Trouble on Her Doorstep (4 page)

‘Perhaps he likes a girl who can stand up him. You are a change from all of the gold-diggers who hit on him on a daily basis. And he liked your Earl Grey.’

‘Please. Did you see him? That suit cost more than my last shipment of Oolong. That is a man who fuels up on espressos and wouldn’t let carbs pass his lips. He will pass the problem on to someone else to sort out, you wait and see. Big fish, small pond. Passing through on the way to greater things. Just like Josh. I think he only turned up to tell me so that he could tick me off his to-do list.’

‘But he is trying to find you a replacement venue. Isn’t he?’

‘His assistant is probably run off her feet at this minute calling every hotel in London which is still available on a Saturday two weeks before the event. The list will be small and the hotels grotty. And he is not getting away with it. I need a high-class venue and nothing else will do.’

Lottie was just about to reply when the telephone rang on the wall behind them and the theme song for
The Teddy Bears’ Picnic
chimed out. She scowled at Dee, who shrugged as though she had not been responsible for changing the ring tone. Again.

‘Lottie’s Cake Shop and Tea Rooms,’ Lottie answered in her best professional voice, and then she reached out and grabbed Dee by the sleeve, tugging hard to make sure that she had her full attention. ‘Good morning to you, too, Sean. Why yes, you are in luck, she is right here. I’ll just get Dee for you.’

Lottie opened her mouth wide, baring her very white teeth, and held out the telephone towards Dee, who took it from her as Lottie picked up a menu and fanned her face. The message was only too clear: hot.

Dee looked at the caller ID on the phone for second longer than necessary and lifted her chin before speaking.

Time to get this game of charades started the way she wanted.

‘Good morning, Flynn’s Phantasmagorian Emporium of Tea. Dee speaking.’

There was a definite pause on the other end of the phone before a deep male voice replied.
Excellent.
She had put him off his stride and victory was hers.

Shame that when he replied that deep voice was resonant, disgracefully measured, slow and confident. It seemed to vibrate inside her skull so that each syllable was stressed and important.

‘That’s quite a name. I am impressed. Good morning to you, Miss Flynn.’

The way he pronounced the end of her name was quite delicious. ‘I have just made it up, and that’s the idea. And how are you feeling this morning, eh? I hope that there is no bruising or delayed mental trauma from your exciting trip to the tea rooms yesterday evening. I wouldn’t like to be responsible for any lasting damage.’

She almost caught the sound of a low chuckle before he choked it. ‘Not at all,’ Sean replied in a voice that was as smooth as the hot chocolate sauce Lottie made to pour over her cream-filled profiteroles.

‘Excellent news.’ Dee smiled and winked at Lottie, who was leaning against her shoulder so that she could hear every word. ‘So, does that mean you have found me a superb replacement venue that will meet my every exacting need?’

‘Before I answer that, I have a question for you. Are you free to join me for a breakfast meeting this morning?’

Dee held out the phone and glanced at Lottie, who rolled her eyes with a cheeky grin, stifled a laugh and headed off into the kitchen, leaving Dee to stare at the innocent handset as though it were toxic.

‘Breakfast? Ah, thank you, but the bakery opens at six-thirty, so Lottie and I have already had our breakfast.’

‘Ah,’ he replied in a low voice. ‘Misunderstanding. I didn’t mean eating breakfast together, delightful as that would be. But it would be useful to have an early morning meeting to go through your list of exhibitors and put a detailed profile together, so that my team can work on the details with the venue you decide on. Pastries and coffee on the house.’

Dee squeezed her eyes tightly shut with embarrassment and mentally kicked the chair.

Sean Beresford had not only made her toss and turn most of the night, worrying about whether the event was going to happen, but apparently those blue-grey eyes had snuck in and robbed her of the one thing that was going to get her through the next two weeks: the ability to think straight.

Of course, a breakfast meeting wasn’t about bacon butties and wake-up brews of tea that would stain your teeth. She knew that. Even if she had never been to one in person.

How did he do it? How did he discombobulate her with a few words? Make her feel that she was totally out of her depth in a world that she did not understand?

It was as though he could see through the surface barriers she had built up and see straight through to the awkward teenager in the hot-weather cotton clothes on her first day in a London high school. In November.

