Do Not Disturb

  Anyway, the point was that the black widow had won. Meanwhile Tina was still spending what was left of the family money like water, despite the fact that she was now earning millions in her own right. The dubious celebrity she’d earned from the sex tape had translated into modeling and endorsement deals up the wazoo. Only in America, right? But none of that money made its way to Palmers.

  To make matters worse, no sooner had the money started rolling in than Tina got herself hooked up with a pseudoreligious group called The Path. A bunch of former hippies and con artists, they were happy to relieve her of the burden of her wealth in return for “speerchal” enlightenment, LA style. So while Tina continued to pay extortionate rent on a Holmby Hills penthouse she never used, she now spent most of her time at one of The Path’s “wellness centers” in Santa Fe.

  The last time Honor had called her there, she’d been stoned out of her mind.

  “You know,” she mumbled drowsily down the phone, “you really need to reconnect to your well.”

  “My well?” Honor sighed.

  “Sure. Your energy well. We all have a pool of positive energy deep within us that we draw on, that we need to grow. Like flowers,” Tina added helpfully. “I’m sensing a lot of negativity from you right now, Honor. Your well is drying up.”

  “Listen, Tomasina Cruise,” said Honor. “The only well drying up around here is the Bank of America well. That’s looking pretty fucking parched right now. We have to talk about your spending, T. How much money are you giving these wackos, exactly?”

  “Spiritual growth can’t be measured in dollars and cents,” said Tina, in the new, serene voice she’d affected recently, which she thought projected inner peace and Honor thought made her sound retarded.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” she said robustly. “So go ask your guru for your money back. What does he need it for? More incense sticks?”

  But she may as well have been speaking Martian. Tina wouldn’t give an inch. Nor did she give a rat’s ass about Honor’s problems bailing out Palmers.

  Turning into the organic produce aisle, Honor threw a few essentials into her shopping cart—milk, whole wheat bread, recycled toilet paper. Suddenly seized by a very nonorganic craving for Oreo cookies, she was about to make a U-turn to the junk food section when she overheard something that made her stop in her tracks.

  “If he does open here, I’m definitely applying.”

  Honor recognized the voice of the Herrick’s maître d’.

  “Careful,” said his friend. “Walls have ears. I wouldn’t put it past Petra to have bugs in the supermarket. KG Bitch.”

  They both laughed.

  “But I wouldn’t bank on Lucas being any easier a boss. All the old staff say he could be a real hard-ass when he ran the Herrick.”

  “He was never as bad as Kamalski,” said the maître d’. “He only yelled at you when you’d fucked up. I can handle that. Besides, it’d be worth a few ear bashings to work at Luxe. Those hotels are gonna be the new Tischens, you mark my words.”

  Honor, who was marking his words, edged closer to the shelf, moving aside some packets of lentils so she could hear them more clearly without being seen.

  Surely Lucas couldn’t be planning to open a Luxe here?

  No, no. It was a European brand. And East Hampton would be the last place Lucas would want to return to. Wouldn’t it? They must be mistaken.

  “Well if you go, I’m going,” said the maître d’s friend. “I can’t take much more of that snake pit. I’ve even thought about moving to Palmers.”

  The maître d’ laughed. “Forget it. They’ll be bust in six months.” Honor flushed red. Was that what everyone thought? That they were finished already?

  “We’ll just have to hope Ruiz doesn’t lose his nerve,” the maître d’ went on. “I don’t mind admitting, I wouldn’t wanna take Petra on head-to-head. The woman scares the living shit out of me.”

  They moved on toward the cash register at that point, out of Honor’s earshot. She was itching to follow them, but there was no way to do it without being spotted. And as soon as they saw her, they’d clam up, so there was no point.

  Grabbing a packet of Oreos on autopilot, her mind raced as she ran over the significance of what she’d just heard.

  Of course, it was only gossip. But she knew from experience that hotel gossip was usually accurate. And they’d both sounded horribly specific about the details.

