‘Frank decided to take up a job offer with another hotel company last Friday. Without notice. That’s why I came in to sort out the emergency situation at Richmond Square and get things back on track.’
She gasped and grabbed his arm. ‘What kind of emergency do you have?’ Then she gulped. ‘Has something happened? I mean, has the hotel flooded or—’ she suddenly felt faint ‘—burnt down? Gas explosion? Water damage?’
‘Flooded?’ he replied, then tilted his head a tiny fraction of an inch. ‘No. The hotel is absolutely fine. In fact, I went there straight from the airport and it is as lovely as ever. Business as usual.’
‘Then please stop scaring the living daylights out of me like that. I don’t understand. Why is there a problem with the booking?’
‘So you met Frank Evans? The previous manager?’
She nodded. ‘Twice in person, then I spoke to him several times over the phone. Frank insisted on taking personal responsibility for my tea festival and we went over the room plans in detail. Then we had lunch at the hotel just before Christmas to make sure that everything was going to plan. And it was. Going to plan.’
‘In any of those meetings, did you see him recording any of your details on a diary or paper planner? Anything like that?
‘Paper? No. Now that you mention it, I don’t remember him taking any notes on paper. It was all on his notebook computer. He showed the photos of the layout on the screen. Is that a problem? I mean, isn’t everything loaded onto computers these days?’
There was just enough of a pause from the man looking at her to send a shiver across Dee’s shoulders.
‘Okay; I get the picture. How bad is it?’ she whispered. ‘Just tell me now and put me out of my misery.’
‘Frank may have taken your details but he didn’t load them onto the hotel booking system. If he had, Frank would have found out that we were already double-booked for the whole weekend with a company client who had booked a year in advance. So you see, he should never have accepted your booking in the first place. I am sorry, Miss Flynn, I have to cancel your booking and refund your deposit... Miss Flynn?’
But 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.