Trouble on Her Doorstep. Nina Harrington

shop is closed, you know. No cake. No tea. So if you are expecting to be fed you are out of luck.’

      ‘You can say that again,’ Sean whispered, then held up one hand when she looked as though she might reply. ‘But please don’t. Tea and cakes are the last thing I came looking for, I can assure you.’

      ‘So why were you hammering on the door, wearing a business suit at nine on a Tuesday evening? You have obviously come here for a reason. Are you planning to sit on my floor and keep me in suspense for the rest of the evening?’

      His green-eyed assailant was just about to say something else when the sound of female laughter drifted out from the back of the room.

      ‘Ah,’ she winced and nodded. ‘Of course. You must be here to pick up one of the girls from the Bake and Bit...Banter club. But those ladies won’t be ready for at least another half-hour.’ One hand gestured towards the back of the room where he could hear the faint sound of female voices and music. ‘The cakes are still in the oven.’ Her lovely shoulders lifted in an apologetic shrug. ‘We were late getting started. Too much bit...chatting and not enough baking. But I can tell someone you are here, if you like. Who exactly are you waiting for?’

      Who was he waiting for? He wasn’t waiting for anyone. He was here on a different kind of mission. Tonight he was very much a messenger boy.

      Sean reached into the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket and checked the address on the piece of lilac writing paper he had found inside the envelope marked ‘D S Flynn contact details’ lying at the bottom of the conference room booking file. It had been handwritten in dark-green ink in very thin letters his father would instantly have dismissed as spider writing.

      Well, he certainly had the right street and, according to the built-in GPS in his phone, he was within three metres of the address of his suspiciously elusive client who had booked a conference room at the hotel and apparently paid the deposit without leaving a telephone number or an email address. Which was not just inconvenient but infuriating.

      ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but I am not here to pick up anyone from your baking club. Far from it. I need to track someone down in a hurry.’

      He waved the envelope in the air and instantly saw something in the way she lifted her chin that suggested that she recognized the envelope, but she covered it up with a quizzical look.

      That seemed to startle her and he could almost feel the intensity of her gaze as it moved slowly from his smart, black lace-up business brogues to the crispness of his shirt collar and silk tie. There was something else going on behind those green eyes, because she glanced back towards the entrance just once and then swung around towards the back of the room, before turning her attention on him again.

      And when she spoke there was the faintest hint of concern in her voice which she was trying hard to conceal and failing miserably.

      ‘Perhaps I could help if you told me who you were looking for,’ she replied.

      Sean looked up into her face and decided that it was time to get this over with so he could get back to the penthouse apartment at the hotel and collapse.

      In one short, sharp movement he pushed himself sideways with one hand, curled his knees and effortlessly got back onto his feet, brushing down his coat and trousers with one hand. So that, when he replied, his words were more directed towards the floor than the girl standing watching him so intently.

      ‘I certainly hope so. Does a Mr D S Flynn live here? Because, if he does, I really need to speak to him. And the sooner the better.’

      TWO

      Tea, glorious tea. A celebration of teas from around the world.

      ‘A woman is like a tea bag: you never know how strong it is until it’s in hot water.’ Eleanor Roosevelt.

      From Flynn’s Phantasmagoria of Tea

      ‘What was that name again?’ Dee asked, holding on to the edge of the counter for support, in a voice that was trembling way too much for her liking. ‘Mr Deesasflin. Was that what you said? Sounds more like a rash cream. It is rather unusual.’

      A low sigh of intense exasperation came from deep inside his chest and he stopped patting down his clothes and stretched out tall. As in, very tall. As in well over six feet tall in his smart shoes which, for a girl who was as vertically challenged as she was, as Lottie called it, seemed really tall.

      Worse.

      He was holding the envelope that she had given to the hotel manager the first time she had visited the lovely, posh, boutique hotel to suss out the conference facilities.

      They had gone through everything in such detail and double-checked the numbers when she had paid the deposit on the conference room in October.

      So why was this man, this stranger, holding that envelope?

      Dee racked her brains. Things had been pretty mad ever since Christmas but she would have remembered a letter or call from the hotel telling her that it had been taken over or they had appointed a new manager.

      Who made house calls.

      Oh no, she groaned inside. This was the last thing she needed. Not now. Please tell me that everything to do with the tea festival is still going to plan...please? She had staked her reputation and her career in the tea trade on organizing this festival. And the last of her savings. Things had to be okay with the venue or she would be toast.

      ‘Flynn. D. S.’ His voice echoed out across the empty tea room, each letter crisp, perfectly enunciated and positively oozing with annoyance. ‘This letter was all that I could find in the booking system. No name or telephone number or email address. Just an address, a surname and two initials.’

      What? All that he could find?

      Great. Well, that answered that question: he was from the hotel.

      She was looking at her gorgeous but grumpy new hotel manager or conference organizer.

      Who she had just sideswiped.

      Splendid. This was getting better and better.

      The only good news was that he seemed to think that his client was a man, so she could find out the reason for his obvious grumpiness without getting her legs swiped from under her. With a bit of luck.

      As far as he knew, she was just a girl in a cake shop. Maybe she could keep up the pretence a little longer and find out more before revealing her true credentials.

      ‘You don’t seem very pleased with this Mr Flynn person.’ She smiled, suddenly desperate to appear as though she was just an outside party making conversation. ‘They must have done something seriously outrageous to make you come out on a wet night in February to track them down.’

      Ouch. That was such a horrible expression. The idea that he had made it as far as the tea rooms and was actually hunting her was enough to give her an icy cold feeling in the pit of her stomach which was going to take a serious amount of hot tea to thaw out.

      From the determined expression on his face, right down to the very official business suit and smart haircut, this man spelt ‘serious’.

      As serious as all of the finance people who had tried their hardest to crush her confidence and convince her that her dream was a foolish illusion. She had been turned down over and over again, despite the brilliant business plan she had worked on for weeks, and all the connections in the tea trade that she could ever need.

      The message was always the same: they could not see the feasibility of a new tea import business in the current economy. All of the statistics about the British obsession with tea and everything connected with it had seemed to fly over their heads. Not enough profit. Too risky. Not viable.

      Was it any wonder that she had gone out on a limb and offered to organize the tea festival so that she could launch her import business at the same time?

      Lottie had been her saviour in the end and had pulled in a few