Do Not Disturb (26 page)

Rude son of a bitch
, thought Lucas. The only thing that made Lucille Malone antsy was when the cucumber-sized vibrator she used to compensate for her husband’s inadequacies ran out of batteries.

Though he feigned indifference, it really got under his skin the way the locals continued to look down on him socially. Whether it was because he was Spanish or working class or simply because his name wasn’t Palmer, he didn’t know. But it bugged the crap out of him.

“You must be pleased with today’s turnout,” said Devon.

Privately, like his friend Mike, Devon also considered Lucas to be little better than a third-rate dago waiter who’d gotten lucky. And he was livid about the vicious things he’d said about Honor in that horrible, one-sided interview. But unlike Malone, he knew how to be diplomatic.

“I
am
pleased,” said Lucas. “And Anton’s thrilled. I hope, now that we’re up and running, we’ll be seen to have answered some of our critics. She’s beautiful, no?” He pointed behind him to the cathedral-like splendor of the Herrick’s facade, its glass glinting in the sunlight and sending rays ricocheting off the Gucci sunglasses of the partygoers.

Devon smiled patronizingly. “If you like that sort of thing, I suppose.”

“You don’t?” Lucas maintained a stiff smile, but inside he was seething. Why couldn’t these people give credit where it was so clearly due?

“Perhaps it’s a cultural difference,” said Devon, unwittingly adding insult to injury. “Our concept of beauty is rather different from yours and Mr. Tisch’s, I suspect. It’s a question of what one grew up with. What one was born to, if you like.”

Lucas didn’t like. Who did this asshole think he was, the Prince of fucking Wales?

“How’s Lola doing?” he asked, delighted to see a cloud of distrust and disapproval fall immediately over Devon’s face. “I was hoping she might be here today.”

Lucas and Lola had enjoyed a brief fling last summer, much to Devon’s fury, but it had fizzled out once she returned to Boston. The last thing Devon wanted was a rerun this year. Quite apart from his social unsuitability, Lucas was far too old for her and a well-known playboy. She should be meeting eligible boys her own age.

“She’s in the city this weekend,” said Devon tersely. “Staying with friends. Why?”

“Oh, no reason. She’s a terrific girl, that’s all,” said Lucas, twisting the knife. “You must be proud.”

“I am,” said Devon, with a grimace worthy of someone undergoing root canal surgery without anesthetic. “I’d hate to see her get hurt or throw away her future…”

“On someone like me?” Lucas smiled sweetly.

“I was going to say, over a relationship that can’t possibly go anywhere,” said Devon.

“Not all relationships have to go somewhere, do they?” said Lucas. “I mean, if someone were married, say, and had a long-term mistress on the side, that arrangement might work very well for everybody, without it having to
go
anywhere. Don’t you think?”

Devon’s eyes narrowed. Was that a veiled reference to him and Honor?

“Lola’s still only eighteen,” he said gruffly. “You know very well that it’s inappropriate, Lucas.”

Lucas shrugged calmly. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I do need someone a little more worldly. Miss Palmer, perhaps? She’s single.”

“Honor?” Devon’s teeth ground audibly. “Don’t be preposterous.”

Lucas laughed. “Please. I didn’t mean
Honor
,” he said scathingly. “I wouldn’t fuck that bull dyke with somebody else’s dick. No, I’m talking about the other Miss Palmer. The sexy one. Over there.”

Devon spun around. Oh Christ, poor Honor. That was all she needed.

Tina, in her trademark cutoff denim hot pants and boots, her newly augmented breasts covered only by the tiniest of waistcoats—no shirt—was fawning over Anton like a groupie at a rock concert.

“Wow, Mr. Tisch, I gotta hand it to you. This place is awesome,” she gushed. “How on earth d’you get it built so fast?”

Anton smiled and sucked in his paunch as the paps began snapping the two of them together.

“Please. It’s Anton,” he purred. “And you know, when you’ve built as many hotels as I have, these things become rather second nature, Miss Palmer.”

“Call me Tina,” said Tina, resting one red-taloned hand on his arm and leaning even farther forward, the better to show off her jaw-dropping cleavage.