  Lucas was planning to open another Luxe here, in the Hamptons. She tried to imagine worse news. But short of nuclear war, a direct meteorite hit on Palmers, or Devon Carter being elected president, she couldn’t think of anything.

  How could he? After what he’d done to her, betraying her in the worst way possible, how could he have the balls to even contemplate showing his face in this town, never mind setting up shop here with one of his damn stupid, overhyped Luxes? God, how she hated that name. It sounded like a fricking soap.

  Like everyone else in the business, Honor had read reams of copy about Lucas’s famed comeback. Unlike everybody else, however, her heart wasn’t remotely warmed by his rags-to-riches story. What kind of karma was it that allowed assholes like him to bounce back from ruin like a pinball, while decent, hardworking people like her got to sit in a shower of shit that never seemed to end?

  If there was a God, she decided, he was definitely a man.

  As for the whole Luxe phenomenon, she couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. A bunch of candles and lavender oil and a few velvet cushions. That was the big concept, as far as she could tell. Big hairy wow. Like no one had ever done boudoir chic before.

  “Are you OK?” The girl at the checkout looked concerned, and Honor realized with embarrassment that she’d been mumbling out loud. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

  The two Herrick workers had gone, and she was once again the only customer in the store. Listening to the lonely beep, beep of the scanner as her items passed through it one by one, she thought about Lucas. In her mind, his handsome, arrogant face was laughing at her.

  “You couldn’t beat Anton Tisch,” he seemed to be saying. “But I’m gonna show you how it’s done.”

  Outside, weighed down with groceries, she drew her chunky-knit cardigan more tightly around her against the bitter wind.

  She couldn’t let him have the last laugh. Not this time. She’d have to come up with some sort of plan.

  A week later, Anton arrived back in London in excellent spirits.

  He’d spent the last week at St. Hubert’s, an exclusive private clinic in Switzerland, having his Botox secretly touched up and was highly satisfied with the results. St. Hubert’s no TV, Internet, or phones policy was a pain in the ass, but the cosmetic surgeons there were such artists, it was worth the inconvenience once a year.

  Marching through terminal three at Heathrow while his chauffeur struggled on ahead with the luggage, he allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction. Life was pretty damn good right now. Excelsior had had a fantastic write-up in last week’s Wall Street Journal—the European Superfund, they were calling it now, much to his delight. Ben Slater’s Stellar Fund had barely rated a two-line name check.

  It particularly amused him how no one in the city could fathom how he’d managed to poach quite so many of Stellar’s clients over the past eighteen months. As if it weren’t patently obvious. He might have gone out of his way to distance himself socially from the Azerbaijani oligarchs to whom he owed most of his vast fortune, but that didn’t mean he was above accepting their money. They were all the same, these Slavs and Russians and Central Asians: sheep. Born followers. Not like the Germans or the British, or even the Americans. Now that a select few of them had come into such phenomenal personal wealth, they were still following one another blindly, investing in the same funds, the same cities, the same yachts, the same property deals. All Anton had to do was to massage a few of his old contacts and land one or two big fish for Excelsior, and the rest of them had jumped on the grav
y train like lambs to the slaughter.

  But the fund’s performance wasn’t the only reason Anton had to celebrate. The share price of his Tischen Hotel Group had gone up sixteen points on the news that the Herrick had been nominated for the coveted number one spot in the Relais Chateaux rankings. And he had the incomparable Ms. Kamalski to thank for that.

  When Petra had first contacted him after he’d fired Lucas, suggesting herself for the Herrick managership, he’d thrown her CV in the trash along with all the others. But a few days later she had the good sense to e-mail a second version—this time with a photograph—and at once his interest was piqued. Something about her stark cheekbones and cold, predatory eyes spoke to him. She looked simultaneously sexual and frigid; controlled, but with the promise of raging passions bubbling beneath the skin. His original intention was to fly her to Geneva, string her along until he got her into bed, then get rid of her. But from the moment he saw her in the flesh and their eyes locked, everything changed. He recognized a kindred spirit.

