Dr. Zinetti's Snowkissed Bride (7 page)

‘You're pretty wise about people for someone who is only seven years old. I wish I'd known that much at your age.'

Jamie pulled a face. ‘Yesterday he didn't want to be my friend, and today he does. I haven't changed. The only thing that's changed is that he knows you're my friend.'

‘That doesn't matter, Jamie.' Meg's voice was husky. ‘As long as he isn't being nasty, that's the important thing.'

‘I think the reason he picks on me is so that he doesn't get picked on himself.'

Startled by that insight, Dino put down his glass. ‘What makes you say that?'

‘The way people behave…' Jamie sprinkled cheese over the pizza bases. ‘There's usually a reason. My mum taught me that. People are complicated. What you see on the outside isn't what's on the inside.'

‘Right.' Dino looked at Meg but she was busy chopping mushrooms.

‘You can't always believe what people say,' Jamie said stoutly, plopping olives and pepperoni onto one of the pizzas. ‘Sometimes people say things they don't mean. And sometimes they don't say things they do mean. Do you want pepperoni and olives?'

‘Sì, grazie
,' Dino said absently, his mind on the conversation.
Sometimes people say things they don't mean.
Was that what had happened with Jamie's father? ‘So who is your best friend at school?'

‘Luke Nicholson.'

‘Sean and Ally's youngest son.' Meg took another sip of her champagne. ‘Luke is a really nice boy. Sean's been taking
the two of them climbing. Jamie, that's enough for one pizza. Do one of the others now.'

Jamie loaded the other pizza bases with toppings. ‘If we lived in Italy, could we eat this all the time? I bet you made loads of pizzas with your parents when you were little, Dino.'

Dino thought about the atmosphere of his parents' home. On the rare occasions he'd been allowed to join his parents for dinner, it had been an excruciatingly formal occasion with no concession to the presence of children. His sister and he had endured countless long, boring evenings when he would rather have been playing or asleep.

‘I didn't make pizza, but I always wanted to.' At the time he hadn't imagined that kids did that sort of thing with their parents, but clearly he was wrong.

Jamie pushed a base across to him. ‘Go on, then. The cheese and tomato is the hard part and I've done that for you. You just have to choose what else you want.'

Smiling, Dino sprinkled olives, pepperoni and mushrooms and Meg slid the pizzas into the oven.

Jamie jumped down from his stool. ‘I'm going to watch TV until it's ready. Don't let them burn, Mum.' He vanished from the room and Meg gave Dino an apologetic glance.

‘Sorry.' She started clearing the various bowls from the table. ‘Not what you're used to, I'm sure.'

‘No. It's better.'

‘Don't patronise us, Dino.'

‘Is that what you think I'm doing?'

‘You just admitted you didn't eat pizza when you were a child.'

‘Not because I didn't want to. Usually my sister and I ate alone in the kitchen with one of the nannies while my parents entertained in the dining room.' He looked around her kitchen. ‘And the kitchen was nothing like this one.'

‘You mean messy.'

‘I mean homely.' He picked up one of Jamie's paintings that had been tidied to one side of the table. ‘He's such an important part of your life. The evidence is everywhere.'

‘That's because I don't spend enough time cleaning the place.' She blew the strands of hair away from her eyes. ‘I'm not a natural housekeeper.'

‘You're proud of him. It shows. And the place looks fine to me. No kid wants to live in a mausoleum.'

Startled by the sudden abruptness in Dino's voice, Meg risked asking a personal question. ‘Is that how your house felt when you were growing up?'

Dino pushed his chair away from the table and stretched out his legs. ‘We had paintings wired to alarm systems that connected straight through to the police station. Once I brought half the Rome police force round to the house by kicking a football indoors.'

‘Ah.'

‘My parents' child-care strategy was that children shouldn't be seen or heard. Which meant that basically we lived separate lives.'

A tiny frown creased her brow. ‘I admit that doesn't sound great.'

‘It wasn't.' Dino spoke quietly, not wanting to disturb too many of the memories. ‘So perhaps now you'll believe me when I say I'm enjoying pizza night.'

