“Jealous?” Gabriel stopped, blocking the path.

About to do the whole “excuse me and why would I possibly be jealous?” bit, I remembered my vow. No more pretense. No more lies.

“Jealous as hell,” I said.

“Good.” And then he kissed me again, taking his time about it. He’d kissed me before. Hot and hard. Cold and sweet. This was different. I’d never been kissed like this before. It was as if he was giving me a part of him that he hadn’t even known existed, and something so deep inside me that I’d forgotten it was there responded and answered him with everything I had to offer.

And then there was a clatter of feet and the dogs, stupid things, came careering out of the woods, expecting to be told how brilliant they were.

Gabriel held me for a moment, face as grave as it had ever been. Then he took my arm, tucked it beneath his. “Let’s go pick out a Christmas tree.”

Dear Reader,

Quiet, studious Ginny Lautour and Sophie Harrington, privileged, lively, the class “princess,” were the two girls least likely to be friends. But Sophie’s natural kindness in rescuing a lost soul on her first day at school, and clever Ginny’s aptitude for getting Sophie out of trouble, forged the kind of bond that lasts a lifetime. So when Sophie begs for Ginny’s help to save her job, even though it means breaking into her sexy billionaire playboy neighbor’s apartment, she doesn’t hesitate.

And everything would have been fine if Richard Mallory was—as promised—away for the weekend. But then Sophie wasn’t being entirely honest with her best friend. She wasn’t in trouble. Just matchmaking!

As Sophie discovers, however, when you tell a big fat fib, even if it is with the best of intentions, it’s likely to come back and bite you. Homeless, jobless and with Ginny honeymooning with her beloved Richard, Sophie has no one to turn to. For the first time ever she has to live on what she can earn and, with Christmas coming, the only job on offer is that of dog walker to gorgeous grouch, Gabriel York. But it’s the season for miracles and once he offers her a home, no matter how temporary, all things are possible.

I do hope you enjoy reading how best friends Ginny and Sophie find their very special happy endings in The Billionaire Takes a Bride (#3817) and A Surprise Christmas Proposal (#3821).

With love,

Liz

A Surprise Christmas Proposal
Liz Fielding

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

‘WHAT kind of job are you looking for, Miss Harrington?’

‘Please, call me Sophie. Peter always does.’

And where was Peter when I needed him? I’d been bringing my untapped potential to this employment agency for the last five years. Dropping in whenever I got bored. Or when an employer decided that I wasn’t quite what he was looking for and encouraged me to widen my horizons. As far away from him as possible. Or when he decided that I was exactly what he was looking for and wouldn’t take no for an answer…

Actually, on this occasion I’d quickly realised that I was never going to be what my present employer was looking for, so, although it wasn’t a good time for me to be out of work, I’d taken pity on him and done it for him. Now, confronted by the frosty-faced female on the business side of the desk, I was beginning to wonder if I’d been a bit hasty.

‘Anything,’ I said, finally cracking in the face of her silent refusal to pick up my invitation to engage in social interaction. Get some kind of relationship going. ‘I’m not fussy. So long as it doesn’t involve heavyweight typing or computers. I’ve had computers up to here.’

I touched my forehead with the tips of my fingers to emphasise just how far ‘up to here’ with them I was.

Then I smiled to show that, computers apart, I wasn’t going to be difficult. I couldn’t afford to be difficult…

Like my expensive manicure, it was totally wasted on this woman. Unmoved, she said, ‘That’s a pity. Your experience at Mallory’s would seem to be your most promising asset. What kind of reference would they give you?’

That was a tricky one. My interview technique had involved nothing more taxing than flirting at a party with a software boffin who had, apparently, been in search of a secretary. I’d never actually been a secretary—and I’d told him that—but I’d been prepared to give it my best shot. And he, sweet man, had been prepared to let me. Now, there was a man who appreciated well applied nail-polish…

Unfortunately perfectly painted nails and good eyelash technique, even when coupled with the ability to make a perfect cup of coffee, hadn’t entirely compensated for my inability to type with more than two fingers. Especially since, attractive though he undoubtedly was, flirting had been as far as I was prepared to go.

To be brutally honest, I’d only held onto the job for so long because his boss, Richard Mallory, had been about to marry my best friend. I’d brought them together through some seriously clever matchmaking and Rich hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to invite me to take my skills elsewhere—which was why I’d made everyone promise to keep my resignation a secret until they’d left on their honeymoon.

He’d found out somehow, but I’d kept well out of his way during this last week before the wedding. Right now I needed a job—really needed a job—but not so badly that I’d watch a grown man break into a sweat as he tried to persuade me to stay. And I wouldn’t be asking him for a reference for much the same reason.

I’d given it my best shot, but I’d missed the target by a mile. I was never going to be secretary material.

‘I tend to do better in jobs where social skills are more important than the ability to type,’ I admitted, avoiding a direct answer to her question. ‘I’ve done reception work,’ I offered helpfully, indicating the thick file that lay in front of her. It was all there. Every job I’d ever had.

‘Presumably in the kind of reception area that doesn’t involve the use of a computer,’ she replied, signally unimpressed.

‘Unfortunately they’re few and far between these days,’ I said, and tried the smile again. In the face of her total lack of encouragement it wasn’t easy; this would have been so much less difficult if I were talking to a man—men, simple souls, took one look and tended to forget about tedious things like computers and typing speeds. But I wasn’t sexist. If she’d just give me a chance I was prepared to work with her on this. Really. ‘I worked in an art gallery once. I enjoyed that.’

Well, I had—until the gallery owner cornered me in the tiny kitchen and I’d had to choose between unemployment and taking my work home with me. That had come as something of a shock, actually. I’d been fooled by his fondness for velvet trousers and satin waistcoats into believing I was quite safe…

‘Lots of opportunities to meet wealthy art collectors, no doubt. We’re not running a dating agency, Miss Harrington.’

If only she knew how far she was from the truth.

‘I don’t need a dating agency,’ I said, possibly a little more sharply than was wise under the circumstances. But I was rapidly losing any desire for interaction of any kind with this woman.

I didn’t have any trouble attracting men. It was convincing them that I wasn’t in the business of making all their dreams come true that was the problem. The ones who worked it out and still wanted to know me became friends. The others became history. Dates I could manage for myself. What I needed was a job. Now.

‘I usually see Peter,’ I said, offering her a way out. ‘If he’s in? He understands what I can do.’

