Читать книгу The British Bachelors Collection - Сара Крейвен, Kate Hardy - Страница 43
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Perfect for when you need to slip into that little black dress.
From Flynn’s Phantasmagoria of Tea
Friday
Sean sauntered casually into the white marble reception area of the most prestigious Beresford hotel in London, the flashguns lighting up his back.
He might be the youngest director in the family firm but this was the one time a year he was willing to put his Armani tux on show for the press and wear his family pride on his sleeve.
Glancing around the room, he gave a quick wave to the management training team who were already lining up the latest graduates to chat to his father, who was greeting the hundred or so specially invited guests in person, same as always.
Tom Beresford. Straight-backed, tall, dark and impressive. The poster boy for every self-made multi-millionaire who had learnt his trade the hard way. The company PR machine loved to repeat the story about the boy who had started work at fourteen, washing dishes in the kitchens where his mother was the head chef, his father serving in the army overseas. His wages had been a hot meal every day and enough cash to pay his bus fare to school.
The weird thing was, it was all true. Except for one thing: he had been thirteen when he’d started, and barely tall enough to stand at the sinks, but had told the hotel he was older to get the work.
By eighteen he’d been working for the hotel and studying at college and at twenty-one had his first job as deputy manager. The rest was history.
Of course, the PR experts did not go into quite so much detail when it came to his father’s complicated personal life, which was way more tabloid fodder than inspirational reading for young managers. He had certainly enjoyed female company as a single man—and when he was not so single.
Not that he could get away with that now. His lovely third wife Ava had been by his side night after night for the past eighteen years, just as she was greeting the guests tonight, and Sean knew that his father adored her.
He was still the man who had read him bedtime stories every night all dressed up in his dinner suit before heading to the hotel to work.
‘Hey, handsome. Feeling lonely?’
Sean laughed out loud as his teenage half-sister Annika hooked her arm around his elbow and leant closer to give him a hug.
He replied by lifting the back of her hand to his lips then glancing up and down her gorgeous aqua cocktail dress. ‘Why look at you, pretty girl. All grown up and everything.’
He was rewarded with a soft kiss on the cheek.
‘Charmer! But you scrub up nicely. New suit?’
‘Had it for months. All ready for the Paris job. New dress?’
‘Had it a day.’ She sniffed and looked around. ‘What have you done with Dee? I noticed that fabulous sari she was wearing when she came in with Rob and then she seemed to disappear. You were very brave, letting him escort your lady friend. Rob is a scamp.’
Then Annika’s voice faded away and she gave a small cough. ‘Oh my. I think I think you’d better go to the rescue. Don’t you? See you later.’ And with that she released his hand to move to the cluster of new arrivals who had packed the reception area behind him.
Sean followed the direction of Annika’s gaze and stood there, chuckling.
Judging by the number of people clustered around the buffet table, there was obviously something exciting going on. Sean could see Rob’s head in the crowd but Dee had emerged from the tea rooms wearing far more practical flat gold sandals. Practical, but it also meant that in a room of tall men she was the orchid shaded by the tall trees.
Except that this was one girl who would always stand out in a crowd.
Especially when she was wearing a gold silk sari, gold jewellery and an azure-and-gold bodice which revealed a tantalizing band of the same taut skin he had admired back in the bedroom.
She took his breath away.
This was no clone. This was a real woman showing that she could act the part when she needed to, and revealing yet another side to her personality that he could never have imagined existed.
He had spent the week learning about one side of Dee Flynn. The woman who had taken a risk with her friend and transformed a simple patisserie into something spectacular. Doing what she loved to do, capitalizing on her passion. On her own terms.
When had he last met a woman like that? Not often. Maybe never. Oh, he had met plenty of glossy-haired girls with high IQs who had claimed they were doing what they truly loved, but so few people knew what they wanted in their twenties that it was astonishingly rare.
He had known precisely what he wanted from the first day he’d walked into his dad’s hotel. His career path had been as clear as a printed map. He was going to do exactly what his father had done, start at the bottom and work his way up, even if he was the son of the owner of the hotel chain.
Dee Flynn had done the same.
Maybe that was why he connected with the tiny woman he was looking at now.
They were different from other people.
Different and special.
He was in awe, and ready to admit that to anyone.
Sean stood in silence as the chatting, smiling men and women in business suits who worked for his family filled the space that separated them. But his gaze was locked on one person. And it was not Rob, who seemed to be holding court.
He could hear his brother’s familiar roar of laughter warm the room, but Sean’s ears were tuned only to Dee’s sweet laugh which was like a hot shower.
