Read Online The Accidental Family by Rowan Coleman - Free Book Online Page A

when Bella insisted that she hated the father who had once abandoned her. Sophie had bonded them back together and she had done it for Carrie, for her dear friend who for so many years had always been the best, most free, and wildest part of her.
    Sophie looked at Louis, brushing a lock of dark hair from his eyes as he laughed at something Bella said.
    On many of the nights she spent alone in the B & B, Sophie sometimes wondered if she would ever have fallen for Louis if she hadn’t met him in that way and at that time. If he hadn’t been a confused man, a jilted husband suffering from guilt and loss? If she hadn’t loved the woman he’d once loved or fallen for his strange, lost daughters so hard, would she have felt the same way about him?
    “Hey, Wendy? Wendy Churchill, it is you!”
    Sophie was snapped out of her thoughts as Louis called after a woman who had walked past their table. “Don’t try and pretend you don’t know who I am!” Louis teased her jovially.
    Sophie studied the woman’s face as she slowly turned to face Louis. Perhaps a couple of years older than Sophie, she had reddish hair pulled back into a ponytail.
    “Louis Gregory,” the woman said slowly. “Last I heard you’d moved away.”
    “I came back.” Louis grinned as he stood up. “And so did you by the looks of things! Last time I saw you …well, it was over twenty years ago.”
    Sophie blinked as her betrothed stepped away from their tableand engulfed the woman in a huge bear hug. She was smaller than Sophie, qualifying as petite, with slender hips and narrow shoulders, and the sort of pretty elfin looks that Sophie hadn’t realized until that very second she despised.
    “How long since you lived up north?” Louis asked, glancing at his girls. Izzy was doing her best to get the entire contents of one mini-sachet of ketchup onto a single French fry. Bella, though, was staring hard at this Wendy woman from underneath her bangs and listening intently to every word being said. Bella liked to know everything that was going on, she spent much of her young life trying to ensure that no piece of information, no matter how trivial it might seem, ever got past her.
    “Moved back down here about a year ago. I’ve got my own business—running costs are lower here and I missed it, it’s always been home.” Wendy smiled. “What about you? Where did you go and why did you come back?”
    “Well, it’s a long story, but basically I lost my wife in a car accident. I came back to look after my two daughters, Bella and Izzy.” Louis gestured at his daughters.
    “Good afternoon,” Bella said gravely.
    “They’re yours?” Wendy Churchill said, glancing briefly at the two girls without returning Bella’s greeting. “You’re a dad ?”
    “Yes.” Louis laughed. “No need to sound so shocked, Wend! Bella is nearly seven, Izzy is four. I’m a dad twice over, and after a serious false start, I’m not doing too bad a job of it now. In fact, things are going really great and this …” Finally Louis gestured toward where Sophie was waiting to be introduced, but Wendy Churchill did not look at her. She looked back at Bella who, after a second wrinkled her nose and then wrested the pot of ketchup sachets from Izzy, choosing to ignore the stranger.
    “They look like you,” Wendy said slowly, as if she were processing some other hidden piece of information.
    “Do they?” Louis looked pleased. “I can see it with Bella, but Izzy is the image of her mum.”
    “No, they both look exactly like …you.” Wendy stopped, glanced over her shoulder, and then seemed to collect herself. Suddenly she beamed at Louis.
    “God, I’m sorry, it’s just been such a long time since I last saw you. I still think of you as sixteen, the great, tall, lanky lad you were. Bumping into you now—a real grown-up man with kids—is a bit of a shock.”
    “ You don’t look any different,” Louis told Wendy, which made Sophie purse her lips a little because