Do Not Disturb (68 page)

She’d promoted Enrique, her old head barman, to overall head of hospitality. He and a handful of core staff were already
living on-site, as was Honor herself. They shared the unfinished space with a legion of workmen, painters, plumbers, and gardeners who still showed up daily, and who Honor was still scrambling to pay on a week-by-week basis.

Even with the constant hammering and disruptions, it was bliss to be out of her poky little cottage at last. Her new rooms were considerably smaller than the old ones: a modest, wood-paneled bedroom that opened out onto a secluded terrace just big enough for a wrought-iron table and two chairs. She also had a simple sitting room with a pair of matching white denim couches, an antique standard lamp, and her grandfather’s old writing desk tucked into the corner; and a bathroom, as yet unfinished, although the shower worked and the toilet flushed, which was all she needed right now.

Her old suite had had a kitchen, but she’d never used it—more wasted square footage that could have been used for another paying guest. The new Palmers was all about economy. If Tina turned up next summer demanding a free room, she could forget it.

“Excuse me, Miss Palmer?” Betty, the faithful receptionist Honor had so terrified when she first arrived at Palmers, but who adored her boss now, appeared at the table looking uncharacteristically anxious.

“There’s a visitor…someone…here to see you.”

“Oh?” said Honor, springing automatically to her feet and dabbing the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “Is it that guy from the tiling company? Because I told him already, a quote is a quote. I’m not about to renegotiate now just because he lost a ship somewhere. I need those bathrooms finished this week or he doesn’t see a red cent from us, right, Don?”

“No. No, it’s not him,” Betty stammered. “It’s…I did tell him you were in a lunch meeting, Miss Palmer. But he wouldn’t go away.”

“Who wouldn’t?” said Honor.

For one awful moment, it crossed her mind that it might be Devon, come to try to wheedle his way around her yet again. That would explain Betty’s embarrassment. The last she’d heard from him was after the fire, when he’d had the brass balls to send a get-well card to the hospital, in which he’d scrawled the sort of self-pitying half apology she’d come to expect from him. She’d heard he was in town—bad news traveled like wildfire in East Hampton—and had resigned herself to the fact that she would almost certainly run into him at some point. But she could have done without it right now, in front of Don.

But it wasn’t Devon. “I see they set three places. Were you expecting me?”

Lucas strolled casually over to the table, extending his hand to Don, who’d stood up.

“I don’t believe we’ve met.” He smiled. “Lucas Ruiz. I’m a friend of Miss Palmer’s.”

“Don Bradford, her accountant,” said Don, shaking his hand with the same warmth with which he greeted everyone. “You’re just in time. I’d have wolfed that last bit of fish myself in a minute.”

Lucas had already helped himself to the last plate of monkfish and was halfway through it by the time Honor had time to blink, never mind tell him to take a running jump. Grinning at her all the while, wearing a loud pair of Bermuda shorts, an open Hawaiian shirt, and flip-flops, he looked disgustingly relaxed for someone in the midst of a major court battle and whose business was supposedly in crisis.

“Great job you’ve done here, sweetheart,” he said, nodding appreciatively at the decor while cheerfully shoveling food into his mouth. “Don’t you agree, Mr. Bradford?”

“Absolutely,” said Don, who seemed not a bit put out to be joined by an unexpected guest.

“Food’s good, too,” said Lucas between mouthfuls. “Could do with a leetle more coriander. But not at all bad.”

“OK, that’s enough,” said Honor, looking daggers at Lucas. Belatedly, Don realized that perhaps something was amiss. “Is everything all right, my dear?” he asked.

“Everything’s fine,” said Honor. “Mr. Ruiz was just leaving. Weren’t you?”

“Was I?” said Lucas, holding her eye contact. “I don’t think I was, actually.”

An awkward silence fell.

“Perhaps I should go,” said Don, getting to his feet. “Let you two talk.”