She had known from the first second she had stepped inside that narrow off-grey school corridor that she was never going to fit in and that she was going to have to start her life from scratch all over again. She was always going to be the outsider. The nobody. The second best. The girl who had to fight to be taken seriously in anything she did.

But how did Sean see that? Did she have a sign painted in the air above her head?

This had never happened to her before with any man.
Ever
. Normally she just laughed it off and things usually turned out okay in the end.

Usually.

Dee inhaled a deep breath then exhaled slowly. Very slowly.

Focus
. She needed to focus on what was needed. That was it. Concentrate on the job. Her entire reputation and future in the tea-selling business was dependent on it. She couldn’t let a flash boy in a suit distract her, no matter how much she needed him to make her dream become a reality.

Dee looked out of the tea-room window onto the busy high street; the first sign of pale winter sunshine filtered through the half-frosted glass. The sleet had stopped in the night and the forecast was for a much brighter day.

Suddenly the urge to feel fresh air on her face and a cool breeze in her hair spiralled through her brain. She quickly glanced at the wall clock above the counter. It was just after nine. Swallowing down her concerns, Dee raised the phone to her mouth.

‘I can be available for a briefing meeting. But pastries and coffee? That’s blasphemy. Do I need to bring my own emergency supply of tea?’

‘Better than that. Following our meeting, I have set up appointments for you at three Beresford hotels this morning. And they all serve tea.’

Dee caught her breath in the back of her throat. Three hotels? Wow. But then her brain caught up with what he was saying. He had set up appointments for
her
. Not
them
.

Oh no. She was not going to let him get away with that trick.

‘Ah no, that won’t work. You see, I still don’t feel that the Beresford management team is fully committed to fixing the problem they have created. It would be so reassuring if one of the directors of the company would act as my personal guide to each of the three venues. In person. Don’t you agree, Sean? Now, where shall I meet you?’

FOUR

Tea, glorious tea. A celebration of teas from around the world.

Do you add the milk to your tea? About two-thirds of tea drinkers add the milk to the cup before pouring in the hot tea. Apparently this is an old tradition from the early days of tea drinking, when fine porcelain was being imported from China and the ladies were terrified the hot tea would crack the very expensive fragile china.

From
Flynn’s Phantasmagoria of Tea

Wednesday

Dee stepped down
from the red London bus and darted under the narrow shelter of the nearest bus stop. The showers that had held off all morning had suddenly appeared to thwart her. Heavy February rain pounded onto the thin plastic shelter above her head in rapid fire and bounced off the pavement of the smart city street in the business area of London.

Typical! Just when she was determined to make a good impression on Sean Beresford and prove that she was totally in control and calling the shots.

She peered out between the pedestrians scurrying for cover until her gaze settled on a very swish glass-plate entrance of an impressive three-storey building directly across the road from her bus stop. The words Beresford Hotel were engraved on a marble portico in large letters.

Well, at least she had found the hotel where Sean had asked her to meet him. Now all she had to do was step inside those pristine glass doors and get past the snooty concierge. Today she was a special guest of the hotel management, so she might be permitted entry.

What nonsense.

She hated that sort of false pretension and snobbery. In India she had met with some of the richest men and women in the land whose ancestors had once ruled a continent. Most of the stunning palaces had been converted into hotels for tourists but they still had class. Real class.

She could handle a few London suits with delusions of grandeur.

Dee took another look and sighed out loud as the rain faded and she could see the exterior more clearly.

This was one part of town she didn’t know at all well. Lottie’s Cake Shop and Tea Rooms were in smart west London and she rarely went further east than the theatres around Soho and Covent Garden. The financial and banking part of the City of London past St Paul’s Cathedral was a mystery to her.

At first sight the outside of the hotel looked so industrial. Metal pipework ran up one side of the wall; the lift was made of glass and looked as though the architects had glued it to the outside of the stone block building.

There was nothing welcoming or friendly about the entrance at all.

Just the opposite, in fact. It was imposing. Cold. Austere. Slippery and grey in the icy rain.

Where was the connection to that warm and communal spirit that came with the ritual of making tea for people to enjoy?

It was precisely the kind of building she avoided whenever possible. In fact, it gave her the shivers. Or was that the water dripping down onto her jacket from the back of the bus shelter?

Dee closed her eyes and, ignoring the two other ladies waiting at the bus stop, exhaled slowly, bringing her hands down from her cheeks to her sides in one slow, calm, continuous motion.

