Do Not Disturb (12 page)

“Shhhh,” he whispered, gently stroking her hair as her sobs became stronger and more violent. “What is it, my darling? What’s the matter? Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head, wiping the tears away almost angrily with the back of her hand.

“No,” she said. “You were fine. You were lovely. You are lovely. I didn’t…” She was still struggling to get her breath, she’d
been crying so hard, and was obviously having trouble getting the words out. “I didn’t want you to see it.”

“See what?” he said gently.

“How much I love you.” Biting down on her trembling lower lip, she looked like a lost and frightened little girl. Devon felt a surge of love and protectiveness flood over him, tinged with the slightly less noble feeling of triumph. “How much I don’t want you to go away from me. Ever.”

It all came out then: the feelings she’d tried so hard to hide from him yesterday, Tina’s phone call, her deep, profound unhappiness about her father and his continued refusal to see her.

“It’s OK, baby.” Holding her, he listened patiently while all the stress of the past months came pouring out.

“No,” Honor shook her head again. “It’s not. It’s not OK, Devon. Palmers is a mess. I thought I could just come in here and fix everything, but I can’t. It’s going to take years, and the whole town’s against me. They all think I ripped Dad off.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” said Devon, who knew that it was but didn’t want to hurt her. If anything, the East Hampton gossips were even more small-minded and belligerent than their Boston counterparts.

“It is true!” Honor wailed. “And now you’re leaving me, and I need you, and I don’t want to need you; I don’t want to need anyone.”

“Shhh.” He stopped her with a kiss. “I need you too. I do. And I’m not leaving you. I have to go back home, but I’m gonna get out here to see you. Regularly.”

“But how?” Try as she might she couldn’t seem to stop her bottom lip from wobbling again. What was she, six? “You have a job. You have a wife, a family, a whole life in Boston. And I have Palmers. I can’t leave.”

“I know,” he said. “I know all that. But you just have to trust me. We’ll find a way. I know your old man let you down and you’ve had to learn to deal with everything, with Palmers and
your sister and all this shit on your own. But those days are gone now, Honor. You have me. You’ll always have me, I promise.”

He sounded so strong and so reassuring she longed to believe him.

“Now get dressed, and get on the phone,” he said, pulling her up to her feet. “Whatever you have on your schedule today, cancel it.”

Honor was about to protest, but he held up his hand for silence, and for some reason she found herself complying.

“Tell people you have the flu. Tell them whatever you want,” he said. “But for the next six hours, you’re mine and mine alone.”

“OK.” She smiled. “But we can’t spend the whole time…you know.”

“Fucking?” Devon laughed.

“I mean it,” said Honor. “I really need your advice about Palmers. Legal advice. The surveyors handed in their structural report last night, and it’s pretty grim reading.”

“You want to spend our last hours together going over a surveyors’ report?” He looked at her incredulously, then shook his head. “You love me, but you love Palmers more, right?”

Honor gave him her very best, most adoring smile. But she didn’t correct him.

A
RE YOU SURE
you don’t want me to stay a little longer?”

The girl loitering in the doorway of Lucas’s apartment fluttered her eyelashes and gave him the full force of the pouty, wide-eyed look that had made her the hottest model in London this season.

“Because I
really
don’t mind.”

Lucas, wearing only a white towel tied around his waist, marveled again at her incredible body, shown off to perfection in a pair of skinny jeans and a tight white sweater, and felt his resolve fraying at the edges. They’d been screwing all afternoon, but he reckoned he had more than enough energy for a third round if she did.

But no, he shouldn’t. It was the big Christmas party at the Cadogan tonight. Julia was probably already furious that he wasn’t at work right now—bossy, overbearing cow that she was.

“You’re sweet, Georgie,” he said, rubbing a hand against his stubble and realizing belatedly that he needed a shave before tonight as well. “But maybe next time, hey? Tonight’s a big night for me.”

The girl shrugged and kissed him on the cheek. “Your loss, Lucasito,” she said. Flicking her long blonde hair behind her,
she skipped off down the stairs, calling out, “Oh, and merry Christmas!” over her shoulder as she disappeared from view.

“Thanks,” sighed Lucas to himself. Walking back into the apartment, he shut the door behind him. “Merry Christmas to you too.”

He’d been in London for five months now, at the Cadogan for four of them, and had already made a considerable splash on the social scene. With his Heathcliff looks and moody confidence added to the intoxicating whiff of his dangerous other-side-of-the-tracks background, he was an immediate hit with all the well-bred Chelsea heiresses, who’d taken to hanging around the hotel like groupies, hoping to get a crack at him. His job at the Cadogan gave him instant access to London’s notoriously exclusive clubland, and to all outward appearances he appeared to have gained overnight acceptance among the city’s bright young things. Night after night he could be seen squiring the most eligible girls to Annabel’s and Tramp, and by day, in the rare hours when he wasn’t working, he was a familiar figure in the West End, tearing around the streets of Soho on his Ducati motorbike like a Spanish James Dean.

