Chapter 2
Jake
Helen is still talking.
Something about photos and gossip sites and the internet, but the words are arriving slightly out of order because Emilia is standing eighteen inches away and her expression is doing something I’ve never seen it do before.
Not anger.
Not the controlled irritation she uses on me like a weapon.
Something quieter. Something that looks, for one unguarded second, like she doesn’t know what to do next, either.
That’s the part that gets me.
Emilia Hart always knows what to do next.
“The internet thinks you two are together,” Helen repeats, louder, because apparently neither of us responded the first time.
I look at Helen. Then back at Emilia.
Then I laugh.
Not a quiet laugh. A real one, shoulders and everything, that echoes off the concrete walls while Helen stares at me like I’ve lost my mind entirely.
It’s absurd. We’re standing in a hallway arguing and the internet thinks we’re in the middle of a love story. Someone with a camera caught two people having a moment and decided it looked romantic, and now the internet has constructed an entire relationship out of bad lighting and worse angles.
Emilia doesn’t laugh.
“This is not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
“Our faces are on three gossip sites and a donor just texted Dane.”
Okay. That’s less funny.
But I’m still laughing when Emilia drags me toward the ballroom.
She moves fast. Heels on concrete, tablet already open, updating something without breaking stride.
“You have four minutes before two hundred donors decide the head of Hale Futures got cold feet and ditched his own gala.”
“I know the speech, Emilia.”
“Don’t improvise.”
“I always improvise.”
She stops outside the ballroom entrance and turns to face me. The noise bleeds through the doors. Low music, four hundred conversations, the particular hum of wealthy people deciding whether to open their checkbooks.
She already knows she’s not going to win this one. I can see it.
“Jake.”
“It’ll land.” I hold her gaze for one second. “Trust me.”
She opens her mouth.
I push through the doors.
The room quiets faster than I expected.
That’s the thing people don’t understand about these events: by the time you get to the speech, the audience has already made up their mind about you. The cocktail hour, the seating, the way staff talks about you in passing…it’s all been building before you touch a microphone.
I step onto the stage at 7:37 p.m., and the room is ready.
I set the notecards on the podium.
But I don’t look at them.
“My father used to say that buildings were the easy part.”
The room settles immediately. I’ve found that opening with Richard Hale does something to the energy in a room. Softens it. Focuses it. People who knew him lean forward. People who didn’t feel like they’re about to.
“Concrete, glass, infrastructure. Those are problems you can solve with capital and the right contractor.” I pause. “People are harder.”
I spot Mom near the family table. Her expression is still, composed. Watching me.
“Hale Futures isn’t a construction project.
It’s not a scholarship fund or a community center or a line item on a foundation report.
” I let the room sit with that for a second.
“It’s what happens when you decide that the families rebuilding after a disaster deserve the same long-term investment as the buildings around them.
That a kid in Samoa deserves the same shot as a kid in Honolulu.
That community means something more than proximity. ”
I can feel the room. It’s leaning in now. Not politely. Genuinely.
“My father didn’t finish his work. That’s the part we don’t put in the press releases. He had the vision, and he ran out of time. So we finished it for him.”
Somewhere off to my left, Emilia is standing near the ballroom entrance with her tablet lowered.
Not checking anything.
Just listening.
“What you’re funding tonight isn’t a charity initiative.
It’s a promise. To the families already in our programs. To the communities that trusted us to show up consistently, not just when it made good press.
” I look out across the room at the donors, the board members, the political guests who came because of the name on the door.
“That promise is worth more than the buildings.”
The applause starts before I finish the sentence.
I step back from the podium.
When I find Emilia’s face across the room, her expression has changed. I note it and look away.
By the time dessert clears, my phone won’t stop buzzing.
Helen corners me near the bar with two phones out and the energy of a woman deciding whether her resignation letter is already drafted.
“The photo of you two arguing is everywhere.”
Damn.
“I saw.”
“Three gossip sites. Two entertainment outlets. One donor texted Dane directly.”
“Which donor?”
“Holt.”
Fuck.
Holt has been wavering on his Hale Futures commitment for three weeks. The fact that he’s reaching out directly instead of going quiet is either very good…or very bad.
Helen reads my expression. “He didn’t pull out. He asked if the relationship was going to affect the foundation’s leadership structure.”
