Now this is a nice Christmas Eve gift! I'm in between family activities, looking for a bit of illicit distraction, and here this was waiting for me! *g* I enjoyed this--very sweet, yet enough angst to make it interesting! And I see what you meant when you indicated you were channeling Basil! ;-)

I liked this line: Instead, he was now wide awake with one stray dog and one stray Bodie in his flat and no clear idea what to do with either of them. For me, it captured the feeling of the story, along with Christmas.

So, were the two men at the end characters from another show? They had that feel about them, but I'm woefully ignorant! Thank you for this!