Do Not Disturb

by Tilly Bagshawe

  Two weeks ago he’d moved out of the squalid apartment he’d been renting in Tooting and checked himself in to the Cadogan. His room was the cheapest the hotel had to offer and was little more than five hundred square feet, but it had still cost him every penny of his remaining savings. Literally every penny. As of tomorrow morning, he had no idea how he was going to eat.

  Still, it had been worth it. In the past two weeks he’d gotten to know the hotel’s inner workings every bit as intimately as Julia Brett-Sadler, the Cadogan’s bossy, schoolmarmish manager. He knew about the morale problems in the kitchen and the Michelin-starred, megalomaniac chef who made his staff’s lives hell. He knew about the barman who regularly slipped free drinks to girls he was sleeping with. He knew about the maître d’s two-hundred-pounds-a-day coke habit.

  If he was going to have any kind of a shot with Anton Tisch—a guy who wouldn’t even give his own kid a break, apparently—Lucas knew he would have to be more informed and more impressive than everybody else. Of course, he first had to swing himself an appointment with the guy, something that so far was proving depressingly difficult.

  Battling his way through the commuters at Westminster station, he finally emerged into the drizzle of the street. Storm clouds hung low in the sky like a thick, heavy blanket, blocking out so much light that it almost felt like night. Not even the gold-faced splendor of Big Ben or the intricately carved towers of the Palace of Westminster could lift the atmosphere of dreary depression lingering in the air. Clicking open his umbrella with a curse, Lucas made his way along the now-familiar route by the river, toward the Adelphi building where the Tischen Corporation had its offices.

  “You ’ere again, mate?” The doorman seemed less than thrilled to see him. “Don’t give up easy, do you?”

  “No,” said Lucas, pushing past him into the lobby. “I don’t. I’m here to see Mr. Tisch.” He smiled firmly at the Asian girl at the reception desk, who glowered back at him.

  “Do you have an appointment?” she asked wearily. It was the third time she’d been through this charade this week, and the novelty was wearing thin.

  “Yes,” lied Lucas. “He’s expecting me.”

  The girl gave him a look that made it clear she knew he was bullshitting, but that at this point she really didn’t care.

  “Sixteenth floor,” she sighed, handing him a visitor’s pass. “Once you’re up there, you’re Rita’s problem.”

  Luckily for Lucas, Rita was much more amenable to his particular blend of Latin charm than the Thai harridan downstairs. Somewhere in the no-man’s-land between middle-aged and elderly, her sensible tweed suit and Miss Moneypenny manner hid a mischievous streak that Lucas was quick to pick up on. He guessed it had been a long time since any good-looking young man had bothered to flirt with Rita. And it seemed he was right. No sooner had he started to banter with her than the floodgates opened.

  “Darling.” Striding over to her desk, grinning from ear to ear, he kissed her hand while she laughingly attempted to get rid of another caller.

  “Mr. Ruiz!” Switching off her headset, she pulled her hand away and tried to look stern.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” said Lucas. “We must stop meeting like this. People are going to start talking. But you know, all you have to do is let me see him. Just for five minutes. Then I’ll be out of your hair forever.”

  “I’ve told you,” said the secretary, blushing like a giddy schoolgirl, “it really isn’t up to me. Mr. Tisch’s diary is booked up months in advance. I can’t just squeeze people in willy-nilly. However charming they might be. I’d lose my job.”

  “Ah, lovely Rita, surely not?” said Lucas. He’d perched on the corner of her desk now, close enough for her to smell his cologne. Really, he could be most distracting when he wanted to…“No man in his right mind would let you go. Won’t you at least let him know I’m here?”

  “Well…” she said, her resolve already crumbling. “All right. I’ll buzz him. But I can tell you right now, he won’t see you. He’s having rather a bad day, I’m afraid.”

  This turned out to be an understatement.

  Inside his office, Anton reached for his open bottle of antacids and slipped another revolting, chalky pill into his mouth.

  “No, I will not calm down, Roger,” he yelled into the phone. “She’s crucifying me. And that cunt of an editor’s giving her a free pass to do it! There’s more on the story in tomorrow’s paper, apparently. When I think of how much fucking money I gave to their bloody Help a London Child appeal last year. I mean, where’s the fucking loyalty, Roger, huh? Answer me that!”

