Page 38 of A Winter Wedding Adventure
Kira’s chin jerked up. She wanted to break some ice over his head!
‘Go ahead,’ their guide said with a smile. ‘The sound properties in here are very unusual.’
‘Opera is unusual enough in normal conditions,’ Joe continued.
Kira’s gaze settled on Mattia, standing across the cavern from where she stood, half a smile on his face. There was no way he hadn’t heard, but he didn’t lash out in reply; he straightened, planted his feet and cast a gentle spell into the space.
It was almost no sound at all at first. A low rumble that slowly grew into a melody. From his stance, the way he seemed to tense every muscle in his torso, she’d expected an explosion of sound, but instead it was a shimmer, a disembodied tune that seemed to come from every corner separately.
She barely noticed his voice growing louder, shaking every molecule of air – and rock and ice. The music seemed to have colour and shades of dark and light. Mattia was only a conduit, as though the song came to him from another realm.
Kira heard it through her veins. She wanted to ask him if he did it on purpose, playing his audience’s emotions like an instrument. The quality of his voice, so unassuming when he spoke, transformed into an act of nature when he sang the heavy climax of the song. She hoped someone had their ear to the ice kilometres away and could hear the swell and resonance.
He held the final note for long enough that a slight tremor entered his voice and then cut off the sound with a suddenness that made the silence feel violent.
Take that, Joe.
Rhys and Ginny stood frozen, dumbfounded. Alessandra and Carla called out, ‘Bravo!’ and their applause created a high-pitched din that was painful after the shine and colour of the past few minutes.
Mattia propped his hands on his hips and took deep, even breaths, flicking Alessandra’s mother a quick grin when she patted him fondly on the arm.
‘I did not expect that,’ Kira heard Joe commenting behind her.
Kira hadn’t expected Mattia either and she didn’t know what she was going to do with him.
‘When I pointed out I hadn’t spent much time with Joe, I did not mean I wanted to sweat naked with him in a sauna.’
After lunch at over 3,000 metres at the restaurant – with transport by snow groomer – the wedding party had made it back down in the cable car and returned to the relative calm of the Kitzingalm Hütte with a couple of hours until dinner.
Alessandra slapped his arm. ‘I didn’t mean naked! Do you really think Joe would go into a sauna naked?’
‘Good point,’ Mattia grumbled.
‘You can keep your towel on.’
Darn, that was one excuse not to join Joe and the groomsmen in the sauna shot down. Mattia couldn’t imagine he’d enjoy it, even without his intimate parts on show. The groom and his mates would laugh deeply and make inappropriate jokes. With nothing else to do but talk, they’d be deeply uncomfortable.
‘Aren’t I one of the bridesmaids, rather than a groomsman?’ That made him think of Kira again with a sizzle of satisfaction.
‘But you don’t want to get a manicure with us.’
‘Remember at school when I went through that black nail polish phase? I could do that again.’
Then Alessandra brought out the heavy artillery – a pout so pronounced in her wine-coloured lipstick, she reminded him of the Neapolitan ghost stories where a single look could condemn a man to die. ‘For me, Matty? It’s my dearest wish that you and Joe should get to know each other and be friends.’
Mattia thought perhaps the two were rather mutually exclusive, but he couldn’t voice that worry.
‘I’m marrying him and you’re my best friend.’
That reminded him of Kira again and their conversation in the van. He was a little resentful of the change that would take Alessandra away from him, and perhaps that was part of the reason he’d never imagined getting along with Joe.
‘Fine,’ he said with a sigh, giving her a kiss on the cheek in farewell before trudging back to his room to change.
The sauna was a small, wooden hut built onto the far side of the chalet, technically outdoors, which made Mattia grimace as he’d only just warmed up from the trip on the snow groomer. There were also no changing facilities attached, so he had to slap down the stairs in the complimentary felt slippers, clutching his towel.
But when he stepped inside, he understood why it had been constructed that way. One corner of the sauna was made entirely of glass, framing the glistening, white valley and pine forest groaning under a heavy layer of snow.
‘Shut the door, mate, yeah?’