She’d decided to come out to the Hamptons on a whim. Well, sort of a whim. Having finally broken up with Dick Grate, she’d been caught in bed with the CEO of Paramount a few days ago by the guy’s deeply unimpressed wife, and it had all gotten a little ugly. The old battle-ax had too much to lose to expose her husband publicly, but she’d sure as hell gotten her pound of flesh in private. When Mr. Paramount suggested that Tina might like to skip town for a month or so while the marital heat died down—adding weight to his suggestion with the two hundred grand worth of Neil Lane diamonds that dangled from her wrists now—she simply hadn’t the heart to refuse him.

Besides, having seen the amount of press Honor and Palmers had been getting recently (though why anyone should be interested in a tedious old hotel, Tina had no idea) she was itching to get in on the action. She was still a part owner of Palmers, after all. And the Herrick’s opening party was
the
hottest ticket in New York this weekend.

Having finally managed to extricate herself from her conversation with yet another journalist, Honor seized her chance to casually wander over to Devon.

“Have you seen who’s here?” he whispered, kissing her on both cheeks.

“You mean Magnus Haakenson? Yeah, I saw,” she whispered back. “If Lucas got any smugger about it he’d disappear up his own asshole.”

“Really, darling,” Devon frowned, “your language is appalling. But I wasn’t talking about Magnus. Look over there.” He nodded toward Tina.

Honor went white. There was her sister, looking cheap as usual, all over Anton Tisch like shrink-wrap. “Oh. My. God,” she whispered. “What the hell is she doing here?”

“Sizing up her next victim, by the look of it,” said Devon.

“Don’t joke.” Honor shuddered.

“I’m not joking,” said Devon. “Tisch has everything your sister looks for in a man, after all. Money. Money,” he counted them off on his fingers, “and, oh yes, money. If he weren’t such a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work, I might even feel sorry for the guy. Uh oh.” Stepping back from Honor, he smiled over her head and started waving enthusiastically into the middle distance. “It’s Don Hammond from the church council. I’d better go.”

No sooner had he scuttled off than Honor felt a tap on her back. Expecting another journalist, she fixed on her best PR smile, but replaced it with a glare when she found herself face-to-face with Lucas.

“I must say, I’m half surprised you made it,” he gloated. “It can’t have been easy for you.” He waved at the swarming sea of VIPs triumphantly.

“On the contrary,” said Honor, “it’s a welcome distraction. We’ve been so busy at Palmers I haven’t had a second to relax. Besides, there’s nothing I like better than helping your boss to waste his money. How much did all this cost, anyway?” She gestured around her at the free-flowing champagne and the hundreds of open mouths devouring Russian caviar blini, which must have cost at least twenty dollars a pop, as if they were Oreos.

“Looks like your sister’s asking Anton the very same question as we speak,” said Lucas. Tina was flirting so outrageously now, her back arched and her improbable chest thrust forward like an exploding airbag, that Honor couldn’t help but blush for her.

“Ah. Listen.” Grinning, Lucas cupped his hand to his ear as Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” came thumping through the state-of-the-art outdoor Bose speakers. “They’re playing her song.”

Honor shot him a look of purest hatred. Lucas noticed again what incredible, Kryptonite-green eyes she had, and how they
looked even more striking when lit up with anger, as they were now. Shame about the rest of her. At least she was wearing a dress, a welcome change from all those gruesomely butch pantsuits and boxy jackets, but even today’s brushed gray silk number was conservative enough for an off-duty nun. Why did she go to such lengths to hide herself? He wasn’t into scrawny girls, but even he had to grudgingly admit that Honor had good legs and a lovely tapered waist, so small that his fingertips could probably meet around it, in the unlikely event that he ever got to touch her. What a waste, covering it up like that.

Her sister might be soft on the outside, but you could tell at a glance that Tina was hard as nails beneath all that womanly display of flesh. Honor, Lucas imagined, was the reverse. He wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that her “fuck you” exterior masked a heart of pure marshmallow. There was a woman in there somewhere, he was sure of it. She just needed a real man to bring her out—not a crusty old fart like Devon Carter.

“That
Vogue
interview you did was a crock of shit, by the way,” said Honor, anxious to steer the conversation away from Tina.

Lucas shrugged. “After all the libelous things you’ve said about me and my hotel, you’re hardly in a position to throw stones.”

“Please,” sneered Honor. “It’s Tisch’s hotel, not yours. You’re just a paid employee. The way you talk about it, anyone would think you’d designed the place yourself and built it brick by brick.”

