Trouble on Her Doorstep (8 page)

Sean blew out hard. ‘I don’t know whether that is brave or positive thinking.’

‘Neither,’ she replied with a short laugh. ‘I don’t have anything left in the piggy bank to pay for a back-up plan. Everything I have is in the tea rooms and this event. And I mean everything. If this festival doesn’t bring in a return, I shall be explaining to the bank why they won’t be receiving their repayment any time soon. And that is not a conversation I want to have.’

Then she threw her hands in the air with a flourish. ‘That’s why I was having a mini melt-down last night. But no longer. Problem solved. I only hope that Prakash enjoys his job long enough to stay around.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was only talking to Prakash for a fairly short time, but it’s obvious that he feels like a tiny cog in a big machine where nobody knows his name or what he wants from the job. It seems to me that you and your dad and brother have created a training system which is incredibly impersonal and cold.’

Then she paused and twisted one hand into the air. ‘Not deliberately. I don’t mean that. But you are all so busy.’

Dee gave a small shrug. ‘Maybe you could take a few tips from a small business and talk to Prakash and the new graduates one to one, find out what they need. It would make a change from a big, flashy presentation in a huge, impersonal lecture theatre. It might work.’

‘That’s an incredibly sweet idea, Dee, and maybe it would work in a cake shop, but we have hundreds of trainees. It would take weeks of work to get around all of them and then process the responses. It is simply not doable. I wish it was. But that’s business.’

‘No, Sean. You can talk to your graduates for days and give the all of the motivational speeches you like but when they are back in their jobs they have to want to do their best work and be inspired by you and your family. Because you motivate them. Not because they feel they have to perform to bring in a pay cheque. Totally different.’

Then Dee shrugged with a casual smile that left him speechless. ‘And who would have guessed that your Madge is a total tea addict? And that girl knows her leaves! Only the finest white tea for her. I am impressed. And I hope you don’t mind, but I did give her a voucher for a free cream tea if she came to Lottie’s.’

‘Mind? Why should I mind if you give away free samples?’ Sean replied as he dodged a kamikaze cyclist who served around them. ‘But you should try our traditional afternoon tea. It is very popular with the guests—and you seemed to enjoy our desserts.’

‘Oh, the food would be amazing. That’s not the problem. It’s the tea you serve.’ She winced as though there was an unpleasant odour. ‘It’s very nice—and I know the warehouse where you buy it from, because I used to work there—but for a five-star hotel? I have to tell you that you have been fobbed off with stale old tea that has been sitting in those boxes for a very long time. It’s certainly not up to the standard I expected. Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Fobbed off? Is that what you said?’ Sean replied, coming to a dead halt.

‘Now, don’t get upset. I just thought that I should point it out. For future reference.’

‘Anything else you would like to mention?’ Sean asked in a voice of disbelief. ‘I would hate for all that great free advice to be burning up inside without an outlet. Please; don’t hold back. Fire away.’

He ignored her tutting and tugged out his smart phone; his fingers moved over the keys for a second. ‘There. The food and beverages director has been alerted to your concerns. And Rob Beresford is not a man who lets standards slip. What?’

Dee was standing looking at him with her mouth half hanging open. ‘Wait a minute. Beresford; of course. I never made the connection. Are you talking about the celebrity chef Rob Beresford? The one who runs that TV programme sorting out rundown restaurants in need of a makeover?’

‘One and the same. And it’s even worse than that. He is my half-brother. And the man may look laid-back, but underneath that slick exterior he is obsessed with the quality of everything we serve and as sharp as a blade.’

A ping of reply echoed out from the phone. Sean snorted and held the phone out to Dee, who looked at it as if he were offering her a small thermonuclear device. ‘I thought that might push his buttons. He needs your mobile number. Expect a call very soon.’

