Trouble on Her Doorstep

TWO

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

‘A woman is like a tea bag: you never know how strong it is until it’s in hot water.’ Eleanor Roosevelt.

From Flynn’s Phantasmagoria of Tea

‘What was that name again?’ Dee asked, holding on to the edge of the counter for support, in a voice that was trembling way too much for her liking. ‘Mr Deesasflin. Was that what you said? Sounds more like a rash cream. It is rather unusual.’

A low sigh of intense exasperation came from deep inside his chest and he stopped patting down his clothes and stretched out tall. As in, very tall. As in well over six feet tall in his smart shoes which, for a girl who was as vertically challenged as she was, as Lottie called it, seemed really tall.

Worse.

He was holding the envelope that she had given to the hotel manager the first time she had visited the lovely, posh, boutique hotel to suss out the conference facilities.

They had gone through everything in such detail and double-checked the numbers when she had paid the deposit on the conference room in October.

So why was this man, this stranger, holding that envelope?

Dee racked her brains. Things had been pretty mad ever since Christmas but she would have remembered a letter or call from the hotel telling her that it had been taken over or they had appointed a new manager.

Who made house calls.

Oh no, she groaned inside. This was the last thing she needed. Not now. Please tell me that everything to do with the tea festival is still going to plan...please? She had staked her reputation and her career in the tea trade on organizing this festival. And the last of her savings. Things had to be okay with the venue or she would be toast.

‘Flynn. D. S.’ His voice echoed out across the empty tea room, each letter crisp, perfectly enunciated and positively oozing with annoyance. ‘This letter was all that I could find in the booking system. No name or telephone number or email address. Just an address, a surname and two initials.’

What? All that he could find?

Great. Well, that answered that question: he was from the hotel.

She was looking at her gorgeous but grumpy new hotel manager or conference organizer.

Who she had just sideswiped.

Splendid. This was getting better and better.

The only good news was that he seemed to think that his client was a man, so she could find out the reason for his obvious grumpiness without getting her legs swiped from under her. With a bit of luck.

As far as he knew, she was just a girl in a cake shop. Maybe she could keep up the pretence a little longer and find out more before revealing her true credentials.

‘You don’t seem very pleased with this Mr Flynn person.’ She smiled, suddenly desperate to appear as though she was just an outside party making conversation. ‘They must have done something seriously outrageous to make you come out on a wet night in February to track them down.’

Ouch. That was such a horrible expression. The idea that he had made it as far as the tea rooms and was actually hunting her was enough to give her an icy cold feeling in the pit of her stomach which was going to take a serious amount of hot tea to thaw out.

From the determined expression on his face, right down to the very official business suit and smart haircut, this man spelt ‘serious’.

As serious as all of the finance people who had tried their hardest to crush her confidence and convince her that her dream was a foolish illusion. She had been turned down over and over again, despite the brilliant business plan she had worked on for weeks, and all the connections in the tea trade that she could ever need.

The message was always the same: they could not see the feasibility of a new tea import business in the current economy. All of the statistics about the British obsession with tea and everything connected with it had seemed to fly over their heads. Not enough profit. Too risky. Not viable.

Was it any wonder that she had gone out on a limb and offered to organize the tea festival so that she could launch her import business at the same time?

Lottie had been her saviour in the end and had pulled in a few favours so that the private bank her parents used was aware that it was a joint business with the lovely, seriously wealthy and connected Miss Rosemount as well as the equally lovely but seriously broke Miss Flynn.

Come to think of it, the banker had been a girl in a suit. But a suit all the same.

‘On the contrary, Mr Flynn has not done anything. But I do need to speak to him as soon as possible.’

‘May I take a message?’ she asked in her best ‘innocent bystander’ voice, and smiled.

He paused for a second and she thought that he was going to slide over to her counter but he was simply straightening his back. Oh lord. Another two inches taller.

‘I am sorry but this is a confidential business matter for my client. If you know where I can find him, it is important that we talk on a very urgent matter about his booking.’

A cold, icy pit started to form in the base of Dee’s stomach and something close to panic flitted up like a bucket of cold water splashed over her face.

She blinked, lifted her chin and stuck out her hand. ‘That’s me. Dervla Skylark Flynn. Otherwise known as Dee. Dee S Flynn. Tea supplier to the stars. I’m the person you are looking for, Mr...?’

