Sian’s eyes narrowed. The boy was male-model good-looking. Everything about him, from his couture jacket and platinum cuff links to his manicured nails and immaculate dentistry, spoke of serious wealth. But she didn’t appreciate the presumptuous endearment from someone she’d never met before. Nor did she approve of the way he’d just blanked Rhiannon like she didn’t exist.
“My name is Sian,” she said coolly, retrieving her hand. “And I’m not your angel.”
“Not yet,” said Nick, not missing a beat. The cheap clothes and makeup hadn’t escaped his attention either. It was a safe bet a trailer-trash hottie like that would be easily dazzled by his money, if not his charm.
“But play your cards right and you could be. Ever been for a ride in a Porsche?”
Sian cringed. Oh my God. Did he really just say that out loud?
“Why, no, suh.” She put on her best Black Mammy voice and widened her eyes in faux amazement. “I is just a poor, ignorant girl from the farm, suh. I ain’t never been in no aut-o-mo-bile. I jus’ walks ever where, in my bare feet. Ain’t that right, Rhiannon?”
She turned to her friend, who dissolved into fits of giggles. Nick looked furious. He despised being made fun of, especially in public, and especially by women.
“Hey. Your loss, sweetheart,” he said, turning on his heel and stalking back over to Lola. “Let’s go,” he said grumpily, grabbing her arm. “Uh-uh, no way,” she said, wriggling free. She’d watched the whole exchange, and was cheered to see a girl standing up to her Casanova brother for once. “Just because you crashed and burned. I wanna go meet her.”
“She’s a bitch,” snarled Nick. “I’m leaving, so if you want a ride you’d better come now.”
“I’ll take a taxi,” said Lola firmly.
“I promised Mom I’d have you back by one,” he said petulantly. Devon and Karis were up in the city for the weekend and had left Nick in charge, so he felt free to throw his weight around. “It’s quarter of now.”
“Breathe one word to Mom and I’ll tell her you were coked out of your mind,” said Lola. “I’m staying.”
Nick thought about it for a moment. Their mom always took his side over Lola’s. But Devon was bound to ask questions if Lola really did start squealing. It wasn’t worth the aggravation.
“Fine,” he pouted. “Do what you like. But I’m telling you, you’re wasting your time. She’s just an ignorant redneck slut.”
By this time Sian had wandered out into the garden. It took Lola a minute or two to track her down, leaning against the summerhouse and looking more than a little out of place. Her friend had disappeared somewhere, and she was on her own. “I’m sorry about Nick,” said Lola, proffering her hand. “That was great, the way you kicked him to the curb in there. I’m Lola, by the way.”
“Sian.” They shook hands. “You know that guy?”
Lola, she decided, was absolutely stunning, a pre-Botox Nicole Kidman with curves, and her green dress the most divine item of clothing she’d ever laid eyes on. Suddenly struck by an awful possibility, she blurted, “Oh, God, you’re not his date, are you? Honestly, I swear to God, he came on to me.”
“His date? Eeugh. No.” Lola looked suitably disgusted. “He’s my brother, I’m ashamed to say. For some unfathomable reason, girls normally fall at his feet. I get a kick watching his ego take a battering every once in a while.”
“Oh!” Sian laughed. “Well, glad I could help.” Other than their shared Hilfiger-model gorgeousness, Nick and Lola didn’t seem very likely siblings. He was an Olympic-level prick, but there was something exciting and mischievous about his sister that Sian found herself instantly warming to. “So, where are you working?” asked Lola.
“Palmers,” said Sian. “How did you know I was working?”
Lola blushed and hoped she hadn’t just been rude. “Oh, no reason. Just a guess. I haven’t seen you around before. How d’you like it? I bet Honor’s fun to work for, isn’t she? Have you met anyone famous yet?”
Sian shook her head. “I wish. All I do is wash sheets. I see Honor Palmer in the lobby sometimes, but that’s about it. Why, d’you know her too?”
“Everyone in East Hampton knows her,” said Lola matter-of-factly. “She’s a friend of my parents. Sort of.”
