Trouble on Her Doorstep

by Nina Harrington

  ‘Then please stop scaring the living daylights out of me like that. I don’t understand. Why is there a problem with the booking?’

  ‘So you met Frank Evans? The previous manager?’

  She nodded. ‘Twice in person, then I spoke to him several times over the phone. Frank insisted on taking personal responsibility for my tea festival and we went over the room plans in detail. Then we had lunch at the hotel just before Christmas to make sure that everything was going to plan. And it was. Going to plan.’

  ‘In any of those meetings, did you see him recording any of your details on a diary or paper planner? Anything like that?

  ‘Paper? No. Now that you mention it, I don’t remember him taking any notes on paper. It was all on his notebook computer. He showed the photos of the layout on the screen. Is that a problem? I mean, isn’t everything loaded onto computers these days?’

  There was just enough of a pause from the man looking at her to send a shiver across Dee’s shoulders.

  ‘Okay; I get the picture. How bad is it?’ she whispered. ‘Just tell me now and put me out of my misery.’

  ‘Frank may have taken your details but he didn’t load them onto the hotel booking system. If he had, Frank would have found out that we were already double-booked for the whole weekend with a company client who had booked a year in advance. So you see, he should never have accepted your booking in the first place. I am sorry, Miss Flynn, I have to cancel your booking and refund your deposit... Miss Flynn?’

  But Dee was already on her feet.

  ‘Stay right where you are. I need serious cake washed down with strong, sugary tea. And I need it now. Because there is no way on this planet that I am going to cancel that booking. No way at all. Are we clear? Good. Now, what can I get you?’

  * * *

  ‘I don’t understand it. Frank seemed so confident and in control,’ Dee said in a low voice. ‘And he loved my oolong special leaf tea and was all excited about the conference. What happened?’

  Sean was siting opposite and she watched him sip the fragrant Earl Grey that Dee had made for him. Then took another sip.

  ‘This is really very good,’ Sean whispered, and wrapped his fingers around the china beaker.

  ‘Thank you. I have a wonderful supplier in Shanghai. Fifth-generation blender. And you still haven’t answered my question. Is it a computer problem? It was, wasn’t it? Some crazy, fancy booking system that only works if you have a degree in higher mathematics?’

  She waved the remains of a very large piece of Victoria sandwich cake through the air. ‘My parents were right all along: I should never trust a man who did not carry paper and pen.’

  She paused with her cake half between her mouth and her plate and licked her lips.

  ‘Do you have paper and a pen, Mr Beresford?’

  He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a state-of-the-art smart phone.

  ‘Everything I type is automatically synched with the hotel systems and my personal diary. That way, nothing gets lost or overlooked. Which makes it better than a paper notepad which could be misplaced.’

  Dee peered at the glossy black device covered with tiny coloured squares and then shook her head. ‘Frank didn’t have one of those. I would have remembered.’

  ‘Actually, he did. But he chose not to use it.’ Sean sighed. ‘I found it still in the original packaging in his office desk this afternoon.’

  ‘Ah ha. Black mark for Team Beresford Hotels. Time for some staff training, methinks.’

  ‘That’s why I am back in London, Miss Flynn.’ Sean bristled and put away his phone and started refastening his remaining coat buttons. ‘To make sure that this sort of mistake does not happen again. I will personally arrange to have your deposit refunded tomorrow so you can organize a replacement venue at your convenience.’

  She looked at him for a second then took another swig of very dark tea before lowering her large china beaker to the table. Then she stood up, stretched and folded her arms.

  ‘Which part of “I am not cancelling” did you not understand? I don’t want my deposit back. I want my conference suite. No, that’s not quite right.’ Her eyebrows squeezed tight together. ‘I need my conference room. And you...’ she smiled up at him and fluttered her eyelashes outrageously ‘...are going to make sure I get it.’

  Sean sighed, long and low. ‘I thought that I had made it clear. The conference facilities at the Richmond Square had already been reserved for over a year before Frank accepted your booking. There are four hundred and fifty business leaders arriving from all over the world for one of the most prestigious environmental strategy think-tank meetings outside Davos. Four days of high-intensity, high-profile work.’

  ‘Double-booked. Yes. I understand. But here is the thing, Sean; you don’t mind if I call you Sean, do you? Excellent. The lovely Frank made my copies of all of those forms I signed on his very handy hotel photocopier and, as far as I know, my contract is with the Beresford hotel group. And that means that you have to find me an alternative venue.’

  ‘But that is quite impossible at this short notice.’

  And then he did it.

  He looked at her with the same kind of condescending and exasperated expression on his face as her high school headmistress had used when she’d turned up for her first big school experience in London after spending the first fifteen years of her life travelling around tea-growing estates in India with her parents.

  ‘Poor child,’ she had heard the teacher whisper to her assistant. ‘She doesn’t understand the complicated words that we are using. Shame that she has no chance in the modern educational system. It’s far too late for her to catch up now and get the qualifications she needs. What a pity she has no future.’

