Do Not Disturb (25 page)

Turning back to the clothes littering the bed, she settled on a gray brushed-silk, high-necked midi dress and suede kitten heels. Pulling them on, she moved over to her dressing table, where her very basic makeup kit—concealer, powder, and a swipe of bronzer for the cheeks—was laid out waiting. Thank God Devon would be there tonight for moral support. For once he’d be without Karis, who’d begged off this morning with a migraine, so she might actually be able to talk to him. The early, unsettled
days of their relationship were over now, and Honor felt quietly confident in his love and much more able to bear the long separations that she had been so distraught about in the beginning. She still occasionally daydreamed about marriage and children, but it had ceased to be an active topic of conversation between them, and they’d settled into the comfortable, cautious routine of long-term lovers.

She knew he wouldn’t be demonstrative with her tonight at the Herrick or anywhere in public. But she’d learned to read his briefly flashed smiles or winks of encouragement and to cherish these little signals of their secret bond without pushing him for more. Just knowing he was there this evening would help make Lucas’s arrogance and constant baiting more bearable.

Ugh. Lucas. Dabbing a blob of Vaseline onto her lips and eyelids, she tried to push the image of his self-satisfied, handsome face from her mind. She was used to him taking potshots at her in the press, but that last
Vogue
piece had really pissed her off. Palmers had been in business in East Hampton for the better part of a century. Who the fuck was he, two months after opening his doors, to imply that they were finished? Over the past year, the personal animosity between Honor and Lucas had grown like a particularly virulent cancer, fueled by the public PR battle and the social tensions locally. Although the official line was that everybody in the Hamptons hated Lucas and his ghastly hotel and sided with Honor, at least half of the local population (the female half) were unwilling to erase him completely from their address books. You didn’t tell Brad Pitt you were washing your hair, however appallingly he may have treated poor Jennifer Aniston. Lucas was quite simply too sexy to be blackballed, which meant he and Honor still ran into each other occasionally at dinner parties and events. More often than not, such meetings resulted in fireworks.

But tonight would have to be different. However much she loathed him, this was a very public event, and Honor knew she
must keep a lid on her temper. Hopefully Devon could help her with that as well.

Over at the Herrick, Anton Tisch carefully unwrapped another Rococo Belgian chocolate and, leaning down, placed it lovingly into the open mouth of his Great Dane, Mitzi.

“Good girl,” he cooed, bending his face low over the dog’s like a doting parent. “Who’s my precious baby girl, hmmm?” He was sprawled out on the daybed in the newly finished Daria suite (named after his mother), watching one of the homemade pornos he’d brought with him from Geneva. One of the many advantages of having one’s own plane was being able to bring sensitive items of baggage—including tapes from the library that he liked to think of as a sort of virtual harem—without some underling from airport security rifling through them.

Out in the grounds, the launch party was already in full swing. Anton had flown out to the States especially to be here, and soon he’d have to put in an appearance. Not yet, though. Not until he’d come. Petting his beloved dog with his left hand, his right was thrust down his suit pants, rhythmically rubbing his throbbing erection.

God, it felt good. He was pretty close now.

An enthusiastic amateur filmmaker, over the last ten years Anton had built up an extensive video collection of himself having sex with a variety of different women. A true obsessive-compulsive, he’d cataloged the footage alphabetically by the girls’ first names: the long shelf in his Geneva screening room ran all the way from Abigail to Zoe. Today he was enjoying some five-year-old footage of Heidi, the bitch who’d done so much to damage his reputation by selling her story to the
Evening Standard
a year and a half ago.

Looking back at it now, sex with Heidi had actually been pretty average. Despite being an exotic dancer back then, she’d always been disappointingly prissy in bed, reluctant even
to let him do her from behind and absolutely vetoing anal. Nonetheless, watching the film now still gave him a powerful erotic thrill. As with all the other lovers he filmed, Anton had assured Heidi that he’d destroyed the tapes years ago. Knowing that, without her knowledge, he could access her naked body whenever he felt like it—rewinding and freezing the frame on her spread legs and open, inviting cunt whenever he wanted to, for his own private pleasure—felt like a sort of mental rape. Rubbing his groin faster and faster, he felt his excitement building, as much from the sensation of revenge as from the titillation of the images themselves.

“Yeaaah,” he moaned, snarling at the screen as he finally came, his left hand gripping involuntarily tighter onto Mitzi’s collar while his right hand cupped his twitching balls. “Fuck you, you fucking whore.”

Grabbing a couple of Kleenex from the box by his side, he gave himself a perfunctory wipe and zipped up his pants. Then, turning off the flat-screen TV, he ruffled Mitzi’s fur and got to his feet. “Daddy won’t be long,” he cooed, dropping another chocolate into the dog’s slavering mouth, and heading for the door.