Now it was Lucas’s turn to look daggers. He was well aware that he was only the Herrick’s manager, while Honor owned Palmers outright. He tried not to let this difference in status rattle him. After all, by any objective standard he was incredibly lucky to have climbed so far at such an early stage in his career. And yet it did rankle that his dream of owning his own
hotel—his Luxe—remained years away, while Honor had had Palmers handed to her on a plate. Or rather, she’d snatched the plate out of her own father’s hands while the poor bastard was too incapacitated to stop her.

“May I interrupt?”

A smiling, middle-aged woman in wide-leg sailor trousers and a blue blouse with a huge pussycat bow at the neck inserted herself between Honor and Lucas, handing each of them a business card. “Megan Grier,
Talk Today
. I’m a producer at NPR,” she chirruped. “I’d really love to get the two of you on my show. That Five-Star Wars thing in
Vogue
was terrific.” She smiled at Lucas. “Exactly the sort of real-life story we’re looking for.”

“No thanks,” said Honor, tersely. These radio talk show hosts were all sweetness and light when they met you, but as soon as they got you on air, live, they ripped into you with all the balance and compassion of a great white shark in a dolphin sanctuary. “I know your show, and I don’t feel it fits with Palmers’ profile.”

“Which is what, exactly?” said Lucas, still smarting from the “paid employee” jibe. “Stuffy, over-the-hill small-mindedness?”

Before Honor could think of a comeback, he’d turned his most flirtatious smile on Miss Grier. “I’d love to come on. It’d be great publicity for the Herrick, and I’d be happy to explain to your listeners exactly how we’ve eclipsed Palmers as the hotel of choice in East Hampton.”

“Terrific,” said Megan, returning Lucas’s smile. “But we would really need a debate. I’m afraid you’d both have to be there to make it work.” She looked at Honor, who was busy choking on her martini olive.

Eclipsed Palmers indeed!

“That’s a shame,” said Lucas to Megan, shaking his head. “It seems Miss Palmer is too frightened to put her money where her mouth is. She’s used to being the biggest fish in this particular little pond, you see, and now she feels out of her depth.”

Honor knew it was childish, that she shouldn’t rise to his schoolboy taunting. But something about his revoltingly handsome, cocky, chauvinistic face pushed her over the edge.

“Fine,” she spluttered, dislodging the offending olive at last from her esophagus. “I’m game, Miss Grier. Name the day.”

A few minutes later, after Lucas had disappeared to attend to his other guests, Tina popped up beside Honor, smiling from ear to ear like a simpleton.

“Boo!” she giggled. “Why the long face?”

“Hmm,” said Honor. “Well now, let me see. I’m at a party to celebrate the launch of a hotel whose sole purpose is to put our hotel out of business. I’m being harassed by the most objectionable, arrogant, sexist asshole ever to walk the face of the earth—with whom I now have to do battle on live fucking radio, by the way, with a host who clearly wants to jump his bones. And to cap it all off, my publicity whore sister shows up, without a word of warning, and starts prostituting herself to the very man who has spent the last year and a half doing his utmost to destroy what’s left of our family.”

“Jeez,” Tina rolled her eyes, “lighten up, would you? Are you on your period or something?”

“What are you doing here, T?” Honor’s voice rose in exasperation. “And what were you thinking, flirting with Anton Tisch like that? Don’t you have any fucking shame?”

“Shame?” Tina looked blank. “About what? Anyway, I wasn’t flirting with him. We were talking, that’s all. He’s a very interesting guy.”

“He’s trying to ruin us!”

“Oh, fiddlesticks. Stop being so melodramatic,” said Tina dismissively. “He’s a hotelier and he opened a hotel here. So what?” She looked around her admiringly. “I actually quite like it. I might book in myself, if Anton’ll give me a decent rate.”

“You will not!” said Honor furiously.

“I was joking.” Tina looked at her like she had a screw loose. “You know, joke? Ha-ha? Of course I’ll be staying at Palmers. It’s free. Who knows, I might even hang around for a while. Things are a lot more interesting around here than they used to be.”

Honor followed her gaze some thirty-odd feet away, to where Lucas and Anton stood huddled deep in conversation.

“Now that is a good-looking man,” sighed Tina, whistling through her teeth.

“You are kidding me. Right?” said Honor. “Lucas? Have you read the things he’s been saying about me and Dad in the press?”

“Yeah,” said Tina absently, still drooling like a puppy. “He can be pretty harsh, I guess. But then so can you.”

“Promise me you won’t go near him.” Honor grabbed her by the arm. “Near either of them, in fact.”