A Price Worth Paying - By Trish Morey Page 0,10

Every time he looks out of his window, he’s reminded of all that he lost.’ She shook her head. ‘And right now he doesn’t care about the remaining vines. He doesn’t care about anything.’ She gazed up at him, wanting to make him understand. Desperate to make him understand. ‘I know it sounds mad, but if he could see a marriage between our families, he would also see the vineyard reunited, and whatever mistakes he made—well, they wouldn’t matter any more. He might smile again, if he realised that all was not lost.’

‘And so Felipe dies happy.’

She winced at his words and he found himself wondering if she was acting. How could she care so much about a man who must be almost a stranger to her? ‘It would only be for a few months. The doctors said—’

‘You told me.’ He stood suddenly and wandered to the windows, his back to her. ‘Six to twelve months. But why should I believe what you say? It seems to me that you have the most to gain out of this arrangement. How do I know you won’t try to get pregnant and find yet another reason to “reunite” our families, this time on a more permanent basis?’

He thought her capable of doing that? God, what kind of people was he used to dealing with? She gave a tight shake of her head, feeling sick at the thought of there being any chance a pregnancy would result from this union. ‘There is no chance of that. This would be purely a business arrangement. Nothing more.’

‘So you say, but how can I believe you?’

‘Quite easily.’ She looked at him levelly, her blue-grey eyes as cold as the deepest sea. ‘There will be no pregnancy because there will be no sex.’

He looked back at her over his shoulder in surprise, one eyebrow arched. ‘No sex? You really think a marriage can work without sex?’

‘Why not? It’s not a real marriage so there’s no need for sex. What I’m proposing is a marriage in name only. Besides, it’s not as if we even like each other. We barely even know each other, for that matter. Why would we need or even want to have sex?’

He shrugged aside every one of her objections as irrelevant. He’d never actually considered whether he actually liked someone as a barrier to having sex with them. Then again, from what he could ascertain, his father hadn’t slept with his mother for the last thirty years of their marriage, which proved marriage without sex between husband and wife was possible, even if his father hadn’t gone without, by all accounts.

Which was probably a point worth making …

‘If I agreed to this marriage,’ he said, pausing when he noticed the sudden flare in her eyes and wanting to damp it down before she got too excited, ‘that’s if I agree, and I agreed to your condition of a marriage in name only, you do understand that there will be other women? That I would need to have sex with someone.’

Her lips tightened. Her entire posture tightened. ‘I’m sure you have no shortage of friends and acquaintances who would be only too happy to accommodate your needs. I wouldn’t stand in your way, so long as you were discreet, of course.’

He stroked his chin thoughtfully and her eyes were drawn again to the strong lines of his face, the dramatic planes and dark-as-night eyes and wished his features weren’t anywhere near as well put together. ‘Then possibly it might work,’ he said, ‘And possibly you are also right about not having sex. It’s not as if you’re my type, after all.’

‘Fine!’ she snapped, her eyes wide, her cheeks flaring with colour. ‘So much the better!’

‘Bueno,’ he said, smiling at her snippy response because, for her all her eagerness to announce that she had no interest in having sex with him, it was clear she didn’t want to hear the reasons why he might not be interested in having sex with her. ‘So long as we understand each other. As you’ve mentioned, we don’t know how long such a marriage might last. Several months. A year. You couldn’t expect me to remain celibate for the duration.’

‘I would hate you to have to suppress your natural desires, although perhaps you might try exercising just a little more control.’

‘Why should I? I like sex.’

‘I don’t want to hear it! All I know is that if you agree to this, there will be no sex between us. So