Page 47 of Best In Class (Savannah's Best #7)

“Ember, you’re a beautiful, wonderful girl , and you’ll meet a man who’s your age and shares your dreams of building a life. I’ve already built mine.”

I swallow, my eyes moist. He’s really ending us.

He looks irritably at me. “See, you’re getting upset. A woman my age wouldn’t be.”

That wounds, and he flinches when he sees the bruise of his words on my face. But it only propels him to make his intention clearer. “I need a woman with maturity. This isn’t about you, Sweet Em. It’s what I need in my life.”

And I’m not who he needs or wants. I was good for fucking and some evenings of companionship, but no more—not to build a life with. The shock of that knowledge almost knocks me over.

The server comes with the bill, and Ransom hands him his credit card. The man I’m in love with looks impatient, wants to get far, far away from me and my moist eyes, the ones that I can’t stop from tearing up.

I pull myself together because I’m a Rousseau. I’ve been raised by and with strong women. Freja would never beg a man.

“We had a good time, didn’t we?” I say, picking up my glass of wine, sipping, showing him and myself that my hands are not shaking.

He arches an eyebrow. He’s surprised.

I can read him like a spectral line—every shift tells me what he’s made of, and what he’s hiding.

His eyes soften. “We did. You’re a remarkable girl, Em.”

Now he’d said girl twice and not in the sexy way in bed when he calls me his good girl, but condescendingly, as a way to tell me that he’s a man in need of a woman and not an adolescent.

I raise my glass, clear my face of all emotions. “Ditto, Doc.”

A few months later, I left Stanford, transferred to MIT, and stayed as far away from Dr. Ransom Marchand as I could.

We met at events and functions through the years. We smiled politely. He was friends with my sister and brother, and his parents are close to mine, so no one thinks much of how frosty things are between us—no one thinks we even know each other beyond the perfunctory hellos and how-do-you-dos.

“Latika and the kids say bonjour to everyone.” Aksel hops on the couch I’m on and puts his socked feet on my lap as he lies down on the couch.

Latika is his wife. They have two adorable children.

“Calypso, don’t you think Ember would look better if she didn’t wear glasses?” Aunt Tanya decides to get help by bringing in my ex-lover’s girlfriend to analyze my looks as she and Ransom approach our group, done with whatever they were looking at from the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Yep! This two-week break has ‘ morbid nightmare’ written all over it.

“Well, I say, everyone should get LASIK,” Calypso Blake chimes with amusement as she looks at me like I’m a child to be patronized.

“Calypso,” Ransom murmurs, “LASIK comes with risks.”

“It’s proven science,” Calypso counters. “And it’s done wonders for me.”

What the hell kind of pretentious name is Calypso?

And what? Now Ransom also wants to talk about my face? I know for sure he used to like my eyes, glasses or not.

“Your eyes are so expressive, Em. I love watching you come—love seeing your pleasure in them.”

“See, Ember?” Aunt Tanya points out. “And she’s a fashion editor for Harper’s Bazaar . She knows about these things. You know, Calypso, maybe you can help Ember with makeup. God knows I can’t teach her, and women of a certain age just need a little help from La Prairie and Chanel.”

Kill me now! I’m 30, Aunt Tanya, not 500.

“I’ll be happy to help,” Calypso says smugly. “Ransom loves my makeup no-makeup.”

I dare not look at Ransom, in case he can see how he still affects me. How jealous I am of his soon-to-be fiancée, the fashionista who wants to teach me how to use a bronzer.

Universe , I know I’m a flawed human being, but this shit needs to stop. ASAP. No one deserves to feel this way.

“Darling, you look beautiful no matter what,” he rumbles affectionately, indulgently.

I hear Calypso giggle.

I take a deep breath.

Serenity now, Ember. Serenity, now .

Universe? If you’re listening. This is a freaking SOS.

I’m glad I didn’t look up to see what the couple was up to when I hear Freja snap, “God! Get a room, both of you!”

My heart stutters. Like really.

Any minute now, I’m going to have a cardiac event! Good thing we have a doctor in the house.

Universe? God? Anyone home?

“We have a room, right next to yours, in fact.” Ransom’s deep voice is full of amusement. They’re friends. We’re all friends.

Well, not Ransom and me, not anymore, not since….

“Let me just have the final word. All of you, and especially you two , Mama and Aunt Tanya, stop asking Ember to change. She is gorgeous as she is,” Freja announces. “Don’t you agree, Ransom?”

