Couldn’t he let up with that macho charm for an instant? It was so clearly an automatic reaction with him. All that intense gazing into her eyes and smiling and holding her hand just a little too long!

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.