The One That Got Away

CHAPTER ONE

‘YOU could marry me,’ said Max Carmichael as he stared at the civic centre drawings on Evie’s drawing table. The drawings were his, and very fine they were indeed. The calculations and costings were Evie’s doing, and those costings were higher—far higher—than anything she’d ever worked on before.

Evie stopped chewing over the financials long enough to spare her business partner of six years a glance. Max was an architect, and a visionary one at that. Evie was the engineer—wet blanket to Max’s more fanciful notions. Put them together and good things happened.

Though not always. ‘Are you talking to me?’

‘Yes, I’m talking to you,’ said Max with what he clearly thought was the patience of a saint. ‘I need access to my trust fund. To get access to my trust fund I either have to turn thirty or get married. I don’t turn thirty for another two years.’

‘I have two questions for you, Max. Why me and why now?’

‘The “why you” question is easy: (a), I don’t love you and you don’t love me—’

Evie studied him through narrowed eyes.

‘—which will make divorcing you in two years’ time a lot easier. And (b), It’s in MEP’s best interest that you marry me.’ MEP stood for Max and Evangeline Partnership, the construction company they’d formed six years ago. ‘We’re going to need deep pockets for this one, Evie.’ Max tapped the plans spread out before them.

She’d been telling him this for the past week. The civic centre build was a gem of a project and Max’s latest obsession. High-profile, progressive design brief, reputation-enhancing. But the project was situated on the waterfront, which meant pier drilling and extensive foundation work, and MEP would have to foot the bills until the first payment at the end of stage one. ‘This job’s too big for us, Max.’

‘You’re thinking too small.’

‘I’m thinking within our means.’ They were a small and nimble company with a permanent staff of six, a reliable pool of good subcontractors, and the business was on solid financial footing. If they landed the civic centre job they’d need to expand the business in every respect. If they got caught with a cash-flow problem, they’d be bankrupt within months. ‘We need ten million dollars cash in reserve in order to take on this project, Max. I keep telling you that.’

‘Marry me and we’ll have it.’

Evie blinked.

‘Shut your mouth, Evie,’ murmured Max, and Evie brought her teeth together with a snap.

And opened them again just as quickly. ‘You have a ten-million-dollar trust fund?’

‘Fifty.’

‘Fif—And you never thought to mention it?’

‘Yeah, well, it seemed a long way off.’

He didn’t look like a fifty-million-dollar man. Tall, rangy frame, brown eyes and hair, casual dresser, hard worker. Excellent architect. ‘Why do you even need to work?’

‘I like to work. I want this project, Evie,’ he said with understated intensity. ‘I don’t want to wait ten years for us to build the resources to take on a project this size. This is the one.’

‘Maybe,’ she said cautiously. ‘But we started this business as equal partners. What happens when you drop ten million dollars into kitty and I put in none?’

‘We treat it as a loan. The money goes in at the beginning of the job, buffers us against the unexpected and comes out again at the end. And we’d need a pre-nup.’

‘Oh, the romance of it all,’ she murmured dryly.

‘So you’ll think about it?’

‘The money or the marriage?’

‘I’ve found that it helps a great deal to think about them together,’ said Max. ‘What are you doing Friday?’

‘I am not marrying you on Friday,’ said Evie.

‘Of course not,’ said Max. ‘We have to wait for the paperwork. I was thinking I could take my fiancée home to Melbourne to meet my mother on Friday. We stay a couple of nights, put on a happy show, return Sunday and get married some time next week. It’s a good solution, Evie. I’ve thought about it a lot.’

‘Yeah, well, I haven’t thought about it at all.’

‘Take all day,’ said Max. ‘Take two.’

Evie just looked at him.

‘Okay, three.’

It took them a week to work through all the ramifications, but eventually Evie said yes. There were provisos, of course. They only went through with the wedding if MEP’s tender for the civic centre was looking good. The marriage would end when Max turned thirty. They’d have to share a house but there would be no sharing of beds. And no sex with anyone else either.

Max had balked at that last stipulation.

Discretion regarding others had been his counter offer. Two years was a long time, he’d argued. She didn’t want him all tense and surly for the next two years, did she?

Evie did not, but the role of betrayed wife held little appeal.

Eventually they had settled on extreme discretion regarding others, with a two-hundred-thousand-dollar penalty clause for the innocent party every time an extramarital affair became public.

‘If I were a cunning woman, I’d employ a handful of women to throw themselves at you to the point where you couldn’t resist,’ said Evie as they headed down to Circular Quay for lunch.

‘If you were that cunning I wouldn’t be marrying you,’ said Max as they stepped from the shadow of a Sydney skyscraper into a sunny summer’s day. ‘What do you want for lunch? Seafood?’

‘Yep. You don’t look like a man who’s about to inherit fifty million dollars, by the way.’

‘How about now?’ Max stopped, lifted his chin, narrowed his eyes and stared at the nearest skyscraper as if he were considering taking ownership of it.

‘It’d help if your work boots weren’t a hundred years old,’ she said gravely.

‘They’re comfortable.’

‘And your watch didn’t come from the two-dollar shop.’

‘It still tells the time. You know, you and my mother are going to get on just fine,’ said Max. ‘That’s a useful quality in a wife.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Dear,’ said Max. ‘If you say so, dear.’

‘Oh, you poor, deluded man.’

Max grinned and stopped mid pavement. He drew Evie to his side, held his phone out at arm’s length and took a picture.