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.