The Accidental Family (23 page)

Sophie tensed as Louis shifted his position again, rolling once more onto his stomach, one arm trapped awkwardly beneath him. At least if she pounced on him now, she’d save him from a terrible case of pins and needles.

There was nothing else for it, Sophie told herself sternly. After all, she was here now, literally naked and in his bed. The only alternative to trying to wake him up was to slip back out of bed and secretly put her clothes back on and leave; and although in the past
Sophie could have been fairly accused of being emotionally cowardly at many points in her life, she was determined that this was not going to be one of them. Sex was the thing that she and Louis were best at. It was the cornerstone of their love for each other. Here in his bed was the place where she would find the intimacy with him that had somehow slipped just ever so slightly out of kilter.

Sophie Mills braced herself for seduction.

Rolling onto her side she slid her hand down his back, stroking her palm gently over his buttocks. She watched his face as a frown flickered between his eyes and faded again. Sidling a little closer so that her breast brushed against his bicep, she repeated the action, stroking his back and bottom and this time softly kissing his shoulder and neck.

Louis’s eyes flickered open.

“Wassat?” he murmured, hunching his shoulder against her kiss.

“It’s me, Sophie,” she whispered. “I missed you. I came to see how you were and whether or not you felt like having sex with me.”

Sophie screwed her eyes tightly shut for a second. She really was going to have to work on her sexy-talk skills. Still, as hackneyed as they were, they were effective. Louis was now wide awake.

He rolled on his side to face Sophie, reaching out to trace the curve of her cheek with his fingers.

“Are you really here or is this just a very vivid dream?” he asked her, his voice low and hoarse.

“I don’t know,” Sophie said, hearing the smile in her voice. “Why don’t you pinch yourself and see?”

Louis’s arm encircled her waist and he pulled her body flush against his, moaning as her breasts crushed against his chest.

“I think I’ll pinch you instead,” he said into her neck, his hand
cupping her bottom. “God, Sophie, it’s so good to see you. How did you know I was missing you?”

“I didn’t,” Sophie said. “I just knew that I was missing you.”

“I’m glad.” Sophie felt Louis’s mouth curl into a smile against her cheek. “Two nights in a row—does this finally mean you’ve declared a bed amnesty?” he whispered.

“Yes—and it’s getting light, so you’d better make the most of it; I want to be downstairs and fully dressed before the girls wake up,” Sophie replied before kissing him so hard that she pushed him onto his back and then she rolled on top of him.

“Oh, Soph,” Louis said. “This is the best ever way to wake up.”

Sophie smiled into his eyes as she moved on top of him. Here in his arms, in his bed, among his kisses and caresses, everything was perfect, nothing could touch them, they were safe from harm and could keep the outside world at bay for a few hours. As her hand traveled downward between his thighs, she briefly considered that perhaps passion wasn’t the best basis for a serious relationship, but it was like Grace had said—as long as one of them died before they got bored with each other, everything would be fine.

“Aunty Sophie, you are in Daddy’s bed.” Sophie sat up with a jolt, drawing the covers over her breasts, to find Bella, in her pajamas, staring at her in shock.

“Oh god, I went back to sleep,” Sophie moaned, more to herself than Bella. She looked at her watch. It was well past nine in the morning, which was the very latest that the girls ever slept.

“That is
Daddy’s
bed,” Bella repeated. “And you are not married yet—are you?”

Sophie struggled to compose herself and, even more crucially, form a coherent thought.

“No, no …um,
yes,
yes—I
am
in Daddy’s bed because I was so
jolly tired last night, I didn’t think I could get back to the B and B without falling asleep on the way, and sooooo …Louis …Louis, wake up. Wake up
now
.”

“What …again? Babe, you are amazing, but I am only a man—I need at least another half an hour …oh fu …flip— hello, Bellarina.”

“Sophie is in your bed,” Bella stated again, incredulous, as if she couldn’t quite believe that no one else realized what was going on.

“Yes, I know,” Louis said. “Sophie stayed for a sleepover.”

“I’m sorry, Bella, it must be very strange for you to come in and find me here like this, but like Daddy said, I was very tired and decided to sleep over.”

