Do Not Disturb Read Free

that simply meant that she would grow up to have even more stuff, and live in even more luxury, than she did now. Palmers was nothing more or less than another sign of that wealth. She had never understood Honor’s sentimental obsession with the place and its history. As a child she longed for people to stop blathering on about her boring, old, dead grandfather and bring her another ice cream. Preferably with hot fudge sauce and a cherry on top.
    Despite their differences, Honor and Tina had tolerated each other well enough in those early years. It was their mother’s accident that changed things between them. Honor still remembered the awful day as though it were yesterday. She’d been up in her room in Boston, playing an imagination game with her dolls, and had jumped out of her skin when Rita, the nanny, burst in. She was supposed to have grown out of the dolls and passed themon to Tina. But all Tina ever wanted to do was dress them up, and Honor felt sorry for them, discarded in her sister’s toy box, never getting to go on any fun adventures anymore. Her first thought was that Rita was mad she’d taken them back. She remembered feeling almost relieved to be told it was only her father wanting to see her downstairs.
    Needless to say the relief was short-lived. The first thing she saw when she walked into Trey’s study was Tina sobbing hysterically on the couch. Honor remembered being shocked, because these clearly weren’t her sister’s usual crocodile tears. Something was very wrong.
    Trey was making no move to comfort her. He just stood there, as gray and still as a granite statue in the middle of the room. “Honor, there’s been an accident.”
    That was all he said at first. He wasn’t crying. In all the weeks and months and years that followed, in fact, Honor never once saw him cry for the wife she knew he’d loved more than anything. But still, he seemed to be having difficulty getting his words out. “Mommy’s dead. She’s not coming back.”
    Clearly her father was not a subscriber to the “break it to them gently” school of parenting. As an adult, Honor often wondered how many thousands of dollars in therapy that moment alone would have cost her had she grown up to be the navel-gazing type. Thankfully, she hadn’t. Because as awful as her mother’s death was, far, far worse was to come.
    Tammy. That was the name of their first stepmother. And what a fucking nightmare she was. Unlike the later models, she came from a respected Boston family, but her upbringing didn’t seem to have prevented her from growing up into a class-A bitch. It was a year almost to the day since their mom’s death and Trey brought Tammy home like a trophy, beaming with a pride and happiness that Honor couldn’t fathom.
    “Honor, Tina, this is Tammy,” he said, kissing the strange woman on the lips. Honor, who was eleven at the time, thoughtshe looked like a taller Snow White, with short black hair and porcelain-pale skin. But she wasn’t kind and smiley like Mommy. “She’s going to be living with us from now on,” Trey continued. “And we hope that pretty soon she’s going to give you girls a little brother.”
    We?
Who was this
we
? Honor didn’t hope for any such thing.
    It was the first time she’d heard her father express a desire for a son. Over the next decade, that desire was to bloom into a full-grown obsession.
    “Why?” Tina had asked, twirling her ringlets skeptically in the corner.
    “Your daddy needs a boy so he can take over Palmers one day, honey,” simpered Tammy. “And take care of you girls, too. That’s what brothers do.”
    “Daddy doesn’t need a
boy
!” yelled Honor, pulling herself up to her full four foot nine, her jaw jutting in defiance. “
I’m
going to take over Palmers when I grow up. What do you know about it, anyway?”
    “Honor.” Her father’s voice was stern. “Don’t you dare speak to Tammy like that. Apologize at once.”
    Honor had apologized. Not because