Do Not Disturb (28 page)

Honor looked at her brushed-steel Philippe Patek watch—a birthday present from Devon—and felt her irritation building. Where the fuck was Lucas?

She was sitting in the lobby of an NPR satellite radio station, freezing her ass off thanks to a broken fan that was belting out arctic temperatures into a room roughly big enough to house a hamster. The radio station’s offices, in the attic of a grand old Victorian building on Bleecker and Broadway, were an attempt at old-world style that veered dangerously toward just plain “old.” The couch Honor was sitting on had once been white, but decades of spilled coffee and clammy, newsprint-covered hands had turned it into the sort of amorphous, overboiled cabbage color of old ladies’ panties. This, combined with the peeling paint on the walls, vase full of dead lilies by the door, and selection of tattered, four-year-old magazines lying forlornly on the antique coffee table gave the place a down-at-heel air that was distinctly depressing.

Shivering in her city shorts and vest—outside, temperatures were in the midnineties with the off-the-scale humidity that Manhattan summers seemed to specialize in—Honor wondered for the umpteenth time what the hell she was doing here. She’d had four weeks since the Herrick party in which to cancel today’s
live, on-air head-to-head with Lucas. But she remained genuinely torn about it. On the one hand, it would surely be more dignified to rise above the fray and let the interest in the Herrick burn itself out naturally. But on the other, as much as she loathed him with every breath in her body, even Honor had to admit that Lucas was proving to be a master of spin. He’d already painted Palmers very effectively as the Herrick’s poorer, shabbier cousin, not to mention the damage he’d done by insinuation to her own reputation. Leaving him to run rampant in the press, unchallenged, was a very risky strategy.

“Would you like to come through, Miss Palmer?” Megan Grier’s assistant popped his perfectly groomed head into the waiting room. Clearly he was more used to the air-conditioning malfunctions than Honor and was swaddled from head to toe in cashmere. “Mr. Ruiz isn’t here yet,” he said, plainly disappointed, “but we can go ahead and sound-check you. Save ourselves some time later.”

“Sure,” said Honor, hoping it would be warmer in the studio. It wasn’t.

After making polite small talk with Megan, she was offered a hard plastic seat on the other side of a console covered in more switches than the Starship Enterprise and told to put on some headphones.

“Let me know if you get any feedback,” said the assistant. “Just start talking in your regular voice. You can say anything you like, doesn’t matter.”

“Lucas Ruiz makes my flesh crawl,” said Honor, smiling. “How was that?”

“Very clear.” The deep, familiar male voice from behind her sounded distinctly amused. “No feedback at all, was there, Megan?”

Lucas, looking disheveled and unshaven, marched straight over to their host and kissed her on both cheeks before taking his seat next to Honor with an infuriatingly cocky grin.
With his creased shirt and baggy jeans, he looked more like an Abercrombie model after a hard night’s partying than a professional hotel manager. Honor could clearly smell the stale alcohol on his breath.

“You’re late,” she hissed.

“I know,” he whispered back. “I got held up.”

In fact he’d been held up since six o’clock last night by Cassandra, an old acquaintance from his Ibiza days whose husband worked on Wall Street but was conveniently away on business for a few days. It was rare that he got an excuse to spend a night in the city, and he’d certainly taken full advantage of his chance to play hooky. Apart from a couple of one-night stands with frustrated Hamptons housewives, Lucas’s sex life had been pretty barren of late. Running into Cassie again had been a chance too good to pass up, even with today’s head-to-head with Honor looming. Although in hindsight, perhaps the second bottle of bourbon hadn’t been the smartest idea in the world.

“My guests today are Honor Palmer and Lucas Ruiz.”

Before they could exchange any further pleasantries, Megan was already into her introductory spiel and the green off-air bulb had switched to a threatening red.

“For those of you who are new to this story, they are the protagonists at the heart of what’s being dubbed the Five-Star Wars, a battle for supremacy between two great Hamptons hotels: the world-famous Palmers and the new architecturally acclaimed Tischen hotel, the Herrick. Honor, Lucas. Welcome.”