His senses were razor-sharp. And, as the cluster broke up, he caught sight of her.
She was looking around the room. Looking for him.
She winked at him with a wry smile, shrugged her shoulders and then turned to laugh at something Rob said before they were swallowed up by the trainees and older managers enjoying the delicious food and drink, only too happy to meet the celebrity chef Rob Beresford in person.
The last thing he saw was the slight tilt of her head and a flash of gold silk as she sashayed elegantly away from him.
Dervla Flynn was turning out to be one of the most remarkable women he had ever met in his life, and the last ten minutes had only served to increase his admiration.
He was totally in awe.
Then she slipped out of view as Rob and the whole entourage joined his father in the dining area, leaving him alone with his thoughts.
Strange that he was even now reliving that moment when her body had been pressed against his arm.
Strange how he was still standing in the same spot five minutes later, watching the space where she had last stood. Waiting. Just in case he could catch a glimpse of her again, the most beautiful woman in the room.
For that he was prepared to wait a very long time.
* * *
It seemed like ten minutes had gone by, but when the sitar music sang out from the mobile phone in her embroidered bag Dee was shocked to see that she had been swept up with Rob and his dad, talking food and drink, for over an hour.
There was a text message on the screen:
Ready to escape the noise and crush and get some air? Meet you at the elevator in five minutes. Sean
Sean! She had been so engrossed that she had only spent ten minutes with her date the whole evening. Quickly gathering up her skirts, Dee excused herself and skipped up the steps, and instantly caught sight of Sean, who was beckoning to her.
In a moment he had drawn her into the lift and pressed a card into a slot on the lift button before giving her a quick hug.
‘Do you remember that penthouse suite I was trying to talk you into? Well, I seem to recall that this hotel has a private penthouse worth seeing. If you are willing to risk it?’
‘Risk it?’
‘It’s the eighteenth floor, which means a quick trip inside a lift,’ he whispered, and grinned at her shocked reaction. ‘But it does have a balcony.’
And what a balcony!
Dee stepped out onto a long, tiled terrace, and what she saw in front of her took her breath away.
The rain had cleared to leave a star-kissed, cool evening. And stretched out, in every direction, was London. Her city. Dressed and lit, bright, shiny and sparking with street lamps, advertisements and the lights from homes and offices.
It was like something from a movie or a wonderful painting. A moment so special that Dee knew instinctively that she would never forget it.
She grasped hold of the railing and looked out over London, her heart soaring, all doubt forgotten in the exuberant joy of the view.
It was almost a shock to feel a warm arm wrap a coat around her shoulders and she turned sideways to face Sean with a grin, clutching onto his sleeve.
‘Have you seen this? It’s astonishing. I love it.’ Dee breathed.
‘I know. I can see it on your face.’
Then he moved closer to her on the balcony, his left hand just touching the outstretched fingers of her right hand.
But Sean was looking up at the stars.
‘Last February it was snowy and cloudy for the whole of the three weeks that I was back in London. But tonight? Tonight is perfect.’
‘This is amazing. I had no idea that you could see skies like this in London. I thought the light pollution would block out the stars.’
And she followed his gaze just in time to see a shooting star streak across the sky directly above their heads, and then another, smaller this time, then another.
‘A meteor shower. Sean! Look!’
‘What is it, Dee?’ he asked, his mouth somewhere in the vicinity of her hair. ‘Have you made a wish on a shooting star? What does your heart yearn to do that you haven’t done yet?’
‘Me? Oh, I had such great plans when I was a teenager and the whole world seemed to be an open door to whatever I wanted. My parents loved their work, and I was so happy for them when they decided to retire and run their own tea gardens. Warmth. Sunshine. They could not have been happier.’
She wrapped her arms tight around her body. ‘But then the hard reality of running a business in a recession where tea prices are falling hit. And they lost it. They lost everything they had dreamt of. And it was so hard to see them in pain, Sean. So very hard.’
‘But they stayed. Didn’t they?’
She nodded. ‘They won’t come back unless they have to and if they did... It would break them. And that is what scares me.’
She lifted her head and rested it on Sean’s chest. ‘I know that I am in a different place in my life, and there are lots more opportunities out there for me, but do you know what? I am not so very different from my folks. I want my own business so badly and I don’t know how I could cope if my dream fell apart. Six months ago I was working for a big tea importer and going to night school to study business most evenings and weekends. But Lottie changed that when she asked me to join her in the tea rooms. The time seemed so right. I have volunteered to run the festival and I felt ready to do anything.’
