Page 42 of Best In Class (Savannah's Best #7)

Aria

M y ex-fiancé is comforting his wife, my sister, as we stand in front of my father’s grave. If it weren’t so heartbreaking, it would be funny.

Papa is gone.

He’ll never again bellow, ‘ Aria ,’ when he’s angry.

He’ll never again order me to straighten my spine.

He’ll never again tell me not to show weakness, to hold it together, and to fall apart only when I’m all alone.

He’ll never ask me to come back home.

Tears spike my eyes. I pull them in.

Not gonna cry, Papa, not in front of others.

The priest says, “ Amen .”

Dirt hits the coffin.

My body is still, but my insides jolt with the sound, as if someone just slammed a gate shut behind me. My brain scrambles to make sense of the hollowness inside, like when the TV signal cuts out, and all that’s left is static.

The wind kicks up again, going right through my coat, which is suited for California but not Colorado. The chill cuts through skin and flesh, hitting my bones.

I don’t mind it. It jars me into wakefulness and reminds me to put one foot after the other despite being submerged in grief.

I wrap my arms around myself.

My eyes take in the view of the mountains I’ve missed for a decade.

They are spectacular.

The cemetery sits by the church on a rise at the edge of town, its whitewashed walls weathered by wind and winters long gone.

Just two days ago, I was in another church in a vineyard in Napa, celebrating a friend’s wedding. I left before the reception, my suitcase filled with wedding outfits, completely unsuited for Wildflower Canyon.

Thankfully, I’d packed an LBD for the wedding—otherwise, I’d have had to dig through the attic for whatever was left of my old clothes.

I knew that Celine had wanted to toss them into the trash when she turned my bedroom into a guest room, but Nadine, our long-time farm manager and Papa’s close friend, didn’t let her.

The church in Napa has one thing in common with this one—both stand in front of mountains. These, however, are stretched wide and jagged, their snow-dusted peaks catching what little sun the gray sky offers this early in spring.

Pines crawl up the lower slopes, dark and plentiful. Beyond them, Wildflower Canyon, a small town with big ranches, yawns open. It’s vast and stitched together with the fading golds of last season’s grass.

The cemetery backs up to all of it as if the dead are keeping watch over the land.

The mountains are still covered in snow and will remain so until May, possibly longer if the storms continue to roll through.

Thick drifts cling to the ridgelines.

The land’s holding its breath, waiting for spring to make good on its promises.

Down here, though, the thaw has begun.

Mud clings to boots.

The air carries that sharp, wet smell of melting ice and dormant earth waking up slowly, telling you with each gust of cold wind how far you are from summer.

The church ceremony is for close family and friends only, according to Nadine, who told me this with a roll of her eyes.

She’s not a big fan of my sister and would have left Longhorn Ranch a long time ago if it weren’t for my father.

Papa and Nadine were close, like siblings, not lovers, though Celine sneered that Nadine was Papa’s whore.

But that was just Celine being a mean girl, tossing out insults like confetti. Her real problem with Nadine was that she couldn’t manipulate her the way she did everyone else in Wildflower Canyon—not with that sugar-sweet, goody-two-shoes act.

Oh, Celine has everyone fooled. To them, she is the saint. I’m the devil who ran off and left the ranch and our father for the brighter lights and warmer days of California.

But I didn’t leave. I was kicked out of my home.

Papa told me to pack up and leave. He never asked me to come back.

Of all the things he did to hurt me, this was the most wounding.

He chose silence over reconciliation, pride over love, and my sister over me.

I scan the cemetery, eyes skimming familiar faces. Most I know, despite having been gone ten years, and it shows. People have new last names, new wrinkles, new allegiances—but I know who they are, except for one man.

“Who’s that standing next to Kaz?” I ask Bree Keaton, one of my oldest friends and one of the few people from Wildflower Canyon with whom I've kept in touch with after I left.

“Maverick Kincaid,” she murmurs, leaning close to me.

Recognition flares. Nadine told me about him last night. He’s the man who wants to buy Longhorn Ranch.

He’s not from Wildflower Canyon. He moved here after I left. He owns Kincaid Farms, which he’s grown by acquiring ranches and farms. It is now the second-largest spread in Wildflower Canyon, trailing only behind the old-money sprawl of Wilder Ranch.

From the quick research I did after speaking with Nadine, I learned that Kincaid Farms is part working ranch, part certified-organic farm, and part global supply chain player.

The cattle are grass-fed, antibiotic-free, and sold to premium markets across the U.S.

