Page 69 of An Italian Wedding Adventure

Keeping everything together in front of Andreas would not be easy. She should never have told him about her own experience, or had to listen to his gentle voice telling her he wished he’d been there, although she knew he avoided emotional entanglements. By the time she was ready – notready, but resigned to the awkwardness of the next few minutes – the rain was falling in sheets.

Holding her handbag over her head, she rushed up the cobbled lane to the stone steps that led to Andreas’s apartment and paused, the irrational images of him with Kira still stabbing her brain.

She tried Andreas’s phone one more time, but there was still no answer.

What if theywere‘occupied’ right now? Chances were low. He’d told her clearly that he hadn’t been with Kira like that for a few years. Why would they start up again right now?

But why weren’t they answering their phones?

Grumbling quietly at herself, she set her shoulders and stomped up the steps as loudly as she could, rapping sharply on the door.

‘Andreas? Kira?’

At first, there was no answer, then when she was about to knock again, she heard light, quick footsteps approaching. The door swung open to reveal exactly the scene Sophie had been trying not to imagine: Kira, her blue hair mussed, wearing a kimono robe and apparently nothing else.

It was all too much. Calm, collected Sophie was going to snap. She froze on the doorstep, grasping desperately for the threads of her dignity and expecting any moment for Andreas to appear, also half-dressed and dishevelled, and make her misery complete.

And that’s when the lightning flashed, a crash of thunder alarmingly close.

27

‘Sophie! Get inside!’ Andreas called.

What was she doing?

He rushed along the lane in quick strides, arriving at the door to find Kira staring doubtfully at Sophie and the pretty, put-together wedding planner looking a little wild and increasingly wet. He ushered her inside with a firm hand on her back, almost expecting her to protest.

Instead, she blinked at him in surprise as he closed the door, shutting out the hiss of rain on the clay roofs and cobblestones.

Tugging off his damp cap, he asked, ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I—’ She swallowed. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been calling you for over an hour.’

Setting the bag of groceries on the table, he tugged his phone out of his back pocket, finding an alarming number of missed calls when he woke up the screen. ‘Sorry, I went for a run and then grocery shopping and left my phone in the car.’

She was still blinking at him as though something had confused her. He hurried to put the kettle on, stealing one of Kira’s teabags.

‘I’ll go get dressed,’ Kira said, glancing between the two of them. ‘You caught me in the shower,’ she said to Sophie. ‘Sorry it took me a minute to answer the door.’

Sophie grimaced, looking as though she wanted to say something, but he set a cup of tea in front of her, earning him a sigh of relief that made a smile tug at his lips.

‘Just to be clear,’ Kira said, pausing in the doorway to her room, ‘I’m not sleeping with him. Not now. Not ever again.’

Sophie spat her tea. Holding a hand to her mouth, she spluttered and coughed. ‘I didn’t—’ she choked out.

While Andreas’s heart pounded in his chest, he busied his hands searching for a cloth to clean up the drops.

‘Sorry, was that too blunt?’ Kira asked with a wince. ‘I could see what she was thinking and I wanted to set the record straight. God, I always screw this stuff up.’ With a dismissive gesture, she disappeared into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Wiping up the tea while his mind raced, Andreas glanced at Sophie to find her cheeks pink and her brow knit and all of her expressions seemed to be tailor-made to get under his skin.

‘Did you really think I wasn’t answering my phone because I was… in bed with Kira?’ The pressure that had been building behind his eyes since their stilted conversation last night swelled again.

Her cheeks went from pink to white. ‘Not really.’

‘“Not really”? Or “No”?’

‘Maybe a little.’

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