A Scandalous Marriage

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 making sure that not a single hint of interest showed on her face.

Ever since she could remember, Natalie had been attracted to men like this. Men who didn’t fit the conventional mould. Men who exuded an air of danger. Men who both intrigued and aroused her.

Ten years ago, she would have gone openly gaga over this guy. Today, the inner twanging of her female antennae irritated the life out of her.

‘Ms Fairlane?’ he enquired, his rough, gravelly voice matching his appearance.

‘Yes,’ she returned, annoyed with the way her heart was racing. And with the way he was looking her up and down, his expression somewhat surprised. What on earth had Richard Crawford told him about her?

‘Mike Stone,’ he said at last, and held out his hand.

She hesitated before she placed her own hand in his, steeling herself not to react to his touch in any way.

But when his large male fingers closed firmly around her much smaller, softer hand, there it was.

That spark. That automatic zap of sexual chemistry, running up her arm, leaving goose-bumps in the wake of its highly charged current.

Thank God her jacket had long sleeves, and that she had anticipated something like this.

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Stone,’ she said, her outer coolness belying her inner heat. If she’d met Mike Stone anywhere else, she would have walked away. No, she would have run. But she could hardly do so at this moment. He was a potential paying client. A potential five grand in her pocket. Money she was in desperate need of today.

‘Mike,’ he said. ‘Call me Mike.’

‘Mike,’ she repeated, her mouth pulling back into a plastic smile. ‘Well, come on in, Mike,’ she said, waving him past her into the hallway. ‘The first room on the left. Go right in and find a place to sit.’

Natalie pressed herself hard against the wall as he stepped inside. No way did she want his broad-shouldered body accidentally brushing against her chest as he walked along the narrow hallway. But once he did move safely past her, she watched his back view far too avidly and for far too long before she pulled herself together and flung the front door shut, rolling her eyes at herself as she followed him into the living room.

By this time he was settling himself in the middle of her sofa, his long legs stretching out in front of him whilst he leant back and glanced around.

Natalie knew it was an oddly furnished room, filled with pieces that didn’t match but that she personally liked. There were three large squashy armchairs covered in an assortment of prints, plus a seductively long brown velvet sofa, which stretched across under the front window and on which her client had just made himself very comfortable.

On the wall opposite the sofa was a state-of-the-art home theatre system, which she was still paying for. The wall to the right of her visitor had built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, in front of which sat an ancient mahogany desk, with the latest laptop sitting on one end and an old-fashioned green desk lamp on the other. The floor was polished boxwood, a colourful circular rug providing warmth and a touch of the orient.

There was no coffee-table to bump into, just an assortment of side tables in all shapes and sizes on which sat ornaments and curios bought from flea markets and garage sales. Two standing lamps with gold-fringed lampshades flanked the sofa, providing subtle light at night when she was watching TV.

A friend had once commented to Natalie that the décor of her living room was very much as she was. Hard to pin down.

‘You’re very punctual,’ she said brusquely, glancing at her watch as she headed for the upright chair behind her desk. It was right on five, the time they’d agreed upon for his interview.

‘I’m always punctual when I’m not working,’ he replied.

Natalie ground to an instant halt. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said sharply. ‘But I don’t take on male clients who are unemployed.’

Again, he looked her up and down, his expression this time annoyingly unreadable.

‘I didn’t say I was unemployed. I said I wasn’t working at the moment. I am self-employed. I own a computer software company.’

Natalie could not have been more surprised. He didn’t look at all like a man who spent most of his life sitting at a computer. He was far too fit-looking. Far too tanned.

As Brandon had been.

His reminding her of Brandon sent her irritation meter up even higher.

‘I see,’ she bit out. ‘Sorry,’ she added before proceeding over to her desk, where she sat down and turned on the laptop.

Natalie took her time pulling up the page into which she would enter his personal details and requirements, not looking up till she was good and ready.

‘So what happens where you are working?’ she finally asked.

‘I sometimes don’t show up at all,’ he returned.

Charming, she thought.

It seemed men who looked like this were true to type.

Brandon had never been on time for anything. There again, Brandon had had lots of reasons for running late for his dates with her. Or for not showing up at all.

His job as an anti-terrorist agent for one. Plus the wife and two children that she’d never known he had, came the added caustic thought.

She wondered what Mike Stone’s excuse was.

‘Sounds like you’re a workaholic.’

‘It’s not the first time I’ve been called that,’ he replied with an indifferent shrug.

Natalie liked him less with each passing second. ‘Is that why you haven’t had much luck finding a wife so far?’ she asked rather waspishly.

‘No. I could have married any number of women.’

‘Really.’ Natalie added outrageously arrogant to his rapidly increasing list of flaws.

Finding Mike Stone a wife was going to prove difficult, despite his impressively masculine physique. Her girls all wanted amenable husbands, not up-themselves egotists. Most of them had had unhappy relationships in the past, with difficult and selfish men who hadn’t delivered. By the time they came to her, they usually knew exactly what they wanted, and had no intention of settling for anything less.

Natalie suspected that the likes of Mike Stone would not find favour with any of them.