  Anton Tisch was one of life’s winners. Having cleaned up in Azerbaijan in the midnineties, he’d gotten out of the oil business while the getting was still good, before he found himself poisoned or shot or shipped off to Siberia like so many of the Russians who’d gotten greedy and kept their fat fingers in the pie for too long. Diversifying into other industries, he had reinvented himself as a legitimate businessman. His hedge fund, Excelsior, was now one of the largest and most profitable in Europe. His media empire stretched from Delhi to Vladivostok and incorporated everything from online search engines to cable TV stations. And his hotel chain—the mighty Tischens—was among the most prestigious and well respected in a notoriously cutthroat and fickle business.

  Dividing his time between his home in Mayfair—he’d had three exquisite Georgian mansions knocked together to create one of the largest privately owned residences in London—and his estate on the banks of Lake Geneva, Anton surrounded himself with every luxury that money could buy.

  Of course, as for so many of the world’s wealthiest men, it was the things money couldn’t buy that kept him awake at night. Having grown up poor in an obscure village in rural East Germany, what Tisch craved more than anything was social acceptance among the English upper classes—to become part of the famously amorphous British Establishment. But like so many wealthy foreigners before him, he was discovering the hard way that in England there were numerous doors that money alone could not unlock. Abramovich had won over the masses as Mr. Chelski when he bought and poured money into Chelsea football club. But Anton wasn’t interested in being liked by lager louts and yobs. His social sights were set much higher.

  His strategy—pouring funds very publicly into civic institutions and high-profile charities—was a good one. He wanted people to see him as a modern-day Carnegie: generous, philanthropic, paternalistic; in short, everything that the English aristocracy considered themselves, however misguidedly, to be. Eventually, the plan was for his good works to earn him a knighthood, the social equivalent of an access-all-areas backstage pass.

  Only last month, his sources at Whitehall had been reassuring him that he was well on the way to achieving his coveted K. But that was before Heidi.

  She wasn’t the first girl to go to the papers with a story shredding his hard-earned reputation. A few years ago another ex, a journalist, had written a piece about Anton’s sadomasochistic bedroom practices that had sent his social ambitions slithering back down the chute to square one.

  He ought to have learned his lesson then. But even knowing the dangers he faced at the hands of the notoriously xenophobic British press—German-bashing still sold papers in England—his pathological dislike of women made it almost impossible for him to treat his lovers with the decency or generosity that might have kept them quiet. To Anton Tisch, women were possessions to be used and discarded. Any children he might accidentally have fathered along the way he viewed not so much as people but as collateral damage.

  “You know what I was doing last night, Roger?” he bellowed at his British lawyer, pacing like a cat between his desk and the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the river. “Cutting the ribbon on a brand-new fucking dialysis machine at Great Ormond Street, that’s what. But do they report on that? Do they? Fuck no! They’d rather help that slut tell the world that I don’t like children. It’s libel, that’s what it is. And she’s not getting
away with it.”

  Slamming the phone down petulantly, he sat back down at his desk. The fact was he’d lose if he tried to sue the paper or the girl, and he knew it. The picture Heidi painted might be one-sided, but it wasn’t untrue. And even if it had been, dragging the thing out would only cause more damage to his good name. There really was nothing else to do but pay her off, and that was what was really driving him crazy: the thought that she was going to get the money she wanted after all. That she’d beaten him. She’d won.

  Too restless and irritated to make another call, he idly picked up the piece of paper on the top of his in-tray. It was the CV for a man named Brent Dalgliesh, the candidate he’d decided to hire yesterday as deputy manager at the Cadogan.

  With so many businesses under his control, a large part of Anton’s time was taken up with delegation. The only areas he still focused on personally were his hedge fund, where he still made all the investment decisions himself, and his hotels.

  Anton loved the hotel business every bit as passionately as Abramovich loved his football or Richard Branson his planes. In interviews, he often described the Tischens as his children, but few people realized quite how literally he meant it. His strategy had been simple and consistent from day one: he deliberately picked out locations with a dominant hotel already in place—Reid’s in Madeira, the Post Ranch in Big Sur, Raffles in Singapore—and challenged them right on their doorsteps. Always the last word in decadence and hip, Tischen hotels set out to make the old giants look like what they were: tired behemoths, long past their sell-by dates.

