The Accidental Family

by Rowan Coleman

  “Have you been trying to make friends with Artemis again?” Sophie asked.

  “No, it’s even better than that!” Izzy said, giggling gleefully.

  “It’s not really,” Bella said firmly. “It’s not anything at all. It’s really best forgotten about.”

  “Yes, we are not to tell because Daddy says he has something very important to ask you but we mustn’t say what it is,” Izzy said, wiping her nose on the back of her hand and then her hand on Sophie’s fuchsia candlewick bedspread.

  “Izzy!” Bella hissed, digging her little sister in the ribs. “Shush.”

  She smiled at Sophie, a wide, toothy grin that Sophie had seen once before, when Bella denied using Sophie’s steak knives as tent pegs to make a den out of her best and, for that matter, only leather coat.

  “Oh come on, girls, what are you two hiding? Is your dad finally going to strip that hideous wallpaper in the living room?”

  “It’s much more exciting than that,” Izzy told her. “It’s the excitingest, biggest thing ever!”

  “No it is not!” Bella tried to urge her little sister into discretion by waggling her eyebrows, which might have worked if her bangs hadn’t been so long that they obscured them. “Daddy has nothing to say to you whatsoever.” She pronounced the new, unfamiliar word with great care. “I expect he won’t want to talk to you about anything of consequence at all.”

  “Except that don’t forget he’s going to ask her to …,” Izzy began.

  “Pay for the cake because he’s lost his …money,” Bella interrupted her.

  “Or at least he hasn’t got any monies left because he’s spent them on this most beautifulest—”

  “Hat,” Bella finished for Izzy. “He’s bought a completely enormous hat.”

  Sophie looked from girl to girl. It could never be said that she was the world’s most intuitive woman. It had taken her a rather long time to realize, for example, that Louis loved her back and that the feelings she had for him weren’t just an unrequited, slightly psychotic, and rather ill-advised crush. Yet here was Izzy seething with secrets, talking about something exciting and big that Louis wanted to ask her, and there was Bella gamely trying to cover up with a tale of lost money and an enormous hat. A few months ago Sophie would have been wondering what on earth Louis wanted with an enormous hat, but she had changed from that blunt black-and-white woman, and these children had helped her do it. That and the fact that they were dreadful at keeping secrets led her to believe that unless she was very much mistaken, what the girls were trying not to tell her was that their father was going to ask her to marry him. Again.

  Only this time she wouldn’t be able to pretend she hadn’t heard him, and there would be no opportunity for distraction sex right in the middle of Ye Olde Tea Shoppe.

  Two

  Carmen Velasquez looked exactly like her name. A few years older than Sophie, at thirty-seven she had olive skin, dark pool-like eyes, and shiny black hair that fell in a neat cut to her shoulders. She looked, Sophie remembered thinking the first time she had met her, like a Spanish rose. Which was interesting because she sounded exactly like what she was—an Essex girl through and through.

  The story of how Carmen had come to be running a tea shop in St. Ives was nearly as far-fetched as the one that made Sophie the second-longest-staying guest at the Avalon B & B. Carmen had fallen for a strapping young man, twelve years her junior, at a nightclub in Chelmsford. She had been dancing on a podium when she’d been literally whisked off her feet by a decidedly Nordic-looking young man who hadn’t bothered to ask her name or inquire about her marital status. He’d pressed her up against a wall and kissed her until the fluorescent lights finally flickered on at 2:00 A.M. They had spent a night of unbridled passion together whereupon it became clear that the young man’s name was James, he was on a stag night out with his best mate from school, and he was currently employed as a long-line fisherman off the coast of Cornwall. Carmen Velasquez, who at that point in her life had been called Carmen Higgins, had kissed James good-bye as the sun came up and sadly supposed that that brief but joyful intermission in her life was over and she would never see him again. But she had been wrong.

