Do Not Disturb Read Online Free PDF

me the application form, Lucas darling,” she told him. “All you have to do is sign it. I’ll take care of the rest.”
    And so she had.

    Lucas adored Lausanne. His courses were hard work, but nothing compared to the hell of the Britannia, and his ambition and drive carried him through the four years like adrenaline spurring on a marathon runner.
    Most of his classmates were from wealthy or, middle-class families, but to his surprise, Lucas found it easy to fit in. Social life at the EHL revolved around frat-house parties and weekend ski trips, both of which he took in his stride. And of course, it didn’t hurt that he was far and away the best-looking guy on campus.
    “Are you sure you haven’t skied before?” Daniel, a buddy from his macroeconomics class, quizzed him suspiciously on their first trip to the mountains. “You sure don’t look like a beginner to me.”
    They were in Murren, a tiny, car-free hamlet burrowed into a mountainside in the Jungfrau valley. Home of the famous Downhill Club in the 1920s, it remained popular with British skiers looking for natural Alpine beauty, but without the ritz and pretension of the big resorts like St. Moritz or Courchevel, and was also favored by the local Swiss. Lucas, who didn’t know suchstorybook Hansel and Gretel villages still existed, was utterly charmed.
    “What can I say?” He grinned. Having just completed a tricky black-diamond run, he was feeling more than a little pleased with himself. “I guess I’m a natural.”
    “Right. A natural asshole,” the girl taking her skis off next to him muttered sourly, trudging up the hill to the restaurant to join the others.
    Lucas had won over 99 percent of his female classmates at Lausanne with his combination of humor, confidence, and insanely good looks. But Petra Kamalski remained immune to his charms. The only serious challenger to his crown as EHL’s top-performing student, she was just as beautiful as Lucas, although in a polar opposite way. In fact, with Petra, “polar” was definitely the operative word: tall, reed-thin and as pale as the Snow Queen, she had cheekbones that could cut glass and the sort of ice-blue Russian eyes that both mesmerized and terrified at the same time. Her long blue-black hair was always worn up in a high, tight chignon and her body, though clearly perfect, was hidden at all times beneath polo-neck sweaters and long governess-style skirts.
    “What’s her fucking problem?” Lucas asked Daniel, glaring after Petra as she strode up the hill in her ultraexpensive, fur-lined Prada ski suit.
    “Don’t take it personally,” said Daniel, slapping him on the back. “That’s just Petra. She hates anything with a penis.” Although this was true, Petra’s dislike of Lucas clearly ran deeper than generic animosity toward the opposite sex. In lectures, she was constantly trying to trip him up, picking holes in all his arguments and doing her utmost to embarrass him in front of the professors. She’d even gone so far as to accuse him of plagiarizing one of her papers last semester—a serious allegation that, had she proved it, would have gotten Lucas kicked out. As it was, the authorities had ruled “insufficient evidence,” hardly theringing endorsement of his honesty that Lucas had been hoping for. How come
Petra
had never been reprimanded for bringing the case maliciously and stirring up trouble?
    The answer to that one was simple. Petra’s uncle was the oligarch Oleg Kamalski, a man rich enough to buy the whole of Lausanne, if not Switzerland, with his loose change. Old Oleg was not a man that anyone wanted to alienate—least of all an institution second only to Harvard Business School in squeezing cash out of its successful alumni.
    For the rest of the ski trip, Lucas did his best to keep out of Petra’s way. But it was hard. Not only were they sharing a chalet along with nine other classmates, but Murren was so minuscule it made Ibiza look like New York City, making it