  For one thing, she hadn’t needed the slightest encouragement to sleep with him. She agreed immediately to his request that they have the interview at his home, then showed up for it wearing nothing but a trench coat and patent black stilettos. Thinking about that afternoon now, as his limo surged smoothly out of the airport onto the M, he felt his cock start to harden. After almost three years, he still wanted her constantly.

  From that very first time, sex with Petra had been a revelation. Insatiable, athletic, submissive, yet strong, she was like the missing piece of the jigsaw that Anton had been searching for his whole life. In the past he’d had to pay girls to do the depraved things he wanted. With Petra, he was begged for more. He only had to look at her wildly dilating pupils, or her nipples, hard as frozen berries, arched longingly toward him, to realize her excitement was every bit as real and intense as his own.

  Not only was she a world-class fuck, she was an astonishingly gifted hotelier. Lucas had gotten the Herrick off to a flying start, but Petra took those early seeds of success and multiplied them a hundredfold. She’d broadened their guest list, from the New York–centric music-business types that Lucas had exclusively gone for to the new superrich from across the globe, and she was also a genius at schmoozing stuffy industry types like the buffoons at Relais Chateaux. The locals might not like her, but who cared? The time when Anton had needed their support was long since past. When Petra had confided to him one night in bed that her main motivation in applying for the job had been to put one over on Lucas—the two of them were lifelong enemies, apparently—Anton’s admiration for her became complete. He admired people who pursued their vendettas to the end, who didn’t get distracted or allow the passage of time to smother their righteous indignation. Petra was a woman after his own heart.

  “Your tea, sir.”

  Gavin, the butler Anton always brought with him when traveling, handed him a bone china cup brimming with piping hot Earl Grey. Anton had had his entire fleet of cars fitted with tea-making facilities, along with the standard plasma screens and state-of-the art phone systems. He took the cup wordlessly and settled down to peruse the last week’s papers. See what he’d missed while he’d been stuck at St. Hubert’s.

  Two minutes later, he let out a roar so loud it sent his driver skidding all over the road and promptly spilled scalding tea down his Turnbull & Asser silk shirt.

  “Sheisse!” he roared, pulling the wet cloth away from his skin, but not before a spreading red burn had formed across his chest and stomach like a birthmark. “The little shit.”

  Lucas, it appeared, had taken advantage of his absence to give an interview to the London Times. And it wasn’t pretty.

  The Tischens have become a victim of their own success, he was quoted as saying, in response to a question about whether he saw himself as being in competition with Anton. When a brand explodes to that degree, it soon becomes corporate and faceless, like every other global five-star chain. Mr. Tisch doesn’t like the word “chain,” but that’s what his hotels have become. And I should know. I ran one of them.

  White-lipped with rage, Anton read on.

  Luxe offers something very different. Personal. Unique. So in that sense, no, I don’t see us as competing, not directly anyway. Once we open in the Hamptons, I guess some people might choose to see it that way. But that’s not my view.

  “Get Petra on the phone,” Anton barked at Gavin.

  “She won’t be up, sir,” he stammered timidly, shrinking back in his seat like a mouse before a rattlesnake. “It’s not even six on the East Coast yet.”

  “Don’t tell me what fucking time it is, you stupid fuck,” bellowed Anton. “Just get her on the line.” Already his buoyant mood of a few minutes ago had evaporated completely. Fuck Lucas. Who the hell did he think he was dealing with?

  When Anton killed off an enemy, he expected them to stay dead, and he saw Lucas’s revival of fortunes as a personal affront. He’d been too busy with the fund in recent months to take any further concrete action against him. But he saw now that that had been a mistake. He’d given Lucas an inch and he’d taken a mile, threatening to open a new Luxe in the Hamptons, of all the outrageous…

  “About time.” Petra’s sleepy voice ricocheted around the limo in surround sound. “Where the hell have you been all week?”

