Page 30 of A Winter Wedding Adventure
‘These gondolas are big enough for thirty people,’ Kira pointed out grumpily.
‘I’m sure we’ll think of something. Maybe a snowball fight, where they’ll clear the snow off each other and then stare, obviously thinking about kissing. I wish someone would matchmake me. I always have to go out and ask people to date me.’
‘I think most people don’t matchmake because they respect the free will of the couple involved,’ Kira grumbled. ‘There is a chance they don’t want to be pushed together.’
‘It’s harmless,’ Ginny insisted.
‘Have you ever had a long-term boyfriend – with a messy break-up?’ Kira asked with a sigh.
‘Depends what you mean by long-term. Six months I managed once, but I scared him off as usual. Why do you ask?’
‘It’s just complicated when there’s a break-up involved – pride and hurt feelings. I wouldn’t want it to explode at the wrong time during the wedding.’
‘Past relationships are like a bomb?’ Ginny joked, but Kira wasn’t laughing. She hoped old break-ups weren’t bombs that could still explode at any time. Then Ginny asked the worst possible question. ‘You’ve experienced this? A big break-up?’
Kira froze, the awfulness of that moment washing over her again as though it had happened yesterday. If she wanted to explain to Ginny, now was the time. After twelve years, countless summits and crags and a life rebuilt on her own terms, it shouldn’t have bothered her. She’d told Mattia they both needed to face their problems, but she didn’t want to face hers.
‘Of course not,’ she replied as smoothly as she could, letting her head fall to the too-soft pillow and starting another video on her phone.
Ginny thankfully let the subject drop.
12
‘You’d think he’d never seen a mountain before,’ Kira muttered the following day as she led the group through the snowdrifts to the cable car station. That day was their excursion to the ice cave with a photo shoot. As the famous wedding photographer would only arrive for the ceremony, Kira’s boss Willard had convinced Great Heart’s regular nature photographer Rhys Bowen to take the pictures in the cave, which meant there was one person even grumpier about being here than Kira herself – although that knowledge was little comfort to her.
The fact that she was muttering to herself about Mattia should have bothered her, but she had enough other things bothering her that she barely noticed. Foremost among them the fact that Rav was trying to talk to her, so she couldn’t keep checking back to make sure Mattia made it safely across the ice in his terrible shoes. Or he might trip because he couldn’t seem to stop craning his neck to gawk at the ragged, snowy peaks just visible above the forested slopes.
Keeping ahead of where Rav was following too close for her liking, she led the way across a small bridge over a creek that was flowing sluggishly. Both banks were piled with snow hardened to ice.
‘It’s ice in that part! And look at the layer of snow on the twigs. It looks like someone put it there on purpose.’
Kira supposed she should be satisfied that Mattia was cheerful and not miserably cold.
‘You sound like Alessandra the first time I took her skiing,’ Joe said drily. ‘It’s not a fantasy world.’
‘But it looks like one.’ His voice was soft, as though he were singing one of those quiet parts of an opera scene that sounded like speech.
He spoiled the reverent moment by slipping on a patch of ice with the flair of a slapstick performer, landing heavily on the seat of his tailored trousers. He yelped and hissed in pain, especially when his bare hand landed in a snowdrift. The boy wasn’t even wearing gloves.
Carla and Alessandra rushed to help him up and he at least looked sheepish and brushed off their clutching hands to push himself to his feet. He slipped and slid a few more times before he’d cleared the black ice, like a lanky baby animal learning to walk.
Rav caught up with Kira while she was distracted and she couldn’t come up with an excuse to stop him falling into step beside her. He obviously wasn’t put off by the thunder in her expression.
‘How’ve you been, then?’ he asked. ‘You dropped off the face of the earth after?—’
‘I just really got into climbing – holding onto the face of the earth.’
He laughed more loudly than her joke deserved. ‘I’m glad things worked out for you. It wasn’t?—’
‘Rav, I’m really sorry, but now isn’t a good time to talk about this.’ There, another guest insulted. Kira should tick them off a bingo card and at least win a prize for her rudeness.
Rav’s expression was pinched. ‘I just wanted to ask if Christian knows you’re here.’
Just hearing his name was enough to make her skin crawl.
‘I haven’t spoken to Christian since… then.’ She swallowed a grimace. Did that sound as though she was still hurt by what had happened? She hated how weak all of this made her.
‘Should I… tell him?’