The look I got suggested that she understood, too. Only too well. ‘Peter is on holiday. If you want to see him you’ll have to come back next month. But I doubt if even he would be able to help you. Companies are looking for function rather than adornment in their staff these days.’ The woman indicated the file in front of her. ‘You’ve had a lot of jobs, Miss Harrington, but you don’t appear to be actually qualified for anything. Do you…did you ever…have a career plan?’

‘A career plan?’

For heaven’s sake, did this woman think I was a total fool? Of course I’d had a career plan. It had involved an excessive quantity of white lace, two rings and a large marquee in the garden of my parents’ home. I’d started working on it from the moment I first set eyes on Perry Fotheringay in a pair of skin-tight jodhpurs at some horsey charity do my mother had organised.

I was going to get engaged on my nineteenth birthday, married on my twentieth. I was going to have four children—with a Norland nanny to do all the yucky stuff—breed prize-winning Irish setters and live happily ever after in a small Elizabethan manor house in Berkshire.

Perfect.

Unfortunately Peregrine Charles Fotheringay, a man of smouldering good looks and heir to the manor house in question, had had a career plan of his own. One that did not include me. At least, not in connection with the white lace, rings and marquee.

And when that plan fell apart I just hadn’t had the heart to start again from scratch.

Probably because I didn’t have a heart. I’d given it away. It was gathering dust somewhere, along with my career plan, in PCF’s trophy cabinet.

My big mistake had been to believe, when he’d said he loved me, that marriage would follow. An even bigger mistake had been to fall totally, helplessly, hopelessly in love with him. I had discovered, too late, that men like him didn’t marry for love, but for advantage. And, having taken full and frequent advantage of my stupidity—admittedly with my whole-hearted co-operation—he’d married the heiress to a fortune large enough to fund the expensive upkeep of the said Elizabethan manor and keep him in the kind of luxury to which he felt entitled. As his father had done before him, apparently.

As Perry had explained when I confronted him with a copy of The Times in which his name was linked with the said heiress under the heading ‘Forthcoming Weddings’, it was in the nature of a family business: Fotheringay men didn’t work for their money; they married it.

The heiress was short-changed. For that kind of money she really should have got a title as well.

Anyway.

Here I was, spending my twenty-fifth birthday at an employment agency when I should have been organising a spur-of-the-moment frivolous celebratory bash for my friends. The kind that takes weeks to plan. I just hadn’t got the heart. What was there to celebrate? I was twenty-five, for heaven’s sake—that was a quarter of a century—and to make things worse my father had persuaded the trustees of my grandmother’s trust fund to put a stop on my monthly allowance so that I would have to get a serious job and stand on my own two feet.

That would teach me to tell little white lies.

Three months ago, in a spectacularly successful attempt to toss my shy best friend into the path of a billionaire playboy, I’d made up a story about having to hang onto my job because my father was threatening to stop my allowance. Something he did on a fairly regular basis, but which we both knew was nothing but bluff and bluster.

But now he’d actually done it.

It was for my own good, he had assured me.

Oh, sure.

I might not be clever, like my sister Kate, but I wasn’t stupid. I could see the way his mind was working. He thought that if I was short of money I’d have no choice but to return to the family nest and play housekeeper to him: a singularly unattractive prospect that offered all the undesirable aspects of marriage without any of the fun. Which was presumably why my mother had legged it with the first man to pay her a compliment since she’d walked down the aisle as Mrs Harrington.

‘Well?’

Miss Frosty was getting impatient.

‘Not a career plan as such,’ I said. Even I could see that she wasn’t going to be impressed with my romantic notions of connubial bliss. With the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight even I could see that it wasn’t so much a career plan as total fantasy… ‘I was never what you could describe as academic. My strengths are in what my mother described as “home skills”.’

‘Home skills?’ She didn’t actually get as far as smiling, but she did brighten considerably. ‘What kind of home skills?’

‘You know…flower arranging—that sort of stuff. I can do wonders with an armful of Rose Bay Willow Herb and Cow Parsley.’

‘I see.’ There was a significant pause. ‘And do you have a City and Guilds qualification for this?’ she asked finally. ‘Something I can offer an employer as proof of your capabilities?’

I was forced to admit that I hadn’t. ‘But the Ladies’ Home Union were jolly impressed when I stood in for my mother at the church flower festival at such short notice.’ Well, they’d been polite anyway. No one had so much as breathed the word ‘weeds’. Not within my hearing, anyway. Which, considering they’d been expecting the best blooms from my mother’s garden, had been generous of them.

Unfortunately, when she’d decided she’d had enough of tweeds and dogs and jumble sales and departed for South Africa with the muscular professional from the golf club, my father had driven a tractor through her prize-winning roses. Then, when there was nothing left to flatten, he’d repeated this pointless act of vandalism by doing the same thing to her immaculate herbaceous borders.

Now, that was stupid. She wasn’t there to have her heart broken over the destruction of all her hard work. She didn’t even know he’d done it, for goodness’ sake. And he was the one who had to live with the mess.

But after that Willow Herb and Cow Parsley had been all that I could lay my hands on in any quantity at such short notice.

‘Anything else?’

‘What? Oh…’ I was beginning to get irritated by this woman. Just because I couldn’t type a squillion words a minute, or do much more than send e-mails on my laptop, it didn’t mean I was worthless.

Did it?

No. Of course not. There were all kinds of things I could do. And with a sudden rush of inspiration I said, ‘I have organisational skills.’

I could organise great parties, for a start. That took skill. One look at Miss Frosty Face, however, warned me that party organising might not actually be considered much of an asset in the job market. Frivolity in the workplace was definitely a thing of the past.

But there were other things.

‘I can organise a fundraiser for the Brownies, or a cricket club tea, or a church whist drive.’ In theory, anyway. I’d never done any of those things single-handedly but, unlike my clever older sister, who had been too busy studying to get involved, I’d enjoyed helping my mother do all those things. It had been a heck of a lot more fun than revising for boring old exams, and it wasn’t as if I’d had any intention of going to university. I’d been going to follow in my mother’s footsteps—marry landed gentry and spend the rest of my life oiling the community wheels of village life.

Of course Kate had never had any trouble getting—or keeping—a job. And now she had a totally gorgeous barrister husband who adored her, too.

Maybe I should have paid more attention at school.

