with effort, grimacing as her fingers felt for the catch once more. ‘Oh, come
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.
‘Thank you,’ said Miranda reluctantly.
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Rafe. ‘I don’t often get the chance to make myself useful!’
She eyed him uncertainly, unsure if he was joking or not. On the whole, she thought not. He certainly didn’t have the air of a man used to menial tasks, and why would he? Few people could have led such a pampered and privileged life as Rafe Knighton.
‘Careful!’ she warned as he straightened with the cartridge still in his hand. Bitter experience had taught her that used toner had a tendency to leak badly, and Rafe wouldn’t be nearly so pleased with himself if he ended up with the fine black powder all over that immaculate suit. He looked the fastidious type, and she didn’t have time to deal with an executive’s wardrobe emergency this morning.
But it appeared that Rafe was more competent than he seemed. He set the cartridge down without so much as a particle of powder escaping. ‘I’m not as careless as I look,’ he told her, almost as if reading her mind, and then he smiled at her expression.
Miranda wished he would stop doing that. Her heart knocked into her ribs again, and, desperate to put a few more inches between them, she found herself backing into the table until it dug into the back of her thighs. She was grateful to him for fixing the copier, of course, but now he should just
Close up, Rafe was less handsome than he seemed from a distance and in the glossy magazine photographs, she realised. It should have been reassuring, but the unevenness of his features and the faint prickle of stubble gave him a rough edge that paradoxically made the dark, glinting eyes and the mobile mouth more attractive rather than less, and all at once she was suffocatingly aware of him, of the clean,
Swallowing, Miranda turned away to busy herself inserting the new toner cartridge. Once it had clicked into place, she wiped around the copier to remove any spilt ink and closed the front of the machine with a snap.
‘Now, get on with it!’ she told it, relieving her feelings with a jab at the start button.
Obediently, the copier whirred into action.
‘That’s what I like to see,’ said Rafe, who had been watching her with amusement. ‘A firm hand! There’s no mistaking who’s boss around here, is there?’
‘Very funny,’ said Miranda mirthlessly, her eyes on the copies that were emerging from the machine. After all the hassle the copier had given her this morning, it was hard to believe that it was actually doing what it was supposed to do.
She couldn’t believe Rafe had actually joked about who was in charge. He seemed to have no sense of his own importance. He was unlike any boss she’d ever encountered before. He definitely wasn’t the kind of boss
In her experience, bosses maintained their distance from the staff, either because they were too busy, or because they were concerned about their own status. They certainly didn’t drift around the way Rafe Knighton evidently did. Miranda couldn’t think of any other boss she had known who would hang around in the copying room, winding up the new temp or attempting to fix a photocopier themselves. Didn’t he have anything better to do?
That unnerving awareness of him as a powerful male was fading, and she could dismiss him once more as little more than a clothes horse for expensive suits, an empty-headed celebrity wandering around his own company because he didn’t know what to do with himself.
‘Were you looking for anyone in particular?’ she asked repressively.
‘I was hoping to have a word with Simon,’ said Rafe, recalled to a sense of his original purpose. ‘Is he around?’
‘He’s out, I’m afraid. He’ll be back this afternoon. He’s got a meeting at two.’ Miranda nodded at the papers stacking up in the copier tray. ‘That’s what all this copying is for.’
‘I’ll catch him later, then,’ said Rafe easily.
‘Shall I ask him to call you when he gets back?’
‘You could do,’ he said, ‘or I’ll wander down again a bit later. I only took over a month or so ago, and I’m still trying to get to know everybody,’ he explained, seeing that Miranda was looking unimpressed by this casual approach. ‘I like to walk round myself and see what’s going on rather than wait for staff to come to me. That’s how I get to know people like you and learn interesting things I didn’t know, like rude words and how to talk to photocopiers!’
Miranda flushed slightly. Didn’t he take anything seriously? ‘Can I tell Simon what it’s in connection with?’ she asked, deliberately formal.
‘I’ve got an idea I want to discuss with him,’ said Rafe. ‘I think we should hold a ball.’
A ball? Miranda’s lips tightened disapprovingly. Rafe ought to be worrying about investment and product development and financial forecasts, not parties and balls and getting his photo in the papers! He reminded her all too bitterly of her father, who had been bored by the nitty gritty of business and had poured all his energy-not to mention the firm’s profits-into putting on a show. Rafe Knighton had a reputation as a hell-raiser, and Miranda hoped that he wasn’t going to throw away everything his father and grandfather had achieved the way her own father had done at Fairchild’s.
‘I’ll tell Simon as soon as he gets back,’ she said curtly as she collected the first set of copies and banged them lightly on the top of the machine to straighten them into a neat pile.
Rafe was left with the distinct feeling that he had been dismissed. For a moment he wavered between irritation and amusement-who did this temp think she was?-but, as so often with him, amusement won. He had to admire her gall, if nothing else.
‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ he said. ‘Nice to meet you, Miranda Fairchild.’
Miranda watched him go, shaking her head slightly. Thank goodness he had gone, she thought. Perhaps now she could get on with some work. It had been impossible to concentrate with him looming over her, charging the air with his mere presence and making her nerves fizz and prickle. He would be much better off staying in his boardroom than wandering around unsettling people like that.
She slotted another set of papers into the feeder and pressed the copy button again.