  The plan worked, time after time, but nowhere had he pulled it off with such spectacular success as in London, with the Cadogan. A stone’s throw from both the Lanesborough and the Dorchester, Anton’s gentleman’s club–style hotel had outearned both of those giants in only its second year. As one journalist had put it in a piece that Anton had blown up, framed, and hung on his office wall: “With the Cadogan, the brilliant Mr. Tisch has out-Englished the English. A triumph of good taste.”

  Looking at Brent’s CV again now, Anton felt his irritation mounting. It was a stupid name, for one thing. Made him sound like a shopping center, or a service station on the M. As for the litany of achievements that had so impressed him yesterday—a first-class degree from the LSE, seven years at the Georges V in Paris, the Young Hotelier of the Year Award—suddenly they all seemed cloyingly earnest and worthy. What kind of a resume-conscious suck-up became president of the student union, for God’s sake?

  It was at that moment that Rita buzzed his intercom.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Tisch,” she said meekly. “But there’s a Mr. Lucas Ruiz here to see you. Again.”

  Anton was about to snap at her that “do not disturb” meant exactly that, when something made him think twice. This kid had been showing up like clockwork day after day, asking about the Cadogan job. He was fresh out of college and consequently ludicrously underqualified. But he’d refused to take no for an answer, a trait that Anton greatly admired. He was also, according to the CV he’d insisted on leaving with Rita, quite brilliant academically.

  Fuck it. He couldn’t focus on work anyway, not with this Heidi shit hanging over his head. What harm would it do to see the boy?

  “OK, Rita,” he said, ripping Brent’s details into four neat pieces and dropping them into the trash can under the desk. “Show him in.”

  If Lucas was surprised to have been granted an audience, he didn’t show it. Instead he burst into Anton’s office, pushing his long hair out of his eyes and smiling, radiating confidence like a stadium floodlight.

  “How do you do, Mr. Tisch?” he said, thrusting out his hand in greeting. “Thank you for seeing me.” He was a good-looking boy and came across as much older and more self-assured than the twenty-four-year-old he claimed to be. Still, he hardly looked like a senior executive. Despite the suit and tie, there was a certain rock-star rebelliousness about him that was screaming to be let out. What with that and the flowing hair, he looked more like a drug dealer than a hotelier.

  “I’m really not sure why I am seeing you,” said Anton, honestly. Lucas scoured his face for clues as to his mood or character, anything he could use. But the great man was eerily expressionless, and much more waxy-faced than he appeared in pictures. Having never seen Botox on a man before, Lucas made a mental note never, ever to try it. Tisch reminded him of the dead Lenin—only perhaps not quite so warm and cuddly. He was tall, with obviously dyed chestnut-brown hair plastered to his head as though stuck on with glue, and was wearing what appeared to be some sort of naval uniform, a white jacket with blue stripes down the arms. Clearly he considered himself to be something of a snazzy dresser, but the overall effect was too Michael Jackson for Lucas’s taste. He half expected to see fingerless leather gloves emerge from the military sleeves or a black armband whipped out of the drawer.

  “The position at the Cadogan is far beyond your experience and capabilities,” Anton went on. “It’s a world-class hotel. What on earth makes you think I’d hand any part of it over to an amateur?”

  Lucas took a deep breath. “With respect, sir, I think you already have. Julia Brett-Sadler couldn’t run her own bath.”

  Tisch raised an eyebrow and suppressed a smile. The boy was cocky as hell. But he liked that about him.

  “All right, Lucas,” he said. “You’ve got my attention. Let’s hear what you have to say.”

  And so Lucas told him. Calmly, dispassionately, he listed every problem, every failure he’d witnessed at the Cadogan in his the last two weeks there as a guest. For each one he put forward his own solution, explaining concisely but meticulously just how he would do a better job than the current manager. When he’d finished, he sat back in his chair, cracked his knuckles with confident finality, and waited for Anton’s response.

  When it came, it was not at all what he expected.

