The Accidental Mother (34 page)

Sophie stood up so abruptly that her chair scraped along the stone floor. She willed herself outside, dimly aware of people lifting their heads to watch her race past them. At last she was bathed in the cold night air, and she felt her skin begin to cool. She crossed the street to the harbor front, leaned against the railing, and watched the foam-topped waves shining in the moonlight as they raced inland. From the moment they had stepped into Carrie’s house that morning, the whole day had seemed like a dream. It seemed as if she had experienced more emotion and turmoil in the space of the last few hours than she had since, well, since the day her father died. She heard the rush of the sea more clearly, smelled the chill in the air more sharply, and saw each tiny reflection of light in the dark water perfectly. And she sensed Louis at her side a second before he reached her.

“I didn’t know if you wanted me to follow you or not,” he said. “So I thought I’d follow you on the off chance.”

She turned to face him. “I’m glad you did.” Louis opened his mouth to speak, but Sophie stopped him. “Look, if you want me to talk about other people’s feelings, then I can. I can do that all night. I am a very good advice giver. But I am not the sort of person who finds it easy to talk about myself. I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now or what it means. I don’t even understand it. But all of the things you said in there about me, I could say them back to you,” she finished awkwardly.

“You mean you feel it too?” Louis asked uncertainly.

“I do,” Sophie said with difficulty. Louis smiled, but before he could say or do anything, Sophie put the flat of her hand on his chest and halted him. “But this isn’t right, Louis. For us to do anything about it would be wrong. I think it might be really wrong—”

He nodded, his smile fading slightly. “You’re probably right,” he said. “But, well, would it matter…if we had just one night without thinking about anyone or anything else except for this ‘thing’ that’s going on between us?”

Sophie studied him in the moonlight. That was all he was talking about. A one-night stand, a sort of therapeutic session to clear away the sexual tension. She felt simultaneously relieved, sad, and excited, because if that was all it would be, then it didn’t really count and there would be no consequences. It could be like stepping off the planet for a few hours and leaving it all behind. And for once Sophie wanted to do something completely foreign to her nature. Tonight she wanted to know what it felt like to be reckless and not care about tomorrow.

“I want to know,” she said. “Which probably makes me an idiot.”

“That makes two of us,” Louis said.

“Do you think so, because…” Sophie began again, earnestly trying to rationalize what she was saying.

“Let’s stop talking now,” Louis said, laying the tips of his fingers gently over her mouth. He watched her in the moonlight, tracing the curves of her lips, and then at last he kissed her so that all she could feel for a wondrous few moments was the heat of his mouth warming every fiber of her being. Sophie broke off the kiss and found she was giggling.

“Not the response I was expecting,” Louis said, smiling as she buried her face in his jacket.

She caught her breath and looked up. “I must be drunk,” she said. “This isn’t normal.”

“Well, don’t back out on me now. Remember what I said about thinking I might not be able to stop kissing you once I started? I was right.” Louis rested his hand on her shoulders, his fingers entwined in her hair. “Sophie, stay with me tonight? Just tonight, please?” he asked her, touchingly nervous.

Sophie looked into his eyes and felt a heady rush of intoxication that she was sure had nothing to do with brandy. “I guess we’re going to find out how we both fit in that single bed after all,” she said, and she took a step into thin air and kept on walking.

I
t was still dark when Sophie woke.

For a moment she lay there waiting for her eyes to adjust as a thin line that ran around the doorframe cast a sliver of light into the room. For a moment, still warmed and comforted by sleep, she stared at the door, trying to work out how it had moved from its previous position.

And then she remembered she was in Louis’s room.

Sophie did not leap out of bed, partly because she did not want to wake Louis but also because she discovered that her limbs were so tangled in his that it seemed impossible to move. She lay still, staring into the dark, listening to her heart thumping in her chest. Piece by piece, everything that had happened came back to her in a series of jolting and shocking tableaux.

The moment they had returned to the B & B. A second’s hesitation before they’d crossed the doorstep. Their silent ascent to Louis’s room, not looking at each other as they climbed the stairs, their fingers just touching on the handrail. Louis looking over his shoulder at her as he unlocked his door. Sophie standing perfectly still with her ear pressed to her and the children’s door, looking at the pointed, scuffed toes of her pink knee-high boots—now water-stained and dirty—as she’d waited, holding her breath, for a small voice to call out her name. Not knowing if she’d wanted to hear that voice or not.

Sophie felt again the knot of anticipation that had clenched her stomach into a fist as Louis had held out his hand and she’d taken it, and then…

She remembered his kisses all over her face and her neck, in her hair and across her shoulders. Their clothes somehow disintegrating, the heat his body gave off a moment before his skin met hers. The touch of his hands on her breasts, then his lips and teeth. Her own hands exploring the curve of his waist, the length of his thighs. Feeling him harden against the soft cushion of her belly. Feeling him shudder when she touched him and kissed him. Feeling him moving inside of her, experiencing every tiny sensation, every part of him connected to her until she buried her face in his neck, her teeth catching the skin of his shoulder as she came, and a moment later his voice whispering something softly in her ear, words she couldn’t make out and did not want to understand.

