‘You underestimate me, Rich. I can do celibate. No problem.’ He’d been doing it for a few weeks now. ‘For the amount of money at stake here, I’d become a monk for life.’
Richard didn’t look too convinced. ‘If you say so. Now don’t forget what I said about Natalie Fairlane,’ he added when Mike stood up. ‘Watch what you say to her.’
‘I think you’re being a bit naïve about the owner of Wives Wanted,’ Mike replied. ‘Ms Fairlane is in the marriage business strictly for the money, just like ninety-nine per cent of her female clients. Wave the right amount under her nose and the old bag’ll find me the right girl before you can say Jack Robinson.’
A wry smile pulled at Richard’s mouth as he watched Mike leave. He’d love to be a fly on the wall when his friend met the formidable Ms Fairlane.
Mike might be right about her being as mercenary as some of the women on the Wives Wanted database. He didn’t know her well enough to judge. But an old bag, she was not.
CHAPTER TWO
‘MUM, this is terrible,’ Natalie said. ‘How on earth did you and Dad let your finances get into such a mess?’
Even as she asked the question Natalie already knew the answer. Her father had always been attracted to get-rich-quick schemes. He wasn’t a gambler in the ordinary sense of the word. He didn’t waste money at casinos or on the racetrack, but he was a sucker for the kind of investment or business idea that sounded too good to be true, and usually was.
Natalie hadn’t realised what a poor businessman he’d been when she’d been growing up. She’d never lacked for anything. As an only child, she’d actually been rather spoilt.
It wasn’t till Natalie had grown up that she’d realised her parents lived mainly on credit.
She’d been helping her mother out with her housekeeping budget for quite some time—slipping her a hundred dollars or so every time they saw each other. But now, it seemed that things had really hit rock-bottom. Her father could no longer continue with his latest venture—a lawn-mowing franchise he’d foolishly borrowed money on top of his already hefty mortgage to buy, and which required a fit young man to run.
Natalie’s dad was reasonably fit. But he was fifty-seven.
Last month, he’d fallen and broken his ankle.
Naturally, he hadn’t taken out any income-protection insurance. What sane insurance company would have given it to him, anyway?
The bank was threatening to repossess their house if they didn’t meet their mortgage, which was already running months in arrears. Natalie could cover a couple of months’ payments, but not the many thousands of dollars they were behind.
Which meant her parents would shortly have no money and no place to live.
Natalie shuddered at the thought of having them live with her. She was thirty-four years of age, long past the time when you enjoyed living with your parents.
On top of that, she ran her business from home, using one of the two bedrooms in her terraced house as an office-cum-computer room, and her downstairs living room as her reception and interviewing area.
Things would get very difficult with two more adults in the place. Especially two miserable ones.
‘Don’t you worry, dear,’ her mother said. ‘I’m going to get a job.’
Natalie rolled her eyes. Her mother was as big a dreamer as her father. She hadn’t been properly employed for over twenty years. She’d been busy helping her silly husband with all his crazy schemes. On top of that, she was even older than Natalie’s dad.
No one was going to employ a fifty-nine-year-old woman with no certifiable qualifications.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mum,’ Natalie said more sharply than she intended. ‘It’s not that easy to get a job at your age.’
‘I’m going to do cleaning. Your father ran off some fliers on that old computer and printer you gave him and I put them in every postbox in the neighbourhood.’
Natalie wanted to cry. It wasn’t right that her mother had to become a cleaner at her age.
‘Mum, I could get a second mortgage on this place,’ Natalie offered. ‘It’s gone up quite a bit in value since I bought it.’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ her mother said firmly. ‘We’ll be fine. I don’t want you to worry.’
Then why did you tell me? Natalie groaned silently.
The sound of her doorbell ringing brought Natalie back to her own life. ‘Mum, can I ring you back later? I have a client at the door.’ Her first in a fortnight. Business at Wives Wanted had dropped off a bit this past month. She hadn’t had any new female clients, either. Maybe it was time for another series of magazine ads. It was a rare business that could survive on word of mouth alone.
‘You go, dear. But do ring me back later.’
‘I will. I promise.’
Natalie hung up quickly, buttoning up her suit jacket as she rose and headed for the front door.
A quick glance in the hallway mirror as she passed by assured her she looked every inch the professional businesswoman. Her thick auburn hair was pulled back tightly into a French pleat. Her make-up was minimal and her jewellery discreet. Just a slimline gold wrist-watch and simple gold studs in her ears.
It wasn’t till her hand reached for the knob that Natalie wondered what Mr Mike Stone looked like.
He’d been referred to her by Richard Crawford, a merchant banker who’d been a client of Wives Wanted earlier this year. Natalie suspected, however, that Mr Stone wasn’t in the banking business. He hadn’t sounded like executive material over the phone. He’d sounded less polished than Richard Crawford. Hopefully, that didn’t mean less rich. Most of her male clients were well-off, professional men.
But beggars couldn’t be choosers, especially not right now. If Mr Stone was willing to pay a few thousand for her to find him a wife, then he could be a truck driver for all she cared.
Better, however, if he were a rich truck driver.
Most of her girls weren’t in the market for working-class husbands.
Natalie turned the knob and opened the front door, her eyes widening when she saw the man standing on her doorstep.
Never, during the three years she’d been running Wives Wanted, had she had a client quite like this.
He wouldn’t have looked totally out of place behind the wheel of a truck, she supposed. Not if it was an army truck and he was wearing a military uniform instead of the jeans and black leather jacket he was currently wearing.
Mike Stone was soldier material through and through.
Not an ordinary soldier, Natalie decided as her assessing gaze travelled all the way up his impressive body to his hard, dark eyes and close-cropped brown hair. A commando, one of those highly trained soldiers who went on covert missions and killed people without making a sound or turning a hair’s breadth.
He wasn’t classically good-looking. His features lacked symmetry. His nose had obviously been broken at one stage and his mouth was way too cruel.
But, for all that, Natalie found him extremely attractive.
Natalie smothered an inner sigh of frustration, at the same time