Page 60 of Italy and Forever

‘What happens to one in six marriages within ten years,’ Reshma said with a shrug. ‘And it was messy. I went back to my maiden name and moved and then it didn’t seem the best advertisement for my new business to mention it.’

Ginny sensed the heartache behind those words and her world felt upside down for a moment. Reshma was indomitable, a strong woman Ginny had always admired. She’d assumed her boss was simply choosy and hadn’t found the right man, but to know she’d married young and then regretted it tugged at her heart – and strengthened the little voice that had been insisting she was having an existential crisis at only twenty-eight years old.

‘Why did you start a wedding business, of all things?’ she asked.

‘Don’t look so horrified,’ Reshma said, giving her hand a squeeze. ‘I saw a gap in the market and I like to travel. I couldn’t have built this business if I were still married. You and Sophie have always been better with the details. You both like to travel too, the freedom of it. I’d say Toni is exactly right.’ She turned to Great Heart’s receptionist with a conspiratorial smile. ‘You started to see through me during that wedding on Elba this year, didn’t you? I know I’m a fraud, peddling dreams I don’t believe in myself, but it’s a business and no one would judge a man for doing what I’m doing.’

‘You’re right, they wouldn’t,’ Kira agreed vehemently. ‘But this leaves you, Ginny. You’re the only one left – a heartbreak virgin.’

Ginny recoiled. ‘That’s a horrible expression,’ she muttered. ‘Not everyone gets their heart broken.’

‘Not the people who date by the rules, I suppose,’ Kira said gently. ‘But you remember what the hypnotherapist said.’

‘I didn’t think you’d remember so well.’

‘You’re the last one to fall in love. Maybe there’s more to it than not finding the right person.’

Her thoughts flickered down the hall to where Rhys would be already in his room. He was definitely not the right person, but he came to mind anyway.

Kira continued baldly, speaking words Ginny would have refused to understand two months ago. ‘Maybe you don’t really believe you have a soulmate.’

‘Um, I’m super tired actually,’ Ginny lied outrageously when they’d finished packing the wedding favours into a box to be transported to the reception venue. Although it wasn’t entirely a lie. Her muscles ached from the walk and that terrible – fantastic – climb. Her heart was tired of… trying too hard.

She’d felt dangerously numb ever since Kira had made her flippant declaration, thinking of Reshma, her parents, her dating ban and those confusing moments with Rhys where something had seemed to briefly shimmer into focus and then dissolve again. It was something about herself and she wasn’t sure she wanted to see it.

Hugging Sophie over her pregnant belly delivered another blow that only made her feel so desperately apart from all of her friends.

‘Please, Ginny, don’t overdo it. I need you smiling next to me at the ceremony.’

‘She’ll be fine tomorrow,’ Kira answered for her with that self-assurance that Ginny had always envied. ‘She just needs to recover from her adventures today when she proved she’s just as much a team member at Great Heart as she is at I Do.’

Ginny shook her head, even as the reminder sent another little fizz of adrenaline through her.

When she shut the door behind her friends, she sagged against it, allowing her thoughts to spin for a moment, forcing herself to pause when her feet wanted to race down the hall. Not only did she have to wait until no one was looking, part of her insisted she needed to think about what she was doing.

Sneaking around to have sex with a guy who openly said he’d never commit didn’t sound like the actions of someone whose goal in life was to have her own partner. But what did that goal even mean? Did it just mean she wanted someone to love her? Perhaps she really was that pathetic.

Pathetic and deluded and naïve – and standing outside Rhys’s door with no idea how she got there. She hadn’t even made the important detour to the condom machine. She knocked anyway.

Nothing. For several drawn-out seconds, she heard only silence and hated herself a little more for the thought that even her casual-sex partner had ditched her after one time. She heard footsteps on the stairs and tasted panic. If he didn’t come to the door in three seconds, she’d have to casually saunter back to her own room and come up with a plausible excuse for roaming this part of the corridor.

Finally, a light scuffling behind the door put her out of her misery and then it swung open – to reveal a horny fantasy of a half-naked man, dripping wet. This time the image was even more inviting, because there was central heating and steam from a hot shower, rather than nine degrees and condensation from the cold.

‘Are you going to come in?’

Her gaze snapped back up to his, the footsteps suddenly echoing twice as loudly, and she dived for cover. She’d admit – only to herself – that she’d been aiming for his chest. To her relief, his arms came around her as soon as she landed, even as he stumbled backwards. Keeping her anchored to him, he turned to close the door with one last peek along the corridor.

‘Was anyone there?’

He shook his head. ‘All clear.’

As her heartbeat returned to normal, Ginny kept her cheek pressed just below his collarbone, not minding the moisture, hiding there for a moment as she came to terms with herself and her actions. She needed a lot more than a dating ban to work herself out.

When his mouth met hers with all the sparks and tension of the day, it didn’t matter any more whether coming here was a good idea, or what would happen in a few days when the wedding was over. His breath, the way he clutched her shirt in his fists, the pressure of his lips clashing with hers filled the moment so there wasn’t room for anything else.

She buried her fingers in his hair, recognised the lime scent of his soap. All they’d done was kiss, but her vision blurred.

Rhys’s mouth was on her neck, short-circuiting her nervous system as the sensation rippled through her. His teeth scraped just below her ear and she fumbled for him, sucking in desperate breaths.