Husband Material (London Calling #2)(69)

“Isn’t that a bit…eugenicsey?” I asked.

Alex smiled vaguely at me. “Thank you. We do try. Daddy picked Mummy because Granddaddy said we needed some height in the line.”

“Then I’m sure”—Oliver put a reassuring hand on Alex’s shoulder—“you’ll be very happy together and everything will work out tomorrow.”

The look in Alex’s eyes, as he glanced up at Oliver, was not vulnerability exactly, because that had probably been bred out of him along with haemophilia and shortness, but a posh facsimile of it.

“Cheers,” he said. “Decent of you.” Then, filled with a new resolve, he bounced to his feet. “Don’t know what I’m fretting about, to be honest. After all, there’s simply armies of people we’ve brought in to make everything go smoothly. We Twaddles may not be able to fix photocopiers, but we’ve been getting married properly for centuries, and we’re not about to start blowing it now.” He looked momentarily fretful. “Just, you know, being such a duffer. Very real chance I might duff something up.”

“You’ll be fine,” Oliver told him. “Walk in a straight line, repeat whatever you’re told to repeat, and say ‘I do’ whenever someone asks you a question.”

“Unless”—I briefly stopped temple massaging—“the question is Do you love someone else.”

Alex ambled towards the door. “Well, I hope that won’t come up.

Seems a rather rum thing to ask a chap at his own wedding.”

“You’re right.” I sighed. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”





AS SOON AS ALEX HAD gone, I proceeded with my face-planting.

“I can’t believe,” I said into the soft, enticing mattress, “I have to be up for a wedding in three and a half hours.”

Oliver sat down next to me. “Surely this cannot be the first time you’ve staggered home in the small hours of the morning, had a shower, and then left for work or a lecture or some major society function.”

“I was in my twenties then.”

“You’re barely out of your twenties now.”

“I’m thirty. I’m an old man. I can’t cope with this wild, thrill-seeking, field-crossing, tea-stealing lifestyle anymore.” Burying my head deeper into the bedclothes, I groaned like a zombie donkey.

“Also, I’ve got that thing where you get wet and you dry out but you haven’t really dried, and my pants are clinging to my bum in this weird way.”

He stroked my hair. “You’re very sexy right now.”

“I am. I’m wearing sexy pants. That’s why they’re clinging.”

“Then I fear you’ve made a rod for your own buttocks.”

“No spanking,” I whined. “Too sleepy.”

There was a pause. Then Oliver said, “I appreciate I need a sleazy moustache in order to deliver this line properly, but we probably should get out of our wet clothes.”

Trying to imagine Oliver in a sleazy moustache was sufficiently…

something that I brain-knotted myself back into wakefulness and began peeling my T-shirt off. “Are you here to deliver a pizza?” I asked. “Is it twelve inches?”

“Yes.” It was Oliver’s driest voice, which was pretty fucking dry.

“I’m here with the twelve-inch hot sausage pizza you ordered. Also, my penis.”

My jeans had adhered to my legs in a way that might have looked enticing in a movie but in real life was just clammy. I tried to wriggle attractively out of them and ended up thrashing around in a tangle of denim and sheets instead. “I’m not sure porn is your calling.”

“Are you sure? I think the X-Rated Barrister has a certain ring to it. I was going to call my debut feature Habeus Porkus.”

“Not Men’s Rear?”

“That’ll be the sequel.” His eyes alighted on my, well, mens rea.

“On the subject of which, those are some impressively tiny pants.”

“Thanks. I’d love to tell you I was planning something naughty for the wedding but, actually, I just haven’t done any laundry for a while.”

“I’ll admit,” he said, “that was my first assumption.”

Damn. That was the problem with the relationship lasting. You got to know each other too well.

“Whether a product of necessity or design”—Oliver was still looking—“they remain very much appreciated.”

He drew me into a hug. Mostly a hug. Sort of a grown-up hug, one of his hands sliding down to continue his appreciation of my underwear. Such as it was. He was mostly dressed, having shed only his jacket, which meant he was business casual and I was rent-boy chic. So that was a mood. Not necessarily a bad mood, but a very specific one, and one I’d have been uncomfortable with had it been anyone but Oliver.

“You are quite cold,” he said, giving me a little a rub. Of the your-arms-and-shoulders-are-chilly variety. Not of the fun variety.

Trust Oliver to care more about my well-being than my arse.

I shrugged. “I’ll be okay. I mean…you can always warm me up.”

Unfortunately, Oliver was still fixated on making sure I didn’t die of a chill like a Victorian spinster. “Shall I run you a bath?”