‘Not more chocolate,’ she teased with a mock groan.
Luke pursed his mouth in quick consideration, screwing his eyes up in thought before saying, his face alight with laughter, ‘How about a kiss?’
Mina gave him an arch, reproving look, although inside it felt as if an army of frogs had taken up residence and were hopping up and down with mad excitement, saying yes, yes, yes. The memory of their one and only heart-stopping, ridiculously amazing, impromptu, never-should-have-happened kiss still had the power to make her toes curl. ‘I don’t give out kisses to just anyone, you know.’
‘I’m not just anyone.’ Luke raised his eyebrows playfully. ‘Remember serendipity.’
‘I think you’ve got serendipity on the brain.’
‘Not me. I think it’s trying to tell us something. Third time’s a charm. This is the third time we’ve bumped into each other.’
‘I think you talk a lot of nonsense,’ said Mina, which was in fact her talking nonsense, because it turned out that 99.9 per cent of her seemed to find the thought kissing Luke an excellent idea. Her wistful smile belied her words and Luke’s grin widened.
‘See,’ he said triumphantly, as if he could read her mind.
She rolled her eyes and ignored the dipping disappointment when he didn’t kiss her. Instead he turned to the window and placed his gloved hand on the glass. ‘Sometimes you can look down and the valley is full of clouds, and at this point we’re above the clouds in sunshine and down in the valley it’s a grey day. I always think that’s a piece of magic. To be able to go higher than the clouds. I sometimes wonder what it must be like to be an airline pilot. Do they live in perpetual sunshine?’
Mina stared at him, a touch startled. It was the very thought she’d had on the way to Switzerland when the flight had left a grey, drizzly Manchester and climbed to a brilliant blue sky. No wonder pilots always wore aviator sunglasses or – duh! – why those sunglasses were called aviators.
‘What?’ asked Luke.
‘I was just thinking about sunglasses and pilots.’
‘Aviators.’
‘Exactly.’ The smile they exchanged this time was, Mina felt, was a bit deeper. An acknowledgement that they were actually on the same wavelength. Instead of reassuring her, it made her feel a little on edge.
Her innate honesty forced her to acknowledge that despite the sparkly feelings inside her, she needed to put a brake on things. She wasn’t here for flirtation. She was here to sort herself out. To find what she wanted in life and to stop making impulsive decisions that caused chaos and created a wake of trouble. Luke, she decided, was not the type of person who was going to help her sort herself out.
He was a mirror image of herself. Like Simon had said, she was for fun not for permanence, just like her parents had been, and look where that had got them. They’d left behind the people they should have been taking care of. If she was going to sort herself out and move forward with her life, Luke was not the man for her. She needed someone who took life seriously. Someone who would rein in her impulsiveness, not encourage her with talk of serendipity and seizing the moment. Gorgeous and fun as Luke was, he wasn’t what she needed right now, not when she was trying to create some firm footings and foundations in her life.
‘Luke,’ she said, knowing she had to say it now. ‘That old cliché, I really like you but…’ He raised an eyebrow as if to say,I’m listening.
‘I’m just going to be honest.’ She held up both hands. ‘I’m here because I left a right old mess behind. I’ve buggered up my job and stuffed up a relationship, although admittedly it wasn’t worth keeping, but I messed it up through jumping in without thinking. The reason I’m out here is to sort myself out, and that means making some changes, being more sensible about things, planning and not being impulsive. And not being impulsive means not kissing strange men on trains or believing in serendipity. I’m sorry. I am attracted to you but…’ She smiled at him and exhaled heavily. ‘We’re too much alike and I can’t be like that anymore.’ She watched his face anxiously, already regretting the things she’d said, but it would be wrong to indulge in the flirtation that so clearly bubbled and fizzed between them.
‘OK,’ said Luke with a quick shrug and he turned to look up at the mountain peak looming into view.
‘OK,’ she echoed softly, knowing that it was contrary to feel that whisper of disappointment.
He turned back to her and gave her a cheerful smile. ‘Yeah, you might not believe in serendipity but I do.’
‘Luke, I’m serious. No more of…’ She waved an inadequate hand that was supposed to indicate what she meant.
He took her hand and squeezed it. ‘I understand, Mina.’ Then the infuriating creature lifted it to his lips and brushed his mouth across her knuckles. ‘But there’s nothing to stop us being friends.’
‘No, not at all. I just wanted to be upfront with you.’
He grinned at her, seeming completely unperturbed. ‘I can’t imagine you being anything but, that’s what I like about you. No games.’ For a brief moment, he screwed up his eyes, ‘I hate people trying to keep the truth from you.’
Mina wondered what he meant by that, but then the gondola swung into the station and everyone in the cable car began to crowd towards the door.
The view from the top of Eggishorn was like standing on top of the world. With the ranges of mountains spreading out around them and stretching as far as the eye could see, they could have been in Narnia or a Tolkien landscape.
Luke came to stand behind her, his breath grazing her cheek, and her heart did another of those inappropriate flips, but he didn’t touch her. So why didn’t she feel relieved? ‘That’s the Jungrau.’ He pointed. ‘And there’s the Eiger. And that…’
‘That’s the Matterhorn,’ said Mina, recognising the distinctive, crooked shape from photographs she’d seen, although from this angle it looked like a cresting wave.
‘What about this?’ He pointed to a wide sweep of what looked like an untouched highway cutting through the mountains.
