Chapter 10: The Gala
Eight months earlier, Jason Cole arrived at the charity gala twenty minutes late, on purpose.
"Welcome back, Mr. Cole," the coat check attendant said.
"Thank you, Daniel," Jason said, though he had never been there before and the name tag said David. He pressed a folded bill into the man's hand. "Keep it warm. I never stay as long as I promise."
Inside, a string quartet played near the staircase and waiters moved with trays. Jason took a glass of champagne, held it without drinking, and surveyed the room the way he imagined rich men did, unhurried and bored.
"You are doing the face again," a voice said beside him.
Jason turned. A woman in a green dress stood at the bar, watching him with amusement.
"What face?" he said.
"The one that says you own the building but you are too gracious to mention it," she said. "My cousin does it at every family dinner. He inherited a parking garage."
Jason laughed, pleased to be caught. "And does it work on you?"
"Never," she said. "I grew up around owners. They look tired and ask about the food." She extended a hand. "Chloe Bennett. I am here under family orders to look moved by the quartet."
"Jason Cole," he said. "Senior Vice President, Vanguard Capital. I am here under no orders at all, which makes me either very generous or very lost."
"Which is it?"
"Tonight, generous." He nodded toward the silent auction. "I bid on the vineyard weekend, and I do not even drink red wine. I hate watching good causes go cheap."
"You bid to be seen bidding," Chloe said gently.
"Is that a crime at a charity gala?" he said. "Performance is the whole point. We all pretend the canapés are worth the ticket."
She laughed. "Careful. My family helped pay for those canapés."
"Then I take it back. Best shrimp I have ever had at gunpoint."
"Better," she said. "What desk at Vanguard?"
"Investor relations, mostly private clients," he said smoothly. "Old money, new money, nervous money. I translate panic into strategy."
"That sounds like a line you use often."
"It is a line I use well," he said. "What do you do when you are not under family orders, Chloe Bennett?"
Her expression changed, as if she was deciding whether to give the real answer. "I run the arts grants program for our foundation," she said. "Small theaters, school music programs, community galleries. I read the applications myself."
"Most people here would have led with the foundation name," Jason said.
"Most people here did," she said.
"Tell me about one grant," he said. "Not the biggest. Your favorite."
She studied him. "A middle school in Fresno wanted instruments. Not new ones. Repairs. Trumpets with stuck valves. Their teacher wrote that a repaired instrument teaches a child that broken things deserve care."
Jason went quiet. "Did you fund it?"
"Fully," Chloe said. "Plus a workshop, so students learn repairs themselves."
"Best pitch I have heard all year," he said, "and I hear pitches for a living."
Across the bar, her friend Simone leaned in as she passed.
"Chloe, your mother is looking for you," Simone said. Then, lower, meant for Chloe alone but not low enough: "And do ask the new ones for a last name before the second dance. The last one borrowed a yacht."
"I heard that," Jason said cheerfully.
"You were meant to," Simone said, and moved on.
"She loves me," Chloe said. "She just expresses it as surveillance."
"She is not wrong to check," Jason said. "Charm is the easiest currency to counterfeit. You should vet everyone."
"Including you?"
"Especially me," he said.
"All right," Chloe said. "If you are so established, why did you tip the coat check man like you were buying his silence?"
Jason grinned. "Because generous men tip well, and mysterious men tip better."
"You are impossible," she said, but she stayed.
At the next table, an older man in a gray suit was speaking to the foundation director, his voice carrying between songs.
"The trust terms are strict, thank God," the man said. "Her grandmother set it up that way. Nothing moves without Chloe's signature. Not a dollar of the portfolio. The girl could fund this hospital wing if she chose to, but she would have to sign for it herself."
Jason did not turn his head. He listened very carefully, the way a man listens when a door he had not known existed quietly unlocks.
"Jason?" Chloe said. "You went somewhere."
"Sorry," he said, and his attention returned to her. "You were about to tell me whether repaired trumpets ever really stay in tune."
"They do," she said, "if someone cares for them properly."
"Then teach me," Jason said. "I want to hear all of it."