Page 92 of A Winter Wedding Adventure
She turned the pages, skipping over the images of the hotel room where they’d got dressed. Kira wasn’t in any of the photos – at least that part of wedding planning she’d mastered – but Mattia painted her back in with his memories. Whenever she’d been in the room, he’d seen everything in brighter colours, felt everything more keenly.
He made the appropriate gushing noises at the posed portraits after the ceremony, in front the old wooden farmhouse with its balconies and slanting roof. Tiny flakes of snow seemed to light up the picture, and the shimmer of rocky mountain peaks in the distance looked too magical to be real.
But the grinning bride and groom were the ones that made the picture into a true fairy tale.
‘This one’s lovely,’ Mattia commented softly, pointing to a photo of Joe tipping Alessandra over his arm, pressing a firm kiss to her cheek while she laughed.
‘I asked them to include lots of photos of the guests too,’ she said, turning the page again. There was a stunning action shot of the tarantella, taken from a high angle. Mattia hadn’t noticed the photographer getting up on a chair, but that’s what he must have done. He picked out Kira immediately, with her strong chin and blue hair.
It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her face over the past four weeks. She’d unfortunately let him take a photo of her holding her breakfast pretzel at the bakery in Innsbruck. Whenever he looked at her bandaged hands and wry smile, he had a host of contradictory feelings.
He saw none of the other guests in the picture from the tarantella – or even the bridal couple in the middle of the circle. He wondered what Kira was doing and when it would feel normal that he didn’t know.
Alessandra surely noticed the focus of his gaze, but he couldn’t bring himself to shift it, even though he also didn’t want to talk about it. She turned the page slowly, before he was ready, but the photo in the corner of the next page made him freeze, his throat thick.
He was dancing with her. She’d wound her arms around his neck, her body so naturally, so effortlessly close to his. He’d felt her pulling away that night. Had offered to set her free – not that he’d ever tried to hold her back. But she hadn’t gone, not until the next day. She’d asked him what he wanted, too scared to be the one to speak first.
Sometime after that, they’d looked like this: intimate and content and easy. He sighed, loudly enough that Alessandra unfortunately saw it as an opening.
‘You do still feel something for her.’
He laughed darkly. ‘As if that were in doubt!’
‘But then why…? Have you kept in touch?’
He shook his head. ‘She didn’t want to.’ As soon as he said the words, he realised they weren’t quite true. ‘At least, that wasn’t the plan.’
‘But was it your plan?’
‘Even I know having feelings for someone who doesn’t commit will never work out. I accepted that before we started anything.’
Squeezing his arm affectionately, she scooted closer. ‘You changed,’ she said lightly. ‘I think it’s good. I mean, I don’t think you should go out and date casually all the time, but you discovered something, right?’
He nodded. He’d discovered how well two people who were wildly different could fit together in the right circumstances.
‘But Matty,’ she continued, her voice firm, ‘I think Kira changed too.’
He stilled, his ears hot. He didn’t need much encouragement and he was a little resentful of Alessandra for providing it. ‘She didn’t say – anything. Except at the beginning, that she only had casual relationships.’
‘I don’t blame her, after what Christian did. No wonder she was so disparaging of weddings, the poor thing.’
Kira would hate being called a ‘poor thing’. She’d learned to be tough, to protect the soft heart under all her layers. He loved that she was tough – he’d needed that. But maybe he had helped her realise that the soft heart wasn’t a weakness to hide.
‘I understand why she didn’t say anything,’ Alessandra continued, ‘but did you? On that last day, did you say you wanted to see her again? Give her a chance to say no, if that’s what it had to be?’
The heat spread to his cheeks. He couldn’t exactly tell Alessandra that he hadn’t said anything because Kira had pressed a hand to his mouth and moved things on to sex. But the longer he thought about it, the more it made sense that he’d needed to be the one. He’d needed to be brave and promise he wouldn’t hurt her, even though she was scared.
Instead, he’d let her go.
‘I collected the photo album in person last weekend,’ Alessandra said.
‘You… Hmm?’
‘Joe and I drove out to Bath, to the office of I Do Destinations. It was lovely to see Ginny again, even though she spent ten minutes apologising for the photographer, who I personally think did an amazing job. The pictures in the ice cave in particular are stunning, since he’s a nature photographer.’
‘That’s… nice,’ was all Mattia managed to reply. ‘How’s Ginny? On to the next wedding?’
Alessandra nodded. ‘And she’s taken up climbing. She said it’s been good for her confidence, especially since she might have to do some of these outdoor weddings this summer, now they’ve merged with the adventure travel company.’