Dee stared at the phone and shook her head very slowly. ‘I don’t have a mobile phone. Never had one. No clue how to use one.’ Then she looked up at Sean and chuckled. ‘I could give him the number for the cake shop, but Lottie would probably put the phone down on him thinking it was a prank call. Would email be okay?’

Sean stood in silence for a few seconds.

‘No mobile phone?’

She shook her head again. ‘I live above the shop and rarely travel. My friends know where I live. No need.’

‘Tablet computer? Or some sort of palm top?’ She rolled her eyes and mouthed the word ‘no’.

Sean took back his phone and fired off a quick message, then laughed out loud when the reply came whizzing back.

‘Have I said something to amuse you? My life’s mission is now complete,’ Dee whispered and looked up and down the street as Sean bent over his phone as though she were not there. Then she spotted something out of the corner of her eye just around the next corner, glanced back once to check that Sean was fully occupied and took off without looking back.

Sean did not even notice that she had walked off until he had exchanged a couple of messages with Rob, who thought that the whole thing had to be one huge practical joke, and couldn’t believe that a girl who was willing to criticize his tea supplier didn’t have a phone. So he came up with another idea instead.

An idea so outrageous that Sean was sure Dee would turn him down in a flash, but hey, it was worth a try.

‘Well, it seems that you were right, it really is your lucky day. I have a rather unusual request from my brother. Rob is flying in on Friday for... Dee?’

Sean turned from side to side.

She had gone. Vanished. Taken off. Left him standing there, talking to himself like an idiot. What was all that about?

The girl was a mirage. A mirage who he knew had not retraced her steps to the hotel—he would have spotted that—so she must have gone ahead.

One more thing to add to his new client’s list of credentials: impatient. As well as a technophobe.

Sean strolled down the street, and had only been gone a few minutes when he turned the corner and walked straight into one of the local street markets that were famous in the area. Once a week stallholders selling all kinds of handmade goods, food, clothing, books, ornaments, paintings and everything else they had found in the attic laid out their goods on wooden tables.

A smile crept unbidden across Sean’s face.

His mother used to love coming to these markets and he used to spend hours every Saturday trailing behind her as she scoured the stalls for what she called ‘treasures’. Her collections: postcards of London; Victorian hand-painted tiles; antique dolls with porcelain faces; handbags covered with beads and sequins, most of them missing; cupboards-full of old white linen bedding which had always felt cold and scratchy when he was a boy. But to her eyes, glorious items which were simply in need of a good wash and a good home.

Each item had its own story. A silver snuff-box must have been owned by someone important like Sherlock Holmes, while a chipped tin car had once been the treasured toy of a refugee who had been forced to leave everything behind when his family had fled. Just as she had done when she’d escaped persecution when she’d been a small girl, arriving in London with her journalist parents and only a small suitcase between them. Simply glad to be safe from the political persecution from the new regime in their corner of Eastern Europe.

The horror of being forced to flee from your home to avoid arrest was one thing. But to start again and make your life a success in a new country was something special. Sean admired his mother and his grandparents more than he could say. They had taught him that hard work was the only way to make sure that you were never poor or hungry again. To build a legacy that nobody could take away from you.

No wonder his dad had adored her.

His dad usually had been working all hours of the day and night at one or another of the hotels, but if he was home when they got back, carrying their bags of assorted ‘treasures’, he’d used to laugh like a train and go through every single one and pretend to love it.

Happy days.

Happier days.

Sean inhaled a couple of sharp breaths.

It had been years since he had been to a street market and even longer since he had thought about coming here with his mother as a boy. Most of the time he would much rather have been playing football with his mates from school. But now? Now they were treasured memories.

Long years filled with good times and bad. Hard, physical work had helped to block out the bad. Long years when he’d usually been so exhausted that he collapsed into bed at night without the luxury of dreams.

Not much had changed there. He was still working so hard that sometimes the days just melted together into one huge blur.

When was the last time he had walked anywhere? He always caught a black cab or had a limo waiting to take him to some airport. There was no down time. There couldn’t be. His work demanded his full attention and he didn’t know how to give anything else but his best.

