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,