Cinderella's Wedding Wish

Miranda was exasperated. Surely he didn’t expect her to believe that he had actually seen her? He was like a big tom cat on the prowl, making overtures to any female that happened to cross his path. Look at him, just waiting for her to melt at the knees and smile mistily back at him!

She had absolutely no intention of gratifying his vanity by smiling at all, let alone mistily, but she was annoyed to discover that her knees were not, in fact, quite as steady as they should have been.

Miranda scowled at the thought, and Rafe raised an eyebrow at her expression. ‘Is there a problem?’

Perversely, this evidence that he was not only seeing her but watching her quite closely made Miranda even crosser. She could hardly tell him the truth: Oh, I’m just irritated with my knees for going all weak when you smiled. Now she was going to have to lie, and she hated doing that.

‘I’m sorry, it’s just a bit sore,’ she improvised, holding up her grazed finger and taking the opportunity to step back. Why couldn’t he go away and leave her alone?

‘You’ve hurt yourself?’ Rafe frowned in quick concern at the raw graze on her hand.

‘I didn’t do it,’ she corrected him crisply. ‘It was the photocopier that bit me. I told you it started it! I don’t know why you’re worrying about the machine. You should get in touch with the RSPCT instead.’

‘The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to…?’

‘Temps,’ she said, and he laughed.

She reminded him of a little bird, he thought, one with drab plumage but bright-eyed and alert. Rafe liked people and usually people liked him back, but since he had taken over Knighton’s he had come to wonder whether there was an element of sycophancy in the smiles that met him wherever he went. This girl with her prim outfit and her crisp voice and her clear, disapproving gaze made a refreshing change.

‘That looks sore,’ he said. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to sue you for a grazed finger!’ she said and turned back to the photocopier, but Rafe was intrigued now, and refused to take the hint that he should leave her to get on.

Instead he settled himself against the table and studied her with a discerning eye. It was a long time since he had met a woman who made so little of herself. That suit she was wearing was appalling, for instance. There was no way of telling what kind of figure she had, but she had other assets, Rafe realised on looking closer. Her hair was an ordinary brown, but shiny and very clean, and she had beautiful skin and quiet, fine-boned features. If she wore a better-fitting suit, let down her hair and bothered with a little make-up, she wouldn’t look too bad at all.

‘Which department are you working in?’

‘Communications,’ said Miranda briefly, wishing that he would go away. She crouched down and peered into the photocopier again.

‘Ah, yes, you must be covering for Simon’s PA… Is it Helen? Isn’t there some problem with her mother?’

‘It’s Ellen, and it’s her father who’s ill,’ Miranda corrected him, but she was secretly impressed that he had remembered as much as he had. In her experience as a temp, chief executives of companies the size of the Knighton Group rarely bothered to learn the names of their junior staff, let alone remember details of their domestic problems. ‘I’m just covering for a week while she sorts out some care for him.’

‘And after that?’

She shrugged. ‘I’ll have to hope the agency comes up with another assignment for me.’

‘Have you been temping long?’

‘A few months,’ she said uninformatively.

Rafe looked down at her as she frowned into the photocopier. The overhead light gleamed on her hair, and his gaze noted the sweep of her lashes and the way the fine brows were drawn together over her nose. Her face had intelligence and character, he thought. She seemed an unlikely temp somehow.

‘What were you doing before that?’

She shot an irritated glance up at him. ‘Are you always this interested in your temporary staff?’

‘I’m interested in all my staff,’ said Rafe, wondering why she didn’t want to tell him. ‘How do you find Knighton’s as a place to work?’

Miranda shrugged. ‘It’s fine. Everyone is very professional.’

Except the chief executive, she wanted to add, but didn’t. Temping might be a bit of a climb-down from board member, but she needed the money and there were worse places for temporary placements.

Working here was bittersweet. So much was familiar. Like Fairchild’s, the Knighton Group was a family business, a dynasty, but one that had embraced new technologies and business practices to become a household name with global interests, while Fairchild’s had traded for too long on its past reputation.

Still, there was no use feeling bitter. She had a job to do, and she just wished Rafe Knighton would let her get on with it instead of lounging there interrogating her about things that were none of his business.

‘It’s just a shame about the machinery,’ she added, pulling awkwardly at the toner cartridge, and muttering under her breath as it stuck firmly in place.

‘Can I help?’ asked Rafe, bending down to peer into the machine.

‘Not unless you’d like to go out and buy a new photocopier,’ said Miranda as crisply as she could, but it was hard with him so close beside her. The room was airless enough to begin with, and with six feet of male looming over her she was feeling distinctly short of oxygen.

‘Is it broken?’

‘I can’t get the toner cartridge out.’

‘I like to make sure my staff have the equipment they need to do their jobs properly,’ said Rafe, ‘and I don’t want you to think I’m mean, but purchasing an entirely new machine when we just need to replace a cartridge does seem a touch extravagant.’

Miranda sucked in her breath, irritated anew by the undercurrent of laughter in his voice. ‘I wasn’t being serious,’ she snapped. Cautiously, she reached back into the innards of the copier. ‘If I could just…’ She grunted with effort, grimacing as her fingers felt for the catch once more. ‘Oh, come on, stop being so difficult!’

Rafe observed her with amusement as she sat back on her heels with a sigh of frustration. ‘Do you always talk to photocopiers?’

‘I’ve got this theory they’re like horses,’ Miranda told him. ‘When you’re a temp, you spend a lot of time wrestling with photocopiers. They’re always skittish at first, and they play up the moment they sense you don’t know what you’re doing. You have to get to know them every time, and let them know who’s boss.’

‘You mean you’re a sort of office equipment whisperer?’

‘Not a very effective one at the moment.’

Miranda sighed and gave up on the catch, but as she pulled her hand out, she caught her finger again. Same metal, same finger. ‘Ow!’ she said, shaking it. ‘Maybe I am serious about you buying a new one!’ she added to Rafe. ‘I could take a hammer to this one first, and then you’d have to replace it.’

‘Let me have a go.’

Rafe hitched up the trousers of his perfect Italian suit and crouched down beside her.

At close quarters, he was overwhelmingly male. Miranda scuttled crab-wise away from him as far as she could go, but there was very little room to manoeuvre between the table and the photocopier, and in the end she scrambled to her feet instead. At least that way she could breathe.

‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘You’re too well dressed,’ she told him bluntly, trying to ignore the way every cell in her body still seemed to be humming with awareness of the leashed power beneath the suave exterior. ‘Changing the toner cartridge can be a very messy business.’

‘So can letting temps loose with hammers,’ he said, glancing up at her with a grin that infuriatingly made Miranda’s heart skip a beat.

Scowling at herself, she watched as Rafe put his hand into the copier, grasped the cartridge, and jerked it sharply forwards so that it shot out of its slot at last.

‘There you go,’ he said. He unclipped the used cartridge and lifted it out.