Yep, just push me down a black diamond slope and end my life now.

“Yes,” Ransom clips, his tone saying he doesn’t think anything of that sort.

“Make-up is a very personal choice,” Calypso adds with what she probably thinks is sympathy and understanding, but is really condescension. “And, you know, plenty of women do fine without it.”

Lady, I’ll take fine over caked-up face, thank you very much.

I lower my gaze and nod, keeping my face neutral.

Great , the introvert who likes to blend into the wallpaper is being discussed by everyone .

My brother sits up and holds out his hand to me. “Hey, I want to show you something.”

I smile at him and slip my hand into his. “Yes, please.”

Aksel takes me to the orangerie, tucked at the far end of the chalet, past the library and down a hallway lined with antique skis and black-and-white photographs of Rousseau ancestors on mountaintops.

The space is technically a conservatory, but we refer to it as the orangerie because the first resident of the chalet, a 19th-century count from the Rousseau family, once kept citrus trees here year-round.

Back then, cultivating oranges in the Alps was a symbol of wealth and refinement, a display of both science and extravagance.

The orangerie was heated with coal beneath the stone floor, and legend has it that Napoleon himself visited once, though that may just be a bit of family lore no one wants to fact-check.

Now, it’s a glass-walled retreat with hanging ivy, potted olive and lemon trees, and a steaming indoor pool framed in polished stone. The scent of citrus lingers faintly in the air.

Outside, snow falls in slow, delicate spirals. From here, you can see the pine forest that guards the edge of the estate and, just beyond it, the jagged silhouette of the Mont Blanc massif.

We sit at the edge of the pool on wide chaise lounges draped in rust-colored wool blankets. The warmth from the heated floor seeps through the soles of my Ugg slippers.

“Better?” Aksel asks gently.

I nod, wrapping the blanket around myself like armor. “Thanks for the extraction.”

“Anytime”—he pauses thoughtfully and adds, “You know they don’t mean to be….”

“Cruel? Vapid?” I offer, mockingly wiping a fake tear from my cheek.

He studies me for a moment. “Sometimes I worry that you hide behind these pity jokes and dry humor.”

“Hide?”

“That maybe Mama and Aunt Tanya hurt your feelings.”

I give him a soft, contemplative glance. “Their comments used to make me feel bad. Now…don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t feel good to be told that I’m not fine as I am, but it also doesn’t consume any space in my head.”

Aksel listens the way he always does—quietly, fully, like there’s nothing more important in the world.

“You’re the most self-aware of all of us,” he murmurs, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.

Freja is all fire and feeling—bold, passionate, unfiltered. Aksel, by contrast, is calm and composed. He measures his words carefully, always thinking before he speaks.

My sister doesn’t have to do that here. With family, she lets her heart lead. Maybe it’s because in her professional life—where she anchors one of the highest-rated primetime news shows on cable—every word has to be precise. Controlled. Calculated. So at home, she doesn’t hold back.

“Growing up in the Rousseau family, one has no choice but to be,” I murmur.

We are a family that speaks our minds, especially when we’re together. We let go of facades and filters, and just be. There’s comfort in that. There is also judgment that can be hurtful.

“Our family kills with kindness,” he jokes.

“Mama kills with fashion.”

He chuckles, then falls quiet.

We both watch the snow fall in companionable silence.

We’ve been coming to Chamonix and this chalet, sitting here, watching the cold world from the warmth of the orangerie since we were kids.

The chalet is three stories of old-world elegance and sharp-edged modern luxury, nestled in a fold of the mountain like something out of a fairytale. There are twelve bedrooms, two kitchens, six fireplaces, and an underground wine cellar that could host a small wedding.

There’s also a ski-in/ski-out tunnel lined with boot warmers, a home theater with velvet seats, and a music room that Mama and Aunt Tanya go to town on the piano in. Alas, neither my siblings nor I are musical in the least.

I’ve always felt fortunate to be able to stay here whenever I wish, though I only come in the winter during this two-week sojourn we take as a family. Freja and Aksel come here more often with their families and friends for skiing throughout the season.

I don’t have that kind of time.

I’ve just finished my PhD and I’m in the thick of my postdoc at MIT, working under one of the biggest names in theoretical astrophysics.

Our lab is collaborating with a private aerospace company on a project so confidential that I have to log into a biometric server just to check my own simulation results.

