by Lynn Messina
John looks up from the note he’s writing to himself and wrinkles his brow. “Which committee?”
It’s a very good question. Meryton taps his fingers against the desk as he thinks. “How about the Diamond Circle Committee?”
John shakes his head. “We gave that to Gloria Carlsberg last month.”
At once, Meryton recalls the teenage daughter of one of their board members, a financier who lives in South America. He pictures her strong chin and stronger bank balance. “Ah, yes, Gloria. She’s doing a wonderful job.”
“What about gold circle?” Bennet offers, although he has little hope of prevailing. Handing out meaningless and hastily conceived social chairs is something the Longbourn does on a bimonthly basis. Meryton believes vanity is the greatest motivator: Convince a socialite to put her name on an event, and she’ll move heaven and earth to ensure its success. It’s also an excellent way to get your hands on her list of contacts. Socialites don’t often sponsor events for the Longbourn Collection, but when they do, the museum usually nets thousands of dollars’ worth of free press and several sizable donations. Newcomers tend to be more generous than old standbys, who are tired of being tapped every time a brick falls off the facade.
As expected, John rejects his suggestion on the basis that another heiress—Shia Haines—already chairs the Gold Circle Committee.
Bennet tries again. “Platinum?”
Meryton shoots it down just as abruptly. “Josie Chow.”
Bennet tries to think of a metal they haven’t used before. “Titanium?”
Appalled, Meryton shakes his head. “She’s an heiress, not a golf club.”
“Silver,” Bennet offers.
“You might as well make her chair of the Very Muddy Mud Society,” Meryton insists impatiently.
Amused as always by the challenge, Bennet decides to switch gears. “How about the Patrons Circle Centennial Committee, which is planning the celebration for the collection’s one hundredth anniversary. It will be a huge bash.”
“It was a huge bash,” John reminds him. “We had that two years ago.”
His brother shrugs. “She’ll never know.”
“Your opinion of heiresses is appalling,” John observes. “They’re not all airheads.”
Bennet pictures the last heiress he met—Ms. Haines, whose hairless Chihuahua has its own personal assistant and a weekly standing appointment at the Woofdorf-Astoria for a puppy pedi. Although he’s not inclined to concede the point, he knows his brother is determined to see the best in everyone and admits he might be overly harsh in his estimation. “But the vast majority of them are too busy Instagramming selfies or creating vanity perfume lines to come up with a useful idea. And if one of them has had the good sense to hire an actual professional as her admin and not her dear friend Bitsy from Theta Phi, I’ve yet to meet her.”
Impatient with the chatter, Meryton knocks on Bennet’s desk three times. “Tick-tock, tick-tock, gentlemen,” he says and strides in three easy steps to the door. “Figure it out and get that gift basket to the Netherfield immediately. We don’t have any time to waste. And don’t disparage the Theta Phis, Bennet. That illustrious organization has supplied us with some of our best committee chairs.”
With that, he returns to his office and sits down at his computer to make sure Charlotte Bingston’s father has retained his ranking on the Billionaires Index. Ah, yes, there he is—holding steady at 395.
CHAPTER TWO
The basket from the Longbourn arrives first. Although fundraising isn’t entirely a race, it’s mostly a race—the first one to the credit line wins!—and Meryton is delighted to know they’ve established contact with their quarry before any of the competition.
“A bellman delivered the basket at 11:45,” John says, “and I’ve been assured by Larissa, the front desk manager, that ours is the only one she’s received since checking in last night at 7:39 p.m. I was just about to follow up with a call, but if you’d rather take a meeting to discuss our next move, I’d be happy to put it off until later.”
Meryton would love nothing more than to provide John with a script for his conversation with Ms. Bingston, but he knows the value of momentum and doesn’t want to lose it. “No, no, proceed as planned. Time is of the essence.”
John nods and picks up the phone. To his delight, Larissa answers, and he has a breezy conversation with her about bird watchers in Central Park. The mid-March weather always brings them out.