  Less than two weeks later, James appeared at the office where Carmen worked, in human resources for a small children’s charity, and told her he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. After giving the matter some thought, Carmen took the afternoon off and booked a hotel room in which they discussed the matter further. She’d told Sophie on the very first afternoon that the two women met that she would probably have felt guiltier about betraying her marriage if it hadn’t been for the fact that she didn’t have any children and her husband was a jerk, to quote Carmen directly. From that fateful afternoon onward, Carmen and James shared various hotel rooms located around the southern half of the country for over a year, Carmen all the while expecting the younger man to tire of her at any moment, and bracing herself to get on with her loveless marriage, but with the knowledge that she had at least tasted happiness for a short while.

  Only, James didn’t tire of her. James fell in love with her and begged her to run away to Cornwall to live with him. Finally, after eighteen months of minibars and shredded credit card statements, Carmen had taken the plunge, left her husband, and reclaimed her much more impressive maiden name.

  Never one to sit about on her arse, as Carmen put it most succinctly, she had decided to channel her passion for pastries and baking into a career and turn the local tourist-reliant tea shop into a thriving year-round concern. She’d succeeded within her first year of owning the shop. And she and James were still going strong, something that Sophie would have found heartening if she didn’t believe in the law of averages. Surely the chances of there being two happy whirlwind romances blooming into two successful long-term relationships in the same Cornish town seemed rather remote. But even if Carmen had dibs on the fairy-tale ending coming true, it didn’t stop Sophie from liking her enormously. It wasn’t only the quality of Carmen’s jam that led her back to the Ye Olde Tea Shoppe so regularly. It was that she could really talk to Carmen and Carmen could certainly talk back. Carmen had stepped into the void that leaving Cal in London had left in Sophie’s life, and Sophie found her forthright friendliness a port in the storm as she settled into a new town.

  “He’s gonna what?” Carmen asked her, her thickly mascaraed eyes widening as Sophie whispered her fears over the lace-doilied counter as Louis and the girls sat at the table only a few feet away. “Never! What, here?”

  “I think so,” Sophie said. “Although to be fair I’m not one hundred percent sure. It’s just that Izzy said he had a big question to ask me and that he’d spent a lot of money on something really special.”

  “Right, well, I love that child, but isn’t she the one who made a mouse out of cheese and kept it in a matchbox under the bed until it grew actual fur?” Carmen asked. “I’m not especially sure you should base your assumptions on what she has to say, bless her. What about Bella? Bella’s the one who normally knows what’s going on from here to Land’s End. That girl loves information.”

  “Bella tried to cover it up, going on about hats and stuff. Bella was definitely trying to keep something a secret—it has to be a proposal, it fits the facts, and it wouldn’t be the first time—”

  “Wouldn’t it?” Carmen’s eyes widened. “Don’t say you’ve turned him down before?”

  “Not exactly,” Sophie said, experiencing a rather wonderful flashback of exactly what had happened after Louis had proposed the first time. “Anyway, that’s not important at the moment. What’s important is— what am I going to do?”

  Sophie glanced back at Louis, who was letting Izzy dress him with a hat she’d fashioned out of paper napkins and some secret bubble gum. It was a good thing he wasn’t fussy about his hair, Sophie thought fondly.

  “Say yes, you idiot,” Carmen told her in hushed tones. “That feller’s pure class, love. If I didn’t love my James, I would, let m
e tell you.”

  “Would you?” Sophie watched Louis, trying to see him through fresh eyes. To her he was the most beautiful creature who had ever walked the earth in the form of a man, but it always interested her to know how other women saw him.

  “Look at him,” Carmen all but growled. “He’s sex on legs, that one.”

  “Sex on …? Oh, never mind. The point is, any moment now he’s going to ask me to marry him and I’m going to have to say no, Carmen. I’m going to have to turn him down.”

  “Excuse me? Turn him down? But why?” Carmen fired the questions at her in quick succession, each one gilded with incredulity.

