Chapter 7
7
If Andreas had needed a reminder of why being in the same room as Sophie was agony, he had it.
You just didn’t love me…
What could he say to that? That he had wanted to – so badly? That he thought he probably could have – at least better than whatever Orschkopf she’d married. At one time, he’d even thought he could make it work with Sophie, as stupid as that sounded to him now.
His mind spun with the mess of pride and hurt from the day he’d said goodbye to her – and the day weeks later when he’d realised it truly had been the end.
Damn it, this woman turned him into a reckless fool and reckless fools had no place on a mountain.
So, he swallowed deeply and said nothing, even though he’d never seen her look as compelling as she did in that moment, her lips pressed tightly together and her make-up wearing off to show the pale freckles on her nose.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered – an apology that solved nothing. Her doubtful gaze told him she knew it. He leaned one shoulder against the wall next to her, lifting a hand hesitantly to smooth a strand of hair back. The small touch quelled the agony – at least for a moment.
‘What do we do now?’ she asked.
‘We build you an adventure wedding file.’ It was the easy answer. ‘And try to be friends.’
‘Try? Why couldn’t we be friends?’
The consternation in her expression made him smile. He brushed his thumb along her cheek, drifting for the merest second to her lower lip. The way her breath stalled proved his point. No matter how much the past bothered both of them, the pull between them was still alive.
She lifted her chin, the slightest movement, but he saw it, recognised the invitation – the challenge – was desperate to take it. He came closer, each breath heady with memories of a softer, gentler time in his life. But he tipped up his head and pressed a kiss to her forehead instead.
He felt her sway in his direction, her eyes slamming closed, but at least he’d avoided tumbling headfirst back into the intimacy that had ruined them before. She wanted a different life. She wanted marriage, a partner, and repeating history would get them nowhere.
‘We’ll try to be friends,’ he repeated.
She opened her mouth to say something, but a loud buzzing stopped her. Pulling her phone out of her pocket with a frown, she glanced at him apologetically and connected the call, slipping out from under his arm and making him realise how close he’d been standing.
‘Rory? What’s up?’ she answered, turning pointedly away.
Andreas glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Rory . The name reminded him of Rory Brent, the guy from the Sardinia trip where Sophie and Andreas had first met.
‘Yes, that should be fine. Just leave food and water for her, because I won’t be back until later tonight.’ She paused, listening. ‘I said it’s okay, don’t worry. I’m at home until Monday, so I can have her.’
Her ?
‘Have a good time. I’ll see you later.’ She disconnected the call swiftly and he didn’t quite have time to look away. Her cheeks went pink. ‘My dog,’ she blurted out in explanation. ‘I have to take Betsy from…’
He lifted his brow, wishing he wasn’t holding his breath for her answer. Surely it wasn’t the same Rory. That would be… significant in a way he didn’t want to think about.
She blew out a breath. ‘We share custody of the dog,’ she said with a dark smile he didn’t like. ‘My ex-husband and I.’ He watched her swallow and then she headed for the rest of the group around the corner.
Grasping her arm, he stopped her. ‘Rory?’
When she only nodded, avoiding his gaze, his stomach pitched and sank. It shouldn’t have made any difference who she’d married – whoever it was would have been a loser to let her go – but the fact that it might be that stubborn, supercilious Mistkerl, the fact that it might be someone he knew, made him sick.
‘You married Rory Brent?’ He couldn’t quite stop the rather hysterical laugh that emerged from his throat. He waited – hoped – for her to deny it.
‘I could have married Mickey Mouse and it wouldn’t affect you. You turned me down, remember.’
It damn well did affect him. He just wasn’t sure why. ‘But… he was such an idiot on those trips.’
‘He was jealous , which I understand. He was interested in me and I was a lovesick fool over you at the beginning.’ Turning away, she fiddled with the clasp of the chain that hung around her neck.
God, she’d been a sweet fool at the beginning. He couldn’t think about it without his heart hurting. She’d laughed at his terrible jokes and looked at him as though he could hang the moon and he wished he’d never had to hurt her.
But as much as that, he wished she’d never married Rory Brent.
‘ I should have married you, if only to stop you ever imagining he was the right guy for you!’ he growled.
‘You’re unbelievable, Andreas!’ she bit out. ‘Feelings are off limits, but locking horns in a stupid contest with another guy is fine? You’re just as bad as Rory turned out to be! Maybe you’re right, being friends is going to be a stretch, but not because you’re so bloody irresistible. You have no clue about how to be a human being!’
She turned and walked away with a toss of her head that sent ripples through him. He stood rocking on his heels for a moment after she disappeared around the corner, knowing he’d deserved every word.
When he reluctantly followed in her footsteps, he found Kira eyeing him with a pointed gaze. All he could do was shrug. He’d screwed up – again. He always seemed to screw up with Sophie.
He had to make sure the trip in May was a success, for her sake, but also for Willard’s, for the merger that was his last chance to save the business his friend had spent fifteen years building. If they had to do a few weddings to stay afloat, that was a fair price to pay for the downturn in expedition bookings.
Maybe he’d get a chance to make it up to Sophie.
* * *
Sophie was thankful that the new team of Great Heart Adventure Weddings didn’t quite get on. No one wanted to stay after they’d eaten their toads in holes or their fish and chips and Sophie bundled herself into the back seat of Ginny’s car with her head still in a fog.
Her coworker didn’t even wait until she’d left the car park. ‘All right, Soph. Those were some of the weirdest vibes I’ve ever felt. Spit the whole story – and don’t skimp on the details!’ she instructed as she closed the driver’s side door.