But beneath the veneer of glamour, the reality was that he was still only a small step above broke. Anton paid him a fair wage at the Cadogan and partially subsidized his bachelor pad on St. James’s, which was a godsend. But the crowd that Lucas moved in, a mixture of trust-fund brats, city whiz kids, and old-money aristocracy, all had disposable incomes to burn, and he was painfully aware of his own inadequate funds as he tried to keep up. Most of the men in his circle knew that he was struggling and, already jealous of his popularity with the It-girls and models that had swooned over them before Lucas showed up, responded by patronizing him socially. This, naturally, drove Lucas insane with rage, and he nursed his wounded pride like a stuck bull. If they’d openly challenged him, he’d have been able to hit back. But in typically British style, their exclusion of
Lucas was far more subtle and insidious than that. So a group of Goldman bankers would happily share a table with him at a restaurant or club, and might even invite him to drinks parties. But when it came to shooting weekends at Blenheim or boys-only ski breaks to Verbier, Lucas only ever heard about it after the fact. Not that he could have afforded to go anyway, but it would have been nice to be asked. In Lausanne, the European rich kids had accepted him without reservation. But British snobbery, he was beginning to discover, was of quite a different order. Outwardly, he pretended not to care about being snubbed. Inside, however, he was more determined than ever to beat the British bastards at their own game, and it wasn’t long before he was living well beyond his means.

Despite these irritating problems, he had grudgingly come to enjoy London. Though he still bitched about the weather and the cost of living (black cabs in particular were astronomical, although he couldn’t seem to break himself of the habit) he had to admit that the city was magically transformed at Christmastime. Everywhere he went, shop windows were illuminated with brightly colored displays, and the old Victorian street lamps were adorned with mini Christmas trees, simply lit in white, that gave the darkening afternoons a cozy, Dickensian glow. From his bachelor pad Lucas could see the shoppers darting to and fro between Fortnum’s and the Burlington Arcade, stocking up on presents and candies and every possible variety of ribbons, bows, and rolls of shiny metallic paper to wrap them all up in. Though the promised snow had yet to materialize, the frost transformed the park every night into a gray-white wonderland, making Lucas’s early-morning walk to work one of the highlights of his day.

Unfortunately, some days it was the
only
highlight. On top of the pressure of his unpaid credit card bills and ever-growing overdraft, recently his work at the Cadogan had become intensely stressful too. More often than not, the stress took human form in the formidable, sturdy shape of Julia Brett-Sadler.

Relations between Lucas and his boss had begun as strained, then deteriorated steadily over the next few months to their current status of raging, open hostility.

Julia despised Lucas. She considered her new undermanager arrogant to the point of insubordination, and she wasn’t the only one. Ever since he’d fucked some moron on the editorial desk at
Tatler
and managed to get himself named as London’s fifth-most-eligible bachelor, he seemed to have become even more full of himself, treating the Cadogan like his own private fiefdom—although even Julia had to admit that, most of the time, he worked like a dog. Nevertheless, she was seething with Anton for appointing him in the first place without consulting her. Lucas was so underqualified it was laughable. But instead of biding his time and trying to learn something constructive from more experienced professionals like her, he’d blundered in like a bull in a china shop, deliberately fanning the flames of Julia’s anger by wearing his contempt for her and the other senior staff firmly on his sleeve.

For his part, Lucas resented Julia for routinely dismissing all his suggestions for change or improvements at the hotel. It didn’t occur to him that perhaps a constant stream of criticism and invective might not be the best way to win her over to his point of view. With any other woman he’d have been able to flirt his way out of trouble. But Julia was such a battle-ax, she’d never displayed so much as a hint of sexual interest in him. Though he wouldn’t admit it, even to himself, this also annoyed Lucas intensely.

Unfortunately, however, she was his boss, for now anyway, and he couldn’t afford to lose this job. Which meant that, whether he liked it or not, her word was law. He had no choice but to sit back and watch as, one by one, his ideas and projects got sidelined. It was beyond depressing.

He could have run to Anton about it, of course. But that would have made him look weak and immature and he knew it.
Besides, Anton Tisch had more important things on his mind than the problems of one of his lowliest undermanagers.

No. It was up to Lucas to outsmart Julia. But so far, he’d gotten precisely nowhere.

Sighing, he loosened his towel and threw it down onto the sofa before wandering naked into the bathroom. Like the rest of the apartment, it was decorated in classic bachelor style, with lots of black granite and chrome crammed into a small but elegantly masculine space. There was no bathtub, just a huge shower and an ornate Oriental floor-to-ceiling mirror that Lucas looked in now, examining his reflection.

He was aware he was handsome—he wasn’t blind—but he wasn’t vain in the sense of being focused on his good looks. He merely acknowledged them as another fact of his existence, like being tall or good at languages. If anything, he had a tendency to be critical of himself physically, particularly if he felt his strength faltering as it had been recently. Since taking the Cadogan job, he hadn’t had any free time to go to the gym. Mostly it was seventeen- or eighteen-hour days, squeezing the girls in in between. By the time he got home he hadn’t an ounce of energy left for lifting weights.

Still, there was no time to worry about that now. The party officially kicked off in less than three hours’ time. He’d better get a move on.

Over at the Cadogan, Julia was rushing around like a blue-assed fly getting everything ready, and silently cursing Lucas.

“For God’s sake, Matt,” she could be heard berating the poor head barman. “People don’t want to drink vodka out of a penis. Whose idea was this monstrosity?”

She pointed to an ice sculpture of cupid, three feet high, through which a steady trickle of neat vodka was already flowing, exiting via the frostily shriveled appendage.