“Palmers, in the Hamptons? Of course,” he said. “It’s a legend. Probably the most prestigious family-owned hotel in the world.”
“Used to be,” said Anton. He handed Lucas a spreadsheet from the pile in front of him. “These are last year’s numbers. Take a look.”
Lucas’s eyes scanned down the page, his almost photographic memory taking in the relevant points on the P and L at once.
“Yeah, well. That’s not good. How did you get ahold of these?” He handed the paper back.
“Never mind that,” said Anton brusquely. “The point is that Palmers is on its last legs. I’ve decided to build my next Tischen in East Hampton, just a couple of streets away. It’s going to be called the Herrick.”
“Great,” said Lucas, unsure what any of this had to do with him. “But listen, about the Cadogan—”
Anton held up his hand for silence.
“For Christ’s sake, boy, stop whining about all that before I change my mind. Clearly that hotel isn’t big enough for the two of you, and there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell I’m letting Julia Brett-Sadler go. You can consider yourself fired from the Cadogan, Lucas.”
“But Mr. Tisch—”
“As of right now,” said Anton firmly.
Gulping, Lucas ran a hand through his thick mop of curls, trying desperately not to show how crushed he was. He was far too proud to beg for his job—it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway—but what the fuck was he going to tell his bank manager now?
Noticing the gesture, Anton added: “Oh yes, your hair. That’ll have to go. From now on I want you clean-shaven and preppier than a Gap model at a loafer-wearers convention. Got it?”
“Not really,” said Lucas. “I thought you just said I was fired.”
“From the Cadogan, you are.” Anton smiled. “In a few short months you’ve shown yourself to be completely incapable of compromise, taking direction, or working within a team. I’m not surprised Julia’s sick to death of you.”
Lucas’s face fell.
“But you’ve also shown yourself to be an innovator and a risk taker,” Anton went on, “with a quite masterful grasp of the media. Those are skills I can use.”
Blindsided by relief, and not having the first idea what to say to this, Lucas wisely said nothing.
“What I need at the Herrick is youth, energy, and above all some real momentum in the press,” said Anton. “Palmers may not be the giant it once was. But old names like that don’t die out overnight, especially not in a closed, elitist society like the Hamptons. I’ve been reduced to blackmailing the planning committee just to get the damn project off the ground,” he said bitterly. “None of the locals will rest until they’ve run us out of town, and we haven’t even begun construction yet. I need someone out there who doesn’t shy away from confrontation, but who can also be charming in the right quarters. You’ll be project manager-cum-foreman for the first year at least, then take over as manager once she’s up and running. What do you think? Are you up to it?”
Slowly, grindingly slowly, the full import of what Anton was saying began to sink into Lucas’s brain.
“D’you mean…you want to hire me as the manager?” he stammered.
“Ah. You don’t think you’re ready.” Sensing his hesitation like a shark smelling blood, Anton snapped shut the folder of documents with a sigh. “Well, perhaps you’re right. You are less than a year out of school, after all. It’s a big step.”
“No, no.” Lucas shot to his feet like he’d just been shocked with a cattle prod. “I’m ready. Of course I’m ready. When do you want me to start?”
“Soon,” said Anton. “As you’re here now, you can spend the next month in Geneva learning the ropes of the project. Then it’ll take a few weeks to sort out your visa, et cetera…but I’ll want you on the ground by February, latest.”
Lucas grinned. Anton Tisch might be a bastard to the rest of the world, but he was rapidly turning into Lucas’s own personal guardian angel.
“Palmers has been in a lot of trouble for years,” he went on. “But their real weak spot right now is Honor Palmer, old man Trey’s daughter. She’s taken over as manager with no prior experience in the hotel trade, and the locals all hate her for pulling a fast one on her father, seizing control of his assets against his wishes.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Lucas. “Grasping bitch.”
