Page 4 of A Winter Wedding Adventure
‘The tourist information office closes soon and I don’t want to spend all evening looking for a hotel online. Those apps drive me crazy.’
Definitely too grumpy.
He slipped and slid after her, dragging his suitcase. ‘Are you… not having a good day?’
To his surprise, she laughed, a deep, throaty sound with rough edges and a brittle centre. He was so distracted by the texture of the sound that it took a moment for her words to register. ‘You could say that. Weddings are up there with laundry and tax returns in my book – complete hell.’
‘You don’t like doing laundry?’
She glanced back at him as though he had a screw loose. ‘No one likes laundry.’
With a self-conscious hand at his starched, white collar, he dashed after her through the sliding doors.
‘Why do you do this if you hate it so much?’ he couldn’t help asking, struggling to catch his breath.
‘I’m not really a wedding planner,’ was her only response.
‘Huh. Are you kidnapping me, then? Is that what’s going on?’
Her withering sigh was another inexplicably pleasant, textured noise on his skin. ‘You seem very cheerful at the prospect of a kidnapping.’
‘As long as I get some food and rest, I’ll take a kidnapping right now.’ He was drained, strung out and wobbly with the remnants of audition adrenaline in his system and all his mixed feelings about the imminent wedding. Grumpy he could accept right now, as long as she looked after him.
She blinked at him, but her steps slowed. Her eyes were almost the colour of her hair and just as striking. ‘You are one of the strangest people I’ve ever met.’ Her declaration was without the bite of some of the statements he’d heard from her, so it didn’t sting. He rather liked the attention.
‘The feeling is mutual,’ he replied with a grin. ‘I didn’t have a good day either.’
‘All right,’ she said, a perplexed twist in her lips. ‘I’m sorry about that.’
He beamed at her again, disproportionately happy to discover she was capable of sympathy – vindicated even, as he had some instinct telling him she was someone he could trust.
But his smile seemed to dim hers and she turned away. ‘Let’s just find somewhere to stay for tonight.’
‘I promise not to escape,’ he leaned close to say as they approached the counter of the tourist information office.
‘It might be easier if you did,’ she mumbled in reply.
The man behind the counter flicked his gaze from Mattia to Kira as though he were as puzzled as Mattia was about how they’d ended up here.
‘Hi, we need rooms for tonight,’ she said without preamble. ‘Could you help us find something?’ She gave Mattia a measuring glance. ‘Four stars?’
‘Please,’ he added with a smile for the man. Leaning down to Kira, he said through the side of his mouth, ‘I’m not worth five?’
She didn’t even smile. ‘It’s a hotel, not an opera review,’ she replied under her breath, and that gave him a twinge between the ribs as well.
‘It’s a very busy period over Christmas and New Year, but I’m sure I’ll find something,’ the man responded. He tapped away on his computer. ‘You’re in luck! There’s a room showing as available at the Hotel Alpin. Premium double. It includes breakfast.’
Mattia started at the words ‘premium double’. In combination with ‘busy period’, and the prospect was alarming.
Kira straightened. ‘Two rooms?’
‘I’m sorry? I don’t understand,’ the man said, his smile slipping.
‘We need two rooms. For two people,’ she explained through gritted teeth.
‘Oh, I see,’ the man said stiltedly, although his puzzled gaze suggested otherwise. ‘There are four of you.’
The pressure of the auditions, the performance, the impending wedding too much to hold in, Mattia burst out laughing. Leaning heavily on the counter, he shook with it, hunger and exhaustion rolling over him along with amusement.
