"How can I be disappointed when you came so alive in my arms?"
"Sawyer," she moaned.
"Okay. We won't talk about that."
"Don't even think about it."
"Fine. What about your being pregnant? When will you know?"
"Two weeks, give or take."
"Then we won't think about that, either, until we know one way or another. There's no point in worrying, and there's no way we can change the chances. If it happened, it's already happened, and if that's the case, we'll sit down together and decide what to do."
Faith couldn't fault his logic. But then, she'd always found Sawyer to be logical. She'd always thought she was, too, which was why she was surprised by her own heightened emotions. "Sound fair?" he asked, when she remained quiet in his arms.
She nodded. "What do we do in the meantime?"
It was a little while before he answered. He honestly didn't know what to do.
"Maybe we ought to go on the way we always have."
"Business as usual?"
"That's right."
"There's only one problem with that. Business as usual means running into each other only by accident. But there's the little matter of the Leindecker divorce."
"The Leindecker divorce."
"Remember? The thing that brought you down to my office in the first place yesterday?"
"I remember." But he hadn't until then, and the recollection gave greater weight to what had happened in the intervening hours.
"Oh boy."
Faith knew what he was thinking. "Uh-huh. If we were wondering whether there was a conflict of interest then, what's the story now?"
Reluctantly Sawyer let his arms fall from around her. He sank back onto his stool.
"No different, I guess. We're still okay as long as we watch what we do."
"You can pretend last night didn't happen?"
"No. But I don't know if it'll happen again, and if it doesn't, not much has really changed." He paused.
"Has it?"
"I guess not."
"Do you feel that because of last night you'll be less strong an advocate for your client?"
"I don't know. Maybe I won't be as tough a negotiator knowing I'm negotiating with you."
Sawyer narrowed his eyes, which were beginning to feel better.
"You'll be tough. Probably more so than usual, if for no other reason than to make the point that you aren't biased by any relationship with me. Of course," he mused, "if you feel uncomfortable about it, you can tell Mrs. Leindecker to get another lawyer."
Faith smirked.
"Would that please you?" "No way. I said I was excited about working with you. I was simply considering your feelings."
"If you're that considerate, you could always withdraw from the case yourself. You could tell Mr. Leindecker to get another lawyer."
"But I want to work with you."
"Against me."
"Against you. It's a challenge, and in that sense both of our clients stand to benefit."
At that moment. Faith wasn't much up for challenges. But in an hour, a day, a week, things would be different. She'd been accepting challenges since she first applied to law school. Fighting prejudice, she'd had to work twice as hard because she was female, but she'd proven herself every bit as good a lawyer as any other she'd run across.
"A woman in Mrs. Leindecker's position deserves the best if she's going to get the respect she's earned," she told him.
"A man in Mr. Leindecker's position needs the best if he doesn't want to be taken to the cleaners."
"They were married a long time," she warned.
"She's put up with a lot."
"She's had a lot. She's lived like a queen."
"Which is how she deserves to be kept. You can't just expect her to go off, get a job and live hand-to- mouth all of a sudden, do you?"
"Come on. Faith. It's not like she's got little kids to take care of--or that she's doddering at the older end of the scale. She's a healthy, middle-aged woman. It wouldn't kill her to work."
"What could she do? She's not trained for anything. Any job she'd get would pay her a fraction of what your client earns. We're talking the most menial, entry-level position if she had to work. But she shouldn't have to. Not if he led her to believe that she'd always be taken care of. There are things like service and loyalty and unspoken contracts to consider."
"Tell it to the judge."
There it was. Faith knew. The gauntlet had been thrown down. And Sawyer Bell was looking at her with a crooked half-grin on his handsome face, waiting, just waiting to see if she had the courage to pick it up.
She wasn't sure whether it was the grin, the handsome face, the need to put last night's folly behind them or the challenge itself that did it. But she rose from the stool, tipped up her chin and informed him in slow, clear words, "I intend to, thank you."
With that, she reached for the refrigerator door.
Faith made a huge breakfast, not so much because Sawyer might be hungry, but because she was. Then, trying to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened between them, she sent him on his way.
Saturdays were work days. On this particular one, she had to go to the grocery for food, the dry cleaner for a drop-off and pickup, the department store for stockings and a refill of mascara. Despite the aspirin, the coffee and the breakfast, she was still feeling a little logy. But she pushed herself. There were things to be done, and if she didn't grab the opportunity, she'd lose it.
She had to smile at that thought; it was the credo by which Jack lived. Over and over he'd said those words during the eight years they'd been married usually at times when Faith was at her laziest.
Since the divorce she'd been more diligent about all those non-law-related things that she would have let ride in the past.
Without Jack to keep her on her toes, she had to rely on herself.
So he wasn't all bad, she told herself and knew that it was a way of compensating for how she'd belittled him with Sawyer. In honor of Jack, she even went shopping for a new suit for work, one that was conservative and practical like him, and though she'd probably have picked something more daring on another day, she knew she'd wear it well.
By the time she returned to Union Wharf it was nearly three in the afternoon. Curled up on the sofa in deliberate defiance of what had happened behind it the night before, she spent several hours making notes on a case that would be coming up for a hearing that week. Then she slipped into a sexy black sheath, made good use of the eye makeup she'd just happened to buy along with the mascara that afternoon, and went to a harvest party at Monica's home in Concord.
