Page 49 of Best In Class (Savannah's Best #7)

I lean back against the velvet cushions of the comfortable couch in the glassed sunroom where we’re all ensconced for pre-dinner drinks.

“Ransom, we’re only being helpful,” Tanya continues once Margot is out of earshot. “Ember’s thirty…she should be dating and not just hiding in her lab all the time.”

“She’s not hiding in her lab, she works there,” Jean snaps, his eyes narrowing with irritation. “And Ember doesn’t need to find herself a man. She’s got the biggest balls in any room she’s in. When there’s a man who can handle her, be worthy of her, I’m sure she’ll?—”

“Jean, she wants to get married, have children,” Tanya cuts him off. “She worries…you know…that it’ll be too late and she won’t be able to….”

Have children? My blood surges. She wants a baby? The idea of her being pregnant…with another man’s child, feels like a hot poker through my eyes.

“And LASIK is going to help with that?” Jean shakes his head.

“Not just LASIK…just… actually ”—Tanya sighs elaborately—"it’s got nothing to do with LASIK, well it does and…it doesn’t. It’s more about getting her out and about, dating, putting herself out there. She dated that musician jerk a year and a half ago.”

Jean is old-fashioned when it comes to economics, but not when it comes to his daughter being married off to eligible bachelors, as Tanya wants, thinking life is another version of Pride and Prejudice , he gets his feminist back up. “Ember’s marital status is no one’s business but Ember’s.”

Calypso is about to say something, but I squeeze her shoulder in warning.

Tanya is family, and she can argue the point with Jean, but even she won’t because she heard the steel in his voice. He’ll tolerate it, regardless because she’s Margot’s sister.

But Calypso is a veritable stranger. And they know that just because I brought her over for a holiday doesn’t mean a damn thing. I made sure Calypso knows that, too, but I’m getting the impression that she did read more into this trip than I intended.

She’s a bedmate and good company. We’ve been seeing each other for a few months now. I thought we’d make it at least until next summer. Now, I’m not sure we’ll make it past the flight home to San Francisco, especially after she unsheathed her claws and took a swipe at Ember.

“Why don’t we see if Margot needs our assistance?” I rise, pulling Calypso up with me.

She looks baffled but lets me lead her out of the room.

“You’re a guest,” I tell her as soon as we’re alone in the empty dining room.

She bobs her head, confused.

I hold her gaze. I don’t want her to misunderstand what I’m about to say. “Please don’t get into familial discussions about Ember or anyone else.”

“Excuse me?” She’s incredulous.

“They are worried about Ember, so they talk about her and to her. Margot and Tanya want her to get a new wardrobe and haircut or whatever. Freja wants Ember to just be happy. Aksel wants to protect her. And Jean wants everyone to shut the fuck up about his youngest daughter’s love life.”

“Or lack thereof” Calypso quips.

I control my temper and continue as if she hasn’t spoken. “What we don’t need is you interjecting yourself?—”

“I was just trying to be helpful and?—”

“—into that spectacle,” I ignore her cutting me off. “Regardless, it wasn’t particularly nice of you to pile onto the ‘ let’s bitch about how Ember looks’ bandwagon.”

She’s taken aback.

No doubt.

I’m usually polite and deferential. I don’t ever get angry or even irritated. Even now, as I’m talking to her, I’m calm and controlled. I could just as well be asking her how she likes her lamb cooked. Pink in the center?

“You don’t have to be rude, Ransom.”

“Not being rude, Cali, just telling you the way things are in this house.”

“You were short with Tanya. You’re a guest, too,” she throws back at me.

So, maybe I shouldn’t have asked her to join me.

I don’t like how childish Calypso is behaving. How quickly her insecurities surface, like now, when she stomps her feet like a teenager, instead of agreeing that she’d been out of line.

“I am family. You’re not.” I pause, let that settle in, and then, before she can respond, I smile, throwing her off. “Why don’t I find a glass of Bordeaux for you? The Rousseaus have an excellent wine cellar.”

She doesn’t quite know how to respond. She swallows. Nods.

I hold out my arm, and she curves her hand into my elbow.

I disperse the acid between us by telling her about a painting on the large wall above the dining table.

She goes along with my efforts, choosing, as I knew she would, not to pick a fight as she wants to. She knows she won’t win. We’re not in a committed relationship. I’m not her boyfriend . We’re companions, sharing a holiday and a bed.

“It’s a Georges de La Tour— Magdalene with the Smoking Flame . One of the originals. Margot thinks it’s too somber for a dining room, but I think it fits.”

She tilts her head to study it.

A woman in candlelight, her face caught between reflection and sorrow, one hand resting on a skull, the other near a flickering flame.

“I agree with Margot,” she murmurs.

“Let me show you the original Picasso in the next room. You may like it better.” I steer her away from the La Tour.

The painting came to my attention because of Ember, the year she came to my attention.

I was in Chamonix with my family and hers. She was just about to start her master’s at Stanford, and since I worked in Palo Alto and lived in Los Gatos, we got talking.

“Why do you like it?” I ask when Ember tells me the La Tour is her favorite painting in the whole chalet.

“Magdalena is contemplating her mortality,” she explains shyly.

“La Tour was obsessed with that kind of stillness. Grief without drama. Light and shadow. It’s the kind of painting that doesn’t raise its voice, but you can’t stop looking at it.

La Tour knew how to get his message across elegantly, don’t you think? ”

I glance at Ember, entranced by her explanation. “I’m surprised an astrophysics student knows so much about art.”

She looks at me, amused. “Are you saying I’m too nerdy?”

“Charmingly so.”

She laughs, not offended, not petulant. “I once worked a summer at El Prado in Madrid as an assistant to an art restorer.”

She isn’t even smug when she says it. It’s just a fact she’s stating. Her humility is not something I often see in the God-complex world I live in.

“Really? You paint?”

“Yes, I do. Why do you look so surprised?”

This woman has so much more depth than I ever thought possible, not that I ever thought about her one way or the other. She flew under the radar, the sister and daughter of friends, not in my circle of interest.

“You have to admit, it’s unexpected.”

She smiles, shaking her head. “Only if you’re judging people.”

That was when I fell, hopelessly charmed by how she got her message across so elegantly.