They’d been silent then and still, seeming to slot perfectly together in the narrow bed like a pair of puzzle pieces. And they must have fallen asleep soon after, because that was exactly how they still lay, Sophie folded inside Louis, his long arms and legs wrapped around her, holding her back against his chest. She edged herself onto her back and turned her head to look at him. Most of his face was in shadow, just the tiniest slice of light picked out one corner of his eye, the curve of his jaw, and the corner of his mouth. His breathing was regular and deep; he was fast asleep.

Sophie was now wide awake, and she could feel her blood pounding around her body. She felt breathless and anxious as the remnants of sleep slowly receded to reveal a sense of raw, wide-awake panic. It seemed as if the reasons for this not happening, which they had hardly talked about and quickly dismissed last night, were solidifying into cold, hard realities all around her.

Sophie frantically tried to close herself off from the feelings that were surfacing with the early morning. Last night it had seemed so possible to do as Louis had said. To explore their attraction to each other free from the restraint of history or circumstance and then go on with their lives as they had been. Louis had seduced her with his reasoning, his looks, and his touches, and she had let him. But she had been wrong when she’d thought there would be no consequences. If she had had a stupid unrequited crush on him last night, this morning it was much, much worse. Spending the night with him had brought all her dreams crashing into the real world, where they could be trampled on and torn apart.

She had gone and fallen in love with him.

She could not do this. She could not be here with Louis. With Carrie’s husband, with Bella and Izzy’s father. Being here was a betrayal, it was pointless and weak. She should have realized. He might have slept with her, but he’d talked about Carrie with such warmth last night, how could he not still love her? And the place was so full of Carrie—everywhere she looked she felt her friend’s presence—her friend who had always been there for her. How could she have even daydreamed about a life with Louis and the girls?

Reaching down to the side of the bed, she felt for her bag and was relieved when she found it almost right away. She took out her cell phone and checked the time.

It was just after five-thirty. The girls could be up at any minute. She had to get up, get dressed, and get back into her own bed before they noticed that she was not there. Immediately Sophie was gripped by panic as she began to grasp the implications of what she had done, and the reckless joy that she had felt in Louis’s arms seemed in another lifetime.

“Oh, Christ,” she whispered to herself, feeling the prick of tears behind her eyes. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Carefully she began to ease herself out of Louis’s embrace, but as soon as he sensed her moving, his arms tightened reflexively. The thumb of his left hand ran lazily over her nipple as he kissed the back of her neck, burying his face in her hair. He shifted a little, moving his other arm out from underneath her, using it to prop himself up above her. Sophie felt him looking at her even though she could not see his face.

“Not a dream then,” he said softly, and she felt his fingertips run lightly across the contours of her face and neck, traveling over her breasts. For a heartbeat she allowed herself to remain still, closing her eyes even in the dark. And then she closed her hand over his and stopped its exploration. “I’ve got to go next door,” she whispered. “They’ll be awake soon.”

Louis flopped back onto the bed with a heartfelt sigh. “It’s still dark,” he protested, his voice warm with sleep.

“I know, but still…,” Sophie whispered.

Louis didn’t try to stop her as she swung her legs onto the floor and, sitting on the edge of the bed, bent over searching for discarded items of clothing. Instead, as she found her knickers and pulled them over her ankles, he transferred his caresses to the back of her neck and along her spine.

Abruptly, Sophie pulled her underwear up as she stood. “I can’t find anything,” she said irritably, feeling claustrophobic in the darkness.

“I’ll turn on the lamp,” Louis said sleepily.

“No, don’t—” she said, too late to stop him.

Soft light filled the corners of the room, and all sense of unreality was gone. He was really lying in his bed watching her. She was really standing before him, almost naked and feeling more exposed than she had ever felt before.

“You are so amazing,” Louis said, his eyes running over her body. “Come back here, please, just for a moment…” He smiled as he held a hand out to her.

Sophie saw her T-shirt lying inside out on the floor and, picking it up, pulled it hastily over her head. She retrieved her jeans lying in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed, her fingers fumbling as she tried to pull one leg out the right way.

“I can’t,” she said, her voice tight and nervous. “If the children wake up and find I’m not there or even come in here…” Finally she slipped her legs into the cold denim and buttoned the jeans at the waist. “And anyway, that’s not what we said, is it?” she made herself remind him, keeping her voice cool. “It was just a one-time thing, remember?”

Louis sat up in bed. “I didn’t mean it literally,” he said. “I meant—”

“What did you mean?” Sophie asked him, her anger surfacing protectively.