It’s demanding, obsessive work. Long hours, deep focus, no small talk. Exactly my kind of rhythm.

“I don’t ever want you to feel you’re not great as you are,” Aksel breaks the quiet, his voice low.

“You’re all way more successful than me,” I say before I can stop myself.

“We’re older,” he retorts.

I am the baby, an accidental pregnancy, which means I’m eight years younger than Freja and nearly eleven than Aksel.

“I doubt in a decade I’ll be world famous like you,” I tease. “Or our guests.”

Ransom speaks at conferences and is regarded as one of the top neurosurgeons in the United States. Calypso is an ex-model and a fashion editor, and Heidi and Giselle are prominent in their own right.

“You’re the youngest by years, Ember.” He leans his head back, eyes on the snow. “Speaking of guests, what the fuck is Ransom doing with that woman? She’s all pretense from her LASIK eyes down to her Botoxed chin.”

I almost say, “ She’s the right age for Ransom, plus she’s beautiful .” But I don’t. That will give me away. No one thinks we know each other well.

“The way she looks, Aksel, he’s probably banging her…a lot.”

Hiding, again, behind humor, Ember? Hell yeah. Wouldn’t you if the love of your life was banging another woman?

“She’s the kind of woman who needs a man. There’s a tinge of desperation about her. You know? Like any man would do.” Aksel rubs a hand over his chin. “It’s not Ransom she’s interested in…just what he is, doctor, rich, handsome…not who he is…emotionally stunted and a crap chess player.”

“Not all women want to snag a man. Okay? Maybe she’s just enjoying…him.”

“Maybe.”

“And not all women give two damns about being single—some of us like it.”

His eyes light up with amusement. “Mama and Aunt Tanya are worried about your single status.”

I exhale wearily. “It’ll happen when it’ll happen.” That’s my standard line.

“I believe that.” He takes my hand in his. “I never expected to fall in love with Latika…I’m still in awe that I did.”

Latika Panday, Aksel’s wife, works with Aksel at the World Bank. She’s with their kids in London to see her family, but will be coming to Chamonix with my favorite (and only) niece and nephew in time for Christmas.

“Latika is all things cool.”

I love my sister-in-law. She’s fun and smart.

She’s the kind who will go along to get along unless you cross moral lines, and then she’ll be at your throat.

Latika is a big believer in choosing carefully the hills you want to die on.

She lives by the motto, “ You don’t have to go to every fight you’re invited to. ”

“She is, and I’m damn lucky.” He grins at me. “I hope you’ll find love like that one day. You deserve it.”

I blink hard, surprised by the lump forming in my throat. I don’t tell him that it probably won't be possible. I trust with great difficulty, so when it’s broken…I’m not the kind who bounces back. I collapse inward, like a dying star—dense, invisible, still holding the heat of what once was.

“We’ll see.”

Aksel squeezes my hand gently, the way he did when we were kids and I’d crawl into his bed during storms.

Outside the orangerie, the snow has thickened to a steady fall, blanketing the trees and softening the edges of the world. The glass walls glow with the reflections of the overhead lights, and for a moment, it feels like we’re in a snow globe—sealed off, still, suspended in time.

We sit in silence for a while longer, watching the world turn white.

Eventually, Aksel stands and stretches. “I better go help pick out the wine so Freja doesn’t, once again, try to serve some low-quality California red with the lamb.”

I laugh softly. “God forbid.”

Aksel and Freja are on two very different sides of the wine debate. He’s all about the old country, thinks French and Italian, while Freja believes that no one does wine better than the Californians.

For these two weeks, everyone will enjoy some excellent wine that they’ve each brought along to quietly—and not so quietly—compete with one another, turning every dinner into a passive-aggressive tasting panel and every toast into a thinly veiled argument about terroir .

He ruffles my hair as he walks past. “See you for dinner?”

I nod. “I’ll be there in a bit.”

I watch him leave, his silhouette swallowed by the golden light of the hallway.

The quiet closes in on me. Familiar. Safe. Mine .

The snow outside thickens, blurring the world into a soft, white hush. From deep in the chalet, I hear music drifting through the walls—something smooth and jazzy—and the faint hum of voices, laughter, and clinking glasses.

I wait until the very last minute to head back in for dinner, bracing myself for seeing Ransom with The Wicked Witch from Harper’s Bazaar .