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,’ he said testily. ‘I keep telling you it’s not the nineteen-sixties, so knock it off. Seriously, you make me feel a hundred and two instead of thirty-two.’
He didn’t wait for a response—luckily, because she didn’t have one. Just muttered something unintelligible and grabbed the hefty report from her in-tray.
‘I have some notes to give you on this Queensland business, among other things, so come in and we’ll see about ensuring you have something to do. If you have the time, that is, Ms Catherine.’
And at last he strode into his office.
Danger averted.
Catherine suddenly felt like laughing—partly because the sudden release of tension was such a relief, and partly from the sheer absurdity of that scene. Perhaps the most absurd so far in her four months at Rutherford Property—and there had been plenty.
She and Max had the most ridiculous boss-employee relationship. It felt like a theatre production, with each of them playing a role: her the prim, often outraged spinster—which she most definitely was not—and Max the irascible autocrat. And she was pretty sure that was one big, tough-guy act.
Max thrived on people speaking their minds—mainly because it allowed him to do the same. It made for some hair-raisingly direct and unceremonious exchanges of opinions. It also made work both unpredictable and fun. Catherine figured that was how Max had slipped past her defences; it was just too hard to keep your distance from a boss who actually wanted you to be insubordinate.
‘Cathy!’
‘Yes—coming.’ Ruthlessly morphing back into strait-laced assistant mode, Catherine grabbed her compact out of her bag to check her face. She wanted so badly to at least fix her hair. Well, she would just have to be extra buttoned-up tomorrow, so Max would think today’s unprofessional appearance was a figment of his imagination. And she would not make the mistake of coming into the office minus her camouflage gear ever again.
‘How long are you going to keep me waiting?’
Max’s bark brought her thoughts to an abrupt halt.
‘Just one minute,’ Catherine said soothingly as she turned off the printer as a shortcut to stopping the job—a feat she accomplished with such suddenness a page jammed.
She cleared the paper tray, swearing under her breath with a fluency that was very unlike Ms North Prudish Secretary—but she was stressed, dammit! She looked like this, Max was waiting, she was wasting precious moments unjamming the printer, and she had yet to save the changes she’d made to her manuscript and get it onto the flash drive and off the screen.
At last the sheet pulled free.
‘Catherine!’
‘Two seconds.’
She spun towards the computer, but before she could lower a finger towards the keyboard she heard the unmistakable sound of Max cursing as he pushed back his chair.
He was always so impatient!
Reacting on instinct, she simply hit the off switch, trusting the computer to do a back-up save. Then she pulled out the flash drive and thrust it to the back of her top drawer, snatched up her notepad, grabbed a pencil and hurried towards Max’s office—managing to run straight into him.
Catherine was too shocked at the sudden contact even to recoil as Max’s hands shot out to steady her.
It was the first time Max had touched her—and the fact that it was purely accidental did nothing to stop the heat that sizzled through her body in a fierce surge.
For one moment Max froze. Then his hands dropped. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I told you I was on my way in,’ she said, staring at his chest so he wouldn’t see how rattled she was. ‘You didn’t have to come barrelling out like a rodeo rider on a bull.’
‘You were taking too long.’
‘You’re too impatient,’ she said.
Pause. And then, ‘What’s so interesting about my shirt?’
Catherine sucked in a breath, thinking fast. ‘Actually, it’s your tie,’ she said.
‘Is there something wrong with my tie?’
She managed a sorry-but-you-did-ask look up. ‘Yes. It’s mauve. Isn’t mauve a bit poncy?’
He hooted out a laugh, and Catherine’s breath became all jammed up because she wanted to laugh, too, whenever he did.
‘Ouch! Weight-lifting tonight, then, to get my macho back.’
Another laugh. Delighted.
Catherine’s fingers went for the top button of her shirt—her first line of defence in reminding herself of exactly who she was in this office. But, encountering skin above fine wool instead, her fingers hovered there ineffectually.
‘No button today,’ Max observed. His eyes followed her hand as it fluttered up to her earlobe, searching for her second line of defence. ‘And no little gold hoops. What are you going to do now?’
Well, what she was not going to do was get into a discussion about the way she looked! ‘Work, I assume, Mr Rutherford,’ she said.
‘Max,’ he said.
Catherine blinked at him. ‘I know what your first name is.’
‘Then use it, dammit.’
Catherine’s resistance to calling her boss by his first name had become quite a bone of contention. It just felt too...too personal. And she didn’t like personal in the office. Personal could move into unsafe territory if you weren’t on your guard. And she was already teetering on the edge with Passion Flower.
But she decided not to antagonise him with another ‘Mr Rutherford’ for the rest of the day.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Max.’
He looked shocked for a moment—but then he nodded, satisfied. Too satisfied.
‘But please don’t swear at me,’ she added, very saintly, and almost gave herself away by giggling as his satisfaction gave way to bemusement.
‘But
