that she was sending out the wrong message. Or was it the right message?
She had been aiming for elegant and attractive, while the girl who stared back at her from the mirror looked like a stranger. Some clone from a fashion magazine. Not her. Not Dee Flynn, the wannabe tea merchant.
This wasn’t working.
She had been mad even to think that she was ready to go out on a date with Sean Beresford. Even if it was for only one evening.
She tottered to her bed in one shoe, fell backwards and let her arms dangle over the sides.
She was just about to make herself a laughing stock in exchange for a few canapés and a glass of fizz in a luxury hotel.
Dee bit down on the inside of her lip. Deep inside, where she kept her dreams and most sacred wishes, she knew that she had every right to stride into that hotel in these high-heeled shoes with her head high and stun the lot of them, including Sean. Strong, and confident that she was the equal of anyone there.
She had worked for this success and deserved to be treated like a goddess.
Drat Sean for reminding her that she still had a long way to go.
Dee closed her eyes, her throat burning and tears stinging at the sides of her eyes.
She was pathetic.
This handsome and attentive man had chosen her to be his date for the evening. Which was so amazing that she still couldn’t believe it.
The past few days had passed in a blur of activity and mad work.
Sean had kept his word, and Prakash and Madge were now her official best friends in the whole world. Nothing was too much trouble. Extra power points for the hot-water heaters? No problem. Portable kitchen equipment, refrigerators and study tables appeared out of nowhere like magic.
Apparently the word had come down from on high that, whatever Miss Flynn needed for her festival of tea, the team had to make sure happened.
Especially when the boss, the one and only Mr Sean Beresford, had seemed to find his way into the conference area several times during the day, just to make sure that everything was on track.
Oh, it was on track. In more ways than one.
Strange how many times in the day he’d found a way to brush against her hand with his, or look over her shoulder at some suddenly vital piece of information on the floor plan.
She’d had to stop the tickling, of course. That had got completely out of hand and she’d had to scold him about being professional in front of his staff.
Of course, he had insisted on regular tea breaks. Just the two of them, sitting around an elegant table in the hotel dining room, chatting about her critique of the quite good tea the hotel served. And all the while he’d told her anecdotes about his work in the hotel trade which had her clutching her stomach with laughter, and family stories about the antics his brother and sisters got up to.
And maybe it was just as well that she had been kept busy. It had kept her mind from mulling over all of those intimate moments they had shared since he had walked into the tea rooms: the sly glances that set her pulse racing and the gentle touch of his hand on her back or arm. His kindness. His quiet compassion. His humour.
A girl could fall for a man like that.
Hell. She was already halfway there.
Then her smile faded. This evening was turning into a date with Sean when she should be focusing on taking her dream one step closer to being a reality.
And that sent a cold shiver across her shoulders.
She couldn’t let the exhibitors down. Some of the tea merchants were coming a long way to show London what tea was all about.
And she couldn’t let Sean down either.
No wonder she had the jitters.
Dee stole another glance at the dress hanging outside the wardrobe.
Lottie had done a fantastic job and the girl in the mirror looked every bit the type of sophisticated, elegant girl that Sean was used to having on his arm.
It was the world that Lottie had been born into. A world of luxury and privilege where eating dinner in a Beresford hotel costing hundreds of pounds was something her family did without thinking.
Lottie had her own problems to deal with, no doubt about that, but she could never truly understand what it felt like always to have been the new girl with the second-hand school uniform and the strange accent. Never feeling as though she fitted in. No matter what she did to change her clothes, her hair and the way she spoke, she was always going to be different. And her parents had loved that about her. Loved that she was unique.
Pity that as a teenaged girl going to a city high school the last thing the fifteen-year-old Dee Flynn had wanted to be was unique.
Strange. She thought that she had conquered that particular battle years ago when her flair for catering had taken her higher than she had ever expected.
But that was not the only reason for the jitters.
For the next few hours she would be dealing with Sean’s father and his wife Ava, their daughter Annika and Sean’s older brother Robert—the professional celebrity chef and current pin-up for a lot of trainee chefs at catering college. And Sean—the blue-eyed boy who had come to her rescue.
How was she going to make polite chit chat with Sean when they had become...what? Event planners? Friends? Or as close to it as you could be when you had spent half the week together.
Dee wrapped her arms around her bare waist, squeezed her eyes tightly shut and relived, once more, the sensuous pleasure of his gentle kiss in the park and the touch of his hand on the small of her back. All of those subtle moments where she had felt him next to her.
No matter that those thoughts had made for very little sleep the night before. In an hour or so she would be seeing him again. Holding him. Just being in the same room within touching distance.
Delicious.
Her eyes flicked half-open and she glanced across at the brightly coloured tulips which she had popped into a plain white milk-jug on her desk. She could smell their fragrance anywhere in the room, and just seeing the blossoms reminded her of Sean all over again.
His laugh. His smile. The expression of pure pleasure and delight on his face when he’d telephoned his brother the other day and talked to her about his family. They truly were the most precious people in the world to him. He loved his family. And they loved him right back.
It would be so special to be on the receiving end of that kind of devotion.
Had it only been a few days since Sean had walked into the tea room? It felt so much longer. And like the tulips he would fade and go out of her life. Back to his hotel chain, bottomless wallet and first-class everything. Back to the life she would never have.
A low groan of exasperation escaped her lips, and she would have wiped her eyes but Lottie had just spent her evening using make-up brushes Dee had not known existed to create the face that she was wearing. She dared not mess it up.
She dared not mess any of this evening up.
Too much was at stake. The tea festival was serious business and people were relying on her to do the very best she could.
But why now? Of all the times she could have chosen to have a crush, why did it have to be now, and why, oh why, did it have to be on Sean Beresford—the big-city hotel executive with the shiny, shiny lifestyle and looks to die for? The man who was in line to run the Paris branch of the Beresford hotel empire?
Fate had certainly played her a blinder of a hand. And Sean was currently holding all of the aces.
Sean could make her laugh like no other man, and discombobulate her with equal ease. But she dared not tell him. Could not tell him. Letting him know how attracted she was would only lead to heartbreak, disaster and embarrassment