Do Not Disturb

  “Mama,” said Lucas, hesitating at the last moment. “Please. Come with me. Bring the boys. What do you have to stay for, for Christ’s sake?”

  He felt betrayed, bewildered, hurt beyond belief by her behavior. But he still loved her, and his brothers. If there was any chance at all to rescue them…

  “Querido,” she whispered. There were tears in her eyes. “I can’t.” It was the last time Lucas was to see her for four years.

  The first twelve months were the worst. Lucas was used to poverty, but he wasn’t used to having to sleep on the beach or in shop doorways. His first few jobs were all in the kitchens of cheap tourist cafés. The pay was third world, but the food was free, and a couple of the places even let him sleep on the floor behind the counter during the winter months.

  The problem was that Lucas could never hold down a job for more than a few weeks. As soon as anyone crossed him—a temperamental cook, a demanding boss, or a dissatisfied customer—he flew completely off the handle, settling disputes the only way he knew how: with his fists. Having worked so hard for it, it came as a shock to him to discover that his physical strength did not automatically translate to power and control. That sometimes it could lead him into situations beyond his control—situations that harmed him.

  At sixteen, waking up cold and aching from yet another long night on the beach surrounded by junkies and hobos, he decided that his days of drifting were over. He needed a steady job, one that provided meals and accommodation as well as a wage. By the end of that week he’d found one.

  The kindest thing you could say about the Britannia Hotel in San Antonio was that it was a shit hole. Managed by a fat, ignorant sadist named Miguel Munoz, the place smelled constantly of disinfectant—it was that or vomit—and operated against a constant background white noise of electronic slot machines, arguing couples, and screaming children.

  Lucas worked in the laundry room, which in some ways was a blessing, as it kept him away from the obnoxious British and American guests, whom he soon came to loathe with a passion. But the work was tough and often revolting, with sheets regularly covered in vomit or worse. It made Lucas seethe that these rich foreigners—rich by his standards, anyway—flocked to his beautiful island in droves, but when they got here, all they wanted to do was drink themselves into oblivion.

  None of them made even the most cursory attempt to speak Spanish. They couldn’t even be bothered to sample the cuisine, eschewing the delicious local tapas and fresh traditional dishes in favor of spaghetti Bolognese or the ubiquitous “chicken ’n’ chips.”

  But his time at the Britannia wasn’t wasted. The hotel, like the rest of the dives in San Antonio, opened his eyes to a world of possibilities. If a fat slob like Miguel was making money hand over fist offering a service as atrocious as this—and he was, as he liked to remind his impoverished staff constantly—how much more money must there be in a decent, professionally run hotel?

  Lucas had no intention of spending the rest of his life removing used condoms from other people’s filthy bedding. He was going to get out of Ibiza. And he was going to get rich in the hotel business.

  The first thing he needed, he rapidly realized, was an education. School had never felt like much of a priority during his hand-to-mouth childhood, and the gaps in his basic learning were huge as a result. Undaunted, he enrolled himself in night school, and though he was often so tired after a day’s work that he fell asleep in class, he nevertheless managed to complete his high school diploma within a year.

  “I don’t know what you’re so happy about,” Miguel had taunted him the day he heard his results. “What do you expect to do with that? Run Goldman Sachs?”

  But for once, Lucas didn’t rise to the insult. Instead he quietly continued with his studies, focusing on the subjects that he knew would provide a passport to the better life he craved. To his own amazement and delight, he turned out to have a marked aptitude for languages. He’d already picked up a lot of English by osmosis from the tourists at the Britannia, and he rapidly added German, French, and Italian to his repertoire. Not since he first started weight training as a kid had he experienced such a sense of achievement in such a short space of time. Slowly, like an early spring flower struggling up through the frost toward the sunlight, his confidence began to grow.

  And languages were not his only talent. At school he’d been so withdrawn and moody he’d barely noticed the lingering looks he got from girls in his class. But by seventeen he was well aware of the effect he had on the opposite sex, and the power it gave him.

