“A Home Depot?” said Karis, turning the words over as she spoke, as if examining a rare stone. “How fascinating.”
Clearly, ordinary people with ordinary jobs were completely outside her frame of reference. With two such out-of-touch parents and a megalomaniacal fantasist for a brother, it was a miracle Lola had turned out so normal.
Somehow Marti made it to dessert—a sinfully creamy tiramisu—without losing his cool, and at last the general conversation changed tack.
“This party at the Herrick should be fun,” said Nick, helping himself to a second slab of dessert and greedily cramming a spoonful into his mouth. “From what I hear, that Russki chick’s really pulled out all the stops. Alex Loeb said the Clintons are gonna be there.”
The Herrick party, less than three weeks away now, was the talk of the town.
“Good for them,” said Devon, without looking up. “However, we won’t be going.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Nick. “I’m going. Gisele Bündchen’s on the guest list, along with half the Brazilian Elite girls. I’m not missing that for anyone.”
“Yeah, right. Like you have a chance with them,” muttered Lola.
“Enough!” roared Devon, losing his temper and banging his fist down on the table so hard the crystalware shuddered. “None of us is going and that’s final. We’re here to enjoy a quiet family summer together, not go running around town chasing after floozies.”
“You’d know all about that,” muttered Nick under his breath. Unfortunately he wasn’t quite quiet enough.
“What did you just say?” Devon’s voice had dropped to its normal level again, but his lips had gone white with rage.
“Darling, leave it,” whispered Karis. “Please.”
Marti shifted uncomfortably in his seat. This was going to get ugly. Nick pushed back his chair and got defiantly to his feet. “I’m sick of being stuck in this house, creeping around like a criminal because you two are running scared of Honor stupid Palmer.”
“Nicky!” hissed Karis, on the verge of hysterics. “Do not say that name in this house. Ever.”
Lola reached across the table and squeezed her mother’s hand, but Karis seemed not to notice. Meanwhile Devon’s face had gone from white through every shade to purple and was now, Marti noticed, roughly the color of a baboon’s backside.
“Get out!” he yelled at Nick. “I mean it, Nicholas. Get out of this house, before I throw you out.”
“Fine,” said Nick, kicking his chair to the floor as he stormed off, slamming the dining room door behind him.
For a few precious moments silence fell. Then Devon looked up and smiled around the table as if nothing had happened.
“Would you like some coffee, my dear?” he asked Karis.
“Yes,” she said, a little nervously. “I think so. Why not? As long as it’s decaf. Lola darling? Will you and Martin be having any?”
Half an hour later, up in their bedroom, Marti undid his tie with relief.
“Was it just me? Or was that like something out of The Stepford Wives? Your mom was smiling so hard she looked like her jaw might go into spasm.”
“I know,” said Lola, unzipping her dress and kicking off her gold stiletto shoes.
“How can they live like that, in such a constant state of denial? I’ve never seen two people more repressed.”
“I did warn you we weren’t exactly the Waltons,” said Lola ruefully. “Look on the bright side. At least Nick’s taken off.”
“Not for long, I bet,” said Marti. “Your dad hasn’t written him a check yet, and isn’t likely to if he doesn’t stick around to eat some humble pie. Something tells me he won’t be going to that party at the Herrick either.”
“Poor Gisele’ll be sooo disappointed,” giggled Lola.
Crawling under the covers together, they soon fell asleep, content as always just to lie in each other’s arms.
At eleven the next morning, Honor sat at a table in the newly finished Palmers’ dining room, sampling some mouthwateringly delicious roast monkfish.
“What do you think?”
“Fantastic,” said Don Bradford, her saintly accountant whose own mouth was still full of the succulent, juicy fish. “Fucking amazing, if you want the truth.”