‘I can produce fairy cakes in vast quantities, ditto scones and sandwiches at the drop of a hat.’ I hadn’t done it since I’d left home at eighteen—to avoid running into PCF in the village, driving his new Ferrari, a wedding present from his bride—but it was like riding a bicycle. Probably. ‘And I can speak French, too,’ I said, getting a bit carried away.

‘Well?’

When I hesitated between lying through my teeth and a realistic appraisal of my linguistic skills she reeled off something double-quick in French. Too fast for me to understand, but I could tell it was a question because of the intonation. And I could make a good guess at what she was asking…

Show-off.

‘And play the piano.’ Before she could ask me the difference between a crotchet and a quaver I added, ‘And I know how to address anyone, from a Duke to an Archbishop—’

‘Then you appear to have missed your vocation,’ she said, cutting me off before I made a total idiot of myself. Or maybe not. Her expression suggested that I was way beyond that point. ‘You were clearly destined to marry one of the minor royals.’

I began to laugh. Too late I discovered I was on my own. This was not, apparently, her idea of a little light-hearted banter.

It occurred to me that this woman did not—unlike the much missed Peter—have a sense of humour. And, unlike him, she did not look upon a lack of formal qualifications as a challenge to her ingenuity; she just thought I was a total waste of space, a spoilt ‘princess’ who had some kind of nerve taking up her valuable time and expecting to be taken seriously.

It occurred to me, somewhat belatedly, that she might have a point, and that maybe I should consider a totally serious reappraisal of my entire life. And I would. Just as soon as I was in gainful employment.

‘Look, I don’t need a job that pays a fortune,’ I told her. ‘I just need to be able to pay the bills.’ And treat myself to a new lipstick now and then. Not a fortune, but not exactly peanuts, either. At least I had the luxury of living rent-free, thanks to Aunt Cora, who preferred the guaranteed warmth of her villa in the south of France to the London apartment that had been part of her lucrative divorce settlement. I only hoped my mother had been taking notes… ‘I’ll consider anything. Really.’

‘I see. Well, since your skills appear to be of the domestic variety, Miss Harrington, maybe you could put them to good use. I don’t have much call for free-form flower arrangers just now, but how are you at cleaning?’

Cleaning? ‘Cleaning what?’

‘Anything that people will pay good money to someone else to clean for them rather than do it themselves. Cookers come top of the list, but kitchen floors and bathrooms are popular, too.’

She had got to be joking! The only cleaning fluid I’d handled recently came in small, expensive bottles from the cosmetic department at Claibourne & Farraday.

‘I don’t have any real experience in that direction,’ I admitted.

Aunt Cora’s flat came equipped with a lady who appeared three times a week and did anything that required the use of rubber gloves. She charged the earth on an hourly basis for her services, but I’d planned on sub-letting my sister’s old room in order to pay her. And to cover some of the monthly maintenance charges. Just as soon as it was vacant. Unfortunately Aunt Cora had taken advantage of Kate’s departure to offer her room to ‘some very dear friends who need somewhere to stay in London while they’re looking for a place of their own.’

I was hardly in a position to say that it wasn’t convenient. Actually, at the time it had been fine, but that had been months ago and there was still no sign of them finding anywhere else. And, staying rent-free—and, unlike me, expenses-free—in London, why would they be in any great hurry?

‘Well, that’s a pity. We can always find work for someone with the ability to apply themselves to a scrubbing brush. ‘ She gave a dismissive little shrug. ‘But clearly that’s an “anything” too far for you.’ With that, Miss Frosty stood up to signal that as far as she was concerned the interview was over. But just to ram the point home she said, ‘Should I be offered anything in your particular niche in the job market, I’ll give you a call.’

She managed to make the prospect sound about as likely as a cold day in hell. That I could live with. It was the smirk she couldn’t quite hide that brought an unexpectedly reckless ‘I’ll show her…’ genie bubbling right out of the bottle.

‘I said I was short of experience. I didn’t say I wasn’t prepared to give it a try.’

Even as I heard myself say the words I knew I’d regret it, but at least I had the satisfaction of surprising that look of superiority right off Miss Frosty’s face. I hoped it would be sufficient comfort when I was on my knees with my head inside some bloke’s greasy oven.

‘Well, that’s the spirit,’ she said, finally managing a smile. It was a smug, self-satisfied little smile, and I had the strongest feeling that she couldn’t wait to get stuck into the ‘domestic’ files and search for the nastiest, dirtiest job she could find. ‘I’ve got your telephone number. I’ll be in touch. Very soon.’

‘Great,’ I said, looking her straight in the eyes.

In the meantime I’d treat myself to the best pair of rubber gloves money could buy. It was, after all, my birthday.

It would be fine, I told myself as I reached the pavement and, on automatic, raised my hand to hail a passing taxi. Then thought better of it and stood back to let someone else take it.

It would be fine. Peter would be back from his holiday in a week or two, he’d find me something to do, and life would return to normal—more or less. But in the meantime my expenses had doubled and my income had just become non-existent.

It wouldn’t hurt to start economising and take a bus.

It wouldn’t hurt to buy a newspaper and check out the job prospects for myself, either. The only possible excuse for not taking whatever revolting job Miss Frosty dug up for me—and I had no doubt that it would be revolting—would be that I was already gainfully employed.

The prospect of telling her so cheered me up considerably. It wasn’t as if I was unemployable, or even lazy. I’d had loads of jobs. But the unappealing prospect of becoming unpaid housekeeper to my manipulative and thoroughly bad-tempered father was all the incentive I needed to stay seriously focussed. I was in the mood to show him, too.

Okay, so I’d majored in having fun for the last few years. I mean, what was there to be serious about? But I’d had a wake-up call, a reminder that I couldn’t carry on like this indefinitely.

Apparently I was supposed to get serious now I’d turned twenty-five. Get a career plan.

Let’s face it. I didn’t even have a life plan.

It occurred to me that if I wasn’t jolly careful another twenty-five years would drift by and I wouldn’t have had a life.

Yes, it was definitely time to get serious.

I stopped at the corner shop to stock up on cat food, and while I was there picked up the evening paper. I scanned the ads while I was waiting for the girl behind the counter to stop flirting with a man buying a motorcycle magazine and discovered to my delight that I could job hunt on the internet, thus bypassing the doubtful pleasure of being made to feel totally useless on a face to face basis.

