Do Not Disturb (16 page)

“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 querulous, 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?

“Your father passed away this morning.”

She stood there staring at him blankly. After what felt like an age, she eventually managed a strangled “I’m sorry?”

“It was very peaceful,” said Devon. “I was with him when it happened, purely by chance. I stopped in to see him on my way to work, and Lise told me he’d taken a turn for the worse last night. The doctor was with him, but I don’t think there was anything he could have done.”

“Lise didn’t call me,” said Honor. She was still staring straight ahead, like a zombie. “No one called me.”

“I asked her not to,” said Devon. “My pilot brought me straight down here. I thought…I don’t know. I didn’t want you to hear over the phone. And I figured you could use a shoulder to cry on.”

“But…I’m coming to see him,” Honor whispered. “This month. I booked my flight.”

With infinite tenderness, Devon pulled her to him, wrapping his arms tightly around her.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “I really am sorry.”

Trey Palmer’s funeral was a circus.

A stream of black-clad bimbos, like aging ghosts of Christmases past, filed into St. Stephen’s Cathedral and proceeded to argue loudly about which of them should have precedence in the seating arrangements. They were fighting for space with all the great and the good of Boston: hoteliers, captains of industry and their wives, and old family friends like the Carters, most of whom hadn’t laid eyes on Trey for a good twenty years. Then there was the press, none of whom Honor could recall
inviting, but who seemed nevertheless to have turned out in spectacular force to see the old man off.

“Did you ask these people to show up?” Honor hissed at Lise after one particularly insensitive photographer had shoved a lens within inches of her face.

“Of course not,” Lise snapped back. Her skintight Dolce & Gabbana minidress, though black, was possibly the most unfunereal item of clothing Honor had ever seen, and the red soles of her sky-high Louboutin stilettos undoubtedly said more about her true feelings than anything else she was wearing. “Tina’s the one who can’t take a shit unless it’s on film.”

Of course. Tina. Sharing the front row with her sister, stepmother, and of course the ubiquitous Dick, she was, as usual, reveling in the attention in a bright-red pantsuit and more diamonds than a De Beers advertisement.

“I look on today as a celebration of my dad’s life,” Honor overheard her earnestly explaining to a reporter behind them. “He would have hated to see all this black. It’s so depressing.”