Loe raamatut: «Cinderella's Wedding Wish»

Out of the corner of her eye she could see the firm line of his jaw and the corner of that mouth. He wasn’t smiling, but there was a dent in his cheek and a quirk to the set of his lips that sent warmth shivering through her. She tried looking away and staring at his jacket instead, but the material seemed to shimmer in front of her gaze after a while and her eyes slid surreptitiously back to his mouth.

It was so close. All he had to do was turn his head just a little, and if she turned hers too their lips would meet. What would that be like? The answer came in the leap of her heart, the acceleration of her pulse at the very thought, and Miranda closed her eyes against the instinctive knowledge of how thrilling it would be to touch her lips to his, to feel his mouth take sure, seductive possession of hers.

He would be a very good kisser. He had had lots of practice, after all. Miranda dragged the feverish drift of her thoughts back to reality. What was she thinking? That Rafe Knighton, playboy extraordinaire, would actually think about kissing her? He had his pick of beautiful women. Was it really likely that he would pass them all over in favour of plain Miranda Fairchild?

Jessica Hart was born in West Africa, and has suffered from itchy feet ever since, travelling and working around the world in a wide variety of interesting but very lowly jobs, all of which have provided inspiration on which to draw when it comes to the settings and plots of her stories. Now she lives a rather more settled existence in York, where she has been able to pursue her interest in history, although she still yearns sometimes for wider horizons. If you’d like to know more about Jessica, visit her website www.jessicahart.co. uk

CINDERELLA’S WEDDING WISH

BY

JESSICA HART

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘OH, FOR heaven’s sake!’ Miranda yanked impatiently at the front of the photocopier and banged it open so that she could peer inside. ‘Now what?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve cleared the jam, I’ve refilled all the paper trays… I can’t believe you really need toner too! You’re just being difficult.’

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.

Briefly, she wondered what he was doing slumming it on the communications floor. Perhaps he strolled down every few days to thrill the staff with his presence, and amused himself by seeing how long it took the females to swoon at his feet.

If he was waiting for her to do the same, he was in for a long wait, boss or no boss.

On the other hand, being caught swearing and kicking the office equipment probably wasn’t the best way to endear herself to the management, Miranda reflected. A swoon might be a better option. It was that, or brazen it out.

Before she had a chance to decide, Rafe Knighton had straightened from the doorway and was strolling into the room as if he owned it.

Which he did, of course.

‘I’ve a good mind to report you to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Photocopiers!’ he said, wagging a chastising finger at her. ‘That poor machine shouldn’t have to put up with that kind of language, when it can’t answer back.’

The deadpan delivery was contradicted by the dancing humour in his eyes and ripple of amusement in his voice. The man practically oozed charm, Miranda thought, annoyed that she still had to brace herself to resist it.

As if she didn’t have enough to annoy her at the moment.

It was too late to swoon, anyway.

‘The photocopier started it,’ she said coldly.

Rafe’s eyes gleamed as he studied her. He was still getting used to the idea that Knighton’s wealth and prestige was his responsibility now, and the realisation could be oppressive at times. Whenever he started feeling that the walls were closing in on him, he took a walk. He told everyone that he wanted to familiarise himself with the company, which was true, but Rafe knew that these tours of the building were more about his own restlessness and inability to decide whether he had done the right thing in coming back.

Knighton’s was an institution, with a fiercely loyal and dedicated staff, and Rafe sometimes felt that everyone belonged here except him—and now this girl, turning the air in the copying room blue. Her involuntary exclamation had been so unexpected that he had stopped as he walked past the door, captivated by the slight girl in a neat, dull suit swearing at the photocopier.

Entertained by the contrast, Rafe had been unable to resist finding out more.

He hadn’t seen her before. At least, he didn’t think so. The most memorable thing about her seemed to be the plain brown hair pulled tightly back from her face in a very unflattering style. Rafe’s first impression had been one of primness, contrasting sharply with the words coming out of her mouth, but as she stood there and looked back at him with eyes that were clear and green and very direct she suddenly didn’t seem so nondescript any more, and his interest sharpened.

‘We haven’t met, have we?’

‘No,’ she said curtly. ‘I’m just a temp.’

‘Well, welcome.’ Apparently oblivious to her lack of enthusiasm, he smiled and held out his hand. ‘I’m Rafe Knighton.’

As if she wasn’t supposed to know!

Miranda might have little interest in celebrities, but even she knew about Rafe Knighton. He had been the ultimate playboy until four or five years ago when he had disappeared from London, presumably to drift around some other playground of the rich and famous, and there had been almost feverish excitement in the gossip pages when he had returned a couple of months earlier to take up the reins of the Knighton Group.

His father had famously keeled over with a heart attack in the middle of negotiating a mega-million dollar deal in New York and since then the business pages had been full of speculation about Rafe’s ability to step into his father’s spectacularly successful shoes.

Speculation of a more lurid nature was equally rife in the gossip columns and celebrity magazines. At thirty-five, Rafe was still unmarried, and since inheriting his father’s fortune was rarely mentioned without the tag of ‘the most eligible bachelor in Britain’ attached to his name. He was welcomed back onto the A-list with open arms, and was photographed with any number of beautiful women on his arm, but as yet there had been no obvious front-runner for the title of Mrs Knighton.

Miranda knew all this because her younger sister, Octavia, avidly drank up every mention of Rafe Knighton and was determined to meet him. She had been delighted when she had heard that Miranda would be working for the Knighton Group.

‘Wangle me an invitation to meet Rafe,’ she had urged her sister, while Miranda had stared at her in disbelief.

