Sorry, everyone. Yesterday was so hellishly busy and complicated and mildly disastrous in non-serious ways that I never even glanced at Mn until this morning, and then had (have) a slightly shamed sense I am going to be dashing people's somewhat over-frothed expectations.
Just to get it out of the way, no, I did not end up in R's sheets, or arms, and no, we did not kiss, hold hands, nuzzle or lunge at one another. Well, I did tell you we wouldn't…
For context, the day started cartoonishly badly -- we'd had new snow in the night that had melted and iced over, and my car wouldn't start, so I took off my carefully-curated outfit, threw on jeans and big boots, walked DD to her childminder, and trekked out to the main road and caught a bus which took three times longer than normal to make the journey to the city where I work. At work, changed into dress (with a jacket to make it look more daytime), had a succession of hideously involved meetings involving a fellow-suffering R, who was looking so rumpled by about 11 am that he looked like the winner of a Best Bed Hair Selfie competition.
(And honestly, by mid-afternoon, we were pretty much exhausted fellow-soldiers on a foray into enemy terrain, as I predicted. I think I had genuinely almost forgotten I was in the throes of a giant passion for him -- he was just the over-caffeinated guy across the table who predictably had my back in a sticky situation and would ask someone else awkward questions in order to let me recover myself for a minute. If you'd stuck helmets and camouflage on us, we could have been in a bad Vietnam buddy movie. 
)
I was dreading a sort of lunchtime reception I had to attend because I'd had an unpleasant episode the week before that had left me feeling quite publicly undermined through no fault of my own -- which R knew about. (In fact, despite being the most gentle being, he offered to beat up the offender in an email, which I found immensely consoling, though reactionary. ) He would normally not have been attending this reception, though his department was usually invited, but when I sidled in the door feeling about a foot tall, there was R eating a mince pie in the middle of the crowd, and he’d brought his entire department with him. No idea what he told them, if anything, but he stayed by my side the whole time, and his department kept bringing me cups of coffee and food like sort of angel footmen.
Then, sartorial disaster -- near the end of the day, I was walking between buildings (no coat, it’s not far), a car hit a huge puddle by the footpath and drenched me to the skin with freezing dirty slush. And that is how I ended up attending this famous Christmas party, frazzled and damp, wearing old, dirty jeans now several sizes too big and my ex-husband’s giant grubby snowboots (I couldn't find mine), with mad hair I’d had to dry under the hand-dryer, and so exhausted that if you'd asked me to choose between R declaring undying devotion, and a magic ride home to a huge bed with fresh linen, I would have gone with the bed.
I wish I was making this up.