I also bought a notebook—one with a kitten on the cover and its own matching pen. I’d need a notebook if I was going to do all this planning. And, feeling virtuous, I circled all the likely job prospects in the paper while I was on the bus, jumping off at my stop fired up with enthusiasm and raring to go.

‘Big Issue, miss?’

Saving money or not, I wasn’t homeless like the man standing on this freezing corner selling copies of a magazine for a living.

‘Hi, Paul. How’s it going? Found anywhere to live yet?’

‘It’s looking good for after Christmas.’

‘Great.’ I handed over the money for the magazine and then bent down to make a fuss of the black and white mongrel pup sitting patiently at his side.

‘Hello, boy.’ He responded happily to a scratch behind the ear and I gave him a pound, too, which more or less cancelled out my economy with the taxi. ‘Buy yourself a bone on me.’

I went in through the back entrance to the flats so that I could feed the little stripey cat who’d made a home there. She appeared at the first sound of kibble rattling in the dish. She was so predictable. Then I walked through to the lifts, grateful that my ‘guests’ were away for an entire week and determined to make a serious start on the job hunting front.

There were distractions waiting for me in the lobby, however.

I might be trying to ignore my birthday, but nobody else was taking the hint. The porter had a pile of cards for me, as well as a parcel from my sister—who was away visiting her in-laws for a family celebration—and some totally knockout flowers.

There was a whopping big bunch of sunflowers—my absolute favourite, and heaven alone knew where the florist had managed to get them this late in the year—from Ginny and Rich. I felt a lump forming in my throat. I was practically certain that it was a rule of being on honeymoon that you were supposed to be totally self-centred and forget that the rest of the world existed. I touched the bright petals. Not Ginny…

There was an orchid in a pot from Philly, too. I hadn’t seen my here-today-gone-tomorrow next door neighbour in ages. She and Cal were always flitting off to some corner of a foreign field, or jungle, or mountain range to film exotic fauna. Neither of them had allowed the arrival of their baby daughter to slow them down, but just carried her along with them, papoose-style, wherever they went.

I’d have been okay if the arrangement of pale pink roses hadn’t been from my mother.

I sniffed. Loudly. I refused to cry. I did not cry—I’d used up all the tears I was ever going to shed over Perry Fotheringay—but it was a close-run thing. Everyone in the world I loved was married, or away on an adventure, or busy getting a life. Not that I begrudged any of them one bit of happiness or success. I was just a little bit tired of endlessly playing the dizzy bridesmaid and doing my best to avoid catching the bouquet tossed so carefully in my direction before waving them off on their new lives. That was all.

I opened the package from my sister. Nestling inside the layers of tissue paper, I found a pot of industrial strength anti-wrinkle cream, support stockings and a pair of ‘big knickers’. The card—’Over the hill? What hill? I didn’t see any hill…’—that went with it contained a voucher for a day of total pampering with all the extras at a luxury spa. It was exactly what I needed.

A laugh and a bit of luxury.

I was still grinning when the phone began to ring. I picked it up, expecting to hear a raucous chorus of ‘Happy Birthday to you’ from one of the gang I hung around with.

‘Sophie Harrington—single, sexy and celebrating—’

‘Miss Harrington?’ Miss Frosty’s voice froze the smile on my face. ‘How are you with dogs?’

‘Dogs?’

She wanted me to wash dogs?

‘One of our clients needs a dog-walker, and it occurred to me that this might be something you could do.’

Oh, very funny.

If this was her idea of ‘changing my life’ she could keep it. I’d go somewhere else. I cleared my throat, about to tell her what she could do with her dog-walking job; I just about managed to stop myself from saying it.

I’d said ‘anything’. If this was a test I wasn’t about to fail it just because I was too proud to walk someone’s dog for money. Not when I’d probably have done it for nothing, if asked nicely. Who was I kidding? Not probably—I’d have volunteered like a shot. I loved dogs. They were always the same. Up-front and honest. They had no hidden agendas, no secrets. They never let you down.

‘How much an hour?’ I asked. Since I hadn’t been asked nicely, I might as well be businesslike about it.

She told me.

A dog-walker didn’t rate as much per hour as a secretary, but if I was totally honest I had to admit that I could walk a lot better than I could type. And I couldn’t afford to be choosy.

‘Two hours a day—first thing in the morning and again in the evening,’ she continued. ‘It will leave you ample time to fit in other jobs during the day.’

‘Great,’ I said, the spectre of greasy ovens looming large. But it occurred to me that not only would I have a little money coming in—and I wasn’t in any position to turn that down—I’d also have plenty of time to work on my career plan. Look for a proper job. ‘When do I start?’

‘This afternoon. It’s a bit of a crisis situation.’

Naturally. Some idle bloke couldn’t be bothered to walk his own dogs and it was a crisis.

‘That’s not a problem, is it?’

‘Well, it is my birthday,’ I replied sweetly. ‘But I can take an hour out from the endless round of fun to walk a dog.’

‘Two dogs.’

‘Do I get paid per dog?’ I asked. ‘Or was the rate quoted for both of them?’ I was learning ‘businesslike’ fast.

‘You’re being paid for an hour of your time, Miss Harrington, not per dog.’

‘So I’d be paid the same if I was walking one dog?’

I thought it was a fair question, but she didn’t bother to answer. All she said was, ‘The client’s name is York. Gabriel York. If you’ve got a pen handy, I’ll give you the address.’

I grabbed my new kitty notebook, with its matching pen, and wrote it down. Then, since the ability to put one foot in front of the other without falling over was the only potential of mine that Miss Frosty-Face was prepared to tap, I registered with a couple of online agencies who might ignore me but at least wouldn’t be rude to my face.

CHAPTER TWO

I WAS late. It wasn’t my fault, okay? People had kept phoning me to see what I was doing to celebrate my birthday. No one had believed me when I’d said nothing. They’d just laughed and said, ‘No, really—what are you doing?’ and in the end I’d relented and promised I’d meet Tony down the pub at nine o’clock.

Then my mother had phoned from South Africa, wanting to tell me about everything she’d been doing—well, obviously not everything—and I could hardly say I had more important things to do, could I?

Anyway, it was hardly a matter of life or death. Dogs couldn’t tell the time and I didn’t have to rush off anywhere else. They’d get their hour. Start twenty minutes late; finish twenty minutes late. Sorted.