‘Oh, well—good.'

‘You do this every Friday?'

‘Yes. Unless I'm working.' She washed her hands and removed her apron. ‘I wanted to thank you again for what you did yesterday. It's made all the difference to Jamie. And to me. It was such a relief to see him bouncing out of school today instead of slinking along. I can always tell what sort of day he's had by the way he walks out of the building.'

‘It was tough not intervening. I wanted to pick Freddie up by the collar and give him a talking to.'

‘I think you found a more effective way of silencing him. Hopefully it will all calm down now.' Reaching up, she closed the blind in the kitchen. ‘It's snowing again. Did you hear that they've issued an avalanche warning? Can you believe that in the Lake District?'

‘We have had half a metre of snow in some places. Add to that a high wind and you end up with drifts that are only loosely attached to the mountainside. The snow pack needs time to consolidate.'

‘I suppose you're used to it, having been brought up in the Alps. Apparently it's lethal underfoot. Some of the edges are literally breaking away and if you're standing underneath at the time, you're in trouble. They're warning people not to venture out. But people will, of course. There's always someone who thinks they're cleverer than the weather.' The conversation was light, skating over the surface of the personal, but he felt the undercurrent of tension and he knew she felt it, too.

Since that moment in the tent on the mountain, everything had changed.

Every interaction they shared had another level—something deeper.

Sensing that this wasn't the moment to explore that further, Dino looked at the dog stretched out in front of the range cooker, enjoying the warmth. ‘Is Rambo trained to search in snow?'

‘Yes. Whenever we have snow we do extra training because obviously there aren't that many opportunities around here. But it's a different skill. A search dog is trained to find the person, bark, and then return to the handler. They carry on doing that until they've drawn the handler to the body.' She bent down and stroked Rambo's head, making a fuss of him.
‘When they're working in snow they have to stay with the scent and dig. He's good at it.'

‘How long have you had him?' Dino crouched down to stroke the dog too and Meg immediately pulled her hand away.

‘He was my eighteenth birthday present from my parents. I was already involved with the mountain rescue team. I used to help out manning the base and I worked as a volunteer body. That means losing yourself on a mountain so that the dogs can practise finding you. Then, when I had Rambo, I trained him. It took longer than usual because halfway through I discovered I was pregnant and that—well, let's just say that complicated things.'

He wanted to ask her how, but he was afraid of triggering the same response he'd seen a few days earlier when he'd asked if Jamie's father was still on the scene. ‘So you moved into this cottage?'

‘My dad died the same year I had Jamie.' She pulled a face. ‘It was a truly terrible year. I lived with Mum for a while, it worked better that way. We were both on our own and somehow we got through it together. Then she suggested I move into Lake Cottage. I'd always loved it and it's only half a mile from her house so it's perfect. If I'm called out in the night on a rescue I just drop Jamie with her, or she comes over here. I'm lucky. How about you? How did you get involved with mountain rescue?'

‘When I stopped competitive skiing, I started off working as a ski guide to earn money before I went to university. Then I did mountain rescue.' He wanted to ask whether she'd been on her own right from the start. Whether Jamie's father had walked out before he was born. Had she married the guy?

‘How did you end up in England?'

He'd been escaping
. ‘I wanted a change. Do I smell pizza?'

Meg gasped and grabbed a cloth. ‘Jamie will kill me if I've burnt them.' She pulled them out of the oven and Dino smiled as he looked at the bubbling cheese and perfectly cooked crust.

‘I thought you told me you were a lousy cook.'

‘I am normally. You were the one who reminded me to get them out of the oven before they were burnt to a cinder.' She cut the pizzas into slices. ‘Jamie! It's ready!'

They ate pizza together and he watched as she listened attentively to Jamie's questions and answered them. She was interested in her child, he thought, and that gave the boy confidence. He tried to remember a time when his mother had given him that much of her time, but failed. Families were all different, but this—this was the way he would have wanted his to be.

