The Accidental Family by Rowan Coleman

city girl, a Londoner born and bred and used to elbowing her way through crowds along with the best of them. But something in her had changed since Bella and Izzy burst into her life. For the first time she felt vulnerable, as if the merest glancing blow would bruise her badly. The world outside the four of them seemed like a much more frightening place, with danger lurking in every corner, which Sophie had been mercifully unaware of before she had two children to worry about. Carrie’s sudden and pointless death had given her a sense of her own mortality, but more than that, it had made her see how fragile the lives of those around her were too. How easy, if improbable, it would be to lose the people she loved.
    Apart from that new nagging anxiety, she was also finding it hard to adjust to her new persona. Sophie was aware that she wasn’t Sophie Mills career-girl-about-town anymore. She wasn’t even former-career-girl-about— St. Ives, at least until she found a new professional niche for herself, which so far hadn’t progressed much further than her ruling herself out of a career as an artist, largely because Bella was constantly telling her she was the only adult in the world who couldn’t even draw a stick figure, or marketing her culinary skills as Carmen had. Culinary skills, Carmen told her, had to extend beyond heating things up in order to constitute a career. You had to know how to chop and mix and have a basic knowledge of ingredients. And although Sophie was becoming a pro at grilling, that was where her kitchen prowess ended. Whatever it was she was destined to do down here in Cornwall, apart from be happy and in love, she hadn’t found it yet and in the meantime struggled to accept the identity she did have— Sophie Mills, official engage-ée. Or fiancée, Louis reminded her once he’d pointed out that the word “engage-ée” didn’t actually exist.
    “You are my fiancée and I am yours,” Louis had told her happily as they walked up the garden path to his house earlier that morning.
    “I know, I know,” Sophie said. “It’s just going to take me a while to get my head around that word being associated with me . I mean, for starters, it’s awfully French .”
    “Okay, if you don’t like ‘fiancée,’ how about ‘betrothed’? How about I call you my betrothed?”
    “Mmmm.” Sophie sounded skeptical.
    “What—too medieval?” Louis asked her.
    “No, it’s just that it’s a very formal word,” Sophie said. “It’s not very fun.”
    “I see where you’re coming from. It’s just that I think gettingengaged slash betrothed is supposed to be a tiny bit formal,” Louis pointed out.
    “I know, I’m just saying there should be a third word, a fun word. A word that isn’t quite so loaded.”
    “Loaded?” Louis raised his brow. “Okay, I’ll give it some thought.”
    “Well?” Mrs. Alexander had opened Louis’s front door before he could fit the key into the lock. She’d obviously been waiting for them by the living room window.
    “The Avalon has not burned down and Grace is absolutely fine,” Sophie reassured her. “How are the girls? Did they run you ragged?”
    “They did no such thing,” Mrs. Alexander said. “It takes a lot more than a couple of sweet little poppets like those two to get the better of me. That cat of yours, on the other hand, nearly had my eye out when I tried to pet her.”
    “That’s because she doesn’t like people. I did mention it,” Sophie said, wondering if Mrs. Alexander might consider letting them in anytime soon. “She likes her space and she’s very protective of her privacy. She takes her time forming relationships …she’s a rescue cat, you know. I’ve had her for years now and she still doesn’t like me. I try not to take it personally.”
    “Good job, by the sound of it,” Mrs. Alexander told her. She appraised Sophie with a cool blue-eyed gaze. “So, are you going to marry him?”
    Sophie’s jaw dropped and she looked