  A cold shiver ran down Dee’s back just at the memory of those words. If only that teacher knew that she had lit a fire inside her belly to prove just how wrong she had been to write her off as a hopeless case just because she had been outside the formal school system. And that fire was still burning bright. In fact, at this particular moment it was hot enough to warm half the city and certainly hot enough to burn this man’s fingers if he even tried to get in her way.

  This man who had fallen into her tea rooms uninvited was treating her like a child who had to be tolerated, patted on the head and told to keep quiet while the grown-ups decided what was going to happen to her without bothering to ask her opinion.

  This handsome man in a suit didn’t realize that he was doing it.

  And the hair on the back of her neck flicked up in righteous annoyance.

  She had never asked to come to London. Far from it. And what had been her reward for being uprooted from the only country that she had called home?

  Oh yes. Being ridiculed on a daily basis by the other pupils because of her strange clothes and her Anglo-Indian accent, and then humiliated by the teachers because she had no clue about exam curricula and timetables and how to use the school desktop computers. Why should she have? That had never been her life.

  And of course she hadn’t been able to complain to her lovely parents. They were just as miserable and had believed that they were doing the right thing, coming back to Britain for the big promotion and sending her to the local high school.

  Well, that was then and this was now.

  The fifteen-year-old Dee had been helpless to do anything about it but work hard and try to get through each day as best as she could.

  But she certainly did not have to take it now. She had come a long way from that quiet, awkward teenager and worked so very hard to put up with anything less than respect.

  Maybe that was why she stepped forward and glared up into his face so that he had to look down at her before he could reply.

  ‘Exactly. There is no way that I could find another hotel that can cope wit
h three hundred international tea specialists less than two weeks before the festival. Everywhere will be booked well ahead, even in February.’

  She lifted her cute little chin and stared him out. ‘Here is a question for you: would you mind reminding me exactly how many hotels the Beresford hotel group runs in London? Because they seem to be popping up everywhere I look.’

  ‘Five,’ he replied in a low voice.

  ‘Five? Really? That many? Congratulations. Well, in that case it shouldn’t be any trouble for you to find me a replacement conference room in one of the four other hotels in our fine city. Should it?’ she said in a low, hoarse voice, her eyes locked onto his. And this time she had no intention of looking away first.

  The air between them was so thick with electricity that she could have cut it with a cake knife. Time seemed to stretch and she could see the muscles in the side of his face twitching with suppressed energy, as though he could hardly believe that she was challenging him.

  Because she had no intention whatsoever of giving in.

  No way was she going to allow Sean Used-to-having-his-own-way Beresford to treat her like a second-class citizen.

  And the sooner he realized that, the better!

  * * *

  Sean felt the cold ferocity of those pale-green eyes burn like frostbite onto his cheeks, and was just about to tell her what an impossible task that was when there was an explosion of noise and movement from behind his back. What seemed like a coach party of women of all shapes and ages burst out into the tea rooms, laughing like trains, gossiping and competing with one another in volume and pitch to make their voices heard above the uproar.

  It felt like a tsunami of women was bearing down on him.

  All carrying huge bags bursting with what looked like cake tins and mystery utensils and binders. Sean stepped back and practically squeezed himself against one wall to let the wall of female baking power sweep past him towards the entrance and out into the street.

  ‘Ah, Lottie. There you are!’ Dee Flynn cried out and grabbed the sleeve of a very pretty slim blonde dressed in a matching navy T-shirt and trousers. ‘Sorry I did not get back to serve more tea. Come and meet Sean. The London Festival of Tea is going to have a new exciting venue and Sean here is the man who is in charge of finding the perfect location. And he is not going to rest until he has found the perfect replacement.’

  She grinned at him with an expression of pure delight, with an added twist of evil. ‘Aren’t you, Sean?’

  THREE

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

  There are many different kinds of tea, but they are all derived from just one type of plant: Camellia sinensis. The colour and variety of the tea (green, black, white and oolong) depends on the way the leaves are treated once they are picked.

  From Flynn’s Phantasmagoria of Tea

  Wednesday

  ‘So how are you enjoying being back in London?’ Rob Beresford’s voice echoed out from the computer screen in his usual nonchalant manner. His eyebrows lifted. ‘Same old madness?’

  ‘Nothing that boring.’ Sean snorted and pointed to the bags under his eyes. ‘Still shattered. Still jet-lagged. Still wading through the mess Frank Evans got himself into at Richmond Square. I still can’t believe that the man we trusted to run our hotel just took off and left this disaster for someone else to sort out.’

  Sean’s half-brother sat back in his chair and gave a low cough. ‘Now, who does that remind me of? Oh yes, your ex-girlfriend. I caught up with the lovely Sasha at the catering-strategy forum last week. She asked me to say hi, by the way. Now, wasn’t that sweet? Considering that she dumped you with zero notice. I could almost dislike her if it wasn’t for her fantastic figure.’ Rob gave a low, rough sigh. ‘And that tan... She’s looking good, brother. The Barbados hotel seems to be suiting her very nicely and the clients love her.’