—restaurants in Denver, Austin, and New York with menus that charge $85 for a steak and brag about where it came from.

His dairy herd is smaller, but artisan creameries in Boulder and Telluride prize the milk and cream.

He got into organic crop production early, long before anyone else in Wildflower—rotating hay, hard red winter wheat, sweet corn, and heritage potatoes.

His onions and apples go to natural food co-ops all over the Mountain West.

And then there are the horses.

He runs an enviable breeding program, at least according to a Western Horseman article I read.

You can take the girl off the ranch, but you can’t stop her from browsing horse websites.

The man’s got money. He’s got land.

So why does he want Longhorn?

We’re a neighbor, sure. But we’re not a major player. We’re mid-sized… were mid-sized. From what I can see and what I have heard, the ranch and its operations have shrunk.

I don’t have all the details yet, but I plan to get them.

Maverick nods at me, seeing that my eyes are on him.

I return the greeting with a tight jerk of my chin.

His eyes fall on Celine, and he smiles.

She smiles back at him.

Ah fuck!

“He sleeping with her ?” I ask Bree.

“Maybe. He’s known to…ah…keep busy with the women.”

See, this is how Miss Perfect works. She sleeps around, strategically, though. She probably managed to get this guy into bed because he buys ranches, and she’s been wanting to get rid of the ranch for as long as she’s been old enough to know that half the ranch would be hers.

Maverick Kincaid clearly has the morals of a pig—carrying on an affair with a married woman like it’s nothing. Honestly, it’s a match made in hell. Two people with no integrity, perfectly suited to tear through other people’s lives without a shred of remorse.

The man is handsome . I have to give him that.

He paints quite a picture in worn jeans, scuffed cowboy boots, a black button-down, and a cowboy hat in hand.

His face is all hard lines and sun-weathered skin that speaks of long days outdoors.

His jaw looks sharp enough to slice through hay.

His dark hair is just a little too long, probably the kind that curls at the edges of his collar when it gets wet.

Clean-shaven—thank God. If he had a beard, he’d look like he belonged on a 1950s wanted poster.

He stands like a man used to being listened to.

Tall, broad across the chest, shoulders built from real labor, not gym reps.

But it’s his eyes that tell me this man is cold as a Colorado winter. They’re ice blue. And even when he smiles as he did when he looked at Celine, they’re not soft—they’re like cut glass.

If I had to take a guess, this man doesn’t lose his temper. He doesn’t get angry. He gets even.

He also doesn’t give a shit about anyone but getting what he wants.

How badly does he want Longhorn Ranch? And how will he react when I tell him I’m not interested in selling, regardless of what Celine wants?

I watch as the last shovelful of earth falls over an opulent casket that doesn’t suit Rami Delgado.

Papa didn’t want anything fancy. He told Nadine and Earl Cotter, the ranch foreman and Papa’s long-time friend, that he wanted to be buried on Longhorn, but Celine insisted that he be laid to rest next to Mama.

Frances Ackerman Delgado, may her soul rest in peace if it can, was a Catholic who hated the ranch and was buried in the cemetery where there were plots of land secured for Celine, Celine’s husband, me, my husband if I ever had one, our kids….

Papa hadn’t left any legally binding instructions about where or how he wanted to be buried—not a word through a damn lawyer or notary—so Celine did whatever she wanted. I’d only arrived last night, too late to stop anything. Her decisions were already in motion, and there was nothing I could do.

In any case, Papa was dead, and like he said, “ When I’m dead, I won’t give two shits about what y’all do out here in the world of the living. I’ll be in hell. I’ll have other problems.”

I smile as I remember his irreverence.

A sob tears through my sister, and then a howl as she folds herself into Hudson’s arms like she’s on the cover of Grief Magazine .

Her husband pats her back, keeping a bland face.

He probably knows her by now. I wonder how he feels about her.

I know for sure how she feels about him, though.

Narcissistic, overt sociopaths don’t have emotions like normal humans. Yeah, I was in therapy for a while, so I got a dose of who’s who on the family tree.

Frances Ackerman Delgado . Mother. Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance.

Celine Delgado-Wiliams . Sister. Narcissistic Personality Disorder with Antisocial Traits, colloquially referred to as high-functioning sociopathy, which she masks with charm.

Along with entitlement, manipulativeness, and lack of empathy, she also has a pattern of deceit, disregard for others’ safety, and willingness to harm or endanger others for personal gain.