Trouble on Her Doorstep Read Online Free PDF Page A

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, and was just about to tell her what an impossible task that was when there was an explosion of noise and movement from behind his back. What seemed like a coach party of women of all shapes and ages burst out into the tea rooms, laughing like trains, gossiping and competing with one another in volume and pitch to make their voices heard above the uproar.
    It felt like a tsunami of women was bearing down on him.
    All carrying huge bags bursting with what looked like cake tins and mystery utensils and binders. Sean stepped back and practically squeezed himself against one wall to let the wall of female baking power sweep past him towards the entrance and out into the street.
    ‘Ah, Lottie. There you are!’ Dee Flynn cried out and grabbed the sleeve of a very pretty slim blonde dressed in a matching navy T-shirt and trousers. ‘Sorry I did not get back to serve more tea. Come and meet Sean. The London Festival of Tea is going to have a new exciting venue and Sean here is the man who is in charge of finding the perfect location. And he is not going to rest until he has found the perfect replacement.’
    She grinned at him with an expression of pure delight, with an added twist of evil. ‘Aren’t you, Sean?’

THREE
    Tea, glorious tea. A celebration of teas from around the world.
    There are many different kinds of tea, but they are all derived from just one type of plant: Camellia sinensis . The colour and variety of the tea (green, black, white and oolong) depends on the way the leaves are treated once they are picked.
    From Flynn’s Phantasmagoria of Tea
    Wednesday
    ‘So how are you enjoying being back in London?’ Rob Beresford’s voice echoed out from the computer screen in his usual nonchalant manner. His eyebrows lifted. ‘Same old madness?’
    ‘Nothing that boring.’ Sean snorted and pointed to the bags under his eyes. ‘Still shattered. Still jet-lagged. Still wading through the mess Frank Evans got himself into at Richmond Square. I still can’t believe that the man we trusted to run our hotel just took off and left this disaster for someone else to sort out.’
    Sean’s half-brother sat back in his chair and gave a low cough. ‘Now, who does that remind me of? Oh yes, your ex-girlfriend. I caught up with the lovely Sasha at the catering-strategy forum last week. She asked me to say hi, by the way. Now, wasn’t that sweet? Considering that she dumped you with zero notice. I could almost dislike her if it wasn’t for her fantastic figure.’ Rob gave a low, rough sigh. ‘And that tan... She’s looking good, brother. The Barbados hotel seems to be suiting her very nicely and the clients love her.’
    ‘Thanks for the update.’ Sean coughed and then squinted towards the computer screen. ‘And she did not dump me. It simply wasn’t working out for either of us. Trying to co-ordinate our diaries so that we were in the same time zone for more than a few days had stopped being funny a long time before we called it a day. You know what chaos it was last year! You were there, working the same hours as I was.’
    Sean turned back to shuffling through a file on the desk. Sasha had been on the fast-track Beresford Hotels management programme and he had been working so hard that he hadn’t even noticed that they barely saw one another face to face any more.
    Until he’d come back to her apartment at one a.m., exhausted after two weeks on the road solving all the teething problems for a hotel opening, to find Sasha sitting waiting for him.
    He had just missed her birthday dinner, the one he had promised