There was a general commotion as someone emerged from the house. Turning to look, Lola felt her heart skip a beat.
“Whoa,” said Sian. She recognized Lucas immediately from his Vogue picture. “So the camera really doesn’t lie. He’s seriously attractive, isn’t he?”
“Hands off,” said Lola, only half jokingly. “I saw him first.”
Catching her eye, Lucas grinned. In that green dress—if you could call it a dress, it was so wonderfully short—she looked even more voluptuously sexy than he remembered her. Ignoring the other girls who’d formed an admiring circle around him, he headed in her direction.
“Miss Carter.” He gave her a look that made Lola’s stomach flip over like a pancake. “Long time no see, baby. Where have you been hiding all summer?”
“Me hiding?” she said playfully. “Oh, that’s cute, coming from you. What are you, like, half bat or something? You sleep all day and work all night?”
Lucas smiled. He liked girls to challenge him, as long as they ultimately recognized who was boss. Lola’s feistiness, tempered as it was with a healthy dose of adoration, was exactly the sort he appreciated. She wasn’t a rabid man-hater like Honor.
“This is Sian.” Lola indicated the beanpole brunette beside her.
“Hi,” said Lucas, without averting his gaze from Lola’s for so much as a split second.
Rude asshole, thought Sian. I’m glad I work for Honor and not for him.
Having no desire to play third wheel, she took the hint and disappeared back inside, leaving the two of them alone. Casually resting one hand on Lola’s bare shoulder, Lucas started caressing her smooth skin with the ball of his thumb.
“I’ve thought a lot about you, you know,” he said. “Since last time.”
“Is that so?” Lola raised one eyebrow archly.
She was determined to play it cool. She knew he liked her, but she also knew that deep down he considered her to be too young for him—just a kid. This time around, she was determined to prove him wrong.
“Yes,” he murmured. “It is. I’ve missed you.”
He was so close now that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her collarbone, and his voice had collapsed into a soft, husky whisper. The next thing she knew, his lips had parted as if to kiss her, and she instinctively closed her eyes and stood up on tiptoes to respond. But after two long seconds, the kiss failed to materialize. Opening her eyes, she saw to her fury that he had in fact stepped back and was waving to someone about fifty feet away.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he said, kissing her briskly on top of the head. “Hold that thought.” And just like that he disappeared to join his friend, leaving her standing there like an idiot.
The arrogant bastard! How could he embarrass her like that?
In fact, Lucas was every bit as reluctant to break off their encounter as she was. As well as wanting her physically, he loved the idea of pissing off Devon Carter by rekindling his affair with Lola. That’d teach the stuffed shirt to look down his patrician American nose at him. But the guy waving at him was the head of A&R at Sony, an important guest at the Herrick. He couldn’t simply ignore the man.
After the requisite five minutes of small talk, he turned to look for Lola again, but she’d gone.
“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath, wandering back to the house in search of her. Moments later he felt a female arm snake around his waist.
“What’s wrong, baby?” its owner purred. “Lost something?”
Tina Palmer must have only just arrived. In a full-length, tight black sequined dress and Marilyn Monroe makeup, she was overdressed enough to look borderline ridiculous. But there was still something very sexy about her, if you liked the whole brazen Anna Nico
le vibe.
As a rule, Lucas didn’t. But Anton had told him to get close to Tina, and this was his chance. Besides, flirting with her was bound to enrage Honor, and that alone made it worth the effort.
“No, no,” he said, responding to her wandering arm with a sly squeeze of his own. “I’m a little tired, that’s all.”
“Worn out from making mincemeat out of my poor sister, I imagine,” said Tina.
Underneath his tux, Lucas could feel her fingers already starting to slip inside the waistband of his pants. Talk about a fast mover.
“I heard the show. But don’t worry.” She smiled lasciviously. “I don’t bear grudges. Anyway, Honor can take care of herself.”
“Indeed she can,” said Lucas bitterly. “Listen.” Pulling a business card out of his jacket pocket, he scrawled his cell phone number on the back and handed it to her. “I have to get back to the hotel now, I’m afraid. Business.”