Meryton, listening from just a few feet away, knows the advantage of having the front desk manager from the Netherfield in one’s corner and doesn’t protest when the conversation switches to the boat pond. Rather, he grabs a pen, jots down a few words—new polar bear, zoo, children giddy—on a Post-it and hands it to John, who looks at it briefly and nods.
Having been fed many such communications during his tenure, Bennet knows how easily the executive director can conduct proxy conversations via scraps of paper. To buy his brother some breathing room, he says, “I had a meeting with Martindale from Venture Marts this morning, and I’m not sure if I’ve got the tone right for the follow-up. Should I gush a little or keep it entirely businesslike?”
At once, Meryton dashes to Bennet’s desk, dislodges its occupant with a firm shove and sits down to address the question. Rather than ask for permission, he jumps right in, rewording the missive to suit his own fundraising approach. Amused, Bennet watches his hands zip across the keyboard. Of course he’d known exactly what he was doing: Meryton has supreme faith in his own abilities and would never let an employee do well what he himself can do perfectly.
He’s so immersed in Bennet’s letter to the representative from the big-box retailer, he doesn’t notice when John puts down the phone.
“Gush a little?” Meryton asks scornfully. “Try gush a lot. Funders want us to be tripping over ourselves to express our enthusiasm at their potential involvement. Trust me, that’s the trick to winning them over. Devote the first paragraph to your excitement and your second paragraph to stroking their ego: Their participation is necessary to the success of the project, their interest is more than we’d hoped for and so forth. Then get down to business in paragraph three. It’s always best to bury the ask, so they don’t see the request for money coming.”
Bennet, who had saved the original draft of the email before soliciting his boss’s advice, nods appreciatively. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Yes, do,” Meryton says, standing up. Only then does he realize John’s no longer on the phone. He pounces. “Well, what did she say? Is she coming? Has she met Mr. Lucas? Does she want a private tour?”
“That was her assistant, Mitzy,” John says with a wry look at his brother.
Bennet smiles and murmurs, “Mitzy, Bitsy and Cottontail.”
“Her assistant?” Meryton echoes, visibly deflating at the news.
“Yes, but,” John rushes to add, “she said Ms. Bingston is looking forward to the gala next Wednesday and will be bringing several guests with her. She doesn’t know the exact number yet.”
Meryton instantly reinflates. “The more the merrier,” he croons happily, his smile stretching so wide Bennet thinks it might split his face in two. “I wonder who her guests will be. She’s been seen palling around with Zoe Saldana in Paris. And last month she sat next to Rania Al-Abdullah at the Mosaic Foundation benefit dinner.”
Although Bennet doubts very much that the queen of Jordan will attend their gala fundraiser, he lets Meryton have his fun and doesn’t say a thing when, excited by the possibilities, he wonders if the king will accompany his wife.
Meryton is planning the seating arrangements—do the king and queen have to sit at the same table or could they be strewn about the room like rose petals?—when the department intern walks into the office.
No, Bennet thinks, he saunters in. His gait is light and carefree and reflects no concern for the lateness of the hour. In his right hand, he holds a cup of coffee, which he’s about to dip his nose into when
he spots Meryton. He stops in his tracks.
Not so cocky now, Bennet observes with more than a little satisfaction.
So far, the great Lydon Bethle internship experiment hasn’t been the stunning success their mother had promised when she’d pleaded with Bennet and John to help their brother get the job. He understands why she had been so optimistic: Seven years ago, when she’d made the same entreaty to John on his behalf, the arrangement had turned out beautifully. Bennet had thrived in the development department, working his way up to his current position in only four years, an accomplishment that delighted his parents, who, as a personal injury attorney (Dad) and a comparative literature professor (Mom), prize financial security and professional stability.
But Lydon isn’t cut from the same cloth as his older siblings, and finding himself gainfully employed at a New York museum hasn’t been the sobering experience his parents had intended when they discovered their newly minted philosophy grad had spent six months running up bar tabs at campus haunts. They’d been told that he had an office job entering data at a large pharmaceutical company, but the only data he’d entered were women’s numbers into his phone.