  “Do you have a problem with women, Mr. Ruiz?” Tisch’s tone was as casual, as if he were inquiring about the weather or the football results. Lucas looked surprised. “Not at all. I love women,” he said truthfully. “But do I think they’re better in the bedroom than the boardroom? Yes, sir, I do.”

  Anton was warming to this kid more by the minute.

  “You realize that’s the sort of statement that can get you into a lot of hot water these days,” he said, without anger. “There’s no sexual discrimination in my hotels. In fact, the Tischens have a higher proportion of women in management positions than any other major chain.”

  This was true. One of Anton’s most successful weapons in countering the sexism claims made by ex-lovers was his excellent reputation as an equal-opportunity employer. He’d learned long ago that it paid to have prominent, educated women on hand whose job it was to make him sound decent and honorable.

  Lucas shrugged. “I wouldn’t have a problem working for Julia if she were doing her job properly. Or if I didn’t know I could do it better. But she isn’t. And I could.”

  Anton got to his feet. As a rule, he wasn’t a man to make rash decisions. But every once in a while, he liked to act on instinct. And his instincts about the Ruiz boy were all good.

  “I’ve heard what you said today, and I take those criticisms seriously, believe me,” he said. “Nevertheless, Miss Brett-Sadler has done wonderful things with that hotel in the past two years. Things that you have yet to achieve, Mr. Ruiz. It would take a lot more than some internal politics to convince me to replace her.”

  Lucas looked crestfallen.

  “However,” Anton continued, “the undermanager position is still open. And I’ll admit, I’m tempted to give you a shot at it, if only to put your spectacular arrogance to the test.”

  For once, Lucas was speechless. In fact, he was so frightened of jinxing things he could barely breathe. Still as a statue, he prayed for Anton to go on.

  “Fuck it,” said Anton, cracking a smile for the first time that day. “You’re hired. I’m putting you on a three-month probation peri
od. But if I’m not happy with your work, I’ll have you out of there in three minutes, believe me. Got that?”

  “Absolutely,” said Lucas, springing to his feet. All he wanted now was to get the hell out of there before Tisch changed his mind. “You won’t regret this, sir. I promise.”

  “I’d better not,” said Anton. “Because if I do, Mr. Ruiz, it’ll be you who suffers, not me.”

  Despite the implied threat, Anton had a good feeling about Lucas, which only intensified once the boy had left his office, so happy he was practically skipping to the elevator. Julia had been getting a bit complacent over at the Cadogan. It was about time he shook her up a bit.

  He had a feeling that appointing Lucas Ruiz to be her number two might put the cat among the pigeons most satisfactorily. He may not be able to teach Heidi a lesson—yet—but Julia was about to learn that it paid never to rest on your laurels when you worked for the great Anton Tisch.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LOLA!” KARIS CARTER could feel her throat getting hoarse as she yelled up the stairs yet again for her daughter. “Lola, get down here right now. We need those cases. Mo’s loading the car.”

  It was mid-September, and the Carters were finally, belatedly, leaving their summer home in the Hamptons and flying back to Boston. If Karis had had her way they’d have gone home at the end of August, like everybody else. East Hampton was like a ghost town in September, whereas in Boston the endless round of parties and charity “dos” that were the center of Karis’s existence was just beginning again. It was the best month to be there, and she’d missed it. All because of stupid, selfish Devon.

  It was hard to pinpoint exactly when Devon and Karis Carter had grown apart. Certainly they’d loved each other once, back when Karis’s modeling career was still thriving and Devon was an up-and-coming young lawyer, as handsome as he was brilliant. But those days were a lifetime ago now. The intervening years had brought them two children—Nicholas, now nineteen and his mother’s favorite, and sixteen-year-old Lola—as well as enough money from both inheritance and Devon’s work to pay for two multimillion-dollar homes and the lifestyle to go with them. But in other ways they’d been less kind. Though still a handsome woman, Karis’s youthful beauty had faded to a pale shadow of what it had once been. Having built not only her career but her self-esteem around her looks, aging took a terrible toll, not just on her but on her marriage. Insecure and pathologically demanding of attention, she pushed Devon’s patience, not to mention his credit cards, to the limit.