“Thanks, Megan,” they chorused in unison.

“It’s a pleasure to be here,” added Lucas.

“Perhaps we could start with you, Lucas,” Megan purred.

Honor noticed with rising alarm the way she dipped her head and fluttered her eyelashes coquettishly when speaking to him. She obviously still wanted him. What kind of a one-sided savaging had she let herself in for?

“What was behind the decision to open a rival hotel so close to a great name like Palmers?”

“Well, of course, that was Anton Tisch’s decision, not mine,” said Lucas smoothly. “I’m merely the humble manager.”

He looked pointedly at Honor, who rolled her eyes. Lucas didn’t even know how to spell humble.

“But without wanting to speak for Anton…”

“…you’re going to.” Honor couldn’t resist.

“I was going to say,” said Lucas, stiffly, “that while we both think Palmers has a rich and wonderful history, the hotel business has changed profoundly since its heyday. Today’s guests expect more. They aren’t prepared to put up with substandard service for the privilege of staying somewhere well known.”

“There’s nothing substandard about our service,” Honor shot back testily.

“You see, this is part of the problem,” said Lucas. “Miss Palmer has chosen to take personal offense where none was meant. Opening a Tischen in East Hampton was purely a rational business decision, aimed at meeting the changing needs of the luxury hotel market.”

“What I take offense at,” said Honor furiously, “is Mr. Ruiz’s repeated implication to journalists that I cynically manipulated my father’s illness for personal gain by taking over the running of Palmers. What you said in your
Vogue
interview in May was an out-and-out lie.”

Lucas shrugged. “Not according to your father it wasn’t. He was quoted only months before he passed as saying that you had ‘robbed him blind.’ I believe those were his exact words. He also went on record, saying ‘my daughter is dead to me.’ I’d say that was pretty clear, wouldn’t you?” Leaning back in his chair, he looked Honor right in the eye and gave his knuckles an audibly satisfying crack.

Fifteen love to Lucas.

Winded with pain, Honor took a few seconds to respond. When she’d taken over at Palmers, she’d deliberately avoided
reading the press reports, knowing how misinformed and poisonous they were bound to be. Having to hear Trey’s confused, hurtful words for the first time now, on live radio, and from the mouth of her sworn enemy, was like taking a sucker punch to the stomach. For one hideous moment she thought she might be about to cry. But with an effort, she pulled herself together.

“He was ill,” she said finally, her voice barely a whisper. “He didn’t know his own mind when he said those things.”

In that instant she looked so small and pale and vulnerable, even Lucas felt a stab of guilt. But Megan wasn’t about to let him dwell on it.

“Lucas, you can understand, presumably, why Honor would feel emotional about her father, and a hotel that has been synonymous with her family name for over five decades?” said Megan.

“Of course,” said Lucas. “But, you see, this is another difference between us. Being a woman, and naturally more emotional…”

“Oh, because all women are overemotional, I suppose?” interrupted Honor angrily.

“No,” said Lucas patiently. “I’m not talking about women in general, I’m talking about you.” He addressed her directly. “You were born into the sort of wealthy, privileged background most people, people like me, can only dream about. You’ve never had to work to get where you are. That sense of…entitlement…is that the right word in English?” he asked Megan coyly.

“It could be,” said the host.

“Well, it’s reflected in your attitude to business, to competition.”

“How?” said Honor. “That’s an outrageous accusation!”

“Well, let’s take your guest list,” said Lucas. “Talk about elitist. Tell me, are people without titles actually permitted to book into Palmers?”

From that point on the interview degenerated into little more than a mud-slinging match, albeit one that made for damned
good radio. Honor accused Lucas of sexism, narcissism, and of cynically playing his “poor Spanish farm boy made good” card to try to glean public sympathy, when all he was really doing was buying and bribing his way into a community that didn’t want him with Anton Tisch’s limitless money, and doing his best to bully her out of business.

Lucas hit back that Honor was not just a snob but a racist who was terrified of competition. “Name one black guest staying at Palmers today,” he challenged her. “Just one!”