Don had been brilliant this year, guiding her gently through the minefield of IRS demands and escalating interest payments that had become her life since the rebuild, never complaining when his bills were settled months after they were due. It was so rare to find someone kind and decent in the financial world. Honor had been hugely touched by his generosity and was always looking for ways to repay it. Knowing he was a paid-up foodie, she’d invited him along this morning to help her choose one of three Michelin-starred chefs to run the new Palmers’ restaurant. He was clearly having a whale of a time.
“You know, the food is great,” he said, dispatching the last of the monkfish parcels. “Truly, outstanding. But don’t you think it might be a little rich for some people, with all the cream and garlic and drizzled balsamic jus?”
Honor laughed. The menus were a little pretentious.
“Have you considered trying something simpler? I know an awesome Mexican chef in the city who might consider a move.” Honor laughed. He was joking, wasn’t he?
“No offense, Don. But when people pay a thousand bucks a night for a room they expect a little bit more than enchiladas, guacamole, and a bucket of refried beans for dinner.”
“They wouldn’t if they’d tried Tito’s food,” said Don, affably. Looking around the dining room, with its dramatic floor-to-ceiling windows and limed oak floor, Honor felt her chest swell with pride. Her financial worries were far from over, but after so many months of hard work and sleepless nights, she was finally getting to the fun part: finalizing the soft furnishings, arranging contracts with florists, hunting around local antique markets for the perfect grand piano for the cocktail bar. She remembered, the Christmas before her mom died, Santa had brought her a beautiful handcrafted dollhouse in the style of a French chateau. For years afterward, she’d spent every cent of her pocket money buying furniture for it. Her favorite piece was a tiny working replica of a chandelier, which attached with red wires to a switch on the back of the house. At night she would turn off all the lights in her bedroom in Boston and switch it on, watching with delight as the dollhouse and its residents were bathed in a magical red glow that seemed to imbue them with a life of their own.
Decorating Palmers gave her the same thrill. She’d even found a similar light fixture for the dining room. By any rational standards it was far too ornate and completely at odds with the rest of the decor. But she couldn’t resist. Hanging above their table now, she thought it looked absolutely magnificent. And Don adored it.
He also approved of her hiring decisions—which was a good thing, as she didn’t know what she’d have done if he’d told her the money couldn’t stretch to more than a skeleton staff. The chef they were choosing today would be one of only a handful of new appointments, since almost all the old Palmers staff were coming back, a testament to the excellent working relationship Honor had built with them over the years. After the ruthless cull she’d initiated when she first took over, it had taken a while for the remaining workers to feel secure again. But they soon came to realize that their new boss was as quick with her praise as her censure, and scrupulously fair.
When Petra took over at the Herrick, she’d given all the workers there a blanket pay raise and made sure that everyone at Palmers knew they could make more if they jumped ship. But Honor hadn’t lost so much as a single waiter. There was a camaraderie at Palmers that simply didn’t exist anywhere else. Certainly not at the Herrick, where staff turned over almost as frequently as the bed linen.
Of course, after the fire, Honor’s workforce had been forced to move elsewhere, and some had gone to the Herrick then, out of necessity. But almost all were taking pay cuts to return to the new hotel in the fall. There was a palpable sense of excitement about gett
ing the old gang back together, and for the first time in years Honor felt that perhaps, this time, the gods were with her.
She’d promoted Enrique, her old head barman, to overall head of hospitality. He and a handful of core staff were already living on-site, as was Honor herself. They shared the unfinished space with a legion of workmen, painters, plumbers, and gardeners who still showed up daily, and who Honor was still scrambling to pay on a week-by-week basis.
Even with the constant hammering and disruptions, it was bliss to be out of her poky little cottage at last. Her new rooms were considerably smaller than the old ones: a modest, wood-paneled bedroom that opened out onto a secluded terrace just big enough for a wrought-iron table and two chairs. She also had a simple sitting room with a pair of matching white denim couches, an antique standard lamp, and her grandfather’s old writing desk tucked into the corner; and a bathroom, as yet unfinished, although the shower worked and the toilet flushed, which was all she needed right now.
