COLE
I had to hand it to her. She was good.
I sat across the linen-draped table in Victor Raines’ private dining room, a crystal tumbler of sparkling water sweating in my hand, watching Nova Calloway charm an entire room of people who terrified her.
The charity gala dinner was an intimate affair. Thirty seats. Hand-calligraphed place cards. A five-course tasting menu designed by a chef whose name I couldn’t pronounce and whose food I was barely tasting because I kept getting distracted by the woman in the green dress sitting six inches to my left. *Professional curiosity,* I told myself. *She’s my PR partner. I need to know if the performance is holding.* It was holding. That was what I was watching for.
She was magnificent.
Not because she was beautiful, though she was. The emerald s