“What I want you to do,” said Anton, “is to get that message out there nationally, and even internationally. Once people stop seeing Honor and Palmers as the underdog, they’ll be a lot more accepting of us. I’ve done this many times now, and I can tell you, building a world-class hotel is only half the battle. You have to win over the local hearts and minds too. We don’t want to be the Big Bad Corporate Wolf.”
Lucas’s heart was pumping nineteen to the dozen. He wasn’t worried about turning the PR tide against Honor. That should be a piece of cake. But to be responsible for building and managing a Tischen hotel in such a prestigious location? A rival to the great Palmers, no less? That was more than a dream. It was a wildest, most ridiculous fantasy. And it was about to come true.
Sensing his excitement, Anton smiled and dropped the heavy bundle of paperwork in Lucas’s lap.
“Merry Christmas,” he said drily. “Oh, and Lucas? I’m serious about the haircut. I’m not having my hotel run by Steven bloody Tyler.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
HONOR GLANCED UP at the ominous, bruise-gray storm clouds gathering over the ocean and stepped up her pace a notch. It was a typical drab, windy January morning, and apart from her devoted boxer, Caleb, jumping excitedly at her heels, the beach was deserted. That suited Honor just fine. She preferred to be alone when she ran. It helped her to think.
Right now she had a lot to think about. Ignoring the ache in her thighs as the lactic acid streamed through her veins, she made a sharp left and began pounding her way over the bumpy dunes, trying to sort her various problems into some sort of order.
First, as always, there was Palmers. The first whisper she’d heard about a new Tischen hotel being built right on her doorstep had come via Devon, back in October. She’d been worried, of course, but had somehow convinced herself that this was a problem to be faced in the distant future, long after she’d restored Palmers to its former glory. She never imagined that things would move as fast as they had. Less than twelve weeks later and the old houses on the proposed Herrick site had already been demolished, with a forbidding chain-link fence erected around the resultant vast plot of muddy earth. Even if they only built on half that space, it would be twice the size of Palmers.
At first Honor was pissed at Devon for failing to do anything to stop the development.
“You’re on the damn planning committee, aren’t you?” she’d yelled at him in bed, after a particularly unsatisfactory bout of lovemaking. They saw each other so rarely these days—one snatched weekend in three, if they were lucky—that the pressure for everything to be perfect when they did meet hung over them like a death sentence. Her desire for him was as strong as ever, but the wave of sexual confidence that had swept her away in the early months was already subsiding, and all her natural insecurities were creeping back. “Can’t you do something?”
“Like what?” Devon, equally frustrated by the sex, sounded exasperated. “I told you, Tisch clearly has some dirt on Mort Sullivan. The guy did a total U-turn overnight, and he’s got enough influence on the other members to swing the thing his way, whatever I say or do.”
“But there must be something…an appeal, maybe?” Sitting up in bed, Honor ran her fingers through her hair. Devon reached up and started stroking her back, trying to calm her.
“On what grounds? You don’t want the competition? Look,” he added more gently. “The planning decision’s been made. Trying to fight it will be a waste of your time and money, believe me. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do. You can turn Palmers around, just like you planned. And you can beat Anton Tisch at his own game.”
His words came back to her now as the cold wind whipped against her face. He was right, of course. It was pathetic how frightened she was of a little competition. Her grandfather Tertius had seen off more rivals than he could count in his thirty years at Palmers’ helm. And here she was, after only a few months, running scared at the first whiff of a threat. Then again, in her grandfather’s day, Palmers hadn’t been falling apart at the seams. Among the myriad problems that the surveyors’ report had thrown up last year, two were particularly serious. They needed a new roof, and the entire building would have to be rewired.
“If you only had the funds to fix one of those things, which would you fix?” Honor, ever the pragmatist, had asked the surveyor.
“I’d fix my bank account,” he said grimly. “You really can’t cut corners here, Miss Palmer. These are essential repairs, and they’ll cost you a lot more in the long term if you don’t deal with them now.”