He had paid the price for the hugely successful company expansion.

Only, at moments like this, he wondered if maybe the cost was too high.

Sasha had been the last of a long line of short-term relationships. His friends had stopped calling because there was always some excellent reason why he couldn’t make their dinner or meet up for drinks.

All he had left was his family.

Sean stood in silence, overwhelmed by the sights, sounds and smells of the street market, and allowed all of those happy memories to come flooding back.

The sun broke through the clouds and filled the space with light and a little warmth. The birds were singing in the London plane trees which lined the street and, for the first time in months, he felt a sense of contentment well up inside him.

Shockingly new. Depressingly rare.

But for once he did not over-analyze how he felt or push it away.

He simply gave in to the sensation and enjoyed the moment. Each breath of the heady air seemed to invigorate him. The long-standing stiffness in his neck and shoulders simply drifted away. Gone.

He felt engaged and buoyant at the same time.

He shook his head and sighed. Maybe there was something to be said for leaving the hotel now and again.

And he knew precisely who to blame.

The girl who was strolling down between the market stalls, oblivious to the world, a grin on her face and a skip in her steps. Living in the moment and loving it.

Gorgeous, astonishing and totally pushing all of his buttons.

Dee Flynn was turning out to be the best thing that had happened to him in quite a while.

Forget the rules. Forget over-analyzing his schedule and responding to every email that came in. Time to take some of that personal time he was due and had never taken. And he knew who he wanted to share it with.

* * *

Dee dropped her head back and felt the sun on her face.

Oh, that felt so good.

Okay, it was a pale imitation of the sun she had grown up with, but right now she would take whatever sun she could get.

‘Sunbathing already? Does this mean that you plan to strip off any time soon? Because if you do I can sell tickets and talk up the tea festival at the same time.’

Dee chuckled from deep in her chest.

Sean. His voice was deep, slow and as smooth as fine chocolate. Unmistakable.

She couldn’t be angry with this man. Not when the sun was shining and she had a new venue which was ten times more impressive that the Richmond Square hotel—not that she would tell him that, of course.

She lifted her head and turned to face him. And blinked.

Sean was smiling at her with his hands behind his back and a look on his face that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Tiny alarm bells started to sound inside her head, and as he stepped closer she fought the sudden urge to buy something from the haberdashery stall. Buttons. Ribbons. Anything.

He had something on his mind and she knew before he opened his mouth that it would involve her stepping outside her comfort zone in a serious way.

This must be how antelopes felt before the lion pounced.

‘Sorry I spent so long on the phone. Rob had come up with a few ideas about how to make the best use of your advice,’ Sean said and then paused.

One more step and he had closed the distance between them, but before she could respond his hand whipped out from behind his back. He was holding the most enormous bunch of tulips that she had ever seen. And he was holding them out towards her.

No—make that bunch
es
. Lipstick-red tulips that called out to be sniffed; yellow tulips still in bud; and her favourite tulip: stripy parrot blossoms in glorious shades of white and red with splashes of orange and flame. All set off by swords of dark-green leaves with pristine, clean-cut edges.

Without a moment’s hesitation she clutched the flowers from his fingers and gathered them into her arms and up to her face.

It was spring in a bouquet.

It was heaven.

‘I thought that you might like them,’ Sean said with a smile in his voice.

She blinked up into his face, and was totally embarrassed to find that she could hardly speak through the closed sore throat that came with the tears that ran down her cheek.

‘Hey,’ he said in a voice so warm and gentle that it only made her cry more. ‘It’s okay. If you don’t like them, the flower stall has a great selection of daffodils.’

He ran his hand up and down her arm and bent lower to look into her face. His blue eyes showed such concern that she sniffed away her stupid tears and blinked a couple of times.

‘I love them. Thank you. It’s just that...’

‘Yes. Go on,’ he replied, his gaze never leaving her face.