Page 40 of A Winter Wedding Adventure
‘You coming skiing tomorrow?’ Joe asked him casually, although Mattia was either oversensitive or he detected a hint of competitiveness in the groom’s tone.
He shook his head. ‘I’ve never tried it before. I wouldn’t want to hold you back.’
‘Or cause more problems for the wedding planner,’ Joe teased, making Mattia wonder what Alessandra had said and whether they’d all realised he was following her around like a lost puppy. He swiped another stream of sweat off his brow.
‘Speaking of the wedding planner,’ Rav continued, leaning forward to catch Mattia’s eye. ‘Is she single? Kira?’
Before Mattia could swallow his distaste at the question, Joe and Hugh were wolf-whistling and slapping Rav on the back.
‘You’re going to have a go at that one?’ Hugh teased.
‘You’re just jealous you brought your girlfriend and you can’t try it yourself,’ Joe ribbed Hugh.
Mattia ground his teeth, wanting to leap up and remind Joe with a very stern index finger that this was his wedding and he shouldn’t be suggesting his friend would cheat on his girlfriend – let alone objectifying their wedding planner and ski instructor.
‘Her?’ Hugh scoffed. ‘I’ve seen prettier racehorses, but she does have nice t?—’
‘Hugh! Cut it out!’
It was even more distressing that Rav was the one defending her and not Mattia himself. He was struggling for air, discomfort seeping up his spine.
‘I was just wondering if she was single because of the wedding.’ Rav met Mattia’s eye meaningfully. ‘Because Christian and his girlfriend are coming.’
Christian. Coming to the ceremony. Kira’s ex. Did she know? What if she didn’t!
Mattia leapt to his feet, tottering alarmingly. His vision blurred, but he could still see the door. His whole body felt as out of focus as the little wooden hut.
‘E-e-excuse me,’ he stammered and hurtled for the door, even though his head swam. He had to find her.
16
She wasn’t in her room, but after an astonished Ginny had opened the door and finished making a decent impression of a fish, she’d told him about the makeshift climbing wall in the chalet loft. Taking the stairs with one hand fisted in his towel and the other clinging to the banister, his head felt out of synch with the rest of his body and sparks exploded at the edge of his vision.
But when he imagined Kira turning up at the wedding to be confronted by her ex, the man who had most likely broken her heart and turned her off relationships for more than a decade, another shot of panic fizzed through his chest.
Finding the chipboard door at the top of the stairs in the dim loft, he wrenched it open and tumbled in, faltering when he was confronted with an image he would never have expected.
Kira hung from the ceiling.
If she’d been hanging the way gymnasts did at the Olympics, he might not have been so dumbfounded. But her hands were not fisted around rings or a bar and her body was not falling straight, at the mercy of gravity. Her knees were bent, holding her lower body tight to the slope of the roof. Her hands and feet were anchored by little plastic grips. The only part of her body that appeared to be obeying the laws of physics was her hair, spraying out from her head in pale-blue strands.
With an expert shift of her legs and arms – and a ripple of muscle through her torso – she swung to the next holds. Her body stretched and strained, the movements not graceful, but effortless. Mattia watched her and felt as though he could see all the beauty and utility of the human frame captured in her.
If he’d been an artist, he would have imagined drawing her in pencil, shading the curves of muscle in her arms and back, the arc of her bottom. As he wasn’t an artist, his brain fired in a much less helpful direction. He could trace those lines with his hands – his lips. In his fantasy, he imagined making her feel good – feel everything, including her own stark beauty.
But Kira didn’t want to feel anything so radical. And she probably wouldn’t let him kiss her. Especially not after she heard what he had to say.
Which was what, again? Something about a turd of an ex-boyfriend.
His vision flicked in and out of focus and his mouth was suddenly as dry as terracotta. He managed to feel grateful for the rubber mats lining the floor under the climbing wall as his legs finally buckled.
When a muffled thump dragged Kira out of her haze of concentration, she did not expect to find Mattia – naked, except for a bunched towel – crumpled on his knees on the landing mats.
The loft room that had been converted into a bouldering wall had a low ceiling, so she relaxed her toes and swung out, hanging from her arms for a moment before dropping to the floor. He blinked up at her as she approached, as though he were the surprised one.
‘What’s the matter?’ She peered into his face, checking pupil dilation out of first-aid habit, noting no signs of injury. The dressing on his forehead was coming off, but there was no fresh bleeding.
He plonked into a sitting position, belatedly remembering the towel and arranging it hastily, a flush spreading up his chest.