Although banishment to an obscure outpost in Queens to work for little money had felt like punishment, Lydon quickly recognized it for the reward it was. Not only are there more bars in New York City than Ann Arbor, but they stay open later. Bunking at his brothers’ apartments isn’t exactly ideal—he’s either on John’s futon or Bennet’s pullout—but both men keep grown-up food in their cabinets (good-bye, ramen!) and their showers have a steady supply of hot water. On a scale of one to his best friend Steve’s frequently backed-up toilet, he’d give couch surfing at his brothers’ a solid doesn’t totally suck.
As a guest, Lydon rates somewhat lower, at pretty sucky, and Bennet is tired of picking up after his youngest brother at home and at work. Because the internship pays a marginal day rate, Lydon’s commitment to it is marginal as well. He strolls in every day some time after noon, heads out a little before five, and spends the hours in between reading reviews of the latest technical gadgets he can’t afford and texting his friends. Sometimes he’ll make a run to pick up office supplies, but he never returns with anything. He simply uses it as an excuse to cut out early on a job he’s barely showing up for.
To say that Lydon is driving his brother crazy is to vastly understate Bennet’s tenuous connection to sanity. Having slid past crazy a month ago, he’s well into sign-me-up-for-intensive-therapy-with-a-Danish-Jungian territory. In another few weeks, he’ll enter lock-me-in-a-padded-room-and-throw-away-the-key country.
That Lydon is lazy and careless comes as no surprise to Bennet, who had lived in the same house with him for thirteen years before leaving for college. The youngest Bethle was always around when there was fun to be had and long gone when it was time to clean up. But it’s only in this last month that Bennet’s fully grasped the depth of Lydon’s irresponsibility—and it worries him. Blowing off this internship is one thing, but sooner or later, Lydon will have to get a proper job in a proper office with proper coworkers, and they’re going to expect proper results, not hot air and buffoonery.
To be fair, Lydon isn’t entirely without skills, as the young man is remarkably proficient at manipulation. With his easygoing smile and ingratiating personality, he effortlessly wins people to his cause, even their parents, who should know better. Honestly, in what universe is an all-expense-paid trip to New York City a punishment for drunken vagrancy?
Quickly recovering his composure, Lydon turns his talents now to the executive director of the Longbourn. “Mr. Meryton, sir,” he says with an easy smile, “just the man I was hoping to find. I have your favorite: iced mocha latte with extra cream.”
This information disconcerts Meryton, who’s surprised to discover not only that he has a favorite drink from Starbucks but that it’s a concoction called an iced mocha latte. Rather than demur and risk bruising the young man’s feelings or dampening his enthusiasm, he accepts the cup. “Thank you, Lydon,” he says. Cautiously, as if suspicious of the frothy beverage, he breathes in deeply and, finding nothing untoward, takes a sip—and then another and another. If mocha latte with extra cream wasn’t his favorite drink before, it certainly is now. “Mmm. Lovely. Just the thing for a pleasant March afternoon. You’re doing an excellent job, m’boy. Keep up the good work.”
Lydon dips his head modestly. “Thank you, sir. I do my best.”
The sad thing is, Bennet knows this exchange does represent Lydon’s best, and he doesn’t doubt that his feckless brother could make a very good living as a grifter. The legal version of grifting is raising funds for an institution or cause, so it’s fitting—or ironic—that Lydon is in the perfect place to get the experience he needs to succeed in the profession for which he’s most suited.
Swallowing another large gulp of mocha latte, Meryton marvels at how resistant he’d been to taking on another Bethle brother. Having two already in his employ had seemed sufficient to him, as no executive director of a small cultural institution—or, indeed, a large one—wants to be outnumbered in his own office. But the lure of cheap labor was too tempting to resist and the Bethle track record was too impressive to dismiss, so he agreed to an interview. The meeting had gone well, mostly because Lydon had been savvy enough to answer every question with a compliment and had had the good sense to congratulate Meryton on his Award for Excellence from the National Association of Executive Directors. None of the museum’s other staff had noticed the accolade, which, having been hung on his wall in August, could hardly be described as a recent addition to his office.
