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?”

The thing was, I didn’t need Oliver to run me a bath. I was perfectly capable of running one for myself. But.… It was nice, wasn’t it? To be taken care of. “I guess…that’d be lovely.”