Page 88 of A Winter Wedding Adventure
Kira peered doubtfully at her. ‘He’s in Patagonia on an expedition.’
‘Oh, Patagonia,’ Ginny said with a dismissive flick of her hand. ‘As you do. We’ve never had a wedding in Patagonia. Only the usual places with restaurants and beaches and things.’
‘But what does Rhys have to do with it?’
‘He looked at me last week the whole time,’ Ginny grumbled.
‘He did not,’ Kira defended. ‘Rhys doesn’t look at people.’ He truly didn’t, but it wasn’t Kira’s place to explain to Ginny.
‘Well, whether he was really looking at me or not, I felt judged and it drained all my confidence. Does he hate everyone or just me?’
‘Everyone,’ Kira confirmed with a smile.
‘Oh… that’s all right then?’
After showering and changing, they met Toni at The Admiral, the scene of the first, disastrous meeting between the employees of the newly merged ‘Great Heart Does Weddings’, or whatever Reshma and Willard had decided to call it. Kira would continue to say ‘I Do Weddings’ just to tease the others, although she was beginning to accept that she truly did weddings too, now.
Toni looked bright that evening and folded Kira in another hug. She’d never hugged so many people in her life and she wasn’t sure she was happy with the development, since Great Heart seemed to have gone all mushy.
‘How lovely is this? Three girls having dinner at the pub on a school night! With no babysitter required!’
Kira smiled over her pint. ‘It’s working out well with your parents nearby then?’
‘Yes, except I’ve forgotten how to be presentable. My clothes are all fifteen years old or bought from the supermarket!’
‘Oh, Toni, not the supermarket!’ Ginny said disapprovingly. Kira couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic.
‘At least to come here, I don’t need anything special.’
Ginny set down her wine and eyeballed Toni. ‘Does that mean you’ve been thinking about other occasions where you might need to wear something special?’
Toni choked on her sip of wine.
‘I wouldn’t go there, Ginny,’ Kira warned her.
‘Mmhmm,’ Toni managed to agree. ‘Dating is my idea of hell, given the only two topics I can cover are my son and my dead husband. I was thinking about I Do Destinations, now I’ve had to attend a couple of meetings. There is a certain smart-casual vibe required that I’m too out of touch to master.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Ginny said warmly. ‘Kira set her top on fire and had to wear something of Sophie’s at our most recent wedding and that was still fine.’
Kira sat back in her chair, sharing the laughter. She was glad the gentle mocking didn’t embarrass her – since a miracle had transpired and Ginny was a genuine friend. But remembering that day brought the feelings bubbling back to the surface – all the feelings.
‘I did think that’s what we’d gathered here today to discuss,’ Toni said, lifting her eyebrows at Kira.
‘What, my complete lack of grace and poise?’
Toni leaned heavily on the table, shooting Kira a piercing gaze that sent tingles to her hairline. ‘Why you’ve been impossible these past three weeks.’
‘I’ve been just as impossible as I usually am!’ Kira insisted. ‘You don’t have to like it.’
The sympathetic light in Ginny’s eyes pricked her. They all knew, now. Seeing Christian had been a strange anticlimax, wrapped up in too many other emotions to truly hurt, but she couldn’t hide from her friends any more. Perhaps she couldn’t hide from her feelings, which was a terrifying thought, since they got her into trouble.
‘To be honest, it makes sense to me now,’ Toni said lightly. ‘You’ve been hurt, so you hold yourself away from everyone else – especially someone you could fall in love with.’
‘I don’t want to fall in love with anyone.’ That statement grabbed her by the neck. She meant it, but it sounded desperate and panicky even to her own ears. ‘I want to be fine by myself.’
‘You are,’ Ginny said. ‘You’re so strong and passionate and I admire that a lot. I wish I were as content as you to be alone.’
‘Passionate?’ Kira repeated with a snort, taking a sip of her beer in the hope that the conversation would just go away.