“I meant we could get the lust out of the way and then take it from there.” Louis looked at the expression on Sophie’s face. “I’m not very good at this,” he said quickly. “At words and stuff. Look, I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect to…” He faltered to a stop.

“To what?” Sophie whispered, conscious of the thin wall between them and the children. “Get laid while you were sorting out your wife’s estate? Must have been a real bonus for you.”

Louis sat up sharply and pulled on his trousers. “Sophie, please. Why are you so angry?”

Sophie couldn’t tell him, she couldn’t tell him she was furious with herself for falling in love with him. It was better that he thought she was angry with him. Better than the terrifying possibility that she might show him the reality of how she was feeling.

“I have to go now,” she said, gripping the door handle.

“Sophie, wait…”

She closed the door on him.

For a moment Sophie stood outside the room where Louis’s two daughters were sleeping. She couldn’t go in there, not yet, she realized. She was sure the instant that Bella looked at her, she would know something had happened with Louis, something that shouldn’t have. Sophie didn’t want Bella to know. The last thing she wanted was to wreck the fragile peace that Bella had found both with her father and within herself with one foolish, thoughtless act. Bella trusted her, loved her even. Sophie was determined to preserve that.

She walked past her bedroom door and crept down the carpeted stairs. She pulled on her boots, opened the front door, and stepped out into the dark morning. The cold immediately raised goose bumps on her skin, but Sophie welcomed the chill that numbed her burning cheeks. Her mother had said to her once that the darkest hour was always before the dawn. She meant it, Sophie knew, as an uplifting metaphor, a way to try to get Sophie through the loss of her dad, when she couldn’t see any hope, but as Sophie walked down through the near-empty town, still perfectly dark and quiet, she was certain that when the sun came up, her troubles would really begin.

Sophie found her way back to Porthmeor Beach, where she had run into the sea after Izzy. She told herself that it was a random destination, that it was inevitable she would end up staring at the sea. But she knew she had come here deliberately. It was here that Louis had brought her and Izzy out of the water and here that the four of them had stood together, embracing one another. It was on this beach that Sophie had experienced the very last thing she had expected to feel.

A sense of belonging to each of them. To Bella, to Izzy—and to Louis.

As she sat on the sand, Sophie watched the magic and movement of the ocean begin to reveal itself. “What am I doing here?” she asked herself, a whispered question that was immediately lost on a gust of wind. “How did this happen?”

It had started as an inconvenience, she admitted to herself. Carrie’s children forcing a hiatus in her busy and ordered life. It was only now that she realized that life before Bella and Izzy had arrived had been the hiatus, because nothing about Sophie had changed for years until that moment. She had let year after year of her life slip away without anything to mark them out as special or important besides a new piece of jewelry or fabulous new shoes, as her half-forgotten dreams and ambitions quietly stagnated.

Sophie wasn’t sure exactly when it happened, but she knew it was only after Bella and Izzy had come that she had started living inside her own life again instead of passively watching it tick by without her. And now, because of Bella and Izzy, she was in love, maybe for the first time, maybe even forever, because they had kick-started her heart.

The trouble was, it wasn’t just Carrie’s children she was in love with. It was Louis too. Sophie weighed the heavy, debilitating sense of longing that seemed to be pinning her down, and she found it hard to breathe.

It was odd, she thought, and sad that the very thing that had brought her so close to Carrie again—so close that she could almost feel her sitting beside her on the cold sand—was loving the people Carrie would never be able to hold and love again. Sophie felt but did not hear the sob that formed in her throat. She felt so guilty. She felt like a grave robber.

Of course, it was the thought of actually being with Louis that terrified her. The reality of being with a man she wanted so much made the possibilities of it all going wrong horribly real. Cal joked about her intimacy issues, but secretly Sophie knew she kept her distance from love because she could not bear the thought of another man she loved leaving her.

If there was anyone who might make her want to take that risk, perhaps it was Louis, but Louis didn’t come on his own. He came with a past that was full of Carrie and with his children.

Even if the children didn’t exist, there were hundreds of reasons not to let anything else happen with Louis. He had passionately loved another woman. One Sophie knew for sure had been more beautiful and vibrant than she could ever be, and whom Louis might still love, despite his protests.

He had talked about other girlfriends since Carrie, that was true. Women he must have been attracted to in the same way he was attracted to her. Sophie couldn’t exactly remember the way he had described those flings, but she thought the phrase “never anything special” had been used. The panic tightened in her chest again.

What if Louis felt that way about her? What if everything he had said and whispered last night had been a succession of lines, part of a tried and tested seduction routine? She reminded herself that he was still mostly a stranger to her. That despite the last few weeks and the night they had just spent together, she hardly knew him at all. She couldn’t bear to be another nameless encounter he might one day refer to as “nothing special.”

Amazingly, Sophie felt herself laughing even as the tears ran down her cheeks. She was hilarious. She was insane. She was just as afraid of him loving her as she was of him not caring for her at all.