By the time Megan had finished her summing up and thanks and the light had once more switched from red to green, Honor had already ripped off her headphones and was storming furiously toward the elevator lobby.

“Hey, come on.” Reaching her right before the doors opened, Lucas put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be a bad sport. Admit it, you kind of had fun in there. Like a little terrier with a bone.” He shook his head from side to side and made growling noises, but Honor looked far from amused.

“This may be a game to you, Lucas,” she said, still shivering in her thin top. “But it’s my life. My family. Although obviously family isn’t a concept that means much to a guy like you.”

The smile died on Lucas’s lips. Wedging his body in the door, he stopped the elevator doors from closing.

“You know nothing about my family,” he said, glaring at her with eyes that were suddenly quite murderous. “You know nothing about the real world at all, you spoiled little beetch.” As always, when he was angry, his Spanish accent became more pronounced. “My mother has lived hand to mouth all her life.”

“Spare me the sob story,” said Honor coldly. “Sell that shit to one of your bimbos who’s stupid enough to buy it.”

“Maybe I’ll try your sister,” said Lucas nastily. “I don’t doubt she’s stupid, but at least she looks like a fucking woman.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Honor, feeling herself blushing. She was still horribly sensitive about her physical appearance.

“It means I wouldn’t be surprised to find you’ve got a bigger dick than your boyfriend,” said Lucas, twisting the knife. “Maybe you should think about Karis Carter and her kids before you go preaching to other people about family values.”

The blood drained from Honor’s face. “You know what? I’m getting tired of your fucking insinuations. If you have something to say about me and Devon, why don’t you come right out and say it?”

“Because I don’t have to,” said Lucas. “That’s why. Because you know. And I know.”

Stepping back, he allowed the elevator doors to creak slowly shut.

Back at Palmers, Sian Doyle was examining her reflection in the grimy, cracked mirror of the communal staff bathroom.

“Shit,” she sighed. The shadows under her eyes were as deep purple as overripe plums, and her complexion, pale at the best of times, was so washed out with exhaustion that she looked as white as one of the hotel sheets that she seemed to spend her life washing.

Delving into her makeup bag for some concealer—screw Touche Éclat, she needed fucking industrial-strength whitewash to cover those eye bags—she set about trying to make herself look presentable. Tonight she was going to her first Hamptons house party with Rhiannon, another girl from work. It wouldn’t work to turn up looking like something out of
Night of the Living Dead
.

Though it pained her to admit it, Taneesha had been dead right about the drudgery of hotel work. Working at Palmers had
sounded glamorous on paper, but the reality was endless, mindless hours spent stripping and making beds, carrying loads of laundry so heavy that she’d developed permanent backache, and scrubbing out other people’s filthy bathrooms. For such rich and supposedly upper-class people, the Palmers guests had some pretty disgusting habits.

Most nights she finished work too tired to even think about going out. On the rare evenings she forced herself to make the effort, she usually regretted it once she saw the prices in the upscale East Hampton bars. Three bucks for a Diet Coke! How could anyone afford to live here? As for networking, so far the closest she’d come to rubbing shoulders with any celebrities was glimpsing Princess Mette-Marit of Norway across a crowded breakfast room and picking up wet towels from Tina Palmer’s bathroom floor. Hardly the sort of life-changing interaction she’d been hoping for. Washing her hands, she began foraging for a clean towel among the dirty heap by the shower. Man, this bathroom was a dump. Palmers itself was idyllic, its polished oak floors and candlelit corridors overflowing with vases of lilies and jasmine and dog rose, but the staff quarters, tucked away behind the garages at the rear of the hotel (right next to the garbage cans—nice) were horribly cramped. Segregated by sex, the girls slept three to a room, with two rooms sharing a single, poky bathroom. An ancient and very temperamental shower took up most of the space, leaving only one tiny wall-mounted cupboard for toiletries. Needless to say this didn’t go far among six teenage girls, and the overflow of makeup, tampons, and other feminine detritus littered every available surface, including the floor.