Gabriel York’s address proved to be a tall, elegant, terraced house in a quiet cul-de-sac untroubled by through traffic. Its glossy black front door was flanked by a pair of perfectly clipped bay trees which stood in reproduction Versailles boxes; no one in their right mind would leave the genuine lead antiques on their doorstep, even if it would take a crane to lift them. The brass door furniture had the well-worn look that only came from generations of domestics applying serious elbow grease—a fate, I reminded myself, that awaited me unless I gave some serious thought to my future.

The whole effect was just too depressingly perfect for words. Like something out of a costume drama, where no one was interested in the reality of the mud or the smell of nineteenth-century London.

This was a street made for designer chic and high, high heels, and I felt about as out of place as a lily on the proverbial dung heap.

My own fault, entirely.

I’d stupidly forgotten to ask what kind of dogs Mr York owned, and since there was no way I was going to call back and ask Miss Frosty to enlighten me I’d gone for the worst-case scenario, assuming something large and muscular, times two, and dressing accordingly. At home that would have meant one of the ancient waxed jackets that had been hanging in the mud room for as long as I could remember and a pair of equally venerable boots. The kind of clothes that my mother lived in.

Had lived in.

These days, as she’d told me at length, she was to be found stretched out poolside in a pair of shorts, a halter neck top and factor sixty sunblock. I didn’t blame her; she was undoubtedly entitled to a bit of fun after a lifetime of waiting hand, foot and finger on my father for no reward other than an occasional grunt.

I just didn’t want to be reminded of the difference between her life and my own, that was all.

Here in London it was doing something seasonal in the way of freezing drizzle, and although I’d stuffed my hair into a pull-on hat I hadn’t been able to find a pair of gloves; my fingers were beginning to feel decidedly numb.

Anyway, without the luxury of a help-yourself selection of old clothes to choose from, I’d had to make do with my least favourite jeans, a faux-fur jacket—a worn-once fashion disaster that I’d been meaning to take to the nearest charity shop—and a pair of old shoes that my sister had overlooked when she moved out. They were a bit on the big side, but with the help of a pair of socks they’d do. They’d have to. I wasn’t wearing my good boots to plough through the under-growth of Battersea Park.

Now I realised that I looked a total mess for no good reason. I needn’t even have bothered to change my shoes. I only had to take one look at those pom-pom bay trees to know that Mr York’s dogs would be a couple of pampered, shaved miniature poodles, with pom-pom tails to match. They’d undoubtedly consider a brisk trot as far as Sloane Square a serious workout.

So, I asked myself as I mounted the steps to his glossy front door, what kind of man would live in a house like this? My imagination, given free reign, decided that Mr York would be sleek and exquisitely barbered, with small white hands. He’d have a tiny beard, wear a bow tie and do something important in ‘the arts’. I admit to letting my prejudices run away with me here. I have a totally irrational dislike of clipped bay trees—and clipped poodles.

Poor things.

I rang the doorbell and waited to see just how well my imagination and reality coincided.

The dogs responded instantly to the doorbell—one with an excited bark, the other with a howl like a timber wolf in some old movie. One of them hurled itself at the door, hitting it with a thump so emphatic that it echoed distantly from the interior of the house and suggested I might have been a bit hasty in leaping to a judgement based on nothing more substantial than a prejudice against clipped bay trees.

If they were poodles they were the great big ones, with voices to match.

Unfortunately, the dogs were the only ones responding to the bell. The door remained firmly shut, with no human voice to command silence. No human footsteps to suggest that the door was about to be flung open.

Under normal circumstances I would have rung the bell a second time, but considering the racket the dogs were making my presence could hardly have gone unnoticed. So I waited.

And waited.

After a few moments the dog nearest the door stopped barking and the howl died down to a whimper, but apart from a scrabbling, scratching noise from the other side of the door as one of them tried to get at me that was it.

Seriously irritated—I wasn’t that late and the dogs still needed to be walked—I raised my hand to the bell to ring again, but then drew back at the last minute, my outstretched fingers curling back into my palm as annoyance was replaced by a faint stirring of unease.

‘Hello?’ I said, feeling pretty stupid talking to a dog through a door. The scrabbling grew more anxious and I bent down, pushed open the letterbox and found myself peering into a pair of liquid brown eyes set below the expressive brows of a cream silky hound.

‘Hello,’ I repeated, with rather more enthusiasm. ‘What’s your name?’

He twitched his brows and whined sorrowfully.

Okay, I admit it was a stupid question.

‘Is there anyone home besides you dogs?’ I asked, trying to see past him into the hallway.

The intelligent creature backed away from the door, giving me a better look at his sleek short coat, feathery ears and slender body, then he gave a short bark and looked behind him, as if to say, ‘Don’t look at me, you fool, look over there…’ And that was when I saw Gabriel York and realised I’d got it all wrong.

Twice over.

His dogs were not poodles and he wasn’t some dapper little gallery owner in a bow tie.

Gabriel York was six foot plus of dark-haired, muscular male. And the reason he hadn’t answered the door when I rang was because he was lying on the hall floor. Still. Unmoving.

I remembered the echoing thump. Had that been him, hitting the deck?

The second hound, lying at his side, lifted his head and looked at me for a long moment, before pushing his long nose against his master’s chin with an anxious little whine, as if trying to wake him up. When that didn’t have any effect he looked at me again, and the message he was sending came over loud and clear.

Do something!

Oh, crumbs. Yes. Absolutely. Right away.

I dug in my pocket, flipped open my cellphone and with shaking fingers punched in the number for the emergency services. I couldn’t believe how much information they wanted—none of which I had. Apart from the address and the fact that I had an unconscious man on the other side of the door.

How did I know if he’d hit his head? And what difference would it make if I told them? It wasn’t as if they could do anything about it until they got here…

Maybe I sounded a touch hysterical, because the woman in the control centre, in the same calming voice more commonly used to talk to skittish horses, over-excited dogs and total idiots, told me to stay right where I was. Someone would be with me directly.

The minute I hung up, of course, I realised that I should have told her the one thing I did know. That they wouldn’t be able to get in. I looked around in the vain hope that a passing knight errant—and I’d have been quite happy to pass on the gleaming armour and white horse—might leap to my rescue and offer to pick the lock, or break a window, or do some other totally clever thing that had completely eluded me and climb in.

The street—and the way my day was going I was not surprised by this—was deserted.

