Page 35 of A Winter Wedding Adventure
Gazing out at the mix of manicured ski slopes and wild rocks and cliffs, the sharp dips and sudden rises of a landscape that was too big to be tamed, the view called to her, as always. In the physical challenge of a climb or a difficult descent, life appeared simple: breath, muscle, fuel, sleep.
Survival, she could do. Anything more complex and she was out of her depth.
‘I’m assuming she’s learned to eat without clinking her cutlery now,’ she pushed, shifting to give herself an inch of breathing room. But he stretched in response, his knee knocking hers. If he kept touching her, she’d… start to think it felt easy and natural. ‘You two looked cosy last night. Ginny said you had an intimate discussion after dinner.’
He sat up straight, shooting her a disapproving look that was several notches too dramatic. ‘We did not look “cosy”, and do you want to know why I was out in the corridor last night?’
She didn’t really, but he continued before she could stop him.
‘I was looking for you!’
14
Kira looked alarmed at his admission, sending his stomach dropping rapidly into the valley as it became clear that his crush on her was one-sided. If she felt any attraction to him, she wasn’t interested in dwelling on it, whereas he could barely think of anything else.
He liked the way she moved: more practical than graceful and always with purpose. He liked that she rarely smiled, making those occasions all the more arresting. He wanted to trust her and lean on her and let her tend all of his wounds.
But she was pushing him back to Carla.
The gondola shuddered into the next station and he scrambled to follow her, groping for her arm and finding her hand. For a single, startling moment, he held her rough one in his and his mind raced with images of that simple action: holding hers under the table while she struggled through dinner conversation; Kira clutching his before an audition; strolling hand in hand along the lungomare in Naples as the sun set.
She pulled her hand back as they walked out into the stunning sunshine, dissolving the images in his brain. Mattia threw his forearm over his eyes at the sudden glare. ‘Ah, this place is violent!’
‘I don’t think that’s a description I’ve heard before.’
He peeked to find her looking up at something. When he followed her gaze, he was confronted with a landscape he could never have imagined. Protrusions of jagged rock erupted from the pillowy cushion of snow. Directly before him, the ground zoomed up, impossibly steep, to distant peaks he could barely see. Carefree skiers zigzagged down the slopes, giving him heart failure just watching.
She ushered him to the next station and through the turnstiles as he cricked his neck and bobbed his head to keep his eyes fixed on the mind-altering, high altitude environment.
Taking a seat in the gondola – Kira only scooting closer when someone else piled onto the bench after them – she avoided his gaze, but he wasn’t sensible enough to take her hint.
‘Are you going to ask me why I was looking for you?’
The gondola whooshed off at that moment, making his stomach swoop for what felt like the fiftieth time that day. The pressure in his ears built and he rummaged for his lozenges.
‘These are usually for my voice, but they’re working well for my ears today,’ he commented, hoping to disarm her again. ‘I noticed something was bothering you at dinner.’
Her nostrils flared and that was all he needed to confirm his suspicion that she was upset about something – something to do with the groomsman who seemed to know her. He waited for her to deny it.
When she didn’t respond, he proceeded cautiously. ‘After you saved me from a fridge and patched me up after the icicle incident, I’m the last person who’ll judge you. Let me help, if I can.’
A flicker of dismay was her only discernible reaction. ‘You can’t help,’ she insisted. ‘And I wouldn’t want you to anyway.’
He released a slow breath. Her answer couldn’t have been clearer. He should leave her alone, forget about this bubble he imagined forming around them when they were together.
His mind raced for a way to stop her slipping away, but he was distracted by his own disappointment, by the confounding strength of his desire to be close to her. Perhaps he was starved for affection, but he’d have to have a screw loose to look for it with her. Except… deep down, he suspected she was starved for affection too – even more profoundly than he was.
‘All right,’ he said gently – a strategic retreat, for now at least. ‘I just wondered whether it might help to talk about it.’
She glanced at him, unsettled, a blue strand of hair on her cheek.
After a few intense minutes of seeing nothing but her turbulent eyes and crooked lips, the gondola rattled over a pylon with a clunk-clunk, making him jump. The cabin, swinging through the air above the ski slopes, came back into focus.
He glanced out of the window to his right and choked. ‘C-cavolo. Oh my fucking God.’
They were hanging over a deep void on one side, a jagged wall of rock and on the other: nothing. Everything. The whole world. The ground slipped away – far, far away – beneath them as they dangled from the wires.
The pylons they’d just passed were bolted precariously below one rocky peak and the rapidly approaching station perched at the edge of the drop. One false move and…