After the pizza had been cleared away and Jamie had gone to get ready for bed, Dino decided that this was the right time to ask the question he'd been waiting to ask. ‘I have two tickets to the Christmas ball.'

Her shoulders tensed. ‘Good for you. I hope you have a nice time.'

‘I'll pick you up at eight o'clock.'

It took a moment for his words to sink in, but when they did her entire face changed. The tension that had been simmering below the surface bubbled up. ‘Me? No way. I don't go to that sort of thing.'

‘Why not?'

‘For a start, I don't dance.'

‘Pathetic excuse.'

‘That was just one. I have loads more. I can give you a list.'

‘And I'm not going to be impressed by any of them.' Dino wondered why it was such a big deal to her. Judging from the
expression on her face, he might have just asked her to have his babies.

Was it him?
he wondered.
Or men in general?

‘The ball is next Saturday,' he said calmly, ‘at the Winter Hill Hotel and Spa.'

‘I know when it is and I've already told you I can't make it.' She stacked the dirty plates and took them over to the dishwasher. ‘But thanks for inviting me. That was kind.'

‘Kind?' Dino put his glass down slowly. ‘Is that what you think? That I'm being kind?'

‘I'm not thinking at all.' There was a note of panic in her voice as she clattered plates. ‘There's no need to think and analyse because I'm not going. Take someone else. I'm sure there's a whole queue of women just desperate to go with you.' One of the plates slipped through her fingers and smashed on the floor. Muttering under her breath, she swept up the bits and disposed of them.

Dino stood up to help her but she glared at him. ‘I'm fine—I can sweep up my own mess, Dino.'

‘Do you always insist on doing everything by yourself, with no help?'

‘Yes. I'm a grown-up. That's what happens when you're a grown-up. It's called independence.'

‘Doesn't mean you can't take help.'

‘I'm fine, Dino.'

He stood still, wondering what it was about him that had her so on edge. She wasn't just uncomfortable around him—she was nervous. Jumpy. ‘If I'd asked you out to dinner, would you have said yes?'

‘Maybe… No…' She shook her head. ‘No, I wouldn't. I don't date. It just isn't…'

‘Isn't what?'

‘Me. My life. Pick another woman, Dino.'

‘I just picked you.'

‘Well, unpick me!' Her eyes were two huge pools of panic. ‘You'd have more fun with someone else. I'm not great at parties. I don't dance, I hate small talk and…' She flicked the wisps of hair out of her eyes with shaking fingers. ‘Dino, just forget it. I don't even know why you're asking me.'

‘Because you're the one I want to take. We don't have to dance if you don't want to. But that doesn't stop us going out. It's Christmas, Meg. Let your hair down.' He meant it in both a figurative and literal sense. He'd only seen her with her hair down once and that had been when she'd pulled her hat off her head the night they'd rescued Harry. The image of pale gold curls was still embedded in his brain. Using his powers of persuasion, he tried to think what might tempt her to go. ‘It's a really smart evening. A good excuse to buy yourself a new dress.'

Another plate almost slipped to the floor but this time she caught it just in time. ‘I don't need a new dress because I'm not going.'

Dino cursed himself for being tactless. She was a single mother, wasn't she? She probably had to watch her finances really carefully and here was he suggesting she buy a new dress. He wanted to offer to treat her to something new but sensed that would offend her well-developed sense of independence. Instead, he tried to rescue the situation. ‘Just wear anything that's in your wardrobe.'

‘Oh, right. I'll wear my best weatherproof jacket, shall I?' Her tone was light but her shoulders were rigid as she clattered around the kitchen, tidying surfaces that were already tidy. ‘As I said, it's kind of you Dino, but, really, I don't want to go. You'll have loads more fun with someone else. I won't offer you coffee because I expect you're in a hurry to leave.'

And that was that.

The friendly atmosphere had shattered. The conversation
had made her so uncomfortable that she wanted it to be over. She wanted him to leave.

Dino didn't budge. ‘Coffee would be great. And I'm not in a hurry. So is it the issue of what to wear that's putting you off going? Because if so, I—'