  Lucas’s attitude toward women was complicated. Having grown up watching his mother suffer, he felt protective toward most of the girls he slept with. His natural instinct was to like them. But his mother’s example had taught him other things too: namely that women were weak and not necessarily deserving of respect. These two conflicting beliefs, combined with his naturally awesome libido, made Lucas that rarest and yet, to many women, most desirable of males: a benevolent chauvinist pig, the sexual equivalent of a benign dictator.

  Older women in particular found his combination of Latin good looks and macho sexual dynamism irresistible. Lucas made them feel beautiful, because that was truly how he saw them. But he refused to be controlled or tied down in any way.

  Getting one of his wealthy, older lovers to fund his education was never something he consciously planned. And yet, when it happened, he felt quite happy to accept it as no more than his due.

  As the months and years passed at the Britannia, his fantasy of one day owning his own hotel became more detailed and fully formed. His hotel would be the polar opposite of the Britannia: simple lines, an aura not just of luxury but of peace. In his mind he’d planned everything, right down to the linens and the table settings. It even had a name.

  Luxe.

  Not “The Luxe” or “Hotel Luxe.” Just the one word: four letters to symbolize Lucas’s vision. His little piece of heaven on earth.

  He was describing the place to Carla Leon one Sunday afternoon five summers ago, after making love. The latest in his seemingly never-ending stream of Mrs. Robinsons, Lucas liked Mrs. Leon because she was adventurous and funny, and because she seemed to know so much about the educated, wider world that he yearned to be a part of. “It sounds incredible, my darling,” she murmured, lying back against the mossy ground of the secluded woodland where he’d taken her. “But you mustn’t underestimate what you’re going to need to make it happen.”

  “You’re talking about money?” said Lucas, sitting up and gazing moodily ahead of him. Why did everything always come down to that in the end?

  “Not just money,” said Carla. “The hotel trade is highly competitive. You need an education.”

  “I’m getting one,” said Lucas proudly. “I’ve told you that.”

  Sitting up herself, gloriously naked, Carla leaned forward and began to stroke his bare back. Sometimes his strength frightened her. His muscles were so taut and bulging they looked like they might be about to erupt through his skin.

  “It won’t be enough,” she said gently. “You need relevant qualifications. An MBA. The place you should really aim for is in Switzerland. The Ecole Hôtelière in Lausanne. EHL. That’s where all the top hoteliers train. Have you heard of it?”

  “Of course,” said Lucas, who hadn’t but was too arrogant to admit it.

  By the end of the week, he knew all there was to know about the school—courses, entry requirements, fees, foreign student visas. Carla was right. Lausanne was exactly where he needed to be. But getting there was going to be a daunting task.

  The night she left with her husband for Madrid, Carla made Lucas a promise: “This time next year, if you’ve succeeded in passing all the international exams you need for entry, I’ll fund your application.”

  He neither thanked her nor questioned her. He simply trusted in her word and set about studying like he never had before, slaving over his books and sleeping with a copy of the EHL prospectus under his pillow, lik
e a holy text. When at last he earned his qualifications, with a month to spare before his year was up, he called her.

  They hadn’t spoken since she’d left the previous summer. But Carla didn’t sound remotely surprised to hear from him.

  “Send me the application form, Lucas darling,” she told him. “All you have to do is sign it. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  And so she had.

  Lucas adored Lausanne. His courses were hard work, but nothing compared to the hell of the Britannia, and his ambition and drive carried him through the four years like adrenaline spurring on a marathon runner.

  Most of his classmates were from wealthy or, middle-class families, but to his surprise, Lucas found it easy to fit in. Social life at the EHL revolved around frat-house parties and weekend ski trips, both of which he took in his stride. And of course, it didn’t hurt that he was far and away the best-looking guy on campus.

  “Are you sure you haven’t skied before?” Daniel, a buddy from his macroeconomics class, quizzed him suspiciously on their first trip to the mountains. “You sure don’t look like a beginner to me.”

  They were in Murren, a tiny, car-free hamlet burrowed into a mountainside in the Jungfrau valley. Home of the famous Downhill Club in the 1920s, it remained popular with British skiers looking for natural Alpine beauty, but without the ritz and pretension of the big resorts like St. Moritz or Courchevel, and was also favored by the local Swiss. Lucas, who didn’t know such storybook Hansel and Gretel villages still existed, was utterly charmed.

