‘Actually, Rich, more like billions. If I can close this deal, your fifteen per cent of my little company is going to make you an even richer man than you already are. Reece is going to be pretty pleased with his fifteen per cent, too.’

And my seventy per cent share means I’m going to be able to do all those things I’ve always wanted to do, Mike thought, not for the first time. A boys’ club in every city and big town in Australia. Lots more summer camps. And scholarships.

The possibilities were limitless!

If he got the partnership.

Richard shook his head in amazement. ‘I can’t believe it. This is incredible.’

‘There was one small catch. But I can fix that.’

Richard immediately looked wary. ‘What catch?’

‘Chuck Helsinger has a hard-and-fast rule about the men he goes into partnership with.’

‘What rule is that?’

‘They have to be married. Settled men with solid family values.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Nope.’

Richard groaned, then leant back in his leather office chair, his elbows on the padded arm-rests, his hands steepled together in front, his dark brows drawing together. ‘And how, pray tell, are you going to fix that?’

‘I’ve already started. I immediately emailed Chuck that I’d recently become engaged to a wonderful girl and that we were getting married before Christmas.’

Richard’s eyebrows formed a sardonic arch. ‘That was very inventive of you, Mike, but I don’t think that’s going to cut it. A man like Chuck Helsinger is sure to have any prospective business partner of his thoroughly investigated. He’ll soon find out that you lied to him.’

‘I did think of that. But it’s not going to be a lie for long.’

Richard shot forward on his chair. ‘You mean you’d actually get married!’

Mike could understand his friend’s shock. Mike was, after all, a confirmed bachelor. He’d told Richard many times that marriage would never be on his agenda.

Still, he’d never anticipated a deal such as this coming his way. Sometimes, a man had to do what a man had to do.

But on his own terms, of course.

‘If I want this partnership,’ Mike said matter-of-factly, ‘I’m going to have to. And as soon as possible. Helsinger is going to be in Sydney on the fourth of December to pick up a luxury yacht he’s having built here. It’s a Christmas present for his family. He and his wife want me and my new bride to join them for a couple of days for a getting-to-know-you cruise around Sydney’s waterways. I presume, if I pass muster as a happily married man with solid family values, the partnership will be mine.’

‘Good God!’ Richard exclaimed.

‘Look, I don’t intend to stay married,’ Mike informed his friend. ‘It will just be a business arrangement, played out till the partnership is signed and sealed.’