Do Not Disturb
Authors: Tilly Bagshawe
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Contemporary Women
Also by Tilly Bagshawe
Fame
Flawless
Scandalous
Adored
Showdown
Sidney Sheldon’s Mistress of the Game
Sidney Sheldon’s Angel of the Dark
Sidney Sheldon’s After the Darkness
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
First published in 2008.
Copyright © 2013 Tilly Bagshawe
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance
PO Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612186955
ISBN-10: 1612186955
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012943131
To my parents, Nick and Daphne Bagshawe.
Whenever I count my blessings, you’re first on the list.
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
O
VER MY DEAD
body! D’you hear me? You’ll take Palmers over my dead body, you scheming, greedy little—”
A fit of wheezing stopped Trey Palmer from finishing his sentence. But Honor, his eldest daughter, had already gotten the gist. Alzheimer’s may have cruelly eaten away at his mental faculties and old age ravaged his once-enviable physique, but his bitterness was as razor sharp as ever.
“Mr. Palmer, please, don’t upset yourself,” said the lawyer. Sam Brannagan had sat through more family disputes than he could remember, many of them in this very room. With its dark oak-paneled walls and reassuringly expensive soft furnishings it was all very old-school Bostonian—an appropriate setting for internecine warfare if ever there was one.
Watching the old man grapple with his oxygen mask while he glared at his hapless daughter, however, Sam didn’t think he’d ever seen quite as much open hatred as he’d witnessed today. Looking around the room at the eager, greedy faces turned toward him, he felt intensely depressed.
Honor Palmer, who had convened today’s meeting, was the only decent one among them. But even she was not exactly warm and cuddly. With her spiky, boyish hair, aquiline features, and
tiny, taut athlete’s body, the newly minted Harvard Law graduate looked beautiful but forbidding. Everything about her, from her four-inch Louboutins and starkly formal black Prada pantsuit to her low, authoritative voice and impressive grasp of the complex legal issues being discussed, betrayed a steeliness unusual in one so young. Especially a woman.
As for the rest of them—crowded into his office, huddled around the old man like sharks circling a wounded seal—they made his stomach churn.
There was Tina, Honor’s younger sister, looking bored in the corner, glancing pointedly at her Chopard diamond watch. Also beautiful, but in a polar opposite way from her sister: blonde, blowsy, and buxom were the three words that most readily sprang to mind. Tina looked like she’d picked up her wardrobe from Hookers-R-Us. Even at an important legal meeting like this, Boston’s answer to Paris Hilton had shown up in a frayed denim skirt that barely covered her crotch and a pink man’s shirt tied beneath her breasts to reveal a mind-boggling expanse of cleavage. From the look of distaste on her face as she listened to her father’s phlegmy spluttering, it was clear she had no sympathy for him; nor did she seem remotely interested in her sister’s attempts to save them all from financial ruin.
Even more see-through were the Fosters. Jacob, a distant cousin from Omaha, and his wife, had heard in the press about Trey’s Alzheimer’s and the threat to his empire and crawled out of the woodwork to see what they could scavenge. Both wore ostentatious crosses and proclaimed themselves loudly to be born-again Christians, but every reference to Trey’s frozen bank accounts had them salivating like starving puppies. They’d spent most of today’s meeting glowering disapprovingly at Lise, Trey’s bimbo wifelette, whom they wrongly considered to be their key rival for the family inheritance.
Lise might give Lil’ Kim a run for her money in the slutty dressing stakes, but unlike the Fosters, she did at least have the
advantage of being recognized by her husband. It was clear to Sam that neither Trey nor his daughters had ever set eyes on Cousin Jacob before in their lives.
On reflection, perhaps it was hardly surprising that they’d all shown up today. There was, after all, a lot at stake. The Palmers were one of the wealthiest, most prominent families in Boston and had been for three generations. Already rich when he emigrated from England, Trey’s great-grandfather had multiplied the family fortune fivefold, becoming one of the first great American hoteliers. His first hotel, the Cranley on Boston’s exclusive Newbury Street, made so much money that within a decade he’d opened two more: the King James Hotel in Manhattan and the now-legendary Palmers in East Hampton. By the time Trey’s father, Tertius Palmer, came into his inheritance, the family’s net worth was conservatively estimated at over ten million dollars. And that was in the fifties. Heaven only knew what it translated to in today’s money.
Like his father and grandfather before him, Tertius had been a naturally shrewd businessman. But whereas they had been expansionists, Tertius was a consolidator. Cashing in on the postwar real estate boom, he sold the original two hotels for an outrageous profit, which he went on to invest very successfully in the equity markets. Having hired a raft of stockbrokers to manage his portfolio, he was free to focus his own energies exclusively on the one hotel he hadn’t sold: Palmers. By the time of his death—the year before Honor was born—Palmers was widely considered to be the most exclusive, most desirable hotel in the world.
Honor and Tina grew up surrounded by reminders of its illustrious history. The hotel itself was like a second home to them. As little girls they could hardly contain themselves with excitement when, every summer, their mother, Laura, would help them pack their cases and they’d set off for three joyously long months of fun in East Hampton.
But when their mom died—Laura Palmer was killed in a car accident when her daughters were aged ten and eight, respectively—everything changed. Trey, unable to admit his grief for fear it might overwhelm him, had cut himself off emotionally from everything that reminded him of his wife and their former life together. This included not only his children, who needed him more than ever, but also Palmers. The hotel that had been the jewel in the Palmer family crown for half a century rapidly lost its premier status as Trey started spending less and less time there.
Now, some thirteen years later, it had become little more than another dime-a-dozen “luxury” hotel, perhaps even a little shabbier than most of its rivals. If it hadn’t been for the Palmer fortune propping it up, and for its still-legendary name, it would doubtless have closed years ago.
Honor took a deep breath to calm herself and gazed out the window. She knew that what she was doing was right. Taking control of her dad’s assets was the only way to save Palmers and what little was left of her once-immense inheritance. But she still couldn’t look Trey in the eye. Even after all these years, his dislike and distrust of her still hurt her very deeply.
Ironically, Brannagan’s offices were on Newbury Street, almost directly opposite what had once been the Cranley hotel and was now a souped-up shopping mall. It was June, the schools had just got out for summer, and the place was busy. Students in shorts and varsity T-shirts stood around in groups laughing, sipping their Frappuccinos in the courtyard café out front, while wealthy women hurried past them into the designer stores, no doubt looking for bargains in the summer sales.
They all seemed to be having so much fun. For a fleeting moment, Honor wished she were down there too, frittering away
her trust fund like she didn’t have a care in the world. That was how Tina lived her life, after all, along with most of the other vacuous Boston rich kids they’d grown up with. So why not her?
But her stepmother’s whining, wheedling voice soon dragged her back to reality.
“It’s outrageous, Mr. Brannagan,” Lise was saying, doing her best to look hard done by, which wasn’t easy given the twenty-odd carats of diamonds scattered generously about her person. “Just because my baby is sick,” she placed a skinny, red-taloned hand on Trey’s wizened leg, “these vultures are trying to move in and take advantage.”
“Oh, please,” said Honor witheringly. Her voice was low and husky, making her seem even more masculine. “Dad’s nobody’s ‘baby.’ And if anyone’s the vulture here, it’s you.”
Though officially her stepmother, Lise was actually only a couple of years Honor’s senior. A former flight attendant with inflated Angelina Jolie lips and hair extensions that must weigh more than she did, she was the fourth bimbo Trey had married in the last twelve years, in the vain hope that one of them might bear him his longed-for son.