‘You are ready. I know it.’
She looked up into his smiling face but stayed inside the warm circle of his arms.
‘How do you know what your limits are?’
‘You don’t. The only way to find out is by testing yourself. You would be astounded at what you are capable of. And if you don’t succeed you learn from your mistakes and do what you have to do to get back up and try again until you can prove to yourself that you can do it. And then you keep on doing that over and over again.’
‘No matter how many times you fall down and hurt yourself?’
‘That’s right. You’ve got it.’
Dee turned slightly away from Sean and looked out towards the horizon, suddenly needing to get some distance, some air between them. What he was describing was so hard, so difficult and so familiar. He could never know how many times she had forced herself to smile after someone had let her down, or when she had been ridiculed or humiliated.
Dee blinked back tears and pulled the collar of his jacket up around her ears while she fought to gain control of her voice. ‘Some of us lesser mortals have been knocked down so many times that it is hard to bounce back up again, Sean. Very hard. Can you understand that?’
Sean replied by wrapping his long arms around her body in a warm embrace so tender that Dee surrendered to a moment of joy and pressed her head against his chest, inhaling his delicious scent as her body shared his warmth.
His hands made lazy circles on her back in silence for a few minutes until he spoke, the words reverberating inside his chest into her head. ‘Better than you think. Working in the family business is not all fun. I have been in these hotels all my life one way or another. And I still have a lot to learn.’
Dee shuffled back from him, laughed in a choked voice and then pressed both hands against his chest as she replied with a broken smile.
‘So that makes two of us who are stuck in the family trade. Am I right?’
‘Absolutely. How about a suggestion instead? I know a couple of venture-capital guys who have money to invest in new business ideas. All I have to do is make a few phone calls and... What? What now?’
‘I don’t want to carry any debt. No maxed-out credit cards; no business loans; no venture capital investment. That’s how my dad got into so much trouble and there is no way that I am going there. So thank you, but no. I might be hard up, but I have made some rules for myself. I have already maxed out my credit on my share of the tea shop. I can’t handle any more debt.’
Sean inhaled very slowly and watched Dee struggle with her thoughts, her dilemma played out in the tension on her face.
She was as proud as anyone he had ever met. Including himself. Which was quite something.
And just like that the connection he had sensed between them from the moment he had laid eyes on her in the tea rooms kicked up a couple of notches.
And every warning bell in his body started screaming ‘danger!’ so loudly that in the end he could not ignore it any longer. And he pulled away from her.
She shivered in the cool air, fracturing the moment, and he grabbed her hand and jogged back across the balcony. Sean slid open the patio doors and wrapped his arm around her waist, hugging her to him, the luxurious warmth from the penthouse warming their backs.
‘Oh, that’s better. Won’t you get into trouble with the boss for wasting heat? Oh—you are the boss! Well, in that case, carry on.’
‘We should be getting back to the others,’ Sean whispered, only his voice sounded low and way too unconvincing. ‘They might be missing us.’
She must have thought so too, because she took a last step and closed the distance between them and pressed the palms of both of her hands flat against the front of his white dinner shirt. He could feel the warmth of her fingertips through the fine fabric as she spread her fingers out in wide arcs; the light perfume enclosed them.
‘This has been a magical evening. Thank you for inviting me,’ she whispered.
Every muscle in his body tensed as she moved closer and pressed her body against his, one hand reaching in to the small of his back and the other still pressed gently against his shirt. He tried to shift but she shifted with him, her body fitting perfectly against his, her cheek resting on his lapel as though they were dancing to music which only she could hear.
So he did the only thing he could.
He kissed her.
She lifted her head and her hair brushed his chin as she pressed tentative kisses onto his collarbone and neck. Her mouth was soft and moist and totally, totally captivating.
With each kiss she stepped closer until her hips beneath the sari were pressed against his and the pressure made him groan.
‘Dee,’ he hissed, reaching for her shoulders to draw her away. But somehow he was sliding his hands up into her hair instead, holding her head and tilting her face towards him. Then he was kissing her, his tongue in her mouth, her taste surrounding him.
He stroked her tongue with his and traced her lower lip before sucking on it gently. She made a small sound and angled her head to give him more access.
She tasted so sweet, so amazing. So giving.
She gazed at him with eyes filled with such delight, as if she was expecting some suggestive comment about the fact that this penthouse came with a king-sized bed...
And that look hit him hard.