  “Because this is too much, too soon, too fast …,” Sophie said, faltering. “We’ve only been together six months. And it’s not much longer than that since his wife died and he came back to look after his estranged children and found me as their guardian. How’s it going to look to the outside world? It will look like Louis is getting himself a free nanny with added sex benefits. Everything is so perfect now, we’re so happy. I’m so happy, and if we’re that happy, then why change anything? Why not just stay as we are …?”

  “Forever?” Carmen asked her. “Well, I can think of a few reasons, one of them being that if you keep doing it on his sofa you’re going to slip a disk, and the other possibly more pertinent one is that if he makes you happy, and you love him, then you are supposed to marry him. That’s traditionally how it goes, otherwise what’s the point?”

  “The point is that there is no need to rush things. He’s not ready to get married.”

  “He’s not ready you say?” Carmen said, twisting her mouth into a tightly skeptical expression.

  “Of course he’s not!” Sophie said. “Look at him, he’s confused!”

  Just at that moment Louis was surrendering while both his daughters held him in a headlock and tickled him until his laughter filled the entire café.

  “He does look miserable, now you come to mention it,” Carmen said drily. “Look, sweetheart. You don’t know that he’s going to ask you anything yet. This is probably just you imposing your own fears and obsessions on something those two little lovelies said …in fact …,” Carmen gasped and clutched her hand to her chest. “Stone me, I know what it is they were on about!”

  “Does anyone really still say ‘stone me’?” Sophie asked her. “Go on then, what’s your theory?”

  “It’s not a theory, it’s definitely what Izzy and Bella were trying not to tell you—him and James and some of the other lads have been talking about a boys’ surfing trip to Hawaii for ages, haven’t they? Well, James has got together the cash to go now, and he’s trying to get the others to put deposits down so he can book early and get a good deal. He asked Louis about it last night. I bet that’s what Louis wants to ask you, to look after the kids and cats while he’s away living it up in the sun and ogling fit young women in bikinis.”

  “Really? That would be brilliant!” Sophie said, seizing on the thought.

  “I’m not so keen on the young women in bikinis myself,” Carmen said, pursing her lips. “But if you find that preferable to a proposal, then who am I to disagree?”

  “It could just be that, couldn’t it?” Sophie mused aloud. “His photography business is pretty much established now, and he’s always wanted to go to Hawaii. Plus, it fits the facts. It is a big question to ask and it would cost him a lot of money and he’d definitely ask the girls if they minded before he’d go.”

  “Yes,” Carmen said. “And he’d probably be a bit worried about telling you in case you scamper back to London while he’s not looking.”

  “I reckon it’s that,” Sophie said with more than a little relief as Carmen piled a cake stand high with scones, pots of clotted cream, and jam. “That’s what it is, oh god, I’m such an idiot.”

  “I’m not going to try and fight you on that one,” Carmen said. “Now is there anything else?”

  Sophie looked at the cake stand.

  “Well, as it’s my last cream tea ever, how about another pot of jam?”

  “What were you two talking about all cloak and daggers?” Louis asked her as she set the tray down on the red-and-white gingham tablecloth.

  “Oh, nothing,” Sophie said, trying her best to look unconcerned and exactly like the sort of girlfriend who was very relaxed about her boyfriend taking a holiday without her. “Girl talk, you know Carmen.”

  For a good half hour the table was largely silent as cream and jam and scones and cake were liberally passed around in a delectable feast, one Sophie was ashamed to say she was just as involved in as the girls. And then finally two replete and not to mention hyperactive children climbed off their chairs and went to look for entertainment.

  “So anyway—good news,” Louis said a little nervously. They sipped tea in relative peace while the girls helped Carmen clear the tables of place mats and menus, as the café was about to close.

  “Oh yes, what’s that?” Sophie asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Mrs. Alexander’s coming over to babysit tonight. I’m taking you out to dinner at Alba.” Louis had made a reservation at the best fish restaurant in town, the one that looked out over the harbor from which the fish it served were caught, and where, if you were lucky enough to get a window seat, you could see the town’s collection of rather dashing lifeboat men (including James) take the boat out for practice runs.