Actually, on second thoughts, maybe that was just as well. I wasn’t sure that anyone who could pick a lock at the drop of a hat would be a knight errant. Not unless he was a bona fide locksmith, anyway.

I looked through the letterbox again, hoping, in the way that you do, that Gabriel York had miraculously recovered while I’d been panicking on his doorstep. There was no discernible change. Was he actually breathing?

‘Mr York?’ It came out as little more than a whisper. ‘Mr York!’ I repeated more sharply.

The only response was from the dogs, who reprised the bark/howl chorus, presumably in the hope of rousing someone more useful.

Oh, help! I had to do something. But what? I didn’t have any hairpins about my person, and even if I had I couldn’t pick a lock to save my life. His life.

I looked over the railing down into the semi-basement. The only window down there was not just shut, it had security bars, too, so breaking it wouldn’t be much use.

I took a step back and looked up at the house. The ground-floor windows were all firmly fastened, but, blinking the drizzle out of my eyes, I could see that one of the sash cord windows on the floor above street level was open just a crack. It wasn’t that far, and there was a useful downpipe within easy reach. Well, easyish reach, anyway.

I stowed my phone and, catching hold of the iron railing that guarded the steps, pulled myself up. Then, from the vantage point of this precious perch, I grabbed the downpipe and hitched myself up until I was clinging, monkey-like, with my hands and feet. I didn’t pause to gather my breath. I was very much afraid that if I paused to do anything I’d lose my nerve. Instead I clung with my knees, reached up with my hands, pushed with my feet. The cast iron was cold, damp and slippery—and a lot harder to climb than I’d anticipated.

I hadn’t got very far when the muscles in my upper arms began to burn, reminding me that I hadn’t been to the gym in a while. Actually, I really should make the most of it before my membership expired, I thought, and slipped, banging my chin and biting my lip in the process.

Concentrate, you silly cow…

Quite. I gritted my teeth and, telling myself not to be such a wimp, hauled myself up. Things didn’t improve when I finally got level with the window, which was rather further from the pipe than it had looked from the ground. Just a bit more of a stretch. Excellent from a security point of view, but an unnervingly sickening distance to span from mine.

It was perhaps fortunate that the biggest spider I’d ever seen decided to investigate the bipedal blundering that had disturbed whatever it was that spiders do when they lurk behind downpipes—and frankly I’d rather not know—thus confirming the fact that I would rather risk the fall into a stone basement area than endure a face-to-face encounter with eight horribly long though undoubtedly harmless legs.

Idiotic, no doubt, but as a force for overcoming inertia arachnophobia takes some beating.

Have you ever wished you hadn’t started something? Just wished you’d never got out of bed that morning?

It was my birthday. I was twenty-five years old and everyone was telling me that it was time to grow up. As if I hadn’t done that the day I’d realised that love was no competition for money.

But, clinging to Gabriel York’s windowsill by my fingernails, I had a moment of truth. Reality. Let me live through this, I promised whatever unfortunate deity had been given the task of looking after total idiots, and I will embrace maturity. I’ll even get to grips with my dislike of technology and sign up for a computer course.

In the meantime I dug in and hauled myself up, trying not to think about my expensive manicure—probably the last one I’d ever be able to afford—as my nails grated against stone and, with my knee on the sill, I managed to grab hold of the window and push it upwards.

Someone must have been listening to my plea for help because, unlike the sash cord windows of my family home, which stuck like glue in damp weather, Mr York kept his well oiled and perfectly balanced. In response to a shove with the full force of my bodyweight behind it the window shot up and I fell in, landing in a painful heap on a polished oak floor, closely followed by a spindly table and something fragile that shattered noisily very close to my ear.

Make that half listening. Bumped chin, bitten lip, wrecked nails, and now I had a throbbing shoulder to add to the tally. And my knees hurt. This job definitely came under the heading ‘life-changing’. Whether I’d survive it was yet to be proved.

I opened my eyes and was confronted by the ruin of what might have been a Dresden shepherdess. And something told me that this wasn’t a replica. It was the real thing.

I blamed its total destruction on the latest craze for ripping up carpets and polishing original wooden floors. If there had been a draught-stopping fitted carpet, with a thick cushion underlay, the shepherdess would have still been in one piece and I wouldn’t have bruised my knees. And, of the two, it was my knees I was more bothered about. The shepherdess would undoubtedly be insured for replacement value. My knees were unique.

Not that I had any time to lie there and feel sorry for myself. Somewhere in the distance I could hear the sound of a siren—hopefully that of the ambulance I’d summoned. I had to get to the front door and let in the paramedics…

I got up and pulled down the window, leaving grubby fingermarks. I rubbed my hands down the front of my jeans before I left them on anything else, and headed for the door. Not before noting that the room, like the Dresden shepherdess, did not quite fit the glimpse I’d got of Gabriel York. It was a thoroughly feminine room. Presumably the territory of Mrs York. I blamed her for the bay trees while I was at it.

And where was she when her husband needed her to walk his dogs? Pick him up off the floor? Call an ambulance…?

The nearest dog—clearly an adolescent—leapt on me in his excitement as I ran down the stairs, nearly knocking me off my feet again.

‘Get off, you stupid hound,’ I said, pushing him away, trying not to look too closely at my employer as I stepped over him—if he’d fallen downstairs and broken his neck I’d rather not know—and went to open the door.

I looked out. No ambulance… Well, it was building up to the rush hour, so it would undoubtedly have to battle its way through the traffic, like the rest of London.

It was down to me, then. I left the door ajar, so that they could get in when they arrived, and turned back to face the man who lay supine and unmoving, taking up most of the floor.

And I got a reprise of the ‘do something’ look from the dog lying protectively at his side.

Deep breath, Sophie. You can do this…

‘Mr York…’ I knelt down beside him and it didn’t take a genius to see that even when he was on his feet Gabriel York wasn’t going to look terribly well. His skin had a yellowish pallor and his face was drawn-out and haggard with the sharply attenuated features of someone who’s lost a great deal of weight without any of the tiresome bother of going on a diet. He was wearing a black dressing gown over a pair of cotton pyjama pants—which, considering it was late afternoon, suggested that it wasn’t simply idleness that had stopped him from walking his dogs.

He might, of course, have slipped on the stairs—his feet were bare—as he’d come down to answer the door. Or one of the dogs might have got underfoot in its excitement and unbalanced him.

