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Oh, my. Those blue-grey eyes were not the only thing that was startling. For a start he seemed to be wearing the kind of business suit she had last seen on the bank manager who had grudgingly agreed to give the bank loan on the tea room. Only softer and shinier and much, much more expensive. Not that she had much experience of men in suits, but she knew fabric.
And then there was the hair. The sleet had turned to a cold drizzle and his short dark-brown hair was curled into moist waves around his ears and onto his collar. Bringing into sharp focus a face which might have come from a Renaissance painting: all dark shadows and sharp cheekbones. Although the baggy tired eyes could probably use some of her special home-sewn tea bags to compensate for his late nights in the office.
Blimey! She had just swept the legs out from under the best looking man she had seen in a long time and that included the boys from the gym across the street, who stoked up on serious amounts of carbs before hitting the body-sculpting classes.
Men like this did not normally knock on her door....ever. Maybe her luck had finally changed for once.
A smile slid across Dee’s mouth, before the sensible part of her brain which was not bedazzled by a handsome face decided to make an appearance.
So what was he doing here? And who was he?
Why not ask him and find out?
‘Hello,’ she said, peering into his face and telling her hormones to sit down. ‘Sorry about that, but I was worried that you might hurt yourself when you fell into the shop. How are you doing down there?’
* * *
How was he doing?
Sean Beresford pushed himself up on one elbow and took a few seconds to gather his wits and refocus on what looked like a smart café or bistro, although it was hard to tell since he was sitting on the floor.
Looking straight ahead of him, Sean could see cake stands, teapots and a blackboard which told him that the all-day special was cheese-and-leek quiche followed by an organic dark-chocolate brownie and as much Assam tea as he could drink.
Sean stared at the board and chuckled out loud. He could use some of that quiche and tea.
This was turning out to be quite a day.
It had started out in Melbourne what felt like a lifetime ago, followed by a very long flight, where he had probably managed three or four hours of sleep. And then there had been the joy of a manic hour at Heathrow airport where it soon became blindingly obvious that he had boarded the plane, but his luggage had not.
One more reason why he did not want to be sitting on this floor wearing the only suit of clothes that he possessed until the airline tracked down his bag.
Sean shuffled to a sitting position using the back of a very hard wooden chair for support, knees up, back straight, exhaled slowly and lifted his head.
And stared into two of the most startling pale-green eyes that he had ever seen.
So green that they dominated a small oval face framed by short dark-brown hair which was pushed behind neat ears. At this distance he could see that her creamy skin was flawless apart from what looked like cake crumbs which were stuck to the side of a smiling mouth.
A mouth meant to appease and please. A mouth which was so used to smiling that she had laughter lines on either side, even though she couldn’t be over twenty-five.
What the hell had just happened?
He shuffled his bottom a little and stretched out his legs. Nothing broken or hurting. That was a surprise.
‘Anything I can get you?’ The brunette asked in a light, fun voice. ‘Blanket? Cocktail?’
Sean sighed out loud and shook his head at how totally ridiculous he must look at that moment.
So much for being a top hotel executive!
He was lucky that the hotel staff relying on him to sort out the disaster he had just walked into straight from the airport could not see him now.
They might think twice about putting their faith in Tom Beresford’s son.
‘Not at the moment, thank you,’ he murmured with a short nod.
Her eyebrows squeezed tight together. She bent forward a little and pressed the palm of one hand onto his forehead, and her gaze seemed to scan his face.
Her fingers were warm and soft and the sensation of that simple contact of her skin against his forehead was so startling and unexpected that Sean’s breath caught in his throat at the reaction of his body at that simple connection.
Her voice was even warmer, with a definite accent that told him that she has spent a lot of time in Asia.
‘You don’t seem to have a temperature. But it is cold outside. Don’t worry. You’ll soon warm up.’
It he did not have a temperature now, he soon would have, judging by the amount of cleavage this girl was flashing him as she leant closer.
Her chest was only inches away from his face and he sat back a little to more fully appreciate the view. She was wearing one of those strange slinky sweaters that his sister Annika liked to wear on her rare weekend visits. Only Annika wore a T-shirt underneath so that when it slithered off one shoulder she had something to cover her modesty.
This girl was not wearing a T-shirt and a tiny strip of purple lace seemed to be all that was holding up her generously proportioned assets. At another time and definitely another place he might have been tempted to linger on that curving expanse of skin between the top of the slinky forest-green knit and the sharp collar bones and enjoy the moment, but she tilted her head slightly and his gaze locked onto far too many inches of a delicious-looking neckline.
It had been a while since he had been so very up close and personal to a girl with such a fantastic figure and it took a few seconds before what was left of the logical part of his brain clicked back into place. He dragged his focus a little higher.