The best part, she decided, was the drive to and from Concord. Faith enjoyed driving. She didn't do it often, since she usually walked to and from work, but when she had a case in one of the outlying courthouses, or when she found something to do on a weekend that took her out of the city, she drove with relish. She tuned the radio to her favorite station, the only one in Boston that played country music, and she relaxed. She beat her left foot in time to the music, clapped her hands when a traffic light freed them, hummed along from time to time, even sang aloud when a particular lyric grabbed her.
Monica's party, on the other hand, was a drag. Not that Monica hadn't warned her. Most of the guests were friends of Monica's husband, who was fifteen years older than Monica, who was ten years older than Faith. If those guests had been lawyers. Faith might have had a chance, but the men were in busi y ness, and their wives were professional wives. Faith couldn't identify with them at all.
Oh, she managed. She was adept at small talk. Sipping her customary Perrier and lime, she did her share of chatting about the weather, the turn of the leaves, the new musical that had opened at the Shubert, a recently published novel that had the city talking. She listened in on business discussions, knowing that the small bits of information she picked up would come in handy at one point or another in her life. But the talk didn't excite her. There was nothing lively about the gathering. None of the people made her laugh in delight, and if a party wasn't for laughing in delight, Faith didn't know what it was for. For Monica's sake, though, she stuck it out.
She liked Monica. She also respected her. Monica had started out being like the other women at the party, but it hadn't taken her long to realize that if her marriage was to have any chance of survival, she needed something constructive to do. Fortunately her husband understood. He put her through law school and indulged her through ten years of work as a public defender. That was what she was doing when Faith met her. When Faith had decided to leave the law firm she was associated with and go out on her own, Monica was ready for a move.
For five years, they had been splitting the rent on their suite of offices and sharing Loni's salary and skills. Though they often discussed legal issues with each other, their practices were entirely independent. Outside the office, they were friends.
So when, as a friend, Monica had pleaded with Faith to come liven up her husband's party, Faith had agreed. Unfortunately the party needed a kind of livening that Faith, despite her intelligence and quick wit, couldn't begin to accomplish. Still, Faith wasn't sorry she went. The party wasn't a waste. It took up four hours. By the time she drove back into the city, parked her car and safely locked herself into her condo, she was exhausted enough to go straight to sleep.
Unfortunately she'd made a large tactical error. In keeping with the schedule she stuck to in her post- Jack life, she had done no more than make her bed that morning. Sundays were for changing the sheets.
This week, she should have changed them on Saturday. Though she'd aired the bed as always, neatly made it and fluffed the pillows, and though she was tired enough to fall asleep soon after she crawled in, she awoke at four in the morning thinking Sawyer was beside her. And no wonder. The scent of him clung to her sheets. It was so subtle that she wondered at first whether she was imagining it, but the warmth of her body had brought it to life, and she wasn't able to ignore it.
She tried. She tried doing what she'd done all of Saturday, keeping her mind busy enough so that there wasn't room for a wayward thought.
But at four in the morning, she couldn't manufacture distractions.
There were just the lingering lights of the harbor, the sleeping city, the night and Sawyer.
For the first time, perhaps the very first time since she'd known the man, she allowed herself to take a long, objective look at him physically. It wasn't hard. She might not have thought to heed the details before, still they'd registered. Her mind's eye held an exquisitely detailed picture of him.
He was tall, she guessed six-four or six-five. He'd played basketball in college, she knew because he'd mentioned it once, and though the injuries he sustained in Vietnam had dashed any hopes of a professional career, he still had the body of an athlete. He was an athlete. A runner. He'd pushed himself and pushed himself, well beyond the point his doctors had ever thought he'd be able to go, which was a testimony to his will. and to Joanna's, Faith freely admitted.
Despite the scars that he'd always carry, he had full command of his body to do with as he pleased.
He was broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, both of which she'd known forever, neither of which she'd appreciated quite as fully as she had the night before. Though she only remembered seeing his upper body naked, she remembered measuring those parts of him below the waist with her hands. Narrow-hipped, he was, indeed, with legs that could wind forever in and round her own.
Taking in a sharp breath, she put a hand to her chest to calm the wild beat of her heart. But the warmth of her palm served only to remind her of the warmth of Sawyer's hands on her skin. Oh, yes, his hands were warm. They were large and well formed, both strong and gentle.
That was pretty much the way she saw his face, too. Strong but gentle, dark but giving, sober but capable of a buoyant smile. His hair was dark brown and stylishly worn, tumbling over his brow with the least encouragement, and his skin never quite looked as pale as the rest of the world's. There was a ruddiness to it. Like a child, his color heightened with exertion or excitement--or passion, she thought, though she had no way of knowing for sure. It had been too dark in their nook behind the sofa last night to see that.
What she had seen, or felt, was the prickle of his beard. That, too, gave his face a darker, more rugged look, and though she'd never seen him with enough stubble to be called grubby, many times she'd seen a distinct five o'clock shadow. She hadn't thought twice about it before. Now she did, and she decided that it added to the aura of masculinity that surrounded him.
Which was a whole new thought, in itself. Aura of masculinity? He did have that, and he had it in abundance. But she'd never noticed it before, and she couldn't understand why. Surely something that hit her so strongly now had to have hit her on some level before. Maybe, she mused, she'd repressed it. That was an interesting thought.
As she wrestled with it, she could almost see Sawyer standing back, finding a wry humor in her predicament. She could see his brown eyes twinkling, could see his firm mouth twitching at the corners, could even see one dark eyebrow edging upward into an arch. She tried to be annoyed with him, as he stood there in her mind, but she couldn't. He was a good man. And he was gorgeous.