  “What can I say?” He grinned. Having just completed a tricky black-diamond run, he was feeling more than a little pleased with himself. “I guess I’m a natural.”

  “Right. A natural asshole,” the girl taking her skis off next to him muttered sourly, trudging up the hill to the restaurant to join the others.

  Lucas had won over 99 percent of his female classmates at Lausanne with his combination of humor, confidence, and insanely good looks. But Petra Kamalski remained immune to his charms. The only serious challenger to his crown as EHL’s top-performing student, she was just as beautiful as Lucas, although in a polar opposite way. In fact, with Petra, “polar” was definitely the operative word: tall, reed-thin and as pale as the Snow Queen, she had cheekbones that could cut glass and the sort of ice-blue Russian eyes that both mesmerized and terrified at the same time. Her long blue-black hair was always worn up in a high, tight chignon and her body, though clearly perfect, was hidden at all times beneath polo-neck sweaters and long governess-style skirts.

  “What’s her fucking problem?” Lucas asked Daniel, glaring after Petra as she strode up the hill in her ultraexpensive, fur-lined Prada ski suit.

  “Don’t take it personally,” said Daniel, slapping him on the back. “That’s just Petra. She hates anything with a penis.” Although this was true, Petra’s dislike of Lucas clearly ran deeper than generic animosity toward the opposite sex. In lectures, she was constantly trying to trip him up, picking holes in all his arguments and doing her utmost to embarrass him in front of the professors. She’d even gone so far as to accuse him of plagiarizing one of her papers last semester—a serious allegation that, had she proved it, would have gotten Lucas kicked out. As it was, the authorities had ruled “insufficient evidence,” hardly the ringing endorsement of his honesty that Lucas had been hoping for. How come Petra had never been reprimanded for bringing the case maliciously and stirring up trouble?

  The answer to that one was simple. Petra’s uncle was the oligarch Oleg Kamalski, a man rich enough to buy the whole of Lausanne, if not Switzerland, with his loose change. Old Oleg was not a man that anyone wanted to alienate—least of all an institution second only to Harvard Business School in squeezing cash out of its successful alumni.

  For the rest of the ski trip, Lucas did his best to keep out of Petra’s way. But it was hard. Not only were they sharing a chalet along with nine other classmates, but Murren was so minuscule it made Ibiza look like New York City, making it even harder to escape.

  When the day of their departure finally dawned, Lucas wasn’t sorry. He’d come back to Murren another time on his own, or at least without Petra, when he’d be able to relax. Checking out of the chalet with only ten minutes to go before the train for Lauterbrunnen was due to leave, he suddenly discovered that his briefcase was missing.

  “I don’t understand it,” he said, spinning around in frustration. “It’s been under my bed the whole trip. Where can it possibly be?” Then, noticing Petra standing smugly in the lobby with the others, firmly clasping her own matching Chanel luggage, it dawned on him. “You moved it, didn’t you? What the hell have you done with it, you shit-stirring bitch?”

  “My, my, we are paranoid,” she smirked. “It’s no good blaming others for your own disorganized habits. I don’t know why you brought work up here with you anyway. I’m going to trounce you in management theory no matter how hard you cram.”

  Lucas, who had never hit a woman, contemplated breaking his streak. But he knew that if he laid one finger on Petra he would get kicked out. And he wasn’t about to risk that for anything.

  There was nothing to do but to stay behind and hunt. After three long hours, he found the case stuffed behind a pile of ski boots in the garage—damn that stupid woman. But by then it was too late to get a connection to Lausanne. He’d have to stay in the village another night—yet more wasted time and expense—and catch a train first thing in the morning.

  With nothing else to do, he trudged up the snowy hill to the Regina Hotel and settled in for a long night at the bar. His plan was to stare into his whiskey glass until a strategy for wiping Petra Kamalski off the face of the earth appeared before him. But after about fifteen minutes he found himself joined by a big blond Englishman about his own age who looked even more depressed than he did.