He did not just want Dee to be his stand-in date for tonight. He wanted to see her again, be with her again. He wanted to know what she looked like when she had just made love. He wanted to find out what gave her pleasure in bed, and then make sure that he delivered precisely what the lady ordered.
She was as proud and independent as he was. And just as unforgiving with anyone who dared to offer her charity or their pity.
By some fluke, some strange quirk of fate, he had met a woman who truly did understand him more than Sasha had ever done. And that was beyond a miracle.
Could he take a chance and show her how special she was? And put his heart on the line at the same time?
He slid a hand down her back to cup her backside, holding her against him as he flexed his hips forward, and one hand still in her hair. She shuddered as he slid his hand in slow circles up from her back to her waist, running his hands up and down her skin which was like warm silk, so smooth and perfect. He ducked his head and kissed her again, his hands teasing all the while until he was almost holding her upright.
When their lips parted, Dee was panting just as hard as he was. She looked so beautiful, standing there with her gold sari brilliant against the night sky, her cheeks flushed pink and the most stunning smile on her face.
His response was to wrap his arms around her back and, holding her tight against him, rested his chin on her top of her hair.
Eyes closed, they stood locked together until he could feel her heart settle down to a steady beat.
All doubt was cast aside. Her heart beat for him, as his heart beat for her.
Dee moved in his arms and he looked down into her face as she smiled up at him, not just with her sweet mouth but with eyes so bright, fun and joyous that his heart sang just to look at them. And it was as though every good thing that he had ever done had come together into one moment in time.
And his heart melted. Just like that.
For a girl who was just about as different from him and his life as it was possible to be.
And for a girl who had made her tiny flat the size of the hotel’s luggage store into a home and was willing to share her joy with him. And who wanted nothing in return but a chance to see a meteor shower from a penthouse balcony.
God, he admired her for that.... Admired her?
Sean stopped, his body frozen and his mind spinning.
He didn’t just admire Dee, he was falling for her.
Just when he thought that he had finally worked out that he had nothing to give to any woman in the way of a relationship.
Think! He had to think. He could not allow his emotions to get the better of him.
If he cared for her at all then he should stop right now, because the last thing Dee needed was a one-night stand which would leave her with nothing but more reasons to doubt her judgement.
He wouldn’t do that to her. Hell, he wouldn’t do that to himself. It would only be setting them up for heartbreak down the road.
‘I think we might want to rethink the whole getting back in time for dessert...’ She grinned as though she had read his mind.
‘Right as always,’ he replied, and stroked her cheek with one finger. ‘God, you are beautiful. Do you know that?’
Dee blushed from cheek to neck. It was so endearing that he laughed out loud, slid his arms down to her waist and stepped back, even though his body was screaming for him to do something crazy. Like wipe everything off the dining-room table and find out what came next.
He sucked in a breath.
‘You are not so bad yourself. I had no idea that hotel managers were so interested in astronomy.’ And then she bit down on her lower lip and flashed him a coquettish grin. ‘Or did I just get lucky? You are one of a kind, Sean.’
Lucky? He thought of the long days and nights he had spent working for the company to the exclusion of everything else in his life, including the girls who had cared about him. Sasha had lasted the longest.
He had sacrificed everything for the family hotel chain. Everything.
Now as he looked at Dee he thought about what lay ahead, and the hard, cold truth of his situation emptied a bucket of ice water over his head.
His hands slid onto her upper arms and locked there, holding her away from him and the delicious pleasure of her body against his.
‘I am not so sure about the “lucky” bit, Dee. Right now I am in London for a few days to sort things out and run a few classes, then Paris for a month at most. Then I’m off to Canberra...and my diary is full for the next eighteen months. Constant pressure. And all the while I feel as though I am running and running and not getting anywhere.’
‘Then maybe you should stand still long enough to look around and see what you have achieved,’ she said. Dee tilted her head to one side. ‘Somewhere along the way to being the best, I think you forgot the fun part. But I think that funny and creative side of Sean is still inside you, all ready to get excited about new things and have the best time of his life.’
Stretching up onto tiptoes, she kissed him on the lips. ‘You deserve it.’
She stepped back and patted him twice on the chest. Then she laughed. ‘And now it is time to head back down stairs before I embarrass myself even more.’ And she moved a step backwards with a smile.
He frowned, nodded just once and muttered something under his breath along the lines of what he did for the firm. Then he lifted his head, turned towards the door and presented the crook of his arm for her to latch onto. ‘Shall we go to the ball, princess? Your audience awaits.’