Which was all very well. But it would be at least a year, assuming she got her bookings back up to year-round capacity (and how the fuck was she going to manage that?) before she could begin to afford such a major refurb. In the end, deciding that a working roof really was a genuine essential, she’d begun only minor repairs to the wiring. She figured if she got the roof fixed by May and got enough bookings over her first summer season in June through August, in a pinch she might be able to rewire before the following summer, when the Herrick would be up and running. But she still tossed and turned in bed each night praying that she’d made the right decision. What if something really went haywire and she woke one morning to find the building being consumed by an electrical fire? At least if the roof had still leaked, it might have doused the flames. Oh God! Why did Anton bloody Tisch have to crawl out of the woodwork now?
Reaching the top of the dunes, she began the long descent back toward the shore. Caleb had run so far ahead he was little more than a speck in the distance, but there was no way he’d hear her above the breaking waves if she whistled for him now. A parting gift from Devon, the rescue dog was affectionate and loyal to a fault, but obedience had never been his forte—something else that Honor loved about him.
If it hadn’t been for Caleb, she’d probably have had a nervous breakdown over Christmas. Desperately lonely without Devon—she couldn’t even call him over the holiday season; it was too risky with his family around—it felt like one thing after another had conspired to dampen her festive spirits.
First there was the situation with her father, which only seemed to get worse as the weeks passed. He was still refusing to see or talk to Honor, but she knew from the few family friends who visited that his Alzheimer’s was in full, raging swing now, and he probably wouldn’t know who she was even if he did take her calls. Devon had promised her he’d check up on the old man while he was in town, to make sure Lise wasn’t abusing him. She wasn’t, but the picture he painted for Honor was still pretty grim: Trey rarely acknowledged his wife at all and spent long periods each week in a state of total regression, even to the point of sucking his thumb and asking repeatedly for his mother. Honor’s desperation was made worse by the fact that relations between her and her stepmother were at an all-time low.
“You know, you’re very good at telling everyone else what to do,” Lise had told her angrily during a Christmas Eve phone call that had deteriorated, as usual, into a slinging match. “But I’m the one that’s here with him every day. You can’t even be bothered to make it home for Christmas.”
“It’s not a question of being bothered,” Honor shot back angrily. “What’s the point of me being in the house if Dad won’t see me? Besides, Christmas is a crazy time at the hotel. I can’t just abandon ship.”
In fact Palmers was depressingly empty of guests over the holiday. True, East Hampton was primarily a summer resort, but another winter like this one would finish them. The real reason she hadn’t gone back to Boston for the holidays was that she couldn’t bear the thought of running into Devon there with Karis and the kids. From the beginning he’d assured her repeatedly that his marriage was one of convenience, and that both he and Karis stayed in it for the children. Honor told herself she believed him, but going to Boston would mean putting that trust to the test, a thought that filled her with a lot more fear than it ought to have. But after what Devon had told her about her father, she realized that she would have to bite the bullet soon and force her way in to see Trey, whether he liked it or not. After all, as long as she didn’t leave the house, she couldn’t run into Karis Carter, could she? She had a two-day trip penciled in for the end of the month and was absolutely dreading it.
She was at the end of the beach now, in the flat, scrubby area where the sand petered out and the bracken and spiky grass began. A narrow, winding path led from here up to the road and a two-mile flat jog back to Palmers. Caleb, for once, had decided to stop and wait for his mistress, and Honor spent a few seconds patting and praising him while she caught her breath, before sinking down onto the grass for her sit-ups.
Ever since she’d turned thirteen she’d been obsessive about staying in shape and maintaining her lithe, boyish figure. At first, exercise was a weapon in the losing battle against puberty. But once she grew up and realized that not only could she not become a boy, but her father probably wouldn’t love her even if she did, the focus of her workouts changed. Now they were all about control, about power. As though if she could keep her own body in check, she stood a chance at doing the same with the rest of her life. Or something.
