Husband Material (London Calling #2)(120)

Oliver’s fingers curled tightly around mine. “I don’t want to be taking anything away from you. Or turning you into someone you’re not supposed to be.”

“I don’t know who I’m supposed to be,” I told him. “I don’t think anyone does. And being with you isn’t a compromise for me. It’s…it’s what I want. Otherwise I wouldn’t have fucking asked you to marry me.”

Oliver gave a little smile. “Yes, that was quite the gesture.”

“I know, right?” I risked smiling back. “Didn’t think I had it in me. I must really love you or something.”

“Yes. Yes, you must.” The blush was playing an encore on Oliver’s face. “I’m sorry. I’ve been quite silly tonight.”

I rolled my eyes. “I can’t believe you tried to get me to dump you at Quo Vadis less than a week before our wedding.”

“What can I say? Perhaps this place brings out my insecurities.”

“Last time we were here,” I reminded him, “I pretended I spoke French to impress you.”

“Last time we were here,” he replied, “I was entirely convinced you despised me.”

I gazed at him in an embarrassingly mushy way. “I’ve never despised you. And I never will.”

“Oh, Lucien”—it was Oliver’s driest voice—“you always say the most romantic things.”

“Hey, it could be worse. I could have called you a Moomin jigsaw again.”

At last, he laughed.

And, figuring I was onto a good thing, I decided to seal the deal romance-wise. “How about we share a lemon posset for dessert?”

“That would be wonderful,” replied Oliver, for once letting himself enjoy a thing uncomplicatedly. Or at least he did for about half a second. “Ah, except. I believe it’s made with cream?”

I basked for a moment in having, very briefly, not fucked one thing up. “Actually, when I booked, I told them this was our first-date restaurant and that we’d had the lemon posset and you’d gone vegan since but could they do something. And they said they could.”

Oliver’s eyes got very close to teary again. “Lucien.” He swallowed. “That was…that was terribly sweet of you.”

If I’d been a lot more grown-up, I’d have said, It was nothing. If I’d been slightly more grown-up, I’d have said, Anything for you, babe. But wanting to make someone happy as much as I wanted to make Oliver happy was a very naked feeling to be having in a restaurant so, instead, I just gave an embarrassed cringe and said something that came out as “inerenugh?”

By some magic I’d never quite mastered, Oliver caught the waiter’s eye, seamlessly volunteered that the meal had been lovely and, from there, segued into a requesting a lemon posset with two spoons to finish. I should have got used to Oliver being good at this shit by now but…I hadn’t. Really, all that had changed was that instead making me feel inadequate, it made me feel smug that my boyfriend—fiancé—was polite and considerate and confident and knew how to restaurant.

“You know I’m not letting you use that spoon, right?”

He rolled his eyes in his secretly-into-it way. “When did this become a thing with us?”

“Since we went to this restaurant,” I told him, “and you looked at a lemon posset like you wanted to have sex with it. I have to feed you the dessert so it’s a threesome, not voyeurism.”

“I did not want to have sex with the lemon posset.” It was now Oliver’s turn to speak slightly too loudly for the restaurant. He lowered his voice. “I wanted to have sex with you, but you were making it very clear there was no possibility of that happening.”

“Well”—I grinned at him—“now you get us both.”

“Although one of you only temporarily.”

My grin froze. “You are talking about the lemon posset, right?”

At this moment the waiter returned with the requested posset, plus two spoons. It was as beautiful as it had been last time, all sunshine yellow and tempting.

“Do you have something you want to tell me?” I asked it, scowling.

It probably said something about our relationship that Oliver had a specific exasperated-fondness sigh. “Mr. Posset, remember that you have a right not to self-incriminate.”

“Yeah,” I threw back, having seen many police procedurals, “but it may harm its defence if it fails to mention when questioning something it later relies on in court.”

Snatching up both the posset and one of the spoons, Oliver half turned away from me. “Excuse me, I need to confer with my client.”

“‘By confer with,’ do you mean eat? I’m pretty sure you can get disbarred for that.”

“I can confidently say”—Oliver dug the spoon into Mr. Posset —“that I know of no barrister who has ever been disbarred for eating their clients.”

“But not because it’s allowed? Because it’s never happened.”

“I think,” said Oliver thoughtfully, “it might be considered a violation of the core duty to act in the best interests of the client. And, for that matter, the requirement not to behave in a manner that diminishes the trust the public places in the profession. But there’s never technically been a test case on it.”