Her old suite had had a kitchen, but she’d never used it—more wasted square footage that could have been used for another paying guest. The new Palmers was all about economy. If Tina turned up next summer demanding a free room, she could forget it.
“Excuse me, Miss Palmer?” Betty, the faithful receptionist Honor had so terrified when she first arrived at Palmers, but who adored her boss now, appeared at the table looking uncharacteristically anxious.
“There’s a visitor…someone…here to see you.”
“Oh?” said Honor, springing automatically to her feet and dabbing the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “Is it that guy from the tiling company? Because I told him already, a quote is a quote. I’m not about to renegotiate now just because he lost a ship somewhere. I need those bathrooms finished this week or he doesn’t see a red cent from us, right, Don?”
“No. No, it’s not him,” Betty stammered. “It’s…I did tell him you were in a lunch meeting, Miss Palmer. But he wouldn’t go away.”
“Who wouldn’t?” said Honor.
For one awful moment, it crossed her mind that it might be Devon, come to try to wheedle his way around her yet again. That would explain Betty’s embarrassment. The last she’d heard from him was after the fire, when he’d had the brass balls to send a get-well card to the hospital, in which he’d scrawled the sort of self-pitying half apology she’d come to expect from him. She’d heard he was in town—bad news traveled like wildfire in East Hampton—and had resigned herself to the fact that she would almost certainly run into him at some point. But she could have done without it right now, in front of Don.
But it wasn’t Devon. “I see they set three places. Were you expecting me?”
Lucas strolled casually over to the table, extending his hand to Don, who’d stood up.
“I don’t believe we’ve met.” He smiled. “Lucas Ruiz. I’m a friend of Miss Palmer’s.”
“Don Bradford, her accountant,” said Don, shaking his hand with the same warmth with which he greeted everyone. “You’re just in time. I’d have wolfed that last bit of fish myself in a minute.”
Lucas had already helped himself to the last plate of monkfish and was halfway through it by the time Honor had time to blink, never mind tell him to take a running jump. Grinning at her all the while, wearing a loud pair of Bermuda shorts, an open Hawaiian shirt, and flip-flops, he looked disgustingly relaxed for someone in the midst of a major court battle and whose business was supposedly in crisis.
“Great job you’ve done here, sweetheart,” he said, nodding appreciatively at the decor while cheerfully shoveling food into his mouth. “Don’t you agree, Mr. Bradford?”
“Absolutely,” said Don, who seemed not a bit put out to be joined by an unexpected guest.
“Food’s good, too,” said Lucas between mouthfuls. “Could do with a leetle more coriander. But not at all bad.”
“OK, that’s enough,” said Honor, looking daggers at Lucas. Belatedly, Don realized that perhaps something was amiss. “Is everything all right, my dear?” he asked.
“Everything’s fine,” said Honor. “Mr. Ruiz was just leaving. Weren’t you?”
“Was I?” said Lucas, holding her eye contact. “I don’t think I was, actually.”
An awkward silence fell.
“Perhaps I should go,” said Don, getting to his feet. “Let you two talk.”
“No, no, no,” said Honor. “Please, you really don’t—”
“Thanks,” said Lucas, shaking his hand again with friendly finality. “Under the circumstances I think that might be best. Honor and I have some very important business to discuss, you see. It’s a little…delicate.”
“He’s kidding,” said Honor, laying a restraining hand on Don’s arm. “Lucas and I have absolutely nothing to say to one another.”
In a short, fitted red dress, with her hair slicked back into a ponytail and her emerald eyes flashing fury, she looked like a fire hydrant about to explode.
“I think I know you well enough, my dear, to see that that is quite patently untrue,” said Don with a chuckle. He lived a life so free of dramatic passions that he had always found other people’s amusing. “Thank you for a wonderful meal, but don’t get up. I can see myself out.”
“Nice guy,” said Lucas, once he’d gone. A second course of rack of lamb had arrived while Don was saying his good-byes, and Lucas was liberally grinding pepper onto his helping now, looking for all the world like a paying guest. He’d be ordering a cold beer and a doggie bag in a minute.