“A sleepover, but when?” Bella asked Louis. “Mrs. Alexander was still here when we went to bed and I heard you come in and Aunty Sophie wasn’t here then. She wasn’t even here when you went to sleep, and I know because when I went to the toilet, I checked on you and she wasn’t here then.”

Sophie trembled under Bella’s concise interrogation technique, but Louis took it perfectly in stride, draping an arm around Sophie’s shoulder and smiling at his daughter.

“No, she came for a late sleepover. Sometimes grown-ups have late sleepovers,” Louis explained. “It was really more of a practice for when we are married and Sophie will be sleeping in this bed every night and we will get to see her every morning, which will be brilliant.”

“Well, it was a bit of a shock,” Bella said. “I wasn’t expecting it.”

“I’m sorry, Bella,” Sophie told her. She reached out a hand, and to her relief Bella took it and climbed onto the bed, curling up against Sophie. “It must have been a bit of a shock to find me here this morning. I should have told you I was coming for a sleepover. I promise not to surprise you that way again. In fact, I
won’t be sleeping over again until after Daddy and I are married, I promise.”

“Do you?” Bella and Louis asked at the same time, both looking equally perplexed.

“Apart from the surprise, I don’t think I mind you sleeping over,” Bella said. “I like it, and if you sleep over, then sometimes I can come and sleep with you like I did in London. Do you remember when we listened to the sound of the traffic and pretended it was waves?”

“I do,” Sophie said, recalling how she and Bella had squeezed onto her two-seater sofa and curled up together whenever things got a bit too much for them.

Bella twisted around to look at her, a smile playing around her lips. “Did Daddy snore?”

“Yes.” Sophie nodded. “All the time. I’ve never heard anything so loud in all my life.”

“Then sometimes you can come and sleep in my room, because I don’t snore. You snore, but only like a cat purring. Me and Izzy say that Dad’s snore sounds like a wolf growling!”

“It does, or an elephant with a blocked-up nose,” Sophie replied, sending Bella into fits of giggles.

“Hey, you two,” Louis protested. “I do not snore.”

“You do!” Sophie and Bella giggled together.

“So are you sure you don’t mind me being here?” Sophie asked her. “That you’re not upset or worried?”

“I like having you for a sleepover,” Bella said, suddenly serious. “But it would be more fun if you were in my room. I’ve got a blow-up
High School Musical
bed, which is designed for the purpose of a sleepover. You wouldn’t fit in it, but I would, and you could sleep in my bed, except that Artemis probably wouldn’t want to share with you and if she got in my blow-up bed her claws might burst it, so we’d have to shut her in the kitchen with Tango.”

“Don’t you worry, I’m sure we’ll work something out for my next sleepover,” Sophie said, kissing the top of Bella’s head.

“But for now,” Louis said, his fingertip caressing Sophie’s thigh under the covers, “how about you run downstairs and get the Coco Pops out—it is a Coco Pops day today, isn’t it?”

“No, Daddy, it is a Shreddies day, which you know perfectly well. You don’t have to worry. I don’t need Coco Pops to make me feel better about Aunty Sophie having a sleepover.”

“Right—well, good,” Louis said, looking suitably chastened. “How about you run down and get the Shreddies out and I’ll be down in a second.”

Bella stayed on the bed, nestling into the crook of Sophie’s shoulder.

“I’m glad I’ve got you, Aunty Sophie,” Bella said.

“I’m glad I’ve got you,” Sophie said, putting her arms around the little girl and hugging her gently.

“You are my BFF,” Bella told her.

“And you’re mine,” Sophie said, utterly unclear as to what it was she had been told, only that whatever it was, it clearly meant a lot to the child.

“I know,” Bella said. She cast a sideways glance at her father. “Daddy, can we just this once have Coco Pops today even though it is not, strictly speaking, a Coco Pops day?”

“Go for it,” Louis told her.

She hopped off the bed and ran into the hallway yelling, “Izzy, get up! Aunty Sophie stayed for a sleepover and it’s a Coco Pops day!”

“Yay!” Izzy shouted as she thundered down the stairs after her sister a few seconds later.

“That was tricky,” Sophie said, lying back on the bed and examining the ceiling. “I was waiting for her to ask me where my pajamas were …we shouldn’t have put her through that, or Izzy. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“I thought she was pretty cool about it,” Louis said, sliding his hand up across her belly and resting it on her breast.

