Page 27 of The Day After Christmas
‘You are. You’re blushing.’
‘I most certainly am not.’
‘James, please tell me you weren’t actually going to propose to me just then.’
He shook his head even more strongly than before and something inside Felicity twisted like a knife.
‘I can assure you, I definitely wasn’t proposing. You don’t need to worry about that.’ He sounded a little… off, all of a sudden.
‘Good.’
‘Good.’
It was good. Wasn’t it?Then why did she suddenly feel so sideswiped?
‘Right then.’
‘Glad we got that straight.’
Cue awkward silence.
Felicity put her head back on his chest and they both went back to staring at the TV with the distinct feeling that nothing was actually straight whatsoever.
CHAPTER 15
The next day at work Felicity threw herself into cat cuddles and taking the dogs for walks and tried not to think about the proposal that wasn’t a proposal or the approaching meet-up with her long-lost father/potential weirdo stranger scam artist. She was so deeply not-thinking-about-it while she cleaned out the rabbit run in the corridor that she didn’t hear Andrea calling her until her boss’s voice was practically booming.
‘Felicity? For goodness’ sake. I’ve been calling and calling you. I nearly had to actually get up off this chair and everything. Can you please find Charlie something to do? He’s hanging around my office like a bad smell.’
‘Sorry. Yes, of course. Send him this way.’
Charlie stuck his head around the door frame and grinned.
‘Hi, Charlie,’ said Felicity, pulling fresh straw from a bale and laying it out in their little hutch bit, scooching the biggest rabbit gently over as she did so. Andrea and Felicity had named him Bugs because of his perfect grey fur and little white markings. In standard fashion, Charlie didn’t have the faintest idea who Bugs Bunny was.
‘I smell very nice – honest.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ said Felicity with a smile. ‘Now come and help me get the lunchtime feeds ready for the kittens.’
The previous week they’d had a delivery of five tiny ginger kittens from a farmer down the road whose cat always liked “visiting” the neighbourhood females. They were so tiny they were still having milk replacer, which meant a lot of mixing up of powder and then the delightful task of having to hand-feed them. They’d named them all after vegetables for some reason Felicity couldn’t quite remember now.
‘It’s a hard life,’ said Felicity, scooping up the first kitten, the one they’d named Parsnip, and feeling its soft warm fur against her cheek.
Charlie was watching her so intently her face heated. ‘Reckon you’ve got the best job ever,’ he said.
‘Reckon I might just have,’ said Felicity, with the little body purring away in her hand. She passed it to Charlie. ‘Here, you do this one and I’ll have this’ – she scooped another one out of the run – ‘little dot here.’
‘Carrot, I think that one is?’
‘Is it? I thought this one was Carrot and that one with the white feet was Pumpkin?’
‘Who cares?’ Charlie practically gulped as he took the tiny body, holding it close to his chest and whispering in its ear.
‘Told you they all loved you. You’re a natural,’ said Felicity after a moment.
‘Do you think?’
‘I can see it.’