Through the windscreen, Sophie’s gaze snagged on the shadowy figures of Andreas and Kira near the rusty old Land Rover and her voice failed her. Despite the fruity white wine she’d just finished, there was a sour taste in her mouth. Kira was welcome to him, but the conversation before dinner had scratched open a wound.
She should look away before whatever she saw stabbed the knife further into her pride, but part of her needed the blow. As long as her skin still prickled and her lungs ached in his presence, as long as that wanting still sprang up, out of her control, she’d be in danger of believing a relationship between them might work. Perhaps she should be glad he’d ruined the fragile truce by laughing at her for marrying someone who had claimed to love her – even if that marriage had turned out to be a disaster.
Sophie was a wedding planner, after all. She peddled dreams and hope and if anyone had the ability to quash those dreams for good, it was Andreas Hinterdorfer. It beggared belief how someone with no clue about emotions could so thoroughly manipulate hers. No wonder she’d married?—
Nooo . She’d had more than enough of her past mistakes tonight.
So she forced her eyes wide open and waited to see her ex kiss another woman. But when Andreas turned to Kira, all he did was cross his arms and lean heavily on the old paintwork. With a small shake of his head, he gave Kira’s shoulder a squeeze and then he did kiss her – a light press of his lips to her forehead that flashed through Sophie with something other than the hurt and disgust she needed to keep him out of her heart.
It was the memory of him doing the same to her an hour earlier. It seemed two women had wanted to kiss him tonight and he’d put both of them off with a friendly – and absurdly tender – kiss on the forehead.
The rush of embarrassment up to her hairline was a familiar sensation.
Ginny started the car and the headlights flooded the scene with harsh light. Kira was already walking away, her hand raised in a wave, and Andreas flinched, shielding his eyes. The idiot hadn’t even put his coat back on and the light showed up all the furrows of his prodigious muscles.
‘The forearms do not maketh the man,’ Sophie muttered – not quietly enough, because Tita turned to her from where she sat in the passenger seat.
‘But those are not forearms. They are art!’
Ginny snorted a laugh. ‘Sophie was not appreciating them aesthetically. He’s an ex, right? Before or after Rory? And just how ex-y is he really? Looks like it’s not all in the past.’
‘Very ex-y,’ she insisted through gritted teeth, refusing her brain’s request to add an ‘s’ on the front. ‘From before Rory. It was a long time ago and it wasn’t serious.’
‘Really? Andreas looks like he does everything seriously,’ Ginny said as she steered out of the car park and away so Sophie could breathe again.
‘Not me,’ she said emphatically.
‘He didn’t do you seriously?’ Ginny clarified with a wink.
‘Oh, shut up,’ Sophie grumbled.
‘If the colour of her cheeks is anything to go by, he did that part very seriously!’ Tita gave her a less-than-subtle thumbs-up.
‘Given the way he was looking at you, I think he might still be seriously interested.’
‘Ginny! We are a wedding planning agency, not a dating app.’
‘Yeah, we’re single women who plan other people’s weddings,’ Ginny said with a dismayed smile. ‘Although I suppose at least you got married once.’
Yes, in a small ceremony at the town hall with only his parents in attendance – another reason thinking of Rory always ended with a stab of grief. She didn’t need Ginny to remind her of what a joke of a wedding planner she was.
‘As the only married one at I Do, I think after everything that happened with Rory, it might do you good to hit the sheets with a gorgeous guy who stares at you as though you’re Princess Diana,’ Tita said.
‘Not Princess Diana! Tita, how old are you? Sophie deserves a guy who looks at her as though she’s chocolate cake!’
‘I’m not really happy with either of those metaphors,’ Sophie mumbled.
‘Do Italians like chocolate cake? Maybe he looks at you the way he’d look at cannoli. Mmm,’ Ginny licked her lips, touching on the subtle gold piercing below the bottom one. She had a notorious sweet tooth. ‘I love cannoli.’
‘Andreas doesn’t eat cannoli,’ Sophie corrected her grumpily.
‘What does he eat? Whatever he loves to eat, that’s the way he was looking at you.’
‘He was not! He eats instant calories out of tins as far away from civilisation as he can get. And besides, he’s from the German-speaking part, which means he would have been looking at me like…’ She took a second to remember the name of the dumplings he’d insisted were the food of the gods in the typically parochial fashion of a person from a small place. ‘Knodel,’ she said with a snort of laughter, the name even funnier than she’d remembered. ‘That would mean he was looking at me as though I were a Knodel, a big dumpling.’
‘That’s kind of sweet,’ Ginny continued, undeterred. ‘He could call you “dumpling”. Maybe you’d end up getting married and?—’
‘I am not going to marry Andreas! For God’s sake! I was young and stupid enough to suggest that once and then I never saw him again!’
She caught herself abruptly, the heavy silence confirming that she’d revealed too much.
Ginny found her voice first. ‘And you have to work with him now? On a wedding ?’ she squeaked.
Sophie buried her face in her hands and wished she could skip ahead a few months, and get Andreas back into her past.
When Ginny continued, her tone was wary. ‘Soph, I didn’t mean to upset you. I was teasing. I didn’t know he popped your heartbreak cherry.’
‘He didn’t pop my— That is a stupid expression. He didn’t break my heart,’ she insisted. ‘It was all a long time ago. I’ve been married and divorced since.’ And she’d lost a lot more than just a husband, although she’d never wait around for Andreas’s reaction to that news. ‘I am perfectly capable of dealing with this calmly and maturely – and professionally.’
Ginny and Tita nodded, the older woman reaching back to squeeze Sophie’s knee.
‘But, you know, a little… Knodelling in Italy wouldn’t hurt?—’
‘This is the last time I tell you two anything!’
There would be no Knodelling with Andreas, under any circumstances.