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.
But it wasn’t her problem if none of her girls wanted to marry him. She charged her male clients five thousand dollars up front, whether they found a wife at Wives Wanted, or not.
For his money, Mr Stone would be matched and introduced to five very attractive and intelligent women who fitted his criteria the best, and vice versa. After that, it was up to him.
But he’d have to show a bit more charm on a date than he was currently showing if he wanted a wife. Just being sexy was not enough for her once-bitten, twice-shy girls.
Still, that wasn’t her problem.
‘Since you own a computer software company, Mike,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘you’ll be familiar with the type of program I use to match up my clients. It’s quite basic, really. Mine, however, does have a security check built in, which validates that my clients are exactly who they say they are. I presume you have no objection to that?’
‘Nope.’
‘Good. Let’s get started, then. Your full name.’
‘Mike Stone.’
‘No, your full name,’ she said, a touch of exasperation creeping into her voice. ‘The name that’s on your birth certificate and driving licence.’
‘Mike Stone.’
Natalie gritted her teeth. ‘Not Michael?’
‘Just Mike.’
‘Fine. Your address and phone number, please? Mobile as well.’
She typed them in as he rattled them off, thinking to herself that his address of an apartment in Glebe could be good news or bad news. Glebe had become a trendy suburb of late. Its proximity to the inner city and Sydney University was highly valued. But some parts of it were still a bit dumpy.
‘Your work address?’
‘I work from home.’
Oh-oh. Now that was definitely bad news. Okay, so there were some small businesses that were quite successful. But not too many.
‘Age,’ she said.
‘Thirty-four.’
Now her eyebrows lifted. She’d thought him older. There was a wealth of life’s experience within those eyes.
‘I’ll be thirty-five in December,’ he added. ‘December the fifteenth.’
‘So you’re a Sagittarius,’ she said as she tapped in that information.
‘I don’t believe in crap like that.’
‘Really.’ She should have known. Brandon had said something very similar when she’d claimed the stars deemed them a reasonable match. She was a Virgo, which wasn’t a bad match with a Scorpio.
But Natalie wished she’d taken notice of the part that said Scorpio was the sign of dark secrets.
‘Marital status?’ she went on.
‘What?’
‘Have you ever been married?’
‘Nope.’
‘Lots of my clients have been,’ she remarked.
‘Not me, sweetheart.’
Natalie stiffened before shooting him a wintry glance. ‘My name is Natalie,’ she said in a voice that would have cut frozen butter. ‘Not sweetheart.’
His black eyes glittered for a moment, as though her correction amused him. ‘My mistake. Sorry.’
She could see he wasn’t. Not at all. But at least she’d made her stand. She couldn’t bear men who called women generic names liked sweetheart and honey. It was condescending and demeaning.
‘Well, nothing has come back to say that you’re not who you say you are,’ she told him after a few seconds’ wait. Neither was there a warning that he’d ever been arrested, or in prison. ‘Now on to your physical description. I can see for myself that your hair is dark brown and very short,