“As you know, I had my reservations about employing three Bethles, but Lydon here has worked out so well, I think we should hire more,” Meryton says, his eyes sparkling with either mischief or the profound happiness that comes from ingesting excellent whipped cream. “If your two remaining brothers are interested in fundraising, please tell them to schedule an appointment with me as soon as possible.”
While Bennet shudders in horror at the thought of his whole family crammed into the airless space, Lydon thanks Meryton for what’s surely the nicest compliment he’s ever received.
“I mean it,” Meryton assures him, “one hundred percent.”
“We appreciate it,” John says, “but our brothers are settled into careers. Mark teaches piano at a boys’ school in Detroit, and Kit sells cars at the leading Toyota dealership in Evanston.”
“Well, if anything changes, do let me know,” Meryton says, taking his new favorite drink into his office.
As soon as he leaves, Bennet turns to Lydon. “You’re late again.”
“Sorry,” Lydon says as he flashes his signature smile—brash and bold with just a hint of bashful. He brushes his dark hair, which falls to his shoulders, behind one ear as he blinks his bright brown eyes innocently. “I was doing some market research in the café. You know, furthering the cause.”
“Flirting with pretty tourists only furthers your cause,” Bennet says. Even without John’s classic good looks, Lydon attracts women like flies. They’re drawn to his easygoing manner and flirty bonhomie.
Lydon winks. “Isn’t that what I just said?”
Bennet, feeling his temper snap, closes his eyes for a moment and strives for patience. As a brother, Lydon has always been difficult to deal with, but as an employee, he’s next to impossible. Nothing would make Bennet happier than sending him home to their parents in disgrace, and the only thing stopping him is the disappointed look his mother would give him—as if Lydon’s failures are somehow his fault.
Knowing how close Bennet is to the edge, John jumps in. “Hey, Lydon, can you call Hannah in special events and add Charlotte Bingston to the gala guest list? Let her know she might be bringing as many as eight guests.”
“Charlotte Bingston,” Lydon repeats thoughtfully, as if the name might mean something to him. “Charlotte Bingston.”
Bennet rolls his eyes at this affectation. “You don’t
know her. She’s a socialite, not a reviewer for Gizmodo or C-Net.”
“But Bingston. Bingston Reliable makes batteries,” he says with a triumphant snap of his fingers. “Any relation?”
“Yes, actually,” John says. “Her father founded the company.”
“Ah, then they’re rolling in it,” Lydon says as a calculating look enters his eye. “Is she pretty?”
“And how is that piece of information relevant to your calling Hannah as John requested?” Bennet asks irritably.
“You can’t very well expect me to dance with an ugly heiress,” Lydon explains, affronted by the notion. Then he pauses and replays the sentence in his head. “You know what, scratch that. An heiress is an heiress is an heiress. Who am I to quibble? Count me in. I’ll totally take one for the team.”
Bennet sighs deeply and wonders how upset their mother would be if he strangled her youngest son. Distraught, naturally, but surely some part of her would understand. “For the hundredth time, you’re not attending the gala; you’re working it. Your job will be to check people in. That means you’ll take the list of all the people who R.S.V.P.’d and mark them off as they arrive.”
“Yeah, yeah, bro, sounds like a blast,” Lydon says with a dismissive wave. He’s not even pretending to listen. “Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have an errand to run.”
Bennet doesn’t know how he can still be surprised by his brother’s audacity and yet there it is—amazement. “But you just got here.”
“I know. But I gots no coffee.” He raises his empty hands as if presenting evidence to a court. “The old man took mine. You saw it,” he says before breezing out of the room.
Although the café in the museum’s courtyard serves excellent fair-trade, single-origin coffee from an upscale Seattle roaster, Lydon will walk the fifteen minutes to hit the Starbucks on nearby Continental Avenue. “You realize that’s the last we’ve seen of him today,” Bennet observes wearily.