at her computer screen, where the ardent love moves of her fictional hero, Alex Taylor, screamed Disaster! at her. A second glance went to the printer, which was delivering Passion Flower page by steamy page at precisely timed intervals.
‘Cathy? I’m back!’ came the bellow.
Catherine’s breath jammed like a fork in her throat. Heart leapt. Sweat popped.
She shoved at the edge of her desk and shot backwards across the floor on her wheeled chair to the printer. Grabbed the pages. Used her feet to leverage another whizzing roll back to her desk. Shuffled the fresh pages behind the others she’d be marking up. Stopped, panting like a woman in labour. What next?
A click from the printer galvanised her. Duh! She should have cancelled the print job first. She started jabbing, lightning-fast, at the keyboard. Find the printer. Jab. The print queue. Jab, jab. Dammit, where is it? Where is it? Where—
She heard a curse, looked up. Saw Max’s brown leather briefcase swinging into sight, rounding the corner. Froze as six feet and two inches of lean, elegantly suited frame descended on her with its usual churning impatience.
No time to stop the printer. No time to save her changes. No sudden frantic moves now if she didn’t want to look seven shades of guilty.
Catherine dragged in a breath around the fork in her throat as Max came to a stop in front of her desk. A waft of his expensively delicious cologne slid up her nostrils. She looked up at him, smiled serenely, and with an admirable imitation of calm, slid the damning pages under the thick report that was mercifully sitting in her in-tray.
‘Good morning, Mr Rutherford.’
‘Huh,’ he said. Or maybe asked.
Max had become pretty free lately with that slightly mystified ‘huh’, but Catherine hadn’t worked out what the ‘huh’ said about his state of mind and she was not going to start interpreting it today. She just wanted him to go into his office. Like, right that second.
But he didn’t. He just stood there.
Silence. Except for the sound of the printer, relentlessly spitting out pages. Max hadn’t looked in that direction yet, but he would.
Breathe. Think. Breathe.
She needed a distraction. Something dramatic, to keep his attention from straying over there. Something like...throwing up—if only she didn’t have a stomach like cast-iron. Or fainting—which she’d never come close to. Or maybe a heart attack. That was at least a possibility, because her heart was jumping around in her chest so vigorously she thought it might crack a rib.
And then it registered. He hadn’t noticed what was happening over at the printer. He hadn’t noticed her technically perfect in-tray slide. He hadn’t even noticed her ‘good morning’.
Because he was too busy noticing her hair.
Oh, my God.
Her hair. She raised a hand, touched the loose waves. Felt her eyeballs bug out behind her glasses.
Shock, horror, as it all came rushing back.
Last night. Being so carried away with her writing she hadn’t made it to bed until four. Causing her to sleep through her alarm. No time for breakfast. No coffee. Ergo, no wits. Therefore deciding there was no harm in coming to work au naturel today.
Just one day—no biggie, because Max was out of town so it didn’t matter.
And yet...here he was.
And here she was.
At least a disordered version of herself, with swathes of her luxuriant reddish-brown hair, usually ruthlessly disciplined, waving around her face. Wearing a figure-hugging black knit top instead of one of her usual white shirts. Minus the drab cardigan she normally wore—because why swelter in black knit and a cardigan in a Sydney summer, when Max was out of town and wouldn’t see her?
And then Max’s eyes dropped to her chest and Catherine lost it.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.
‘What happened to you?’ Max asked simultaneously.
‘What do you mean, what happened to me?’
‘What do you mean, doing here? I work here! I own here!’
Distract, distract, distract.
Catherine arched an eyebrow. ‘Oh, do you work here? I’d forgotten, it’s been so long.’
They stared at each other.
The click and whirr of the printer continued, depositing pages, layer upon layer.
At last Max flicked a glance at it. ‘What the devil are you printing, anyway?’
‘A document,’ Catherine said, and only just managed not to wince at the inadequacy of that.
‘Oh, a document. Enlightening.’
‘You want me to show you?’ Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. She was an idiot.
He tilted his head, curious. ‘Do you want to show me?’
Catherine opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
‘No? Hmm... Not moonlighting, are you?’ Max asked.
Moonlighting... Not exactly. But she’d be damned if she couldn’t build on that as a worthy diversion. She was desperate enough to try it, anyway, in the absence of something more dramatic—meteorite destroying planet Earth, maybe?
She straightened in her seat, nice and huffy. ‘You’re the moonlighter.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
She flared an outraged nostril. ‘You’re doing my job.’
‘Huh?’
‘Aren’t I supposed to make your travel arrangements?’
‘Yes, but I don’t see—’
‘Well, I didn’t make your travel bookings two weeks ago, and I didn’t change any of your bookings, and yet you were gone, and now you’re here, so...?’ She raised her hands, palms up, shrugged.
He looked suitably—if uncharacteristically—flustered. ‘I just— It just— Look, when I changed my plans there wasn’t time to bother you, so I did it myself. It’s called being considerate.’
‘Mr Rutherford, I like to be kept busy at work.’
‘Miss North, I will keep you busy.’ His eyes strayed towards her chest again, widened fractionally, and then jolted straight back to her face. ‘At work,’ he tacked on quickly.
Catherine gritted her teeth. ‘It’s Ms!’ she said, wishing she could cross her arms over her chest, but scared it would draw his attention back there.
‘No, actually, it’s Catherine and Max,’
