Page 51 of A Winter Wedding Adventure
He drew back in confusion, but Ginny was already sweeping the door open and stepping into the Snowmageddon outside.
Nothing cleared Kira’s head as thoroughly as biting, high mountain air. At over three thousand metres of altitude, each breath was a reminder of the tenacity and value of life. Digging her skis into the fresh powder on top of the glacier, her heart pounded with something that wasn’t joy, but it was a celebration of some kind – of the strength in her body, of the great landscape she had the privilege to be part of for this moment.
If someone had asked her teenage self if she’d ever ski down a mountain, she’d have scoffed. She wasn’t a preppy city banker. She had no interest in expensive hotels and après-ski. But then she’d met Willard as an angry nineteen-year-old with some poor decisions and one enormous disappointment behind her and he’d shown her the magic of working with the slope to conquer it – the elation of playing with gravity.
He’d taken her to Chamonix her first winter on the crew, taught her the basics of skiing and left her there for the season. After five months, she’d pulled thousands of pints in the Irish pub, skied the Vallée Blanche and narrowly passed her first ski instructor’s certificate. And she’d slowly rebuilt her shattered pride – the pride that still felt fragile every time she thought about seeing Christian tomorrow.
Roaring down a steep, snowy slope was almost as good as reaching the top of a challenging crag and she certainly needed to feel the icy wind in her face the day before the wedding – feel herself again. And hopefully banish the disturbing suspicion that, down in the valley, Alessandra was manoeuvring Mattia and Carla beneath a bunch of mistletoe. At least she had to try not to care, if that was the case.
She couldn’t focus only on the euphoria of being alive that day. She had three clients who, although good skiers, were increasingly erratic as the morning wore on. Joe vacillated between daring descents with whoops of excitement and almost desperate dips in his temper. Rav and Hugh seemed to be ignoring his mood, but Kira couldn’t. The clouds had moved in as well, shrouding the ski fields in fog.
Around lunchtime, as Kira sat in the chairlift with her charges, preparing to raise the bar and disembark, she was alarmed to see Joe pitch forward, mumbling something unintelligible. Something dropped into the snow far below them and a sizzle of panic shot up her spine.
The lift approached the station rapidly. ‘Hold him up!’ she snapped at Rav as she yanked Joe back in his seat so she could shove at the safety bar. ‘Help me get him out! What on earth is going on?’
The second question turned out to be unnecessary. As she hauled him out of the chair, thankful that he stayed on his feet for long enough to slide out of the way, it quickly became clear that the groom was stinking drunk.
‘How much has he had?’ she demanded of Hugh and Rav.
‘I dunno,’ Rav answered, wringing his hands. ‘But he mixed it with a few energy drinks too and I don’t know what he’s eaten today.’
Joe collapsed onto his bottom in the snow at her feet, swaying gently in the wind and singing snatches of Frank Sinatra.
‘How are we going to get him down?’ Hugh asked. He had the nerve to tug out his own hip flask and take a swig. Kira hoped he’d accidentally mixed his with arsenic.
‘Under no circumstances are we getting him down ourselves. You and Rav can go and I’ll see you in the car park, but Joe is about to meet the ski patrol.’ She pulled out her phone to dial the resort number, berating herself for not noticing what he’d been sipping all morning.
‘We’ll wait with you,’ Rav offered, but she only spared him a glance as she spoke to the office.
She wished she’d firmly ordered them to meet her in the car park fifteen minutes later when she loaded Joe onto the back of the snowmobile while Hugh filmed everything. The thought of Alessandra seeing that video made her stomach turn.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she said to the laid-back patroller as she climbed on behind Joe, holding him steady with one arm while she clutched their skis with her other.
‘Bachelor party?’ he asked.
‘How did you guess?’ she responded drily.
‘Didn’t have a real bachelor party!’ Joe piped up. His dark mood had returned.
Kira ignored him and turned to the groomsmen. ‘You two, go straight back down to the Sommerbergalm and get the gondola to the car park from there. Straight down! I don’t want to have to come back up here and dig either of you out of the snow.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Rav said with a smile that did not cheer her.
She lost sight of them amongst the throng of skiers as the engine of the snowmobile sprang to life. She hoped Joe might sober up with the wind in his face, but the snow pelted them, visibility so poor, she would have been uneasy continuing even if Joe had been sober. The powerful headlights of the snowmobile created eerie figures out of the skiers, hurtling down the slope in star-shaped silhouettes.
In the queue for the gondola, Joe propped up next to her, but mercifully steady on his feet, she glanced at him and asked, ‘Why didn’t you have a bachelor party? It would have been safer – and more fun – than getting drunk on skis.’ And ruining my chance to clear my head.
‘You say that now, but drinking sounded good this morning,’ he slurred. ‘I didn’t think I wanted the usual sort of bachelor party,’ he continued. ‘Strippers would only make me think of Alessandra. Her body is a fucking dream. And none of my friends are married yet, so they’d all be mocking me.’
‘That’s… insightful,’ Kira replied, ‘apart from the bit in the middle.’ She ushered him through the turnstile and wrapped an arm around his waist to help him step into the moving gondola. Thankfully, there was space on the padded bench.
Joe leaned his head back on the glass, eyes closed, face drawn and ashen. He looked ten years older than he had two days ago.
‘But maybe I should have done it, had a huge bender – licked a stripper, got high.’
Kira studied him for a moment and then laughed, heartily enough that the couple across from them glanced up. ‘That would have saved me some trouble, but do you think that would have made you feel better? That’s a real question,’ she qualified. ‘I don’t have any answers for you and I’m the last person to guide you in any direction except safely down.’
‘I appreciate that, Kira,’ he said softly and she wished she’d separated him from his friends sooner to discover the person underneath his false bravado. ‘I don’t know if I would have felt better, but at least I wouldn’t be wondering. It’s like trying out a different life so you can see you have the right one.’
