About the Authors
A Puppy and a Christmas Proposal
Alison Roberts
The greatest gift he could give her?
A family…
After losing her baby, and sacrificing her pediatric career, Emma spends every Christmas as an emergency locum—and this year she’ll be covering A&E consultant Max Cunningham. Their one kiss years ago was unforgettable, and now that this ex-playboy is daddy to three orphaned children, he’s dangerously tempting! But as Max welcomes Emma into his home, she soon wishes her family for Christmas could be forever…
‘OH, NO…YOU can’t be serious.’
‘I’m so sorry, Dr Cunningham, but there it is. I’m sure you understand that acute appendicitis isn’t something we can plan for. We’re doing our very best to find someone else to fill the position but, realistically, that’s not going to happen until after New Year. People want to be with their families over the festive season and…it’s such late notice. It’s the twentieth of December, for heaven’s sake. Christmas is only a few days away, you know.’
Of course he knew. There was tinsel in all sorts of odd places in his emergency department here at the Cheltenham Royal Hospital and there was a small Christmas tree in the waiting room. Some staff members had taken to wearing earrings that had flashing lights or headbands with reindeer antlers or little red hats with pompoms attached and he kept hearing people humming Christmas carols. They’d even had a man in a Santa suit come in by ambulance earlier today after suffering a suspected heart attack as he coped with all those small people wanting to sit on his knee and have their photographs taken in the town’s largest department store.
And, of course, he knew that people wanted to be with their families. Or felt obliged to be. It was precisely the reason why Max Cunningham always worked right through the holiday season to make sure as many people as possible in his department could have time at home with their loved ones. He’d done it for so many years now he was quite comfortable ignoring the commercial hype that tried to make it compulsory for happy families to gather and have