  ‘Thanks for the update.’ Sean coughed and then squinted towards the computer screen. ‘And she did not dump me. It simply wasn’t working out for either of us. Trying to co-ordinate our diaries so that we were in the same time zone for more than a few days had stopped being funny a long time before we called it a day. You know what chaos it was last year! You were there, working the same hours as I was.’

  Sean turned back to shuffling through a file on the desk. Sasha had been on the fast-track Beresford Hotels management programme and he had been working so hard that he hadn’t even noticed that they barely saw one another face to face any more.

  Until he’d come back to her apartment at one a.m., exhausted after two weeks on the road solving all the teething problems for a hotel opening, to find Sasha sitting waiting for him.

  He had just missed her birthday dinner, the one he had promised that he would be there for. Not even the private jet could fly in tropical storms.

  It was a pity that it hadn’t been the first time that he’d missed her birthday. They had both worked like crazy over the Christmas and New Year holiday, but February should have been down time. Until the new hotel they were opening in Mexico had flooded only days before the grand opening and a holiday became a distant memory.

  They had talked through the night but in the end there had been no escaping the truth. He was the operations troubleshooter and Tom Beresford’s son. It was his job to be on stand-by and cope with emergencies. No matter what else was happening in his life. Or who. And she’d wanted more than he was prepared to give her.

  It had been crunch time. He could either decide to give her the commitment she needed and deserved or they could walk away as friends who had enjoyed a fun and light hearted relationship and leave it like that.

  He had not even bothered to unpack.

  ‘Ah, but I still managed to find the time to enjoy the company of a few lovely ladies,’ Robert replied. ‘Unlike some people. But that’s past history. So last year! Come on; you were in Australia for six weeks scouting for new locations! You must have spent some time at the beach.’

  Robert Beresford sat back with his hands clasped behind his head. ‘I am having visions of lovely ladies in very small bikinis on golden sands and surf boards. Classy. You have just made my day.’

  ‘I know. I can see you drooling from here,’ Sean shook his head. ‘That was the plan. Two glorious weeks in Melbourne in February. Two weeks to sleep, soak up the sun and generally have some down time before starting the Paris assignment.’

  He waved the conference-booking file at the screen. ‘That was the plan. And now I am in London instead. Remind me again why I am the one who gets called in to pick up the pieces when the brown stuff hits the fan?’

  ‘Who else is the old man going to call? I am only interested in the food and drink side of this crazy business, remember? There has to be someone in the family who can squeeze into a super-hero costume and fly in to save the day and Annika is way too stylish to wear underpants over her tights.’

  Sean laughed out loud and flicked open the event files. ‘Now, that is just being mean. I caught those last restaurant reviews. The food critics are crazy about that new fusion franchise you brought in. Kudos.’

  Rob saluted him with a hat-tip. ‘I’ll tell you all about it when we meet up for the conference on Friday. Right? And try and relax. You’ll have that mess sorted out by then. You always do. Shame that you can’t take some down time before starting the new job. But you never know. You might find some sweet distraction while you are in London.’

  Then Sean’s gaze caught the lilac envelope that he had popped onto his desk to be filed. He quickly stole a glance at the file he had updated the minute he had got back to his hotel room the previous evening. Complete with the photo of Dee he had clipped from a London newspaper article from the previous October about the opening of Lottie’s Cake Shop and Tea Rooms.

  The two girls were standing outside the cak
e shop in what looked to be a cold autumn day.

  Dee grinned out to the photographer with a beaming smile which was a lot warmer than the one he had been on the receiving end of. But her colour scheme was just as alarming.

  She was wearing a short, pleated green skirt in a loud check-pattern tweed and a knitted top in fire-engine red partly covered with a pretty floral apron. Her blonde friend, Lottie, was in navy trousers and top with the same apron and compared to Dee looked elegant, sedate and in control while Dee looked...like a breath of fresh air. Animated, excited and alive.

  That was the strange thing. Even in a digital scan from a newspaper this girl’s energy and passion seemed to reach out from the flat screen, grab him and hold him tight in her grasp. She was looking at him right in the eyes. Just as she had in the flesh. No flinching or nervous sideways glances. Just single-minded focus, with eyes the colour of spring-green leaves; it was quite impossible to look away.

  But not cold. Just the opposite, in fact. Even when she’d been challenging him to come up with a replacement venue that sexy smile was warm enough to turn up the heat on a cold winter’s evening. Or was it that slippery one-shoulder sweater that she had been almost wearing?

  He had vowed never to get involved in another relationship after Sasha, and no amount of bar crawling with Rob had persuaded him to change his mind. But there was something about Dee that seemed to get under his skin and he couldn’t shake it off.

  Maybe it was getting very up close to a client when he had no clue who she was?

  It was usual practice in Beresford hotels for the conference manager to take a photo of their client so that the team could recognize who they were dealing with.

  Sean blinked and cricked back his neck, which was stiff from stress and lack of sleep. Jet lag. That was it. He had a workload which was not funny and two weeks in London before heading to his new job in Paris. He didn’t have time to sort out double bookings and track down conference space in the London hotels.