Page 13 of A Winter Wedding Adventure
‘We are very serious about the evil eye in Napoli.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Lucky you’re here to protect me, in case the evil eye followed you to Salzburg.’
He flashed her a smile. ‘Look, you’re enjoying spending time in this crowd. It must be my magic.’
‘Magic? That’s just what I need,’ she grumbled under her breath. Her gaze snapped up to his. ‘You heard that, didn’t you?’
He gave an apologetic nod. ‘But don’t worry,’ he said brightly. ‘You’re just what I need too.’
5
Alcohol apparently made Mattia even happier – volatile in his good mood as he swaggered unpredictably. His hand gestures threatened that he could break into song at any moment.
Kira still had her wits about her, although the fuzz surrounding her brain was thicker than she’d realised when she accepted the last ceramic mug of punch from the copper cauldron with a giant ball of flaming sugar set above it.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have had anything to drink, not even punch, but she had to be off-duty sometime and it was alarmingly easy to drop her guard around Mattia.
‘Foia-zahng-en-boiler?’ He whirled back to face her with a question in his eyes, pausing their progress near the bronze statue of Mozart. The muted melodies from the brass band were now behind them, as were the lights and smells of the market. ‘Is that how you say it?’
‘Don’t look at me. You’re the one who asked the woman in the dirndl to repeat the pronunciation so many times. She thought you were flirting with her.’
‘I was just being an embarrassing tourist. I don’t know how to flirt.’
She snorted at that.
‘No, really,’ he insisted. ‘I don’t flirt. I just fall in love.’
That earned him a perplexed glance, but he didn’t elaborate. He tugged his phone out of the pocket of his sleek coat, fumbling so much, he nearly dropped it. He didn’t seem to have any gloves with him and the temperature had dropped below zero while the snow created a layer of candy floss over everything.
A moment later, a pleasant voice from his phone piped up, ‘Feuerzangenbowle. Feu-er-zang-en-bow-le.’
‘Foia-zangen-boiler!’ he tried again. ‘You’d think I’d never sung operas in German,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Even if it’s difficult to pronounce, it was delicious. Thank you for taking me back to the market.’ As he spoke emphatically, peering at her with his luscious eyelashes and mile-deep eyes, Kira wasn’t sure whether to laugh or smack him. Even if he denied it, he was definitely flirting and there was no way he would ever fall in love with her.
‘You dragged me back here. No matter what Alessandra thinks, I’m not your babysitter.’
‘No,’ he agreed half-heartedly. ‘But I had such an awful day, and to think I’d end it here in the snow with you…’ His lips broke into a smile and that was worse than the eyelashes and the hot-chocolate eyes.
She wasn’t sure what point he was making by adding the ‘with you’. ‘What was so bad about your day? Did you fluff your audition piece?’
‘I didn’t… “fluff”,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I got the part.’
‘And that’s not good because…?’
He paused, scraping his teeth along his bottom lip. ‘It means time away from home. I’m not good with change.’
‘Why not just audition in Naples?’
His shrug told her a thousand things at once, each one incomprehensible – like the other-worldly duet. ‘There’s not a lot of work in Napoli. I… fluffed an audition there. I’ve been only semi-professional up until recently, but I have an agent now. I am forced out of my comfort zone.’
The catch in his voice rippled over Kira with second-hand feelings she couldn’t control. When life got too hot, she found a rock and climbed it, proved herself at each successive difficulty grade. Mattia haemorrhaged emotion all around him in beautiful puddles, enough that she wondered how he could live like that – and how much longer she had to endure it.
‘At least it will be summer when I come back here,’ he said with a sudden restoration of the brightness it seemed he could summon at will. It gave Kira whiplash and she didn’t reply.
She kept silent in the cab, annoyed that she was hyper-conscious of his hand resting on the seat between them – and the fact that she’d climbed in next to him instead of sitting with the driver. His soft skin and neat manicure drew a disheartening comparison with her rough knuckles and bitten-down nails.
‘Thank you,’ he said stiltedly as the car crossed the glistening river and headed for the train station, providing glimpses of the illuminated, white fortress set above the old town. ‘For earlier. The fridge.’ The shadows in his expression were evident. ‘Even though you didn’t know what was going on, you… allora, thank you anyway.’
She waved off his gratitude with a shake of her head. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to go back into your room? Or is it safer to swap? The bed’s a bit small for you, but you’ve used my towel anyway,’ she added drily, hoping to lighten the moment, but the attempt backfired when her words reminded her of the view of him wrapped in that towel and standing close enough for her to see all the droplets.