If there was ever a time to be centred, this was it.

This had been her decision. She was the one who had volunteered to organize the London Festival of Tea. Nobody had forced her to take on all of the admin and co-ordination that came with pulling together dozens of exhibitors, tea growers and tea importers looking for any excuse to show and sell their goods.

But there was one thing that Dee knew for certain.

This was her big chance, and maybe even her only chance, to launch her own business importing tea in bulk from the wonderful tea estates that she knew and understood so well, and the passionate people who ran them.

This was her opportunity to show the small world of the tea trade that Dee Flynn was her father’s daughter and had learnt a thing or two after spending the first fifteen years of her life travelling the world from tea plantation to tea plantation. Peter Flynn might have retired from the world of tea importing, but his little girl was right up there, ready to take over and make a name for herself as an importer.

Just because her parents had found out the hard way that there was a big difference between importing tea other growers had produced and running your own tea plantation, it did not mean to say that she was incapable of running a business.

And she was determined to prove it.

Of course, that had been last summer while she’d been working for a big tea-packaging company. Before Lottie had asked her to help her run the tea rooms in her cake shop. Her life had certainly been a lot simpler then.

But she had done it. No backing out. No giving in. No staying put in a nice, safe job in the back room of the tea importers while her so-called boyfriend Josh took the credit for the work she had done.

Josh had been so kind and attentive that her good nature had stepped in the first time he had struggled over a technical report. He really did not have a clue about the tea and had really appreciated her help. For a few months Dee had actually believed that they could have a future together, and the sex had been amazing.

Pity that it had turned out that Josh was waiting for his real girlfriend to come back from her gap year travelling in nice four-star hotels. Walking in on the two of them in bed last August had not been her finest moment.

Past history. Done and dusted. No going back now. And good luck to them both. They were going to need it.

Dee blinked her eyes open and smiled across the street as the rain shower drifted away and she could see patches of blue in the sky above the hotel roof.

Idiot! She was overreacting.

As usual.

This was probably where Sean had his office. There was no way that he could offer her a conference room in a hotel this swanky. This was a five-star hotel for bankers and stockbrokers, not rough and ready tea growers and importers who were likely to drop wet tealeaves on the no-doubt pristine hand-woven carpet.

She was just been silly and she was exhausted from the worry.

Time to find out just what Sean had come up with.

With a quick laugh, Dee shook the rain from the sleeves of her jacket and dashed out onto the pavement in a lull in the traffic as the lights turned to red and the queue of people at the crossing ran across the busy road.

In an instant she was with them, her boots hitting the puddles and taking the splashes, but she made it.

Taking a breath, Dee lifted her chin, chest out, and rolled back her shoulders as she stepped up to the hotel entrance. For the next few hours she would be D S Flynn, tea importer, not Dee from the cake shop.

Stand back and hear me roar.

She flashed a smile at the doorman, who held the heavy glass door open for her, but the frosty look he gave her almost sent her scurrying back outside, where it would be warmer.

With one bound she was inside the impressive building. Shaking off the rain, she looked up and froze, rocking back on her heels, trying to take in what she was looking at.

White marble flooring. Black marble pillars. Tall white orchids in white ceramic bowls shaped like something from a hospital ward. And, in the centre of the reception area, a large sculpture fabricated from steel wire and white plastic hoops hung from the ceiling like an enormous deformed stalactite.

Well, that was one spot she wouldn’t be walking under. If that monstrosity fell on her head, the tea festival would be the least of her problems.

Ha. So the interior
did
match the outside.

The only warmth in this room was the hot air blasting out from vents high in the walls.

Dee gazed around the reception area, from the black leather sofas in the corner to the curved white polymer reception desk.

There was no sign of Sean, but she was five minutes early.

Dee started to stroll over to the reception desk but changed her mind. The rail-thin receptionist with the stretched-back, shiny, straight ponytail and plain black fitted suit was collecting something from a large printer on the other side of the desk and probably had not even noticed her coming in.

It might be more interesting to watch Sean work from this side of the desk. As a hotel guest. People-watching was one of her favourite pastimes. And free!

Dee strode over to a black high-back chair and slid as gracefully as she could onto the narrow seat. The stainless-steel legs were about the same thickness as the heels on some of Lottie’s designer shoes and she didn’t entirely trust the chair to take her weight.

