PR machine loved to repeat the story about the boy who had started work at fourteen, washing dishes in the kitchens where his mother was the head chef, his father serving in the army overseas. His wages had been a hot meal every day and enough cash to pay his bus fare to school.
The weird thing was, it was all true. Except for one thing: he had been thirteen when he’d started, and barely tall enough to stand at the sinks, but had told the hotel he was older to get the work.
By eighteen he’d been working for the hotel and studying at college and at twenty-one had his first job as deputy manager. The rest was history.
Of course, the PR experts did not go into quite so much detail when it came to his father’s complicated personal life, which was way more tabloid fodder than inspirational reading for young managers. He had certainly enjoyed female company as a single man—and when he was not so single.
Not that he could get away with that now. His lovely third wife Ava had been by his side night after night for the past eighteen years, just as she was greeting the guests tonight, and Sean knew that his father adored her.
He was still the man who had read him bedtime stories every night all dressed up in his dinner suit before heading to the hotel to work.
‘Hey, handsome. Feeling lonely?’
Sean laughed out loud as his teenage half-sister Annika hooked her arm around his elbow and leant closer to give him a hug.
He replied by lifting the back of her hand to his lips then glancing up and down her gorgeous aqua cocktail dress. ‘Why look at you, pretty girl. All grown up and everything.’
He was rewarded with a soft kiss on the cheek.
‘Charmer! But you scrub up nicely. New suit?’
‘Had it for months. All ready for the Paris job. New dress?’
‘Had it a day.’ She sniffed and looked around. ‘What have you done with Dee? I noticed that fabulous sari she was wearing when she came in with Rob and then she seemed to disappear. You were very brave, letting him escort your lady friend. Rob is a scamp.’
Then Annika’s voice faded away and she gave a small cough. ‘Oh my. I think I think you’d better go to the rescue. Don’t you? See you later.’ And with that she released his hand to move to the cluster of new arrivals who had packed the reception area behind him.
Sean followed the direction of Annika’s gaze and stood there, chuckling.
Judging by the number of people clustered around the buffet table, there was obviously something exciting going on. Sean could see Rob’s head in the crowd but Dee had emerged from the tea rooms wearing far more practical flat gold sandals. Practical, but it also meant that in a room of tall men she was the orchid shaded by the tall trees.
Except that this was one girl who would always stand out in a crowd.
Especially when she was wearing a gold silk sari, gold jewellery and an azure-and-gold bodice which revealed a tantalizing band of the same taut skin he had admired back in the bedroom.
She took his breath away.
This was no clone. This was a real woman showing that she could act the part when she needed to, and revealing yet another side to her personality that he could never have imagined existed.
He had spent the week learning about one side of Dee Flynn. The woman who had taken a risk with her friend and transformed a simple patisserie into something spectacular. Doing what she loved to do, capitalizing on her passion. On her own terms.
When had he last met a woman like that? Not often. Maybe never. Oh, he had met plenty of glossy-haired girls with high IQs who had claimed they were doing what they truly loved, but so few people knew what they wanted in their twenties that it was astonishingly rare.
He had known precisely what he wanted from the first day he’d walked into his dad’s hotel. His career path had been as clear as a printed map. He was going to do exactly what his father had done, start at the bottom and work his way up, even if he was the son of the owner of the hotel chain.
Dee Flynn had done the same.
Maybe that was why he connected with the tiny woman he was looking at now.
They were different from other people.
Different and special.
He was in awe, and ready to admit that to anyone.
Sean stood in silence as the chatting, smiling men and women in business suits who worked for his family filled the space that separated them. But his gaze was locked on one person. And it was not Rob, who seemed to be holding court.
He could hear his brother’s familiar roar of laughter warm the room, but Sean’s ears were tuned only to Dee’s sweet laugh which was like a hot shower.
His senses were razor-sharp. And, as the cluster broke up, he caught sight of her.
She was looking around the room. Looking for him.
She winked at him with a wry smile, shrugged her shoulders and then turned to laugh at something Rob said before they were swallowed up by the trainees and older managers enjoying the delicious food and drink, only too happy to meet the celebrity chef Rob Beresford in person.
The last thing he saw was the slight tilt of her head and a flash of gold silk as she sashayed elegantly away from him.
Dervla Flynn was turning out to be one of the most remarkable women he had ever met in his life, and the last ten minutes had only served to increase his admiration.
He was totally in awe.
Then she slipped out of view as Rob and the whole entourage joined his father in the dining area, leaving him alone with his thoughts.
Strange that he was even now reliving that moment when her body had been pressed against his arm.
Strange how he was still standing in the same spot five minutes later, watching the space where she had last stood. Waiting. Just in case he could catch a glimpse of her again, the most beautiful woman in the room.
For that he was prepared to wait a very long time.
* * *
It seemed like ten minutes had gone by, but when the sitar music sang out from the mobile phone in her embroidered bag Dee was shocked to see that she had been swept up with Rob and his dad, talking food and drink, for over an hour.
There was a text message on the screen:
Ready to escape the noise and crush and get some air? Meet you at the elevator in five minutes. Sean
Sean! She had been so engrossed that she had only spent ten minutes with her date the whole evening. Quickly gathering up her skirts, Dee excused herself and skipped up the steps, and instantly caught sight of Sean, who was beckoning to her.
In a moment he had drawn her into the lift and pressed a card into a slot on the lift button before giving her a quick hug.
‘Do you remember that penthouse suite I was
