Do Not Disturb (57 page)

“Palmers isn’t done yet, whatever people might think. I’m gonna rebuild.”

Lucas didn’t say anything, scared of putting his foot in it again. Privately he thought she hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of convincing anyone to fund her little pipe dream. Not with the Herrick riding high less than two blocks away and now his new Luxe hot on its heels. Being a boutique, and modest in scale, he hoped to have the place built and open within a year, assuming he found a new, supportive partner.

“How are things with you and Petra?” he said, steering the conversation back to their mutual enemies.

Honor rolled her eyes. “Dreadful. That bitch has been out to get me from day one,” she said, wriggling around in an effort to get comfortable in the heat of Lucas’s arms. “She’s even worse than you were.”

“Thanks a lot,” said Lucas.

He told her about his own long-running feud with Petra and his theory that Anton hired her as a deliberate, final slap in the face to him.

“If I were you, I’d have fought back,” said Honor. “Set the record straight in the media about all this stuff. Or, failing that, gone over to the bastard’s house with a baseball bat.”

“I’ve thought about it,” said Lucas, “believe me. In the early days I thought of little else. But then I realized: there’s no better revenge than success. Anton wanted to crush me, and he failed. Now I’m an owner, just like him. And I’m setting up shop right in his backyard. If I know the man at all, that’s causing him more pain right now than a baseball bat ever could. I’ll bet Petra’s choking on her vodka too.” He chuckled quietly. “Come to think of it, maybe she only drinks blood?”

He looked across at Honor to check whether she was laughing and was annoyed to see that she’d fallen asleep. But he couldn’t stay angry for long. Curled up in the fetal position with her back toward him, her truculent, hawk-like features softened in repose, hair falling across her apple breasts like Eve, she was already murmuring in her dreams. She looked so innocent and childlike, he wished he had a camera handy to capture the image so he could tease her with it in the morning.

Watching her sleep beside him, her breathing becoming deeper and slower with each passing second, he felt stupidly, deliriously happy. For a moment, he let himself indulge in a little White Knight fantasy. He imagined himself somehow finding her the backer she needed and helping her to rebuild her beloved Palmers. He pictured her slavishly grateful to him for saving her ass, offering to do “anything, anything at all” to thank him, while Petra struggled on foot down the Long Island Expressway’s breakdown lane, dragging her suitcases behind her like a hobo.

Laughing at his own hubris, he pulled the sheet up over Honor and himself and flicked off the bedside lamp. Life, unfortunately, rarely turned out like one’s fantasies. But one thing
he intended to make sure of: this time next year, Luxe America would be a reality.

As for helping Honor, he’d just have to see what came up.

The first thing Honor was aware of when she woke was the glaring, blinding sunlight pouring in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The second was the fact that she was not in her own bed. And the third was that someone seemed to be busy sawing through her skull with a hacksaw.

Groaning, she sat up, shielding her eyes from the light and trying to get her bearings. The next thing she knew, Lucas, fresh from the shower and wearing only a blue towel wrapped toga-style around his snake hips, was looming over her like a gladiator.

“Good morning,” he said brightly, chuckling at her all-too-evident hangover. “Feeling a little the worse for wear, are we, darling?”

Immediately, Honor felt her hackles rising. One night together did not make her his darling. Her brain was still foggy with sleep, but she knew she must have let her guard down horribly, a thought that left her gripped by a stomach-churning fear. But before she could say anything, Lucas had kissed her on the top of her head (patronizing!) and launched into a monologue about his own plans for the day.

“As soon as I’ve called the lost baggage morons at the airport, I need to get going,” he said, dropping his towel without a hint of embarrassment while he rummaged around in his bag from a clothing store for underwear and a shirt. “I have a meeting with a possible new partner at one over at the Venetian. Oh, that reminds me. Be an angel and call down to housekeeping, would you? Ask them to bring my blue suit up. They must have pressed it by now.”

Honor’s mouth opened and closed furiously, but no words came out. Who did he think she was? His little Geisha?

Slowly, through the molasses-thick fog of her brain, the events of last night began falling into place. She felt sick. The sex had been amazing, no doubt about that. She still felt sore between her legs, and every muscle in her body ached after her energetic performance. Even now, with her head throbbing and stomach churning like a washing machine on spin, the memory of his touch excited her to her a ridiculous degree.

But that was the problem. OK, so he fucked like Mick Jagger. And OK, so he hadn’t betrayed her and Tina, like she thought. But he was still Lucas. Still one of the most arrogant, chauvinist pigs to walk the planet. If not the most arrogant. Still the guy who, after one fuck, expected her to run wifely errands for him. Who assumed automatically that his stupid meetings were more important than hers.

Watching him pull his Calvins on over his perfect tennis-player’s ass, she began to justify her anger in her own mind: he’d taken advantage of her in a vulnerable moment. She’d been drunk out of her head. She didn’t know what she was doing.

But the real truth was, she was frightened. She’d opened up to Lucas last night, both literally and metaphorically, in a way she’d never done before with any man, not even Devon. She’d allowed him to see her vulnerability, her weakness, her need. That gave him power over her. Power she was now desperate to claw back.

“Get your own suit,” she snapped, wrapping the sheet around her body and heading for the shower. “I’m busy too, you know.”