“No, no, no,” said Honor. “Please, you really don’t—”

“Thanks,” said Lucas, shaking his hand again with friendly finality. “Under the circumstances I think that might be best. Honor and I have some very important business to discuss, you see. It’s a little…delicate.”

“He’s kidding,” said Honor, laying a restraining hand on Don’s arm. “Lucas and I have absolutely nothing to say to one another.”

In a short, fitted red dress, with her hair slicked back into a ponytail and her emerald eyes flashing fury, she looked like a fire hydrant about to explode.

“I think I know you well enough, my dear, to see that that is quite patently untrue,” said Don with a chuckle. He lived a life so free of dramatic passions that he had always found other people’s amusing. “Thank you for a wonderful meal, but don’t get up. I can see myself out.”

“Nice guy,” said Lucas, once he’d gone. A second course of rack of lamb had arrived while Don was saying his good-byes, and Lucas was liberally grinding pepper onto his helping now, looking for all the world like a paying guest. He’d be ordering a cold beer and a doggie bag in a minute.

“You know what?” said Honor, pulling her hair out of its elastic band and letting it fall loose, a gesture that made Lucas automatically look up. “I’m actually too tired to do this.”

“To do what?” he said, taking a bite of lamb. It was so soft it melted on his tongue like a truffle.

“To fight with you,” said Honor calmly. “To play whatever dumb-ass game it is you’re playing this time. So why don’t you tell me what it is that you want. And then go away and leave me in peace.”

Dropping his knife and fork with a clatter, he gave her a look so intense and serious it made her momentarily nervous.

“Do you remember that night in Vegas?”

“Barely,” she lied, taking a leisurely bite of her own food. “I was very drunk. And the sex really wasn’t that memorable.”

“I’m not talking about the sex,” said Lucas. “Although I’m flattered that was the first thing
you
thought about.”

Honor blushed beet red. Bastard. How did he always manage to do this to her? To twist things around? He was the one who brought up Vegas, not her.

“You’ll be flatt
ened
in a minute,” she shot back furiously. “So what are you talking about?”

“Anton,” said Lucas. “You remember I told you how he set us both up that summer?”

“Of course I remember,” snapped Honor. “You think I’d forget a thing like that?”

“And you told me we ought to fight back? Get revenge?”

“I said
you
should get revenge,” said Honor, looking proudly around her. “I’ve already gotten mine. I’ve built this place back up from nothing.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Lucas, waving his arm impatiently. He hugely admired what she’d done with Palmers, but he wasn’t here to massage her ego. “I’m talking about real revenge.”

“It’s a lot more than you’ve done!” said Honor indignantly.

“Something that would destroy him,” said Lucas, ignoring her. “The way he tried to destroy us.”

Honor was silent. She didn’t like him using the word
us
. It scared her.

“I’ve come to see you because I have a plan,” he said. “And it’s a pretty damn good one. It involves some other people, people you know. But we won’t be able to pull it off without your help.”

Honor sighed a deep, heartfelt sigh and closed her eyes. “I know I’m gonna regret this,” she said. “But go ahead. I’m listening.”

W
HAT THE HELL
do you call that?”

The gardener froze halfway across the polished marble floor. He was carrying a cripplingly heavy potted bamboo through the Herrick’s lobby and had rivers of sweat streaming down between his shoulder blades, not to mention a steady stream of lactic acid coursing through his aching biceps. But when Petra Kamalski yelled at you, you stopped.

“These are the plants you ordered,” he panted, staggering from foot to foot under the weight. “For the party?”

“I know what they’re for,” said Petra scathingly. “But they most certainly are not what was ordered. I said black bamboo, and I said a minimum of eight feet. That’s practically a pot plant.”

“A pot plant?” he muttered under his breath. “You try lifting it, lady.”

“Don’t talk back to me,” hissed Petra. Her bat-like hearing was legendary among the Herrick staff. “And don’t even think of putting that filthy tub down on my floor. Get it out of here. Out, out, out!”

