Читать книгу The British Bachelors Collection - Сара Крейвен, Kate Hardy - Страница 37
ОглавлениеTea, 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.
Her sweet, kind father had been too soft-hearted to cut the wages for the estate workers when it had become obvious that his dream tea plantation on Sri Lanka was not able to pay for itself. Those wages paid for health care and made it possible for the workers’ children to go to school. How could he take that away from them? How could he be responsible for ruining so many people’s lives? But, even when they were selling their possessions, her parents had kept reassuring her that she shouldn’t worry, they would get their savings back. It would all work out for the best in the end.
Dee exhaled very, very slowly and focused on the pattern of the marble floor tiles beneath her boots.
Past history.
And it was not—not—going to happen to her.
History was not going to repeat itself.
She was not going to lose her tea shop or let her dream slip away. With her contacts and experience, she had the technical ability to go right to the top. Now all she had to do was make it happen. No matter how scared she was.
She had worked so hard to get to this point, she could not afford to let her foolish pride get in the way.
Even if it meant asking for help now and then.
A rustle of activity across the room broke the hushed silence of the reception area and she looked up just as Sean turned away from the desk and saw her.
There must have been something about her that amused him, because she felt those blue eyes scan her entire body in a flash, from the toes of her practical red boots to the top of her head, before they slid down to her face. His gaze seemed to lock onto hers and stay there, unmoving, as though he was trying to decide about something.
Whatever it was, the corner of his mouth slid into a lazy smile which reached his eyes as they locked with hers and held them tight.
The heat of that smile warmed the air between them faster than the hot-air vent behind her legs.
The few hotel guests and staff milling around disappeared and all Dee could see was the handsome man in a suit and tie standing at the reception desk.
It was as though they were the only people in the room.
Dee had often wondered what it would feel like to be the star of the show and the centre of attention. To have people adore you and admire you because you are so very special.
Well, now she knew.
It felt...wonderful.
Instead of squirming away into a corner out of embarrassment, she stretched her head high and stared right back at Sean.
Her blood was thumping in her veins, filling every cell of her body with confidence and life.
And something else. Because, the longer he smiled at her, the more she recognized that tell-tale glint of animal attraction in his eyes. Attraction which had nothing to do with the suit and everything to do with the man wearing it.
Elemental. Raw. Alive.
A look that was flicking switches she had locked down into an off position ever since she’d found Josh in bed with a pretty blonde and decided to focus on her career plans and put herself first for once.
How did he do that? How did he make her want to flick her hair, run out to the nearest department store and buy the entire lingerie department and latest beauty products?
Was there an executive training course for that? Or did it come naturally?
One thing was for certain: this hotel was looking better by the minute.
* * *
Sean could not resist smiling as he crossed the floor to where Dee was sitting. She was sitting looking up at him with a look of total innocence and sweet charm. As though she had not planned her outfit today with one single purpose in mind: to knock any chance of sensible thought out of his brain.
A printed floral dress above grey leggings which seemed to have tiny hearts embroidered on them. And her hair? Short, cropped into a pixie style. Textured into a mass of tight brunette curls which any man within a thousand feet would want to run his fingers through and tousle up a bit.
But it was her eyes that captivated him.
Who was he kidding? Those pale-green eyes reached out, grabbed him by the man-parts and tugged him to her with a steel cable that just got tighter and tighter the closer he came.
After Sasha he had set his female-resistance setting on high. But there was something about Dee that was simply irresistible.
She looked like a bright spring flower against the monochrome hotel design scheme. And just as fragile. Slender and small. A greenhouse blossom which could be knocked over in the slightest cold breeze.
No way. This tiny girl was the one who had stopped him falling flat on his face last night. Then had beaten him up verbally.
‘Fragile’ was not how he would describe her.
Interesting was more like it. Intriguing. Enchanting.
Who was she? Apart from a tea fanatic?
‘Good morning, Miss Flynn.’ He smiled and stepped forward and held out his hand. ‘I am so sorry to have kept you waiting.’
‘Actually, I was early,’ she replied and her long slender fingers wrapped around his with a firm positive grip before sliding away. ‘Couldn’t wait to hear what you have lined up for me.’
Completely inappropriate images of what those fingers would feel like on other parts of his body flicked like a video show through Sean’s mind and he gave a low cough and took a tighter hold of his briefcase.
He pointed the flat of his right hand towards the office suite. ‘I have booked one of the breakout rooms. Shall we?’
‘Breakout rooms?’ Dee laughed as she got to her feet and flung her coat over one arm. ‘That sounds ominous. Is that where your hotel guests organize the escape committee?’
‘Just the conference delegates.’ Sean smiled. ‘And only when they have had enough of the speakers. Most of the business meetings we hold here need separate rooms where they can hold workshops and seminars away from the main group. It works well.’
‘Workshops,’ Dee repeated and followed him down a wide corridor fitted with an oatmeal carpet. ‘Right. I don’t think that I shall be needing any of those.’
‘Understood.’ Sean nodded and held open the white polymer door to the only small meeting room that was available for the next hour on a busy week day. ‘After you.’
Her reply was a quick nod as he stood back, waited for her to step inside, then turned and followed her in.
Only Dee could not have taken more than two steps into the room when she whirled around to face him so quickly that he had to lean back slightly to stop her from swinging her bag into his chest.
Her eyes were wild, flashing green and he could see her breathing fast and light, the pulse throbbing in her neck.
They were so close that he could have reached out and touched her face, or fastened up the top button on her cotton dress which was gaping open slightly as it stretched taut from her coat and bag, revealing that same creamy, clear skin that he had seen last night when she’d worn the one-strap jumper.
‘Is something wrong?’ Sean asked and looked over her shoulder at the perfectly orderly and clean meeting room with its cluster of tables and chairs.
Dee took one step closer and pressed both hands against the front of his shirt. He inhaled a heady mix of bakery sweetness and spice blended with a spicy floral perfume with a touch of musk which surprised him by being so girly. Sweet. Aromatic. Personal.
She smelt wonderful, but when she lifted her head to reply her gaze darted from side to side with alarm and there was just enough of a quiver in her voice for his every nerve to stand to attention.
‘There are no windows in this room. Not one. I can’t stay here. No way. No how. No discussion. Borderline claustrophobia. Had it for years. Nothing I can do.’
Then she shuddered and his hands automatically reached out and rested on her hips to steady her, hold her, warm her and sooth away whatever problem was causing her such clear distress.
‘Sean, I am really sorry, but I hate this hotel. Do you have another one? Because I have to get out of here. Right now.’