But, looking at him, I would have gambled that he’d just passed out. At least I hoped that was all he’d done; I gingerly touched his throat, seeking a pulse.

I couldn’t find one.

The hound who’d been guarding him, but who had shifted slightly to let me get closer, licked my hand encouragingly. I patted him absently, swallowing as I attempted to dislodge a great big rock that suddenly seemed to be stuck in my throat.

How long had he been lying there? Was it too late for the kiss of life?

How long had it been since I’d rung the bell and heard that distant thump that I was now certain had been Gabriel York hitting the floor? He was still warm to the touch, but then my own hands were freezing. I rubbed them together, trying to get the feeling back into them.

I’d never actually given anyone the kiss the life, but I’d seen a demonstration once, years ago in the village hall, at a first aid course organised by my mother. You covered the victim’s mouth and blew. No, there was more to it than that. Think, think… I put my hand beneath his neck and tilted it back to clear the airway. I remembered that much.

As I looked down into his face, forcing myself to take steady, even breaths—I hadn’t realised until then that my heart was beating rather too fast for comfort—it occurred to me that even in extremis Gabriel York had an austere beauty, that his wide, sensual mouth was the kind a girl might enjoy kissing under less trying circumstances. At least she would if she was into kissing and all the messy stuff that inevitably followed.

Heartbreak, pain…

I forced myself to concentrate, cupping his chin in my hand and placing my lips over his to seal off the air.

His unshaven chin was bristly against my palm, my fingers. His mouth was cool, but not cold…

I forced myself to concentrate and blew steadily into his mouth.

At this point I nearly passed out myself from lack of oxygen. I’d been concentrating so hard on remembering what to do that I’d missed out the vital step of taking a breath first. Okay. I’d got it now. Breath in, mouth to mouth, blow. And again.

How long was I supposed to keep this up? As if in answer, I heard that long-ago demonstrator sternly warning that once you began CPR you had to continue until relieved…

How much longer was the ambulance going to be?

I paused for another breath, and this time when I looked at him he seemed to have regained a little colour. Encouraged, I tried again.

There was a definite change—the kind of response that if I didn’t know better would have given me the distinct impression that I was being—well, kissed back. No, definitely kissed back…

Oh, sugar…

I opened my eyes—that level of concentration had required my eyes to be tightly shut—and discovered that I was not imagining things. Clearly I had this kiss of life thing down to a fine art, because Gabriel York had his eyes open, too. Black, glittering behind quite scandalously thick lashes, and dangerously over-heated. Quite suddenly, I was the one in need of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Rapidly recovering my wits—I had a highly developed sense of self-preservation where thick dark lashes were concerned—I decided it was time to put a safe distance between us. He was having none of that; his arm was around my waist before the message from my brain reached my limbs, holding me with rather more strength than anyone who’d been unconscious just moments before should have been able to summon up.

‘Who the devil are you?’ he demanded.

Huh? Whatever happened to, Thank you for saving my life?

Charitably putting his brusqueness down to disorientation—and bearing in mind that my electricity bill was in his hands—I didn’t say the first thing that leapt into my mind. Instead I replied—somewhat breathlessly, it’s true—‘I’m Sophie Harrington.’ All my spare breath had been pumping up his lungs, okay? I would have offered him my hand at this point, and said the obligatory How d’you do?, but one of my hands was already busy cradling his chin, while the other was doing something Florence Nightingaleish in the vicinity of his brow. I immediately stopped that nonsense and, in the absence of any other bright conversation ideas, said, ‘I’ve sent for an ambulance. It should be here any minute.’

‘What the hell did you do that for?’ he demanded, with a lack of gratitude that I found just a bit galling, considering all I’d been through.

‘Because you were unconscious—’

‘Rubbish!’

‘You had your eyes closed, you didn’t respond to the doorbell and…and I couldn’t find a pulse.’

‘Where did you look?’ I stopped cradling his chin and pressed my fingers against his Adam’s apple. He moved my hand to the right and pushed it firmly beneath his chin. ‘Try there.’

‘Oh…’ He definitely had a pulse. His heart was beating almost as fast as mine.

He made a move to sit up, but, hoping to retrieve some credibility in the first aid department, I said, ‘Look, you were out cold. I think you should roll over into the recovery position and wait for the paramedics.’ He made no attempt to obey instructions and he was too big for me to push him—at least he was if he didn’t want to be pushed—so I said, ‘In your own time.’

I added a smile, just so he’d know he was in safe hands.

All I got for my pains was a scowl, but at least he was alive and talking. Whether he was quite making sense only time would tell. Whatever. I’d done my bit, and at this point I should have been safe in assuming that nothing worse could happen. Indeed, that when he’d recovered sufficiently to realise that I’d risked my life to save his he would be transformed into Mr Congeniality and I would be showered with thanks for bravery above and beyond the call of dog-walking duties. Possibly. I could wait.

Instead, still frowning, he said, ‘Why were you kissing me?’ From his tone, I didn’t get the impression it was an experience he would wish to repeat any time soon.

Well, snap.

‘I wasn’t kissing you,’ I replied, losing the smile. What did he think I was? Some crazy woman who leapt on unconscious men? I wanted to make sure he understood that I did not kiss men I didn’t know, and even if I did I certainly wouldn’t have to wait until they were unconscious. ‘I was giving you the kiss of life.’

He barked out something that might have been a laugh. The dismissive kind that lacked any kind of humour or warmth. ‘That had about as much in common with CPR as—’

I was spared whatever unflattering comparison he had in mind as a couple of uniformed policemen, taking advantage of the fact that I’d left the door ajar for the paramedics, burst into the hall. One of them grabbed me by the arm and without so much as a by-your-leave hauled me to my feet with an, ‘All right, young lady…’

With that, pandemonium broke out as the older of the two dogs—the one that had been keeping watch over Gabriel York—leapt up, pushing himself between me and the policemen. From somewhere deep in his throat he produced a low, threatening growl that he might well have learned from his master.

The other dog immediately stopped dancing excitedly about the new arrivals and joined in. My heroes.

‘Percy! Joe! Down.’

Percy, still baring his teeth but lowering the growl until it was scarcely audible, obeyed his master’s voice in his own good time, his haunches almost but not quite in contact with the floor, ready to spring to my defence at the slightest provocation. Joe followed his example. The policeman, taking heed of this canine warning that any injudicious move would be met with extreme prejudice, let go of my arm and took a step back.

