A Surprise Christmas Proposal. Liz Fielding

      ‘I was not dead!’

      No. He certainly wasn’t that. Even in extremis he’d managed a fairly good impression of being very much alive.

      ‘—I called for an ambulance,’ I finished, as if I had not been interrupted, hoping that I sounded as if I didn’t care one way or another if it ever arrived.

      ‘Then you can ring them again and call them off.’

      The effort of talking was exhausting him, but his eyes held mine with an inner power. They were full of anger at his own weakness, hating me for having seen him that way, and I knew that there was no way I was going to be keeping this job—which was, I suppose, why I shrugged and said, ‘If you can make it to the phone, Mr York, you can call them off yourself. Otherwise you’re stuck with them.’ I smiled at the younger of the two policemen. He looked barely old enough to shave. Blissfully, he blushed. ‘You’ll stay until the paramedics arrive, gentlemen? These poor dogs really have to do what a dog has to do.’

      They raised no objection.

      The dogs’ leads were looped over a chair, along with—oh, joy—a pooper-scooper and some plastic bags. I picked them up, fastened the leads to the dogs’ collars and, leaving my employer in the capable care of two strapping policemen, said, ‘Okay, boys. Walkies.’

      Joe needed no second bidding, leaping to his paws, his feathered tail whirling, his slender cream body quivering with excitement beneath his short silky coat. Percy looked to his master.

      Gabriel York never took his eyes off me, and I found myself reliving the moment when the kiss of life had become something much more personal, remembering exactly how his lips had felt beneath mine, how his dark hair had felt beneath my hand as I’d brushed it back from his forehead. The strength of his jaw as I’d cradled it…

      Then, with the slightest movement of his hand, he gave his dogs permission to go, and with a jerk on my aching shoulder I found myself being towed through the door, down the steps and into the street.

      An ambulance turned the corner as we headed in the direction of Battersea Park and I grinned.

      Obviously he hadn’t got to the phone in time.

      It was only when I reached the park and set the dogs loose that I wondered what on earth I was going to do with them if the paramedics carted him off to hospital.