‘Nice top,’ he grinned and pressed his hands against the floor to steady his body. ‘Bit cold for the time of year.’
‘Oh, do you like it?’ She smiled and then looked down and gasped a little. In one quick movement she slid back and tugged at her top before squinting at him through narrow eyes. Clearly not too happy that he had been enjoying the view while she was checking his temperature.
‘Cheeky,’ she tutted. ‘Is this how you normally behave in public? I’m surprised that they let you out unsupervised.’
A short cough burst out of Sean’s throat. After sixteen years in the hotel trade he had been called many things by many people but he had never once been accused of being cheeky.
The second son of the founder of the Beresford hotel chain did not go around doing anything that even remotely fell into the ‘cheeky’ category.
This was truly a first. In more ways than one.
‘Did you just deck me?’ he asked in a low, questioning voice and watched her stand up in one single, smooth motion and lean against the table opposite. She was wearing floral patterned leggings which clung to long, slender legs which seemed to go on for ever and only ended where the oversized sweater came down to her thighs. Combined with the green top, she looked like a walking abstract painting of a spring garden. He had never seen anything quite like it before.
‘Me?’ She pressed one hand to her chest and shook her head before looking down at him. ‘Not at all. I stopped you from falling flat on your face and causing serious damage to that cute nose. You should be thanking me. It could have been a nasty fall, the way you burst in like that. This really is your lucky day.’
‘Thank you?’ he spluttered in outrage. Apparently he had a cute nose.
‘You are welcome,’ she chuckled in a sing-song voice. ‘It is not often that I have a chance to show off my judo skills but it comes in handy now and then.’
‘Judo. Right. I’ll take your word for it,’ Sean replied and looked from side to side around the room. ‘What is this place?’
‘Our tea rooms,’ she replied, and peered at him. ‘But you knew that, because you were hammering at our door.’ She flicked a hand towards the entrance. ‘The shop is closed, you know. No cake. No tea. So if you are expecting to be fed you are out of luck.’
‘You can say that again,’ Sean whispered, then held up one hand when she looked as though she might reply. ‘But please don’t. Tea and cakes are the last thing I came looking for, I can assure you.’
‘So why were you hammering on the door, wearing a business suit at nine on a Tuesday evening? You have obviously come here for a reason. Are you planning to sit on my floor and keep me in suspense for the rest of the evening?’
His green-eyed assailant was just about to say something else when the sound of female laughter drifted out from the back of the room.
‘Ah,’ she winced and nodded. ‘Of course. You must be here to pick up one of the girls from the Bake and Bit...Banter club. But those ladies won’t be ready for at least another half-hour.’ One hand gestured towards the back of the room where he could hear the faint sound of female voices and music. ‘The cakes are still in the oven.’ Her lovely shoulders lifted in an apologetic shrug. ‘We were late getting started. Too much bit...chatting and not enough baking. But I can tell someone you are here, if you like. Who exactly are you waiting for?’
Who was he waiting for? He wasn’t waiting for anyone. He was here on a different kind of mission. Tonight he was very much a messenger boy.
Sean reached into the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket and checked the address on the piece of lilac writing paper he had found inside the envelope marked ‘D S Flynn contact details’ lying at the bottom of the conference room booking file. It had been handwritten in dark-green ink in very thin letters his father would instantly have dismissed as spider writing.
Well, he certainly had the right street and, according to the built-in GPS in his phone, he was within three metres of the address of his suspiciously elusive client who had booked a conference room at the hotel and apparently paid the deposit without leaving a telephone number or an email address. Which was not just inconvenient but infuriating.
‘Sorry to disappoint you, but I am not here to pick up anyone from your baking club. Far from it. I need to track someone down in a hurry.’
He waved the envelope in the air and instantly saw something in the way she lifted her chin that suggested that she recognized the envelope, but she covered it up with a quizzical look.
That seemed to startle her and he could almost feel the intensity of her gaze as it moved slowly from his smart, black lace-up business brogues to the crispness of his shirt collar and silk tie. There was something else going on behind those green eyes, because she glanced back towards the entrance just once and then swung around towards the back of the room, before turning her attention on him again.
And when she spoke there was the faintest hint of concern in her voice which she was trying hard to conceal and failing miserably.
‘Perhaps I could help if you told me who you were looking for,’ she replied.
Sean looked up into her face and decided that it was time to get this over with so he could get back to the penthouse apartment at the hotel and collapse.
In one short, sharp movement he pushed himself sideways with one hand, curled his knees and effortlessly got back onto his feet, brushing down his coat and trousers with one hand. So that, when he replied, his words were more directed towards the floor than the girl standing watching him so intently.
‘I certainly hope so. Does a Mr D S Flynn live here? Because, if he does, I really need to speak to him. And the sooner the better.’
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.