“Business?” Tina pouted. “At this time of night?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Lucas. In fact, the only business he had right now was to catch up with Lola Carter before she gave up on him completely. But he wasn’t about to tell that to Tina.
“But please do give me a call, OK?” Lowering his arm, he allowed his hand to wander appreciatively over her ample buttocks. “I’d love to…you know. Sometime.”
Tina slipped the card into her Versace evening bag. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Ruiz,” she smiled knowingly, “you’ll be hearing from me again. You can bet on it.”
Five minutes later, Lucas finally caught up with Lola as she was climbing into a cab.
“Hey!” he called after her. “Where are you going?”
“Home,” she said frostily. “Like you care.”
“Scoot over,” said Lucas. Ignoring her scowl, he opened the door and shoved her farther along the backseat, then climbed in himself, shutting the door behind him. “Woodcock Lane, please,” he instructed the driver firmly.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” said Lola, turning her head away and staring out the window in a sulk.
Lucas responded by putting his hand on her thigh. “I think you do.”
“Well, I don’t,” said Lola, unconvincingly. The downy hairs on her legs were already prickling upward at his touch. “I saw you giving Tina slut-bitch Palmer the come-on back there.”
“Slut-bitch? Dear me.” Lucas leaned in closer. Lola still wasn’t looking at him, but she could hear the smile in his voice. “That’s not a very nice way to talk about a family friend, is it?”
“It’s not funny!” she snapped, spinning around to face him. “If it’s Tina you want, why don’t you go back there and fuck her? Stop wasting my time.”
“If it were Tina I wanted,” he said, edging his hand northward, “I would. But it isn’t. It’s you.”
“But I saw—”
“You saw me giving her my card,” said Lucas. “That was business. Believe it or not, I thought she might be able to help me build bridges with her sister.”
Lola didn’t believe it.
“You want to build bridges with Honor?” She laughed. “I’d say that’s gonna be a tall order after today’s massacre on NPR, wouldn’t you?”
Lucas shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about Honor. He wanted to get this gorgeous, desirable, desiring girl back into bed. Ideally her daddy’s bed. Devon was away for the weekend, and Lucas couldn’t think of any sweeter revenge for the condescending way he’d treated him than to take the guy’s daughter between his own starched Ralph Lauren sheets.
“Lola.” Murmuring softly into her hair, he finally allowed his wandering hand to slip beneath the silky fabric of her panties.
At first she jumped. But then her breathing slowed audibly and she leaned into him, her lips parting silently but tellingly at his touch.
The battle was won.
“Lovely Lola,” he whispered. “I’ve missed you, little one. It’s you that I want, I promise you. Only you.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
RELAX. LET GO of your arm.”
Honor’s fingers were so stiff they felt fossilized as the masseur pulled at each of them in turn.
“I am relaxed,” she insisted, through clenched teeth. “This is as relaxed as I get.”
“If you’ll forgive me for saying so, Miss Palmer, that’s the problem,” said the masseur, giving up on the fingers and pinning her forearm behind her back instead in a vain attempt to loosen up the latticework of knotted muscles across her shoulder blades. “You ought to be having a massage daily, not once a year.”
“Daily, huh?” said Honor, wincing with pain as his fingers kneaded her sore flesh. “Sounds nice. Maybe next lifetime, Gerard.”
This was the first time she’d taken advantage of the newly refurbished spa facilities at Palmers, complete with Moroccan plunge baths and a traditional hammam. Even now, midmassage and surrounded by burning incense sticks, with some ghastly, jangly, Zen-like Muzak wafting through the speakers, she couldn’t stop herself from focusing on the cracked tiles in the floor that needed fixing (already!) and wondering whether or not it would make more economic sense to split these large treatment rooms into two and hire more staff.
That was the thing about running a hotel. You could never switch off. Or, at least, Honor couldn’t.
Having said all that, this new masseur that she’d poached from the Georges V in Paris was doing a damn good job, and she could feel waves of tension leaving her body as his rough hands worked their magic.