“You know what?” said Honor, pulling her hair out of its elastic band and letting it fall loose, a gesture that made Lucas automatically look up. “I’m actually too tired to do this.”
“To do what?” he said, taking a bite of lamb. It was so soft it melted on his tongue like a truffle.
“To fight with you,” said Honor calmly. “To play whatever dumb-ass game it is you’re playing this time. So why don’t you tell me what it is that you want. And then go away and leave me in peace.”
Dropping his knife and fork with a clatter, he gave her a look so intense and serious it made her momentarily nervous.
“Do you remember that night in Vegas?”
“Barely,” she lied, taking a leisurely bite of her own food. “I was very drunk. And the sex really wasn’t that memorable.”
“I’m not talking about the sex,” said Lucas. “Although I’m flattered that was the first thing you thought about.”
Honor blushed beet red. Bastard. How did he always manage to do this to her? To twist things around? He was the one who brought up Vegas, not her.
“You’ll be flattened in a minute,” she shot back furiously. “So what are you talking about?”
“Anton,” said Lucas. “You remember I told you how he set us both up that summer?”
“Of course I remember,” snapped Honor. “You think I’d forget a thing like that?”
“And you told me we ought to fight back? Get revenge?”
“I said you should get revenge,” said Honor, looking proudly around her. “I’ve already gotten mine. I’ve built this place back up from nothing.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Lucas, waving his arm impatiently. He hugely admired what she’d done with Palmers, but he wasn’t here to massage her ego. “I’m talking about real revenge.”
“It’s a lot more than you’ve done!” said Honor indignantly.
“Something that would destroy him,” said Lucas, ignoring her. “The way he tried to destroy us.”
Honor was silent. She didn’t like him using the word us. It scared her.
“I’ve come to see you because I have a plan,” he said. “And it’s a pretty damn good one. It involves some other people, people you know. But we won’t be able to pull it off without your help.”
Honor sighed a deep, heartfelt sigh and closed her eyes. “I know I’m gonna regret this,” she said. “But go ahead. I’m listening.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
WHAT THE HELL do you c
all that?”
The gardener froze halfway across the polished marble floor. He was carrying a cripplingly heavy potted bamboo through the Herrick’s lobby and had rivers of sweat streaming down between his shoulder blades, not to mention a steady stream of lactic acid coursing through his aching biceps. But when Petra Kamalski yelled at you, you stopped.
“These are the plants you ordered,” he panted, staggering from foot to foot under the weight. “For the party?”
“I know what they’re for,” said Petra scathingly. “But they most certainly are not what was ordered. I said black bamboo, and I said a minimum of eight feet. That’s practically a pot plant.”
“A pot plant?” he muttered under his breath. “You try lifting it, lady.”
“Don’t talk back to me,” hissed Petra. Her bat-like hearing was legendary among the Herrick staff. “And don’t even think of putting that filthy tub down on my floor. Get it out of here. Out, out, out!”
“But, ma’am,” wheezed the gardener, “we have a truckload of plants outside. I have the order sheet right here. You can check it yourself.”
“I don’t have time to waste on your mistakes,” said Petra, “and nor do my staff. Fix it. Today.”
Even by her own autocratic standards, she was unusually short-tempered this morning. The “number one” party was in forty-eight hours, and there was still so much to do. The downside of having A-list guests was that they came with A-list requirements, some of them frankly ludicrous. One particular pop diva, for example, had refused to book a room for the night unless she could bring her own bed—not bedding, bed—and have twenty Figuera Dyptique candles lit in the bathroom exactly two hours prior to her arrival. Another guest, an actress, demanded that her arrival be carefully choreographed to upstage that of a younger Hollywood rival who’d also been invited. There were people who had to run into one another and others who must under no circumstances run into one another. And overshadowing it all was Anton, who was treating the whole thing like his private birthday party and who was delighted by the celebrity attendance just so long as it didn’t eclipse his own shining star.
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