Comfort had clearly not been one of the design specifications for this place.

She stroked the skirt of her cotton dress down over her warm leggings and neatly clasped her hands in her lap.

A butterfly feeling of nerves fluttered across her stomach and into her throat as the heat from the vents started to blow on her shoulders.

Memories of sitting on a hard bench at a railway station at a tiny Indian stop waiting for her parents to come and collect her flitted through her brain. Those had been the days before mobile phones, and her parents would not have used one even if they could, so all she’d been able to do was sit there and wait with her luggage and presents. And wait, worrying that something had happened to them, alone in the heat and crush of the ladies’ waiting room, for long hour after hour before the kindly station master had offered to phone the tea estate for her.

It turned out that her dad had been working on a problem with one of the shipping agents and had forgotten that she was flying back from London to spend Christmas with them and that they had agreed that she should take the train to the nearest station that day.

Work had always come first.

Even for those who loved her best in this world.

It had been two years since she had last seen them. She couldn’t afford the air fare when she needed every penny for the tea rooms and they certainly couldn’t spare any cash to fly back to see her now they were retired.

But it would have been fun to have them here for the tea festival at a Beresford hotel of all places. They would have found this all very grand, and probably have been a bit intimidated, but she had promised to send them photos of the event and write a long letter telling them how it had gone.

And they certainly would have been impressed with Sean Beresford. Now, there was a man with a good work ethic! Her dad would like that.

With those good looks and all the money he wanted, Sean would have pre-booked dinner-and-drinks dates already scheduled into his electronic diary to share with his no-doubt lovely girlfriend.

In fact that might be her now, at the reception desk. All polished and groomed; pretty and eloquent. A perfect choice for the second in line to the Beresford hotel fortune.

Sean would probably be astonished that Dee had taken the trouble to look him up on the Internet. For research purposes, of course.

It was amazing the amount of celebrity gossip his father Tom and brother Rob featured in, but Sean? Sean was mostly photographed shaking hands with some official or other at the opening ceremony of the newest Beresford hotel.

Perhaps he did have some hidden talents.

Dee shuffled out of her padded jacket and picked up a brochure about the hotel spa treatments. She was just considering having hot rocks placed on certain parts of a girl’s body which were not supposed to have hot rocks on them when there was a blast of cool air from the front entrance and she shivered in her thin dress as she turned to see who had let the cold in.

It was Sean.

Only not the Sean who had sat on her floor the previous evening. This version of Sean was a different kind of man completely.

He stood just inside the entrance shaking the water droplets from a long, navy waterproof raincoat—a different one from last night, but just as elegant. She could tell because the smiling doorman was helping his boss out of his damp coat and she caught a glimpse of a pale-blue silk lining with a dark-blue tartan stripe. Very stylish. Classy. Smart. A perfect match for the man who wore it.

Sean’s face was glowing from the cold wind and rain and he ruffled his hair back with his right hand like a male fashion model on a photo-shoot. The master of the ship. Lord of all he surveyed.

He looked taller somehow. More in control. Last night he had invaded the tea rooms and entered a foreign territory with strange new customs and practices. But here and now the difference shone out. This was his space. His world. His domain. Confidence and authority seemed to emanate out from him like some magical force-field.

No wonder the doorman was happy to take his coat; there was absolutely no mistaking that he was the boss.

She envied him that confidence and physical presence that came from a wealthy family background and the education to match. He had probably never known what it was like to be ignored and sidelined and made to feel second rate. It was as if they were from different worlds.

Sean rolled back his shoulders, picked up his briefcase and strode out towards the reception desk. And as he turned away Dee sucked in the breath that had been frozen in her lungs.

The fine navy cloth of his superbly cut business suit defined the line of his broad shoulders. From the way his legs moved inside those trousers, she wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if Sean made regular use of the gym facilities she had just been reading about in the hotel magazine.

That confident stride matched his voice: rich, confident and so very self-assured of his identity. He knew who he was and liked it.

This version of Sean could have graced the cover of any business magazine. He was the personification of a city boy. A man used to being in authority and calling the shots.

The second son and heir.

A man who would never know what it felt like to have to cash in his pension fund and savings to pay the staff wages.

A lump formed in Dee’s throat and she turned her gaze onto what passed for the floral display on the coffee table.