It had been two weeks since her now-infamous radio head-to-head with Lucas, and Honor was still seething about it. She didn’t know what bothered her more: his comments about her father, his implied threat to expose her affair with Devon, or the way he’d insulted her about her looks. His “bigger dick than your boyfriend” comment now played over and over in her head whenever she was alone, like a whining, insistent child, demanding to be heard. How dare he imply she was less of a woman than Tina? Stung more than she cared to admit, she’d stopped by Barneys on her way back from the studio and splurged horribly on some floaty Marc Jacob dresses and a clinging, peach-colored pencil skirt for work. As soon as she got back to Palmers, still fired up, she’d thrown open her closet, pulled out thousands of dollars worth of pin-striped suits in her trademark black and gray and flung them unceremoniously into the trash.
The next day she’d almost had a panic attack, waking up to find she had nothing to wear but dresses. Plumping for a deep maroon empire-line sundress because it was simple and long enough to wear with flats, she could feel the stares of the Palmers staff burning into her back like lasers the moment she came downstairs and bolted into her office, blushing furiously.
Desperate for male affirmation, she waited hopefully for Devon to make some positive comment on her new look. He was meeting her that morning to help her plan the next steps in her PR war with Lucas. But when he arrived, he was so enraged about Lucas’s public rekindling of his relationship with Lola—after the Loeb party, the pair of them were the talk of East Hampton—he barely seemed to notice Honor’s existence, never mind her wardrobe.
“I always knew he was a playboy, but even I didn’t have him down as a pedophile,” he ranted, pacing the office like a hungry cat. “I’ve put my foot down and stopped all Lola’s allowance until she agrees to stop seeing him. But that child is so damned stubborn.”
“Can’t think where she gets it from,” said Honor, raising an eyebrow. It had taken all her tact and patience to persuade him that playing the enraged Lord Capulet in all of this would only heighten the drama for Lola and fan the flames of her attraction.
“Come on, honey,” she said gently. “You remember what it was like to be eighteen and in love.”
“I most certainly do not,” said Devon. “When I was Lola’s age I was a hundred percent focused on my studies. And I respected my parents’ wishes like God’s law.” He shook his head sadly. “I just don’t know where Karis and I went wrong with those kids…”
&nb
sp; Honor thought back to their conversation now, as Gerard worked his magic. She was fond of Devon’s rebellious daughter and shared his concerns about Lola getting mixed up with Lucas. But she also knew that the heavy-handed approach would be counterproductive. She loved Devon dearly, but even she felt he overdid the whole Victorian father thing at times—especially given that he himself was hardly the saintly family man he pretended to be.
In truth, Lola’s welfare wasn’t her only concern. She also had a firm eye on safeguarding her own secrets. Not wanting to panic Devon—he was already skittish enough about their affair—she hadn’t told him about Lucas’s implied threat at the radio station. But for the last two weeks she’d been a nervous wreck, waiting for him to spill the beans, either to Lola or—even worse—the press.
So far, though, it hadn’t happened. God knows why, but he had decided to keep his counsel. The last thing Honor wanted was for Devon to wade in now, raising hell about him and Lola and pissing Lucas off so much he changed his mind.
Increasing the pressure of his thumbs, Gerard started kneading Honor’s glutes mercilessly. Breathing through the pain, she tried not to focus on the fact that this was probably the closest she’d come to a sexual experience all week.
Deception, like so many life skills, seemed to get better with practice, and the longer her affair with Devon continued, the more imaginative and resourceful they both became in finding ways and excuses to meet each other. The anguish of those first few months together seemed like a lifetime ago now. But the flip side was that the wild, uncontrollable passion of their early days had also gone, replaced by something calmer and steadier, something Honor told herself she much preferred but that at the same time left her with a bitter aftertaste of sexual frustration that she found increasingly hard to shake.
On the rare occasions when she voiced that frustration to Devon, he was dismissive. “I’m fifty-three, baby,” he’d say with a shrug. “Even if we lived together twenty-four seven, I wouldn’t want to do it all the time. I’m just not at that stage in my life anymore.”