Still giddy with the rapture of last night, Lucas misjudged her mood completely. Running after her, he grabbed the corner of the sheet and whipped it off.

“Call housekeeping,” he grinned. “Now. Before I put you over my knee.” Somehow she looked even more gorgeous this morning, all crumpled and grumpy and still warm from bed. He made a clumsy lunge for her breasts and was taken aback when she first ducked, then lashed out at him like a rattlesnake, only narrowly missing landing a karate chop right on his balls.

“Whoa!” Backing away, he frowned, confused. “What’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter?” said Honor. “Are you kidding me? Get your own fucking suit! I have meetings of my own today which, thanks to you, I’m now late for. I was supposed to be having breakfast with Fred Gillespie at nine.”

Gillespie had been a big name in hotels in San Francisco and Seattle back in the sixties, around the time Trey took over at Palmers, and was still respected. He was something of an unofficial godfather to Honor. She hoped he might be interested in funding her rebuild, or at least loaning her some seed capital until the insurance money came through, so she could make a start.

“What time is it, anyway?” she snapped.

“Eleven,” said Lucas sulkily.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Because I didn’t know you had a meeting, did I?” he yelled. “Jesus, Honor. I’m not psychic.”

This was just great. Fucking American women and their fucking career bullshit. You never knew where you stood from one day to the next. Last night Honor had practically begged him to be the big, strong, macho man, and if her orgasms were anything to go by, she’d loved every minute of it. But this morning he seemed to have woken up with Germaine fucking Greer.

Well if she wanted to pick a fight, he knew how to play that game.

“I can’t believe you’re seriously comparing sitting around drinking tea with some old Harvard club friend of your father’s with my investor meeting,” he said.

“Fred’s a serious investor,” Honor insisted.

“In what?” snapped Lucas. “Scorched earth? You don’t have a hotel for him to invest in, Honor. Wake up! Palmers is gone.”

For a moment she looked so wounded he regretted losing his temper.

“Look, I didn’t mean that, OK?” He took a step toward her.

“Oh, sure you did,” said Honor, storming into the bathroom and slamming and locking the door behind her.

“Honor.” He banged on the door, gently at first, but when she didn’t respond his knocks became louder and more irritated. “Stop being such a spoiled child. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I shouldn’t have. But you have to face reality. Palmers is gone. I wish that weren’t the case, but getting angry about it doesn’t change the facts. And I do have a global business to run. Now, if that makes you jealous—”

“Jealous?” She took the bait. The door flew open. “You think I’m jealous? Of you?”

Pushing past him, she grabbed her torn underwear from the bed and yanked it back on. Then, picking up the robe from the floor, she pulled it tightly around her tiny frame. Fuck the shower. She’d have one in her own room.

“Not in this lifetime, sweetheart,” she snarled. “
Global business
indeed! You have two hotels, Lucas. Two. And neither one of them can hold a candle to mine.”

Lucas snorted derisively. “Rather an unfortunate turn of phrase, don’t you think? Seeing as someone
did
hold a candle to yours?”

Honor walked to the door. “Last night was a mistake.”

“At last,” said Lucas. “Something we agree on.”

Down at reception, the desk clerk was very understanding about Honor’s lost key, producing a new one in seconds and insisting on sending a bellboy up with her to make sure it worked properly. At last, alone in her room, she sat down on the bed and tried to banish the barrage of negative thoughts bombarding her brain.

It was odd. She’d done everything in her power this morning to push Lucas away. And yet part of her was crushed when he’d agreed so readily that their sleeping together was a mistake.

Down the hall, lying on his bed, Lucas wondered how it was possible to want to strangle someone and make love to them at the same time.

But neither of them put their thoughts into words. Instead, true to form, they got ready for their respective days ahead and pretended that they didn’t care.

S
IAN WALKED ALONG
the Strand, clapping her gloved hands together against the bitter, late-January cold.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked herself out loud, her breath shooting out in little warm clouds with each word. “You’ve lost your mind, girl. You’ve totally lost your mind.”

Anyone watching her mumble as she weaved through the choking traffic would probably have agreed with this assessment of her mental health, although perhaps for different reasons. Sian’s concern stemmed not from the fact that she was talking to herself, but from the fact that she was on her way to Ben’s office. And that she was going there to ask for money.

He didn’t know she was coming, which sort of made it both better and worse. Better, because it had spared her the impossible task of trying to explain everything on the phone beforehand (tricky, when every time she started dialing his number she had to rush to the bathroom to throw up with nerves). But worse, because it opened up the shameful possibility of him being too busy to see her.

She tried to encourage herself that he was the one who’d suggested she look into Anton Tisch in the first place. At least, she thought it was his suggestion—she’d drunk so much at that excruciating triple-date dinner she could barely remember her
own name the next morning, so she couldn’t be sure—and she hadn’t seen or heard from Ben since.

But what if it was just a throwaway remark about Tisch? Something he’d said to be polite and show an interest in what she did for a living? Sian still tended to think of him as the tall, awkward, British beach bum who had fallen through Palmers’ fence to ask her out—they used to joke that he’d literally fallen at her feet. But in reality, he had never been that guy. He was a seriously rich, successful businessman. An important man. Naturally he had better things to do than run around the globe helping his summer romances follow up leads for some dumb story they were working on.