He took two long steps to cross the room and shake her hand. A real handshake. His long, slender fingers wrapped around her hand which Dee suddenly realized must be quite sticky from dispensing cake and biscuits and clearing away bowls covered in cake batter.

His gaze was locked on her face as he spoke, and she could almost see the clever cogs interconnecting behind those blue eyes as he processed her little announcement, took her word that she was who she said she was and went for it without pause.

Clever. She liked clever.

‘Sean Beresford. I am the acting manager of the Beresford Hotel, Richmond Square. Pleased to meet you, Miss Flynn.’

‘Richmond Square?’ She replied, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. ‘That’s the hotel where I booked a conference room for February. And...’

Then her brain caught up with the name he had given her and she inhaled through her nose as his fingers slid away from hers and rested lightly on the counter.

‘Did you just say Beresford? As in the Beresford family of hotel owners?’

A smile flickered across his lips which instantly drew her gaze, and her stupid little heart just skipped a beat at the transformation in this man’s face that one simple smile made.

Lord, he was gorgeous. Riveting.

Oh, smile at me again and make my blood soar. Please?

And now she was ogling. How pathetic. Just because she was within touching distance of a real, live Beresford did not mean that she had to go to pieces in front of him.

So what if this man came from one of the most famous hotel-owning families in the world? A Beresford hotel was a name splashed across the broadsheet newspapers and celebrity magazines, not Cake Shop and Tea Room Weekly.

This made it even more gut-clenching that he had just been in close and personal contact with her floorboards.

‘Guilty as charged,’ he replied and touched his forehead with two closed fingers in salute. ‘I am in London for a few months and the Richmond Square hotel is one of my special projects.’

‘You’re feeling guilty?’ she retorted with a cough. ‘What about me? You almost had an accident here tonight. And I could have dropped you. Oh, that is so not good. Especially when you have come all the way from the centre of London late in the evening to see me.’

Then she shook her head, sucked in a long breath and carried on before he had a chance to say anything. ‘Speaking of which, now we have the introductions sorted out, I think you had best tell me what the problem is. Because I am starting to get scared about this special project you need to see me about so very urgently.’

He gestured towards the nearest table and chairs.

‘You may need to sit down, Miss Flynn.’

A lump the size of Scotland formed in her throat, making speech impossible, so she replied with a brief shake of the head and a half-smile and gestured to one of the bar stools next to the tea bar.

She watched in silence as he unbuttoned his coat, scowled at the missing buttons then sat down on the stool and turned to face her, one elbow resting on the bar.

Nightmare visions flitted through her brain of having to tell the tea trade officials that the London Festival of Tea was going to going to be cancelled because she had messed up booking the venue, but she fought them back.

Not going to happen. That tea festival was going ahead even if she had to rent the damp and dusty local community centre and cancel the bingo night.

She had begged the tea trade organization to give her the responsibility for organizing the event and it had taken weeks to convince the hardened professionals that she could coordinate a major London event.

Everything she had worked for rested on this event being a total success. Everything.

Suddenly the room started to feel very warm and she dragged over a bar stool and perched on it to stop her wobbly legs from giving way under her.

Focus, Dee. Focus. It might not be as bad as she was thinking.

‘I only took over the running of the hotel today so it has taken me a while to go through all of the paperwork. That’s why I only started working through the conference-booking system this afternoon. I apologize for not calling in earlier but there has been a lot of catching up to do and I didn’t have any contact details.’

She swallowed down her anxiety. ‘But what happened to the other manager? Frank Evans? He was taking care of all my arrangements in person and seemed very organized. I must have filled in at least three separate forms before I paid the deposit. Surely he has my contact details?’

‘Frank decided to take up a job offer with another hotel company last Friday. Without notice. That’s why I came in to sort out the emergency situation at Richmond Square and get things back on track.’

She gasped and grabbed his arm. ‘What kind of emergency do you have?’ Then she gulped. ‘Has something happened? I mean, has the hotel flooded or—’ she suddenly felt faint ‘—burnt down? Gas explosion? Water damage?’

‘Flooded?’ he replied, then tilted his head a tiny fraction of an inch. ‘No. The hotel is absolutely fine. In fact, I went there straight from the airport and it is as lovely as ever. Business as usual.’

‘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 with 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.’