  “Would you do me a huge favor?” the man asked, looking nervously about him. His accent was pure cockney, straight out of Mary Poppins, and deep enough to be menacing had it not been for his gentle-giant aura. “Would you pretend you know me?”

  Even sitting on a bar stool, Lucas could see he was huge, at least six foot six and broader than a WWE wrestler. But his kind, slightly drooping eyes, freckles, and mop of surfer-blond hair were all more overgrown Labrador than killer Doberman. He was handsome, in an Iowa-farm-boy-meets-London-barrow-boy sort of a way. And right now he had a desperate, pleading look in his eye that not even a hardened cynic like Lucas could ignore.

  “Sure,” he said, smiling. “Why?”

  Before the man could explain, three of the dullest-looking businessmen you could imagine—gray suits, center-parted hair, matching blue ties done up to strangulation point—walked into the bar and headed in his direction. Flinging his arms around Lucas in a bear hug, the stranger started loudly proclaiming his surprise and delight to see him.

  “After all this time! Amazing!” he gushed enthusiastically. “Fancy seeing you in Murren, of all places!”

  The three Swiss stooges held back and hovered, looking baffled.

  “This is Jimmy,” the man explained to them, gesturing toward a mutely smiling Lucas. “We used to knock about together as boys. Haven’t seen each other in…oooh, how long has it been now, Jim?”

  “Longer than I can remember,” said Lucas, who was rather enjoying himself.

  The blond turned back to his companions. “Look, d’you mind if we catch up for a bit? You guys go on to the fondue restaurant, and I’ll, er…I’ll join you a bit later, yeah?”

  “But…but…” the first suit stammered, “we booked the table for four. Without you, we will be three.”

  Jesus, thought Lucas. They couldn’t have been any more Swiss if they’d been full of holes and gone “cuckoo” on the hour.

  “They’ll understand at the restaurant. They know me there,” said the blond, reassuringly. “Honestly, you lot go ahead and have a good time on me, all right? I’ll catch up with you later.”

  After more persuading in a simil
ar vein they finally waddled off, like three penguins skidding back out onto the polar ice. Only then did the blond breathe a sigh of relief and introduce himself.

  “Thanks,” he said, pumping Lucas’s hand like the arm of a slot machine. “I’m Ben. Really, thanks so much. I swear to God, if I had to spend one more hour with those guys I’d have flung meself off the north face of the Eiger.”

  “They did seem a little tightly wound,” conceded Lucas with a chuckle. “I’m Lucas.”

  “An honor and a joy to meet you, Lucas.” Ben grinned. “Let me buy you a drink.”

  Ben Slater, it turned out, ran a hedge fund in London and was in Switzerland wooing possible institutional investors. The three stooges were all senior management from UBS, men almost exactly as powerful as they were dull.

  “I know I ought to be over there with them, dunking my bread in the cheese and talking bond yield curves,” said Ben with a sigh. “But I really can’t face it. That fondue cheese is fucking disgusting anyway.”

  Lucas laughed. “I agree. Here’s to ditching them.”

  In the end, they got along so well that they both decided to stay on for a few more days and this time actually enjoy the skiing. The staff at the Regina knew Ben well and were happy to move him into a larger two-bedroom suite so that he could share with Lucas. Better yet, he insisted on footing the bill for them both—“Honestly, mate, my fund is paying. It’s a corporate expense; you don’t owe me a penny”—and had been so persuasive that even the notoriously proud Lucas felt comfortable accepting.

  Neither Ben nor Lucas was naturally a big talker. But over the course of numerous long slope-side lunches and evenings propping up the bar, they came to share pieces of their respective life stories and discovered themselves to be somewhat kindred spirits. Ben had grown up in a happy family, unlike Lucas. But he had also been very poor and had to work against the odds to shake off his background and achieve the professional success that he had. And there was something so impossibly good-hearted about him, so jovial and warm and open, one couldn’t fail to be drawn to him. Having always hated Englishmen, and especially cockneys since his string of bad experiences at the Britannia, Lucas was shocked to discover that the country could also occasionally turn out some genuinely charming people. Ben was the archetypal diamond in the rough, and from day one Lucas adored him.