It Started With... Collection. Miranda Lee

bland blue tie. His damp dark hair was slicked back at the sides, indicating that he’d not long showered. He had the morning papers tucked under one arm and was carrying his black briefcase in the other. He was frowning, though not at her, his deeply set blue eyes quite distracted, his thick dark brows drawn together over his strong, straight nose in an attitude of worried concentration.

      ‘Morning, Rachel,’ he said with only the briefest sidewards glance as he hurried past. ‘Hold the coffee for ten minutes, would you?’ he tossed over his shoulder as he forged on into his private sanctuary. ‘I have something I have to do first.’

      When he banged the door shut behind him Rachel glared after him, her hazel eyes showing some feminine pique for once.

      ‘Well!’ she huffed at the closed door. ‘And good morning to you, too!’

      So much for his having noticed her red hair. It came to Rachel that she could have been sitting there stark naked this morning, and Justin would not have noticed.

      Not that her being naked was anything to write home about these days. Despite having put on a couple of pounds during the past month, she was still thin, her once noteworthy breasts having long ago shrunk from a voluptuous D-cup to a very average B plus. She’d complained about it to Isabel on Saturday when they were getting dressed before the wedding.

      ‘You still have bigger boobs than me,’ Isabel returned as she surveyed Rachel in her underwear. ‘OK, so you’re thin, but you’re in proportion. Actually, you look darned good in the buff, girl. You’ve surprised me.’

      Rachel had laughed at the time. She laughed now, but with a different type of self-mockery. What on earth was she doing, even thinking about what she looked like naked? Who cared? No one was going to see her that way, except herself.

      Again, it was all Isabel’s fault, putting silly thoughts into her head about Justin and sex.

      Sex! Now, that was a subject not worth thinking about.

      So why was she suddenly thinking about it?

      Rachel filled in the next eight minutes trying to work through her irritability, before giving up and rising to go pour Justin a mug of coffee from the coffee maker, which she kept perking all day. Justin liked his coffee. She figured that ten minutes would have passed by the time she carried it in to him. Any further delay was unacceptable. The sooner he noticed her red hair, and the sooner she explained the reason behind it, the sooner she’d be able to settle down to work, and put aside the fear of looking ludicrous in her boss’s eyes.

      ‘Come in,’ Justin snapped when she tapped on his office door exactly ten minutes after his order.

      She entered to find him sitting at the bank of computers which lined the far side of his U-shaped work station. His back remained to her as he rode his swivel chair down the long line of computers, peering at each screen for a couple of seconds as he went. His jacket was off and his shirtsleeves rolled up. His tie, she knew without being able to see it, would be loosened.

      As Rachel made her way across the room Justin slid down in front of the furthest computer on the right.

      ‘Just put it down here,’ he directed, patting an empty spot next to his right elbow without looking up.

      Grimacing with frustration, Rachel put the coffee down where ordered and was about to leave when she stopped.

      ‘Justin…’

      ‘Mmm?’

      He still didn’t look up.

      She sighed. ‘Justin, I need to talk to you,’ she said firmly.

      ‘What about?’ Again, no eye contact.

      ‘I wanted to explain to you about my red hair.’

      ‘What red hair?’ He spun round from the computer, his eyes finally lifting. He frowned up at her, his head tipping slightly to one side. ‘Mmm. It’s a bit bright for you, isn’t it?’

      Rachel winced. ‘It looked all right for the wedding on Saturday,’ she said, her pride demanding she say something in her own defence.

      His blue eyes widened. ‘Wedding? What wedding? My God, Rachel, you didn’t go and get married on the weekend without telling me, did you?’

      Rachel almost laughed. As if.

      ‘I don’t think you need worry about that ever happening, Justin,’ she said drily. ‘No, I was a bridesmaid at my best friend’s wedding on Saturday and she insisted on having my hair dyed red for the day. It was supposed to wash out afterwards but, as you can see, it didn’t. I just wanted to reassure you that I’m going to dye it back to brown tonight.’

      He shrugged his indifference, then picked up his coffee. ‘Why bother?’ he said between sips. ‘It doesn’t look that bad. And it’ll wash out—or grow out—eventually.’

      Rachel’s shoulders stiffened. It would take two years for it to grow out. Did he honestly think she had such little personal pride that she’d walk around with half-red, half-brown hair for two years?

      Clearly, he did.

      ‘It looks dreadful and you know it,’ she said sharply, and whirled away from him before she did something she would regret.

      Rachel could feel him staring after her as she marched towards the open doorway, probably wondering what was wrong with her. She’d never spoken to him in that tone before. But when she turned to close the door behind her he wasn’t staring after her at all. Or even thinking about her. He was back, peering at the maze of figures on the computer, her red hair—plus her slight outburst—clearly forgotten.

      Rachel didn’t realise the extent of her anger till she tried to get back to work. Why she was so angry with Justin, she couldn’t understand. His indifferent reaction to her hair should have made her happy. It was all rather confusing. But there’d been a moment in there—a vivid, violent moment—when she’d wanted to snatch the coffee out of his hands and throw it in his face.

      It was perhaps just as well that her boss didn’t emerge for the rest of the morning, or call her for more coffee to be delivered. Clearly, he was steeped in something important, some sudden programming brainwave or financial crisis which required his undivided attention.

      In the month she’d been his PA, Rachel had discovered that Justin was a computer genius as well as a financial one, and had created several programs for following and predicting stock-market trends, as well as analysing other economical forces. Aside from her general secretarial duties, Rachel spent a couple of hours each day entering and downloading data into the extensive files these programs used. They needed constant updating to work properly.

      She was completing that daily and slightly tedious area of her job shortly before noon, when the main door from the corridor opened and Justin’s mother walked in.

      Alice McCarthy was in her early sixties, a widow with two sons. She’d been one of Rachel’s best customers during the four years she’d made ends meet by using her sewing skills at home. A tall, broad-shouldered woman with a battleship bust and surprisingly slender hips, Alice had difficulty finding clothing to fit off the peg. But she loved shopping for clothes, rather than having them made from scratch, and had more than enough money to indulge her passion. Mr McCarthy had been a very successful stockbroker in his day, and, according to Alice, a bit of a scrooge, whereas Alice veered towards the other extreme. Consequently, she was in constant need of a competent seamstress who could cleverly alter the dozens of outfits she bought each season.

      Till recently that person had been Rachel, whom Alice had discovered when Rachel had distributed brochures advertising her sewing skills through all her local letterboxes. Alice lived only a couple of streets away from Lettie’s house.

      Despite the thirty-year age gap, the two women had got along well from the start. Alice’s natural joie de vivre had brought some brightness into Rachel’s dreary life. When her foster-mum passed away and her friends thought Rachel needed a job working outside of the home Alice had been generous enough to steer her