‘Would someone like to tell me what the hell is going on?’

Gabriel York had taken advantage of the distraction to sit up and now, grabbing hold of the stairpost, he hauled himself to his feet.

‘No…’ I began. He glared at me for apparently daring to defy him. More gently, I said, ‘You really should sit down, Mr York.’

He gave me a look that suggested he would deal with me later, before ignoring my advice and turning to the nearest policeman. ‘You,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘One of your neighbours called us, sir. She saw this young woman—’ he unwisely gestured in my direction, got a warning reprise of the growl from Percy for his trouble and immediately lowered his arm ‘—er, apparently breaking in through an upstairs window and called the local station.’

Gabriel York turned back to look at me. Sweat had broken out on his upper lip and he looked as if he was about to pass out again at any minute. But not, apparently, before he’d got some answers. ‘Is that right? You climbed in through an upstairs window?’

‘I had to do something!’ I was absolutely livid. I’d been out there, hanging on by my fingernails, risking my life, and instead of coming to help me his nosy neighbour had sat behind her curtains and called the police. Actually, my own legs felt suddenly less than solid as I had a quick flashback of the risks I’d taken. ‘I couldn’t just leave you lying there.’

‘How did you know I was—’ he made a gesture in the direction of the floor ‘—lying there?’

‘Look, my name is Sophie Harrington,’ I said, turning to the nearest policeman. ‘I was sent here by the Garland Agency. They’ll vouch for me. When no one answered the doorbell I looked through the letterbox and saw Mr York lying unconscious—’ he snorted dismissively at this ‘—lying unconscious,’ I repeated, ‘on the floor at the foot of the stairs, so I climbed up the downpipe and in through the window.’

The policeman turned to Gabriel York for a response to this. This time he didn’t snort. After a few moments’ silent contemplation he nodded, then winced, then said, ‘My neighbour undoubtedly did the correct thing, but Miss Harrington is right—’ well, hallelujah ‘—she’s here to walk my dogs.’

‘Lifesaving is all part of the service,’ I volunteered, earning myself another black look.

‘I’m sorry you’ve been bothered, gentlemen,’ he added, clearly hoping they’d leave so that he could collapse quietly. To be honest, he looked so grim that I had to force myself to stay put and not rush over to him and make him sit down before he collapsed in a heap at the foot of the stairs. Something warned me that it would not be a good idea.

Fortunately I did have one ace up my sleeve. I turned to the policemen. ‘They’re not the only ones who’ve been bothered, I’m afraid. Before I climbed in through the upstairs window and applied the kiss of life—’

‘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.

CHAPTER THREE

THE alarm was like a chainsaw chewing through my brain. That was the trouble with surprise parties. They took you by surprise and you didn’t have time to remind yourself of the golden rule about not drinking on an empty stomach. More particularly the platinum, diamond-encrusted rule about not drinking too many margaritas on an empty stomach.

Since I’d been expecting nothing more than a quiet drink with a mate, I hadn’t made a huge effort with my appearance either, going for comfort rather than glamour. I’d taken a long hot shower, to remove what seemed like half of Battersea Park, filed down the ruins of my nails and decided to forgo the doubtful pleasure of spending hours with a brush and hairdryer in an effort to return my hair to sleek perfection, and gone for the rumpled, dragged-through-a-hedge-backwards look instead.

Well, it had come close.

A dab of concealer on the nicely developing bruise, a pair of favourite—if past their fashion statement days—trousers, a baggy shirt and a pair of boots and I’d been all set.

Then I’d walked into the bar.

Everyone else had been dressed to kill, of course. I’d been the only one actually in the mood to perform the deed.

Tony, a bloke a girl could usually rely on not to do anything clever, had ignored my ‘I do not want to even think about this birthday, let alone celebrate it’ response to his query about a party. He’d assumed that I was joking—I said he wasn’t clever—and pulled out all the stops.

But—and these are probably the three most damning words in the English language—he’d meant well. To be honest, after the second margarita what I was wearing hadn’t seemed to matter that much, and I’d surprised myself by having a great time. Cleverer than I thought, perhaps…

I groped for the clock, turned it off and fell out of bed while I was still awake. A walk—a long walk with two very lively dogs—would undoubtedly be good for me. Always assuming I could remember how to put one foot in front of another. Always assuming I still had a job.

On my return to Gabriel York’s house yesterday I had been met by a frosty-faced Mrs York, who had wordlessly handed me a large towel at arm’s length and watched from a safe distance while I’d removed all traces of mud from the dogs. Then, with the minimum of words, she’d indicated I should take them downstairs to the utility room and give them some water. After I’d removed my shoes. Clearly she didn’t ‘do’ dogs.

Actually, I sympathised. She’d been wearing a charcoal grey business suit that had clearly cost a mint and in her place I wouldn’t have wanted two excitable and muddy hounds near me. Honesty compels me to admit that it had been a mistake not to clip their leads back on before we reached the lake. It was asking for trouble and, as usual, I got it. They’d instantly spotted a couple of ducks so far away that I hadn’t noticed them and plunged right in, proving to be selectively deaf when I’d called them to heel.

They’d heard ‘walkies’, no problem.

Anyway, I’d mopped up the resulting mess under her chilling gaze, and in an effort to break the ice—and because I had a stake in his health, besides really wanting to know—enquired after Mr York. All the time I’d been out with the dogs I’d wondered whether he’d been hauled off in an ambulance, undoubtedly protesting that it wasn’t in the least bit necessary, and what I was going to do if he had.

No worries. There’d been lights on all over the place when I returned. Great. And Mrs York was there to answer the door. Not so great.

In reply to my query, she had informed me that he was ‘as well as could be expected under the circumstances’—which told me precisely nothing. I mean, I’d have liked to know if he was suffering from a bad bout of something flulike so that I could stock up on painkillers and tissues. One look at her had suggested it might not be advisable to explain about my ‘kiss of life’. She hadn’t looked as if she’d appreciate my sacrifice.

What she had done, was leave me with the unsettling impression that the ‘circumstances’ had everything to do with me.

Tempted as I’d been to point out that I’d actually saved his life—probably—I had restrained myself. A fair number of silky cream dog hairs, disturbed by my brisk towelling of Joe’s coat, had floated in her direction and attached themselves to her skirt; I hadn’t wanted to be around when she noticed them.

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