Once outside, he strolled around the grounds of his new hotel, watching the growing crowd with quiet satisfaction. He’d been right to hire Lucas. The boy had done a fantastic job under difficult circumstances, and today’s launch party was the culmination of sixteen months of effort. It was the sort of glorious early summer’s day that could make even the most lackluster of gardens look beautiful, and the Herrick’s grounds were anything but lackluster. An exquisite Japanese water garden, complete with koi pond and a twenty-five-foot waterfall, dominated the landscape, adding to the overall air of tranquility and peacefulness. There were no garish flowers here, none of the riotous candy-pink blossoms so ubiquitous elsewhere in the Hamptons at this time of year. Instead, the Herrick designers had gone for a consciously muted palette of greens and whites, offset with
softly winding paths of gray slate, and the occasional smooth black granite sculpture. It was a restfulness that mirrored the clean lines of the hotel itself with its curved glass frontage, which glinted and gleamed in the sunlight now like the overpolished windshield of a new car.

Yes, it was modernist. Very. But only a dyed-in-the-wool philistine could deny its serene beauty. Certainly it had exceeded Anton’s own expectations. He’d seen thousands of pictures during construction, but they were nothing compared to its beauty in the flesh.

Despite his satisfaction, he felt tired. Having flown into New York yesterday afternoon, he hadn’t gotten out to East Hampton until nearly ten at night but had insisted on meeting all the staff personally, then getting a two-hour rundown from Lucas on the plans for the launch party before he finally went to bed.

“More champagne, sir?” A pretty uniformed waitress offered him a flute of Cristal from a glinting silver tray.

“Thank you.” Stifling a yawn, he swapped his empty glass for a full one. Across the lawn he could see Lucas, surrounded by a gaggle of journalists. Since the
Vogue
article on the Herrick’s rivalry with Palmers—Five-Star Wars they’d called it, which Anton thought was rather good—media interest in both the hotel and Lucas personally had risen exponentially. This was good for business, of course, and was exactly what he had hoped for when he hired Lucas. But now that it was actually happening, ironically, he found it annoying. Lucas was getting all the press attention, not to mention his dick sucked by the prettiest girls, while he, the owner and inspiration behind the Herrick, seemed to be practically invisible. There must be more than five hundred people here, many of them genuine A-listers, yet still the hacks swarmed around Lucas as if he were the big draw.

The guest list was certainly impressive. Billy Joel had shown up with his new, very young wife, as had the Seinfelds, and even Martha Stewart, who normally turned down all invitations that
were even semipublic. But the biggest coup of all had undoubtedly been getting Magnus Haakenson, the Danish action star and Hollywood’s latest Next Big Thing, not just to come to the party but to book himself and his entourage into the hotel for a four-night stay. Honor Palmer must surely be crying into her cocktail over that one.

Honor, in fact, had yet to hear the bad news about Magnus. No sooner had she stepped out of her limo and wandered into the gardens than the paparazzi swooped like vultures, their flashbulbs popping.

“Miss Palmer. We weren’t sure we’d see you here.” A reporter Honor vaguely recognized from the
New York Times
society pages popped up at her side.

“But of course I’m here, John.” She smiled serenely, hoping her gray dress wasn’t washing her out too much. “It’s a beautiful evening; there’s free champagne. What’s not to love?”

“What about the comments Lucas Ruiz made about you in last month’s
Vogue
? You’re not offended?”

Honor waved her hand regally, as if swatting away a fly. “I don’t have time to read fashion magazines, I’m afraid,” she lied. She’d read Lucas’s poisonous quotes so many times now she could recite them backward in Hungarian. “I’m far too busy running the best hotel in America. Ah, Billy. How are you?”

More bulbs flashed as she strolled over to a waving Billy Joel, greeting him warmly with a kiss on both cheeks.

A few feet away, Devon was chatting to the chairman of the golf club. When he saw Honor, he shot her a furtive smile, which she returned equally cautiously. They both knew they’d have to be careful today. Lucas would be even more confident on his home turf, and he’d be watching Honor like a hawk. One slip and he’d strike at her like a rattlesnake.

Rather to Honor’s surprise, since his original barbed comment at Karis Carter’s birthday party last year, Lucas had made no further hints about her relationship with Devon, either to her face or, heaven forbid, in print. She was starting to think she must have misheard him that night or somehow misinterpreted what he’d said. She had been very drunk, after all, and it was deeply uncharacteristic of Lucas to let her off the hook about anything, never mind something as potentially explosive as her and Devon’s affair.

But her palms still started to sweat uncomfortably when she saw Lucas cutting through the crowd and making a beeline for Devon. What was he up to? Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. If only she were close enough to overhear what they were saying.

“Devon. Michael. Welcome.” In his white linen suit and pale-pink shirt, Lucas looked like more of a Miami playboy than ever, his teeth shining white and predatory against his deeply tanned skin when he smiled. “I trust you’re both having a good time?”

“Indeed,” said Devon stiffly.

“If you’ll excuse me.” Mike Malone, the chairman of the golf club, gave Lucas the sort of look he normally reserved for things found stuck to the bottom of his shoe. “I’d better go and join my wife. She gets pretty antsy if I desert her for too long.”