Page 37 of The Island Villa

She felt disorientated. It had never occurred to her that her father would actually attend her mother’s wedding. Shock turned to happiness. He’d come all this way to support her. He probably felt guilty because he was the one who had urged her to come, even though he knew she didn’t want to.

Gratitude rose up inside her like the bubbles in a champagne glass. She couldn’t have loved him more if she’d tried, and she was thrilled to see him. It was like spotting a lifeboat approaching when you were about to drown in stormy seas.

For the first time since she’d stepped onto the baking tarmac at the airport, she tho ught that maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be okay. That maybe she’d survive this.

“Dad!” She walked across the terrace and hugged him tightly. She felt a sense of peace and calm as she always did when she was with him. He was the opposite of her mother. His life was quiet, considered and drama-free. Her dad. He was the one person in the world who had never let her down. The one person who had always been there for her. The one person she trusted.

“Hi, Addy.” He hugged her back with equal warmth and affection.

“What are you doing here?” She stepped back so that she could look at him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? You could have stayed with me in London first. We could have had a meal in that restaurant you love. We could have traveled together.”

They could have given each other moral support.

She managed to not say that part aloud. Her father wouldn’t hear a bad word about her mother, which was laudable of course, and mature, but also occasionally maddening.

She waited for an explanation and saw her mother reach for her father’s hand. It was beyond inappropriate in her opinion, but she’d long since given up trying to understand her mother.

She waited for her father to gently extract himself from Catherine’s grasp, but he didn’t. Instead, his fingers folded over hers protectively.

Adeline decided that there were days when she didn’t understand her father either, but presumably that was her mother’s influence.

She took another step backward, uncomfortable with the physical display of affection between two people who had been divorced for more than two decades and had a tumultuous history.

It was fine that they’d managed to keep their relationship largely amicable, but holding hands went a little too far in her opinion.

And maybe he knew what she was thinking, because her father’s face turned a strange shade of pink and he gave her what could only be described as a sheepish smile.

“I know this is probably a little surprising.”

The understatement was reassuringly typical of her father and almost made her smile. “It’s good to see you, Dad. But I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me you were coming.” She tried not to sound accusatory. Tried to remind herself that her father was an adult, who didn’t owe her an explanation for his movements. “When did you arrive?”

“On Corfu?” He looked awkward. “I’ve been here for the past two months.”

Two months? How was that possible?

If she’d been puzzled before, she was completely confused now. “I spoke to you six weeks ago and you were at the cottage in Cape Cod.”

“I never said I was at the cottage, Addy. You made that assumption.”

Of course, she’d made that assumption. Why wouldn’t she? It was where he lived, and she’d been given no reason to think he was staying somewhere else.

“I don’t get it. Why didn’t you tell me you were here?” Feelings awoke that had been dormant for a long time. A faint stirring of panic. Her relationship with her father had never been complicated. They didn’t keep secrets. They both said what they meant and were respectful of each other. They both lived lives that were safe, quiet and predictable. There was none of the drama and theater that she associated with her mother. If her mother’s life was a three-act play, her father’s was a quiet sonnet.

Or so she’d always thought. But now it seemed she’d been wrong about that.

The fact that he hadn’t told her the truth hurt her terribly.

She’d been worried sick about him. She’d lost sleep imagining him stressed and miserable as he contemplated his ex-wife’s impending nuptials (although admittedly, he’d had plenty of experience in that area) and all the time he’d been here, and he hadn’t told her?

“He didn’t tell you, because I asked him not to.” Her mother was still clinging to her father’s hand.

“Why would you do that?”

“I thought it was better to tell you and Cassie in person. I wanted us to be together and celebrate as a family.”

A family? Her mother’s ability to spin real life into fiction never ceased to amaze her. If they were a family, then it was in the loosest sense of the word. Companies said that, didn’t they? They said we’re a family, but that didn’t stop them kicking you out the door when it suited them.

And it was true that her father was the most forgiving, civilized man on the planet and that he seemed to harbor surprisingly little ill will toward her mother, but still the idea of him accepting an invitation to the wedding and agreeing to stay for such a long time in the lead up to the celebrations seemed a little too civilized to her. That was bordering on unnatural, surely? She wondered what her mother’s latest man had to say about it all, and then she realized that her mother was gazing at her father with a dreamy look in her eyes, and he was gazing back at her with the same level of intimacy—

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