Sean sending me personal gifts. I’ve only known him two days.’
‘Think of it this way—it gives him pleasure to send you a phone, and you need one to keep in touch with the hotel if you are out and about doing your organizing thing. It’s a winner. Go on, have a play.’
Lottie finished drying her hands and pointed to the shiny silver button. ‘That’s the power button.’ Then she stood back and smiled before giving Dee a quick one-armed hug. ‘There you are. He took your photo yesterday when you hit the streets. You look so sweet carrying those tulips.’
Then Lottie gave a quick chuckle. ‘Might have guessed. Dee, darling, I hate to state the obvious but that boy is smitten with you. Totally, totally smitten. And, the sooner you get used to the idea that you are being wooed, the better!’
‘Wooed! Have you been sniffing the brandy bottles again? I haven’t got the time be wooed by a Beresford. I have a tea festival to organize.’
‘Wooed. Whether you like it or not. And, actually, I kind of like it. Sean and Dee. Dee and Sean. Oh yes. And that’s my oven timer. Have fun with your phone.’
Dee watched Lottie jog back into the kitchen and waited until her back was turned before picking up Sean’s note and reading through it again with a silly grin on her face. He had written it himself, using a pen on paper. That must have been a change for him. The man seemed to live for his technology.
Her foolish and very well hidden girly heart leapt a few beats as she scanned down to the photo he had taken when she’d stopped at one of the market stalls to look at the antique silver teapots.
The girl smiling back at her with her arms full of tulips looked happy and pretty.
Was that how Sean saw her? Or as a girl who had a problem with enclosed spaces who could deck him any time of the day or night?
Her finger hovered over the menu button. She was so tempted so call him right there and then and spend five minutes of easy, relaxed chatter like they had enjoyed the day before. Talking about their lives and how much he missed London sometimes, just as she missed warm weather and the mountains.
Two normal people enjoying a sunny winter’s morning. Getting to know one another.
How had that happened?
Dee licked her lips and was just about to ring when a group of women swooped in and headed straight towards her. Customers!
Perhaps Lottie was right. Perhaps she was being wooed. Strange how much she rather liked that idea.
* * *
Sean looked out over the London skyline from the penthouse apartment at the Beresford hotel Richmond Square and watched the planted arrangements of ferns and grasses thrash about in the winds that buffeted his high-rise balcony.
No spring flowers or tulips here. Not on a cold evening three storeys above the street level where he had strolled with Dee the previous day.
But she was still with him, and not only in a photo on his phone.
No matter where he went in the Beresford Riverside he could almost hear the sound of laughter and easy chatter. Even Madge had smiled as he’d passed her office.
But it was more than that. Sean felt as though he had been infected with the Dee virus which coloured everything he did and made him see it in a new light.
He had spent the day getting to know the new hotel management trainees. They were a great group of young and not so young graduates: bright, keen and eager to learn. The future lifeblood of Beresford hotels.
It had been a pleasure to take them through some of the Beresford training materials, materials written and tested by experts in the hospitality industry and used in the hotels around the world. And yet, the more time he’d spent standing at the front of the minimalist meeting room at Beresford City, working through the elegant presentation materials while the graduates had scribbled away taking notes, the more his brain had reworked what she had said to him.
Was it really the best way to engage with his staff and motivate them?
Frank Evans was not the only hotel manager who had left Beresford hotels in the last twelve months, and they needed to do something different to keep the staff that were crucial to any hotel business. And it was not just the investment the family made in their training and development; it was that precious connection between the manager, his staff and the hotel guests. That kind of connection took years to build up and could transform customer service.
But it had to come from the top.
Perhaps that was that why he had turned off the projector after a couple of hours and herded these intelligent adults out onto the footpath to the Riverside hotel. He’d let them talk and chatter away as they’d walked, and he’d listened.
It was a revelation. A twenty-minute stroll had given him enough material to completely change his view on how to retain these enthusiastic new employees and make them feel engaged and respected.
The rest of the afternoon had been amazing. He had felt a real buzz and everyone in the room had headed back to their hotels exhausted and dizzy with new ideas and bursting with positivity.
He couldn’t wait to tell Dee all about it.
He couldn’t wait to see Dee and share her laughter. Up close and personal.
Sean flicked open his notebook computer and smiled at the new screensaver he had loaded that morning.
Dee’s sweet, warm smile lit up the penthouse. Her green eyes sparkled in the faint spring sunshine under that silly knitted hat as she clasped the red and yellow tulips to her chest.
She was life, energy and drive all in one medium height package.
The kind of girl who would enjoy travelling on rickety old railways, and always be able to find something interesting to do or someone fascinating to talk to when their flight was delayed. Dee was perfectly happy to spend her days serving tea to real people with real lives and real problems.
She was content to work towards her goal with next to nothing in the way of backing or support, making her dream come true by her own hard work.
His mouth curved up into a smile. He hadn’t forgotten the hit in his gut the first time that he had looked into those eyes only a couple of days ago. The touch of her hand in his as they’d walked along the London streets like old friends, chatting away.
Sean turned his screen off, got up, walked over to the window and looked out over the city where he had grown up.
Where was his passion? He was a Beresford and proud to be part of the family who meant everything to him. There had hardy been a day in his life when he had not been working on something connected to the hotels.
Sasha had accused him of putting his work before everything else in his life, blaming him for not having time for a relationship.
But she had been wrong. Sasha had never understood that it was not the work that drove him. It was the love for his family, and especially his commitment to his father.
That was the fuel that fed the engine. Not money or power or success. They came with the job.
When