“I know she acts cool and together, but we shouldn’t do this. She’s only a little child, they both are. Children who have had a lot to deal with and precious little stability recently, they don’t need any more surprises.”

“Do you mean finding out you had a sleepover or do you mean Seth?” Louis sighed, withdrawing the warmth of his touch from her body as he flopped onto his back.

“Well …” Sophie hesitated. Until that moment the whole of last night had gone out of her head, except for the part where Louis’s body had been wrapped around her. Play it by ear, Cal had said. See what happens.

“How did it go with Seth anyway?” she asked him tentatively.

“Badly.” Louis rubbed his hands roughly over his face. “It went really badly. Wendy said we should come right out with it, no beating around the bush, she said. So he turned up to find me sitting in his living room—and when I saw him, Soph …it was so weird. I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel, but I thought I’d feel something—like a spark of recognition, something in my chest, you know, that pulling feeling you get when you look at the girls. When I came back from Peru, I hadn’t seen Bella for so long, or Izzy ever, but the second I set eyes on them, it was there, that ache that tells you you love them. But I sat there and I looked at this …this
man
and I …well, there was nothing there. And he must have seen that in my face, he must have known.”

“So what happened?”

“It was like I said, he walked in, saw me sitting there, and Wendy said, ‘Seth, this is Louis. Louis is your father,’ just like that. For a second or two he was quiet, just looking at her and then me, and then he said, ‘I don’t have a father, I have never had a father, and I don’t need one now. He’s about twenty years too late.’

“And he walked out without a second glance. I met my son for
less than ten minutes and we didn’t speak two words to each other.”

“It does seem a pretty brutal way to break the news to him,” Sophie said. “It must have been a shock—like Bella finding me here this morning. I don’t think I’d react much differently.”

“Wendy said it was best,” Louis said, shrugging. “She said he appreciated her being straight and open with him, and after all, she’s the one who knows him, not me.”

“So what happened after he left?”

“Well, Wendy had cooked, so I stayed and ate and we talked some more. Talked about the past, talked about Seth—tried to work out what to do.”

Sophie tried not to imagine Louis and Wendy sitting across a table that was, of course, candlelit as they talked over that glorious summer of love they had spent in each other’s arms. This wasn’t about Louis and Wendy, this was about Seth, and she had to remember that or otherwise she’d drive herself mad.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Wendy thinks I should go to his college in Falmouth, try to talk to him again, but I wonder if he needs a bit of space? Like he said, he’s done without a dad for twenty years, and now I turn up and what have I got to offer him? It’s not as if he needs anyone to teach him how to ride a bike or play football in the park.” Sophie felt a pang as she thought of what Seth had told her last night before the kissing incident. Of how he’d longed for a father to do just that with him.

“Maybe I should just let him know I’d like to meet him again,” Louis went on. “Let him know how to get in touch with me and then give him some space to get used to the idea—what do you think?”

“I really think that would be the best thing,” Sophie said, thinking of the look on Seth’s face last night. “I really think he’d appreciate knowing that you are thinking about him.”

Louis looked uncertain. “But then again, Wendy is his mum, she should know best. If she thinks I should really go for it, really try and make a relationship with him now, then maybe I should do that …I don’t want him to think I don’t care even if—the fact is, Sophie, I haven’t known him long enough to know if I do care about him. And if he’s angry and resentful, then whose fault is that? It’s mine. I’ve screwed up the life of a boy without ever knowing about it, and right now, right this moment, I’m finding it really hard to feel anything.”

“You should do what you think is best,” Sophie said, expressing her thoughts before she had a chance to censor them. “Maybe Wendy’s got other reasons for wanting you to hang around so much, maybe she’s not just thinking about Seth …”

“Like what?” Louis turned to look at her, impatience threaded in his tone.

“Like she likes having you in her life again, like she wants a reason to keep seeing you.” Sophie was painfully aware of how irrational and foolish she sounded.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Louis said, suddenly springing out of bed and scooping up his clothes from the floor. “I don’t know why you have such a problem with Wendy. I thought you’d admire her, if anything. She’s a single mother who’s brought up her son, my son, on her own for twenty years and who just wants him to have the chance to know his father. What is your problem with that, Soph?”