Exasperated, she shoved her hand into the machine to release the catch for the toner cartridge, only to catch her finger on a protruding piece of machinery. Jerking back with a yelp, she let out an involuntary exclamation. Miranda didn’t normally swear but it would have taken a saint not to lose it after the morning she had had with this machine.

She glared at the photocopier. ‘Right, that’s it! I’ve had enough of you now!’

Shaking her stinging finger and too frustrated to think what else to do, Miranda aimed a childish kick at the photocopier with another muttered exclamation.

‘Language, language!’ A tutting sound from behind her made Miranda’s head snap round.

A man was lounging in the doorway of the copying room, grinning at her. And not just any man. He was impossibly handsome, with dark hair, glinting navy blue eyes, the kind of features a male model would kill for and a smile perfectly designed to set most female hearts a-flutter.

Not Miranda’s though. Her heart didn’t do fluttering. Maybe it skipped, just a little, at the sight of him, but that was just surprise.

That was what she told herself anyway.

She had never met him before, but she knew exactly who he was, of course. There was no mistaking him. Rafe Knighton, darling of the gossip columnists, and the new Chairman and Chief Executive of the Knighton Group, which technically made him her boss.

And the last person she would have expected to encounter in the copying room, exuding assurance and glamour. The tall, dark and handsome cliché might have been invented for Rafe Knighton, she thought, determinedly unimpressed. He was immaculately dressed in a beautifully cut suit that fitted perfectly across his broad shoulders. His shirt was a luxuriously plain white, his tie discreet, classy, and knotted with just the right combination of ease and elegance. Miranda would have liked to dismiss him as effeminate, but at close quarters it was all too obvious that there was nothing effete about Rafe Knighton. He was all too solidly male.