Page 1 of A Winter Wedding Adventure
1
The crowds obviously hadn’t got the memo that it was no longer the season to be jolly. Although it was two days after Christmas, a milling throng filled the square, smiling faces illuminated by the warm fairy lights criss-crossing above. The sound of animated voices was punctuated by a brass band playing cosy Christmas tunes with a jaunty oompah beat that matched the mountains of pretzels and gingerbread hearts available at the wooden stands.
An inch of snow glittered on the roofs of the market stalls and more was coming down – fat flakes that were also a few days late for Christmas, but perfect timing for the ski season, which would soon get going in earnest.
Usually, if Kira found herself in Salzburg, it was on a ski trip for her employer, Great Heart Adventures. If only that were the case today. She might have been able to enjoy the cosy kitsch if she had fresh powder and a steep slope awaiting her. But no, she wasn’t leading a group out to one of the ski resorts today. She was collecting an Italian opera singer to take him to a wedding.
A wedding. Just the word made her break out in an unseasonal sweat. Willard, her boss, had got the company into a grand mess and now they’d sunk to this: taking clients to out-of-the-way places to get married. She’d thought about quitting earlier in the year when the merger with I Do Destinations had been announced, but then someone would have asked her why she couldn’t handle a wedding or two and she didn’t want to answer.
There were a few things in her past none of her colleagues – her friends – knew about.
All of which was why she now hurried impatiently across the twinkling square, probably the most miserable wedding planner who had ever held the title, the grumpiest person at the market, reluctantly ready to play taxi driver to the opera singer for the posh wedding in the snow.
Also torturous was the smell: caramelised orange peel, burnt sugar, cinnamon and fresh bread, bratwurst, melted cheese and even hints of garlic. Because Kira was starving.
Flight delays had necessitated skipping lunch and although Christmas dinner had sat in her belly until Boxing Day, her usual appetite had returned that morning, only to be thwarted by her mum’s latest diet-fad breakfast ideas and her nauseating hints that it was past time for Kira to consider a relationship again. No thanks, Mum.
Gritting her teeth against the tantalising aromas that made her stomach twist and groan, she scanned the square for the meeting point.
Why the guy had changed plans at the last minute to meet her at the Christmas market, she had no idea. She only had a mobile number and a name for him: Mattia Bentivoglio. It sounded more like the name of a footballer. She would have expected something like Luciano or Donatello.
Apparently, he was a close family friend of the bride and an important part of the ceremony – his voice, Kira assumed. The only other information she had was that he was ‘high maintenance’, whatever that meant. It was probably a euphemism for ‘rude and terrible company’.
She was trying not to dwell on the baseline anxiety turning to ice in her shoulders. A three-hour drive on pleasant Austrian highways should have been a much cushier job than her usual: leading groups up rock faces or down glaciers on skis. But out in the extremes of nature, clients didn’t expect service or deference or politeness – or any conversation at all, if Kira was lucky.
Weddings were their own special brand of hell. There was too much she had to hide.
She’d managed her first affair with Great Heart Adventure Weddings three months ago only because it had been amusing to watch her best friend try to win back his lost love, although it was less amusing now he was properly shacked up. Kira didn’t have many other friends to replace him. People probably called her ‘rude and terrible company’ too, without even using a fancy euphemism.
The prospect of spending three hours in a vehicle with an opera singer, trying not to say the wrong thing, was making her leg twitch. Opera sounded like someone torturing a swan to her untrained ear, to say nothing of the fact that the storylines were all tragic and defeatist and the woman was guaranteed to die. God, she hoped she didn’t blurt out any of this stuff during an awkward silence.
She didn’t even know what this guy looked like or how she’d recognise him. She was picturing a dark-haired man in an evening tailcoat and one of those waistband things that were called something like Benedict Cumberbatch. Maybe he’d have a round belly to go with his powerful diaphragm. Or maybe he’d be a silver fox, oozing Italian machismo. Except if he was a childhood friend of the bride, a chirpy, tiny woman somewhere around thirty called Alessandra Martinelli, he couldn’t be that old. She was originally from Naples and apparently so was this tenor – or bass. She wasn’t actually sure which.
Lifting her backpack higher on her shoulders, she made her way swiftly past the enormous Christmas tree to the white, stone arcade. Behind it, the copper-domed spires of the cathedral rose against the evening sky.
Arriving under the arches, she glanced at her watch – entirely unnecessary, as the church bells gonged loudly a moment later. Five o’clock. No time to grab a sausage or one of those rolls with a slab of mixed meat in it. Maybe she could swipe a pretzel on the way to collect the minivan from the rental place. There was no way she could manage the three-hour drive on an empty stomach, so hopefully, the opera singer would be hungry too – although she didn’t know what opera singers ate.
She waited ten minutes, hopping from foot to foot, leaving complex prints from her boots in the dusting of snow. At least the temperature was hovering around zero – comparatively mild and positively comfortable compared to some of the expeditions Kira had been part of. She’d dressed as usual according to the ‘onion principle’, a series of layers she could take off as necessary, and her gloves were designed to protect her fingers from much harsher conditions.
She scowled as she thought of her new colleague Ginny’s instructions to dress as a wedding planner and not an expedition leader. Ten years as an outdoor guide and she’d been reduced to babysitting opera singers and worrying about presentable outfits. She’d reluctantly packed her best blouse, which was currently growing increasingly crushed in her rucksack, but she wouldn’t pull it on until it was absolutely necessary.
She would feel so out of place next to the pretty, made-up wedding planners with their fancy aesthetics – and genuine excitement at the prospect of a wedding. Kira was worried she wouldn’t even manage any fake excitement.
Five minutes later, her stomach was a gnawing void and there was still no sign of an Italian stallion wearing a cummerbund – cummerbund! That was the word she’d been thinking of earlier. No one else in the jolly crowd looked like a high-maintenance opera singer and she was hopping from foot to foot with sheer impatience. She should have grabbed some food. Luckily, the car rental place was open late and they had plenty of time once the dude showed up. In the time she’d been waiting, she could have eaten three?—
‘Kira Watling?’
She whirled around, but before she had time to register more than a head of thick, dark hair and a fine wool coat, the man mumbled an excuse, shoved an enormous, wheeled suitcase at her and rushed off again.
‘Can you look after that for me? I just have to—’ He gestured expansively with quick fingers, walking away backwards, running into someone and then stumbling over his own feet as he tried to turn around. ‘Mi scusi!’ he said emphatically, clutching the shoulders of the poor passer-by.
He wasn’t wearing a cummerbund that she could see, didn’t have a belly and definitely no silver hair, but this had to be the opera singer. He didn’t even look as though he could grow a beard, this baby-faced man with thick, black curls and dramatic features – made more dramatic by what appeared to be a hint of eyeliner under his lashes. A dangly earring winked in one ear. If he’d said he was twenty, she would have believed it.
Collecting himself, he straightened with a deep breath through his nose and strode theatrically to the bar tables set up around a stall selling pungent hot drinks. Kira watched, mystified, as he leaned on one of the wooden barrel tables, staring up at the sky with a wistful expression.
The air around him seemed to sparkle, but it appeared Kira was the only person who noticed, because the hum of the voices of the crowd continued as normal, as though nothing out of the ordinary was about to happen. For a moment, Kira wondered if he had a bomb strapped under his coat – or a superman suit. It was clear from the tension in his body that he was about to perform some kind of stunt.
Perform… The word should have tipped her off, but she still jumped when a man three metres away from her lifted his chin suddenly and sang ‘Amo!’ in a dramatic voice. Heads turned. A musical refrain sounded from behind one of the stalls.
