Page 11 of A Winter Wedding Adventure
Of course. Any infatuation was on his side only. A woman in big boots with blue hair and no nonsense would not do infatuation. But he was suddenly curious about whether she had a significant other.
Also none of his business.
Besides, considering the impending reunion with Carla at the wedding and the associated stress dreams that had been assailing him for a week, it should have been easy to remember that he was terrible on dates. How fortunate that this wasn’t a date – and he got an extra night to mentally prepare for the wedding.
With a puzzled smile at the strange way good fortune and bad fortune seemed to intertwine like musical motifs in an opera, he hurried to catch up with Kira as she weaved stiffly through the crowd.
He tried to glance up and enjoy the glowing ambience of the strings of lights, the luminous Christmas tree and the cosy stands with knick-knacks made of glass and wood, candles, knitwear and handicrafts, but everything was a blur as he struggled to keep Kira in sight and stay upright on the slippery flagstones.
‘I don’t know what you want to eat,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘but I’m getting chips from the Kartoffelhütte. I saw it while I was waiting for you earlier.’
‘Chips,’ he repeated, already hearing the crispy potato sticks crunching in her mouth – and ringing in his ears.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Are you too fancy for chips?’
‘No!’ he insisted. ‘Oh, look, they have tramezzini,’ he pointed out, but Kira didn’t even stop.
‘You can’t have Italian sandwiches at a Christmas market in Salzburg. Get some when you go home.’
And that was how he found himself juggling a paper cone full of skin-on chips – and a hot-dog roll with two narrow sausages, onion and some mysterious spices – as he followed Kira to a barrel table under a pine garland. He thought he’d done quite well until he lost two chips in a tricky manoeuvre around a toddler in a woollen snow-suit with tassels on the hood.
He was out of breath by the time he set his paper plate down. ‘I think,’ he began, ‘the trick to being calm in a crowd is not to be in a hurry.’
‘If I have to dawdle through a crowd, then I’m not calm,’ she replied gruffly and, before Mattia had a chance to brace himself, took a bite of her sausage bun. The sound crashed in his ears and a few more chips shook onto the ground as his hand wobbled.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ She shoved a chip into her mouth and that exploded through his auditory canal too. ‘Are you going to eat?’
The question snapped him out of his distraction. ‘Yes, of course.’ He considered the messy sausage bun and lifted it gingerly to his lips. It was salty and spiced with unfamiliar flavours, but his taste buds approved.
‘You remember you were the one who wanted to eat here,’ she pointed out doubtfully.
He chewed and swallowed before saying, ‘I was picturing the ambience, rather than the food – and imagined we might get knives and forks.’
She snorted a laugh, chewing with her mouth open.
He took another bite, only for a glob of sauce to fly up into his nose. Spluttering and groping for the serviette, he managed to smear a drop on his collar. ‘Cazzo!’ he cursed, loudly enough to turn a few heads and remind him that, while his beloved Napoli was a long, long way from Salzburg, Italy itself was just over the southern border of this small country.
‘You’d like to eat your sausage with a knife and fork, but you swear? I assume that was a swear word.’
‘Indeed. Swearing is an art form in Italian, although I must admit that one was unimaginative.’
‘Do you want this?’ She held up a water bottle.
‘I think the shirt is ruined anyway. Waste of good tailoring. I seem to be a complete disaster today.’
She squashed her lips together in a manner that would have been amusing if he hadn’t seen exactly what she was thinking.
‘Yes, I’m a disaster every day,’ he admitted.
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘But you were thinking it. It’s okay. You might be surprised to hear I have a reputation for clumsiness and melodrama. I didn’t realise snow was so slippery.’
‘They say there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad shoes.’
‘Excuse me? These are hand-crafted Italian leather.’ And his feet were growing colder by the minute.
Her sharp eyes narrowed as she studied him. ‘But that wasn’t melodrama before – at the hotel,’ she said lightly.