  “You’re taking me out to dinner? I mean, just you and me?” Sophie asked him. In the last six months, not only had she never stayed the night at Louis’s house, they had never been on a date with just each other. They had spent more time together than Sophie had ever spent with anyone else, but there had always been two other delightful little people tagging along—unless you counted the evenings in front of the electric fire after the girls had gone to bed, which were wonderful but not exactly dates. It wasn’t something Sophie had wondered or worried about, it was just the fact of their situation.

  “Yep, you can put on a dress if you like and maybe some of those high heels you carted down here with you,” Louis said, raising a brow hopefully, which made Sophie blush.

  It was clear to Sophie that Louis was buttering her up for news of his departure, but she didn’t mind. She thought it was sweet that he was so worried about how she would take the news of his impending holiday, and she wanted to dress up. She wanted to dress up because he clearly wanted her to and that made her feel kind of sexy. Louis was probably the first man she had ever known who made her feel sexy. Other men had found her attractive. Jake Flynn, for example, the New York businessman she’d had a near miss with around the same time Louis and the girls had come into her life. Jake looked at her and she could feel his desire for her, but for some reason it didn’t penetrate through her outer layer despite his square jaw and strong arms. For a long time Sophie had thought that her inability to feel passion had to be because of something lacking in herself, and then one night, on her first visit to the Avalon B & B, back when they still barely knew each other, Louis had kissed her good night on the cheek. It was nothing, his lips barely grazed her skin, but she could not sleep for the rest of that night because of the way his touch had made her feel. Suddenly she’d felt frighteningly, viscerally alive.

  “Mrs. Alexander said she’ll stay over the night at my place if you don’t mind locking the B and B doors at midnight and making sure Mrs. Tregowan gets her cocoa. Nancy will let herself in in the morning to start the breakfasts,” Louis said, directing his gaze out to sea. “I thought I could stay over with you.”

  “Stay over the night with me?” Sophie asked him.

  Louis laughed. “Yes, I don’t know why we haven’t thought of this before; you don’t have to worry about the girls being freaked out and I can finally wake up with you and see if it’s true that you sleep like a princess.” He leaned a little closer to her. “And you and I can make sleepy early-morning love.” Louis saw the hesitation in her face. “Come on, Sophie, don’t tell me you don’t want me staying over
with you? That’s what serious couples do, you know, they sleep together, by which I mean actually sleep, overnight and in a bed and everything.”

  “I know, I know.” Sophie covered his hand with her own, suddenly yearning for the warmth of his bare skin against hers. “And it will be great; I suppose I’m just surprised that we haven’t thought of it before.”

  “I don’t know,” Louis said, looking back at her, the promise of what was to come lighting his eyes. “We haven’t really done a lot of thinking about just us, have we? We’ve got into a bit of a routine I suppose. A lovely, brilliant routine that I adore, but it doesn’t hurt to have a night just for us once in a while, does it? The girls are stoked about it, they reckon they’re going to have a midnight feast.”

  “They can try,” Sophie joked. “But I don’t fancy their chances much. Beware the fool who tries to come down for breakfast any earlier than seven fifty-nine A.M. Mrs. Alexander takes no prisoners.”

  “So I’ll pick you up at eight then,” Louis said. “Be ready?”

  “I will be so ready,” Sophie said.

  “I love you, Sophie Mills,” Louis told her. He must have told her the same thing many, many times now, but every single time she heard those words, Sophie still could not quite believe her luck. She was too happy, everything was too perfect. Sooner or later something would have to go wrong.

  Three

  As it turned out, Sophie was ready by 7:29, so she went downstairs to sit with Mrs. Tregowan, who was the only guest who ever made use of the sitting room. Grace Tregowan would sit in the floral Windsor armchair opposite the TV and the true crime channel for up to eighteen hours a day. She didn’t watch any of the other channels. The other channels, she had told Sophie once, were full of muck and doom and gloom and not in a good way.

  “Give me a paternity test any day of the week, or a nice grisly murder,” Grace had told her.