‘Octavia, I’m only there as a temp,’ she tried to tell her. ‘Temps don’t even see chief executives, let alone meet them and get on wangling terms! They’re right at the bottom of the pecking order. I won’t even get within spitting distance of Rafe Knighton.’

And yet, here he was, holding out his hand, and clearly waiting for her to introduce herself.

Miranda sighed inwardly. She disapproved of everything Rafe Knighton stood for, and she didn’t like the way he seemed to fill up the room with his good looks and his smile and that almost tangible charm. That feeling that he was using more than his fair share of the room left her edgy and more than a little breathless, and Miranda didn’t like it at all, but she could hardly refuse to shake his hand.

‘Miranda Fairchild,’ she said reluctantly, and touched her palm to his.

She made to withdraw it right away, but Rafe was too quick for her. His fingers closed warm and firm around hers in a proper clasp as he smiled down at her. The touch of his hand sent a strange feeling snaking down her spine, and she snatched her hand away, prickling with irritation.

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.

‘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.

‘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 go away.

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, expensive smell of him, of the faint quiver of laughter she could sense vibrating beneath the suave exterior, of his massive, solid warmth so close to her.

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 she had been in those last disastrous months at Fairchild’s.

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 unim¬ pressed 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.

It looked like being a long day, and she still had tonight to get through. When Rosie had asked her if she wanted to help out on occasional evenings waitressing, Miranda had jumped at the prospect of earning a bit of extra money, but it was hard work being on your feet all evening, and there were times, like now, when she wanted nothing so much as to go back to the flat and flop in front of the television all evening.

But it would be worth it when she had earned enough to move to Whitestones, Miranda thought fiercely, squaring her shoulders. Think about the house, she told herself. Think about the cliffs and the sound of the sea on the shingle.

Think about leaving London and the likes of Rafe Knighton far behind.

It would all be worth it then.

‘You cannot be serious!’

Miranda held up the uniform Rosie had presented her and stared at it, aghast.

Rosie shifted uncomfortably. ‘I know it’s a bit tacky, but the organisers have insisted all the waiting staff wear these.’

‘They want us to dress up as cats?’

‘I think they thought it would be funny,’ said Rosie with a sigh.

‘Hilarious,’ said Miranda acidly. She dropped the cat suit back on the pile with a gesture of distaste. ‘What’s wrong with a black skirt, a white blouse and a frilly pinny?’

‘It’s a book launch,’ Rosie said miserably. ‘One of those novelty self-help books, How to Unleash your Inner Pussy Cat or something like that. If you think the uniform is tasteless, you should see the goodie bag!’

‘We don’t really have to wear this, do we?’ The skin-tight cat suit came complete with a fluffy tail and a cat mask with ears and whiskers. Miranda eyed it with dismay. ‘Can’t we just refuse?’

‘Oh, please, Miranda!’ Rosie begged. ‘I wouldn’t ask, but this is a really important contract for me. They’ve said if it goes well they’ll offer me other jobs, and I think they have launches like this all the time. I can’t afford to get their backs up by being difficult about everything. It all needs to go perfectly tonight.’

Miranda sighed. She knew how Rosie was struggling to get her new business off the ground. Rosie was a fantastic cook who made the kind of delicious, witty, and innovative canapés that were perfect for events catering, but so much business depended on establishing a reputation, and her friend badly needed a break.

How could Miranda let her down? Rosie had been her best friend since they were at school together. Other so-called friends had kept their distance, not wanting to be associated with dreary failure, when Fairchild’s had collapsed and Miranda’s world had come tumbling about her ears, but Rosie had stuck by her. She had a tiny flat at the very end of the Tube line, but had given Miranda a room without hesitation, asking well below the going rate for rent.

Temping by day, Miranda was glad to earn extra money in the evenings by helping Rosie out. Sometimes she just washed dishes or helped with the preparations, but for big events like this one she acted as waitress. Normally she wore black and blended into the background, but occasionally the client asked Rosie if the staff could wear something special. Tonight was the first time they had been presented at the last minute with quite such a ridiculous costume, but, looking at Rosie’s anxious expression, Miranda knew that she couldn’t refuse.

‘Oh, all right,’ she said, and watched her friend’s face clear magically. ‘It’s not as if anyone is going to recognise me with that mask on! And who notices the waitresses anyway?’

Nobody might notice her, but it was hard not to feel very conspicuous indeed once she was squeezed into the cat suit. It clung to her figure in a way that was embarrassingly revealing.

‘Actually, you look great,’ said Rosie, surprised, when Miranda presented herself for duty. She walked round her, inspecting her critically. ‘You’ve got a really good figure, Miranda, but you keep it hidden away beneath those shapeless jackets you wear.’

‘I could do with a shapeless jacket now,’ sighed Miranda, plucking fretfully at the suit. ‘I might as well be naked!’

‘It’s not that bad,’ Rosie consoled her. ‘When you’ve got your mask on you won’t feel so exposed.’

Miranda wasn’t sure about that, but it was too late to back out now. Nobody ever noticed her, anyhow, so why should tonight be any different?

The mask made her feel a little more confident, but she was still very conscious of the stares that seemed to follow her as she threaded her way through the crowd with a tray, and she was dismayed to spot Octavia on the far side of the room. Looking as beautiful as ever, her little sister was flirting with a soap star who was rumoured to be about to hit the big time, and leave his second wife in the process.

Miranda found it hard to shake the habit of worrying about Octavia, but she was fairly sure that her sister would just be amusing herself. For a girl who looked the way she did, Octavia was surprisingly hard-headed when it came to men. Still, she had better avoid that side of the room, Miranda decided. She wouldn’t put it past Octavia to recognise her, mask or no mask, and she and Belinda complained enough about her evening job as it was.