Cole could almost feel the electricity hum in his blood. He stood up, irritated as much at himself as he was at Faith.
"What'd you do? Write this yourself?"
"I went to Atlanta," she said calmly. "And I met with an attorney who handles things like this."
"Ah." He really had forgotten that quick mind of hers. He smiled coolly. "Let me guess. You told him who I am-"
"Of course."
"And he said, `Why, my dear Ms. Cameron, you've stumbled into a goldmine."'
Faith didn't laugh, didn't even smile. She looked at him, her eyes giving nothing away. "What he said doesn't matter. All you need be concerned with is what I said to him."
Cole nodded. "I can imagine."
"I doubt if you can." She jerked her chin toward the paper he held in his hand. "Read it."
How much would she ask for? He looked down, read the numbingly effusive tumble of legal language. Would she want a hundred thousand? Five hundred thousand? A million or more? He toyed with the idea of letting her have the money. He could add stipulations. She'd get a lump sum of so much if she warmed his bed each night for five years, so much more after ten...
And then he reached the single paragraph that mattered. No legal mumbo jumbo, just plain words in plain English. Faith Davenport Cameron agreed to perform all necessary wifely duties save one.
She would not have sexual relations with her husband.
He stared at the paragraph, at the neatly printed spaces beneath it, ready for his signature and hers. And he began to laugh. Really laugh, great roars of laughter that echoed through the room.
"I'm glad you find this so amusing."
He looked at Faith. Her face was white, her eyes pools of darkest blue. He began to speak, laughed instead, and finally caught his breath.
"I hope you didn't spend a lot of money on the services of this attorney," he said. "Where'd you find him? On a street corner?"
"It's a legitimate document," she said in an icy voice. "From a respected law firm."
Cole chuckled. "So, is this their idea of a joke?"
"It's my idea of respectability. I know you're the one who thinks he has the moral high ground, but even a woman you believe has no ethics-a woman like me-will only stoop just so far."
Her words wiped the smile from his face. Her sarcasm shouldn't have meant a damn but it got to him anyway, which was crazy. He was doing the right thing. He knew it.
"This isn't worth the paper it's printed on," he said, and tossed the document on the table.
"If you mean it's unenforceable in a court of law," Faith said quietly, "you're probably right."
"There's no `probably' about it." He moved quickly, grasped her wrists. She jerked back but he brought her arms up, held her fists against his chest. "Marriage involves sex, Faith. You can't expect me to sign a document that says it doesn't." He transferred his hold on her wrists to one hand, slid the other slowly down her spine. "Sex is an implicit part of marriage."
"It won't be, in ours."
"Do you really expect me to agree to that?"
She didn't know what she expected, not anymore, not with his hand moving against her back, with his body hard and warm against hers.
"Yes," she said, her voice shaky, "I do. Ours is nothing but a marriage of convenience."
A marriage of convenience. If anybody had asked him, he'd have laughed at the term and said it was straight out of the eighteenth century. A man didn't take a beautiful woman as his wife and then not sleep with her.
Cole bent his head, inhaled the scent of Faith's hair. Lavender, maybe, or just summer sunshine. Whatever the aroma, it was as out of date as the concept of a marriage of convenience.
"Don't--don't do that," she said.
"I'm not doing anything." It was the truth. Burying your face in a woman's hair, nuzzling the silky locks from her throat and brushing your mouth against her satiny skin didn't qualify as "anything," not in a world where men and women tumbled into bed almost as easily as they shook hands. "Not a thing," he said, his voice hot and low. "Nothing you could actually call `sex."'
Couldn't you? If this wasn't sex it was the next best thing to it. Faith felt as if her heart might burst.
"I mean it, Cole. I won't have sex with you."
Color striped her cheeks; her eyes were wide and glittering. Her lips were parted. Won't you? he thought, as she trembled in his arms.
"If you insist on this marriage," she said, "it will be without intimacy."
Without intimacy. Such an old-fashioned phrase. The amazing thing was that it sounded right, coming from her. If he hadn't know what a little schemer she was, he'd have believed her. But her body, her voice, even the way she looked at him, gave her away. She could say she wouldn't have sex with him but sex was what she wanted. What she needed. It was what they'd always wanted and needed from each other.