Meaning he wants reassurance the program is stable.
Meaning the rumor isn’t hurting us.
Well, hell.
I look across the room and find Emilia near the donor tables, managing the tail end of the evening with the focused calm she brings to every crisis. She hasn’t looked at her phone yet. She doesn’t know how fast this rumor is moving.
“Don’t correct it tonight,” I say.
Helen stares at me.
“Just until morning. Let me think.”
“Jake…”
“One night, Helen.”
She lowers both phones very slowly and walks away without answering.
I take that as an agreement.
The donor call at 8:00 a.m. isn’t what I expected.
Helen sits to my left. Emilia sits to my right. The conference line has fourteen people on it. Foundation board members, primary investors, and two political donors who’ve been wavering for weeks.
I’ve run enough of these calls to know what defensiveness sounds like. The low energy. The careful questions. The thank you for your time feeling radiating from the other end of the line.
This call doesn’t sound like that.
William Holt opens with: “Jake, I have to say, the personal investment you and Ms. Hart clearly have in this program is exactly what we’ve been hoping to see from foundation leadership.”
Emilia stares at me.
Holt keeps talking: family-centered leadership, authenticity, how the photograph reinforced his confidence in the program’s long-term vision.
I sit there and let him finish.
Fourteen donors on the line. And I don’t deny anything Holt said. I don’t correct him. I don’t do a damn thing except say:
“The foundation is and has always been deeply personal to both of us.”
True statement. Every word of it.
The call wraps forty-five minutes later. Three donors who’ve been stalling for weeks are now verbally committed.
Helen closes her laptop very slowly. “Jake.”
“I know.”
“Do you understand what you just did?”
“Yes.”
“You realize I can’t—”
“Helen. I’m aware.”
Emilia hasn’t moved. She’s looking at me like she’s trying to decide whether to fire me, and technically she can’t, but I respect the energy.
Helen’s quiet for a second. Then she does the thing I’ve watched her do for years, the visible recalculation, stress reorganizing itself into strategy.
“Three donors. One photo. Forty-five minutes.” She taps a nail on the laptop lid. “You want to know what happens if we don’t correct it?”
“Go ahead.”
“They’ve already decided you’re settling down. That’s why the money moved, not the program, you. A man building something permanent.” Her eyes cut to Emilia, then back to me.
“A relationship is a rumor. They can talk themselves out of a rumor. An engagement is a commitment. People are less likely to pull funding from a foundation run by a man about to start a family.”
Emilia sets down her pen. “You’re suggesting we announce an engagement.”
“I’m suggesting Jake stop denying something that’s making my job easier for the first time in a decade.” Helen stands, gathers her phones.
“But that’s above my pay grade. That’s a board conversation.” A pause at the door. “For what it’s worth, Dane already asked me what it would take to lock the Holt commitment. This is what it would take.”
She leaves.
“Absolutely not,” Emilia says.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’re about to.”
I close my laptop and fold my hands on the conference table. “I think we should talk.”
She doesn’t take that well.
Which is fair. I’m barely taking it well, and it’s my idea.
We’re alone in my office now, door closed, Honolulu Harbor visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind my desk. Emilia stands across from me with her arms crossed while I explain the situation as rationally as I can.
“We only have to fake it for sixty days,” I say. “Maybe ninety. Just until Hale Futures launches and funding is locked.”
“You want to lie to your donors.”
“I want to let a rumor exist temporarily while we secure funding for a program that supports twenty-six thousand Pacific families.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“Is it? Because the way I see it, the rumor already exists. We didn’t start it. We could correct it publicly right now and we lose the momentum we just got back, or we could let it run until the launch is done and we part ways professionally.”
Emilia stares at me. “Part ways professionally,” she repeats.
“From the fake engagement. Not from...” I stop. “That came out wrong.”
“Did it?”
The morning light cuts across the office at an angle that makes her impossible to look at and also impossible not to. I focus on the harbor instead.
“Emilia. The funding is moving. The board is stabilizing. We have one shot to get Hale Futures off the ground the way my father imagined it, the way you’ve built it. Right now the best tool we have is this rumor.”
Silence.
“Sixty days,” I say again. “You set the rules. Boundaries. Whatever you need.”