As she jackknifed into a series of painful-looking crunches, her mind wandered to Tina, who was supposed to be joining her on her upcoming visit to their father. Although relieved her sister’s relationship with the awful Danny was at an end, Tina’s move to LA had not meant the end to all the gossip that Honor had hoped for. No sooner was she out of one inflammatory relationship than she had launched herself headlong into another, this time with a nineteen-year-old boy-toy model and sometime porn star who rejoiced in the name of Dick Grate. Really, you couldn’t make up Tina’s life if you tried. She and Dick seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time making out (or worse) in public places and had generally succeeded in establishing themselves as Hollywood’s most watched It couple. Rarely did a week go by without some compromising picture or other making its way into US Weekly or the National Enquirer. It didn’t help that, if anything, Dick actually looked even younger than he was—like an overgrown schoolboy out on a date with his buxom math teacher.
Tina, however, refused to see any problem with the relationship.
“You’re just jealous,” she said breezily when Honor tackled her about it before Christmas, insisting it was doing harm to both the family’s reputation and Palmers’. “Dick’s single, I’m single, so what? It’s not my fault you never get laid and waste your life stuck in that mausoleum of a hotel.”
To add insult to injury, she’d positively insisted on bringing the infamous Dick back to Boston with her in a few weeks as well, which meant Honor was going to have to meet him.
“You don’t understand the passion we have for each other,” Tina explained to a by-now nauseous Honor. “We can’t be apart at all, not even for one night. Anyway, Dad’s not gonna care, is he? He won’t know who we are, never mind Dickie.”
This was true. But it didn’t make Honor feel any better.
“C’mon, boy.” Bouncing back up onto her feet, she dragged Caleb by his collar up the steep path to the road. Normally she treated this last stretch of her morning run as a cooldown. But just thinking about Tina and Dickie made her so mad, she found herself sprinting faster than ever, her soles pummeling away at the tarmac as if they had some sort of personal vendetta. By the time she rounded the corner into Palmers’ driveway she was dripping with sweat, and even in the chilly January air her cheeks were flushed redder than a Russian doll’s.
“Miss Palmer?” The girl on reception was new and even more afraid of Honor than the rest of the staff. Her voice sounded positively querulou
s, and Honor found herself battling down irritation. As long as people did their jobs right, they had nothing to fear from her. She hated when they cowered like she was Saddam Hussein or something.
“What is it, Agnes?” she snapped, unclipping Caleb from his leash and shooing him out into the gardens.
“You have a visitor,” mumbled the girl. “He’s waiting in the parlor. I lit the fire for him.”
“Well, who is it?” said Honor. “Can they wait fifteen minutes? I need to take a shower.”
“Erm, I’m not sure.” The girl looked properly panicked now, as if she’d just been asked to explain quantum theory or translate the Koran into Urdu. “It’s Mr. Carter. He seemed…he looked…I think it might be important,” she blurted.
Typical. Devon showed up to surprise her for the first time in almost a month, and she looked like something the cat had dragged in. Torn between running into his arms right away and disappearing upstairs to at least wash the sweat out of her hair, the decision was taken out of her hands when Devon appeared in the lobby. “I need to talk to you,” he said stiffly. He couldn’t risk showing any affection in front of Agnes. “Can we talk in private?”
“Of course,” said Honor, matching his businesslike tone, although inside her heart was pounding. “Come on up to my rooms. We can talk there.”
Only when the door of her suite was safely closed behind them did she reach up and put her arms around him. Kissing him softly on the mouth, before he had a chance to say anything, she breathed in the comforting man-smell of his body, a combination of aftershave, sweat, and the starch from his shirt, and felt herself relaxing like a stretched spring.
Her euphoria, however, was short-lived.
Pulling away, Devon looked her in the eye. She could tell at once that something was wrong.
“What?” she said. Oh, please, please let him not have come to finish things between them. Anything but that. “What is it?”
“Honor, I’m so sorry,” he began. She felt the bile rising up in her throat. He had come to dump her! But he didn’t even love Karis. Why? Why would he leave her, why now?
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