  “Never mind that,” snapped Anton. He wasn’t about to admit his surgical sabbatical to anyone, least of all the woman he was sleeping with. “I just read Lucas’s interview. He claims he’s setting up shop in East Hampton. Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

  “How was I supposed to tell you?” Petra snapped back. “By carrier pigeon? I’ve left you about a hundred messages; you never returned a single one. I haven’t even been able to make a statement to the press. Where were you?”

  “Don’t challenge me,” said Anton.

  He sounded angry, but Petra could sense the lust simmering underneath. Their role-play was always the same: she was the petulant schoolgirl, he the disciplinarian teacher. But Anton never seemed to tire of it.

  “Speak to me like that again and I’ll spank you,” he said.

  Gavin the butler blushed scarlet and stared firmly out the window.

  “Apologize.”

  “Sorry,” purred Petra meekly.

  In the back of the car, Anton’s hard-on was now clearly visible through the twill of his suit pants. How he wished Petra were here in the quivering, pliant flesh, and not on the other end of a phone line. But she wasn’t. And they had business to discuss.

  “So,” he said. “Our friend Mr. Ruiz has crawled out from under his stone while I’ve been gone, has he?”

  “It’s pathetic,” said Petra, her voice dripping with vitriol. “He opens two paltry hotels in Europe—Luxe Paris is so small it’s practically a guesthouse—and already he thinks he’s Rande Gerber. He’s a joke.”

  Anton didn’t find the prospect of a Hamptons Luxe remotely amusing. But neither was he intimidated. Being forced to crush Lucas a second time was an unwanted irritation—like finding a cockroach you thought you’d killed still wriggling on the bottom of your shoe. But it was hardly a serious concern.

  “Lucas is all talk,” said Petra. “He always has been. He clearly hasn’t found a site for this mythical new Luxe yet, or he’d have been boasting about that too.”

  “And he’s not going to find one,” growled Anton menacingly.

  “To be honest,” said Petra, “That stuck-up bitch Honor Palmer worries me far more than Lucas does.”

  Honor’s dislike of Petra was nothing compared to the boiling hatred that Petra harbored for her local rival. Not since Lucas had tried to eclipse her in college had she felt so threatened and, at the same time, so irrationally resentful of another human being. She despised everything about Honor, from her deep, growling voice with its faint Bostonian twang, to her tiny, doll-like body, to the easy way with which she seemed to wrap all the local snobs around her little finger. People treated her l
ike aristocracy, and Petra like some low-life immigrant, when in reality Petra’s family was far older, grander, and richer than the Palmers. Honor was also routinely described in the press as “cute” and even “beautiful,” which incensed Petra, who thought her own physical charms outshone Honor’s like the sun outshone a candle.

  “Honor?” Anton sounded amazed. “Don’t be ridiculous. She’s no threat to us. I’ve seen Holiday Inns in Des Moines with better occupancy rates than Palmers.”

  “Hmm,” said Petra skeptically. “Maybe.”

  Now that Palmers was clearly on its way out, Anton was perfectly content to watch the old hotel die a slow, lingering death. Cancer, as long as it was terminal, was as good a way to finish off a rival as the firing squad. But Petra remained much more antsy. As long as Palmers was standing and open for business, and as long as that poisonous dwarf Honor Palmer hung around like a bad smell, playing the town sweetheart, she would never feel completely secure, no matter how many Relais Chateaux accolades they won.

  “You mustn’t fret so much, darling,” said Anton, reading her mind. “The locals can huff and puff for Honor as much as they like. They won’t blow our house down. And nor will Lucas. We’ll see to that.” The limo eased to a halt outside his Mayfair mansion, and Anton hung up and hurried inside, leaving Gavin and the driver to manage his cases.

  His week away had been rejuvenating. But now there was work to be done. This time around, he’d make damn sure he finished off Lucas Ruiz for good.