“But, ma’am,” wheezed the gardener, “we have a truckload of plants outside. I have the order sheet right here. You can check it yourself.”

“I don’t have time to waste on your mistakes,” said Petra, “and nor do my staff. Fix it. Today.”

Even by her own autocratic standards, she was unusually short-tempered this morning. The “number one” party was in forty-eight hours, and there was still so much to do. The downside of having A-list guests was that they came with A-list requirements, some of them frankly ludicrous. One particular pop diva, for example, had refused to book a room for the night unless she could bring her own bed—not bedding,
bed
—and have twenty Figuera Dyptique candles lit in the bathroom exactly two hours prior to her arrival. Another guest, an actress, demanded that
her
arrival be carefully choreographed to upstage that of a younger Hollywood rival who’d also been invited. There were people who had to run into one another and others who must
under no circumstances
run into one another. And overshadowing it all was Anton, who was treating the whole thing like his private birthday party and who was delighted by the celebrity attendance just so long as it didn’t eclipse his own shining star.

Retreating to her office, she barely had time to sit down before she was rudely interrupted.

“Ah, Petra, there you are. Jolly good.” Anton’s pet PR girl, Saskia, the one person whose presence in the hotel, in fact whose very existence, caused Petra more stress than all the other bullshit put together, had barged in without so much as a “pardon the intrusion.”

“We’ve got an awful lot to do today, duckie,” she trilled efficiently, “so it’s all hands to the mill. I’ve just had the producer from E! on the line asking about the outdoor lighting. Now where are we with that?”

Petra’s top lip began to curl upward, like a sliver of dried orange peel.

There were so many things she hated about Saskia it was hard to focus on any particular one. She was vulgar, overweight,
and overbearing. She wore enough cheap perfume to qualify as a biological weapon. Her laugh, forced, loud and braying, was a cross between a witch’s cackle and a particularly insidious car alarm. At this moment, she was wearing a tight, luminous orange T-shirt in a material so shinily synthetic it would melt rather than burn if you put a match to it (which somebody really ought to) and a pair of white shorts that left nothing to the imagination, beneath which she was plainly pantyless. The woman had all the class and style of a mongrel puppy, and yet she projected an innately British air of superiority that gave Petra fantasies about tying her to the back of a pickup truck and driving off at speed. Not since Honor Palmer had she met a woman so sickeningly full of herself, with so little reason to be so.

But worse than any of this was the way that Saskia had muscled her way in on tomorrow night’s party. Ever since Anton had brought her on board, she’d been acting like the proverbial queen bee, throwing her considerable weight around with Petra’s staff and generally making a royal nuisance of herself.

Anton denied it, but it was perfectly obvious to Petra that he and Saskia were sleeping together. This in itself didn’t bother her. She’d never been the jealous type. If Anton had so little taste as to find a blowsy little tart like Saskia attractive, more fool him. But the vile creature clearly felt that, as the boss’s lover, she had carte blanche to behave as she pleased and flout Petra’s authority as manager. And that was a problem. A big one. She’d already grabbed a chair and parked herself on the other side of the desk and was reaching over to grab the phone when Petra snapped.

“Get out of my office!” she commanded, snatching back her telephone. “I’ve told you before, if you need to make calls, you may do so from the business center like everybody else. This is my private office, not some sort of common room. And I am not your duckie.”

“Anton’s made it very clear he wants us to work together,” pouted Saskia. “We can’t very well do that from separate offices. There’s only thirty-six hours to go now, you know.”

Petra’s antipathy was heartily reciprocated by Saskia, who considered her rival to be about as sexy as a deep-frozen stick insect and considerably less pleasant company. She couldn’t fathom what Anton saw in her. It must be like sticking your dick into one of those automatic pencil sharpeners.

“I’m well aware of the time pressure, thank you, Saskia,” said Petra tartly. “I’ve spent the last three months putting this party together. You’ve been here three minutes.”