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Honestly, the last thing I need is people talking about me at all, let alone speculating about my personal life. For that reason, she’s right about Ruby. Even though spending an evening with industry blowhards sounds a whole lot more palatable with her by my side. Still, I bristle at the idea that PJ would dismiss Ruby for not being sufficient.
“She’s plenty appropriate enough,” I say, feeling the heat creep up the back of my neck as I defend her, while praying my sister doesn’t read my thoughts and realize just how attractive I find Fiona’s nanny.
“You cannot bring your nanny as your date. The gossip mill will be rife with talk about you and the family. You need to keep up appearances, and the talk among the grapevines is that Mallory will inherit her parents’ estate within the year. That makes the two of you a very interesting couple, and we could use that kind of press.”
PJ may be the youngest, but she acts like my mother sometimes. Maybe the Corbett men need a little mothering, but I’d just as soon put my sister in her place.
“I wasn’t aware this was a cotillion. Why do I need to be part of an ‘interesting couple?’ Next, you’ll be proposing an arranged marriage as a business move.”
“It’s not like that.” She laughs, but I don’t see the humor. Far from it.
“Really? Feels that way. Happiness is disposable. I should just whore myself out for good publicity, all in the name of the family business.” My voice is quiet, strained. That’s what happens when I’m seething with indignation.
She knows when she’s crossed a line, but we couldn’t be more opposite in how we deal with things.
Swinging her legs like a gymnast, PJ uses the momentum to propel herself off the desk. She stands toe-to-toe with me, which doesn’t make her any scarier, though she clearly thinks it does. “I told you. It’s about optics. If Dad were able to make his case, I know he’d see it the way I do.”
Closing my eyes, I have to admit she’s probably right. And I hate it when she throws the “what Dad would do” into the equation. It makes me feel sad and guilty and angry at the same time, and then it makes me agree. She knows this.
“Will it really make the “optics” that much better if I pal around with the awful Mallory all night?” I roll my eyes.
“Yes, it will. And stop air quoting.”
I force out a ragged sigh. “Fine. I’ll do it, but only because we can’t afford any more negative publicity right now. Between our numbers being off this quarter and Dad’s health, we need to keep a united front. If schmoozing Mallory gives us that, I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.”
But she doesn’t leave. “Tell me, Jax. Why is she awful?” PJ probably doesn’t really care about the answer to this question now that she knows she’s getting her way.
She makes a note on her list and heads for the door, so I shrug and make up a lie. “I dunno. Maybe because she has nothing to say that doesn’t involve being a nepo baby and inheriting her family’s estate.”
PJ seems satisfied with my explanation. But I’m fully aware of the real reason I don’t want to show up with Mallory Rutherford on my arm—because she isn’t the woman I want to be there with.
She isn’t Ruby.
ChapterFourteen
Ruby
“I know that you have a job,” my sister says from underneath a thick yellow quilt covered in fat daisies with smiley faces on it.
“Impressive, missy. I’ve been there three weeks already.”
Flipping the covers off her face, she treats me to a view of her closed eyes, still covered in blue shadow and a beehive of hair piled on her head. Loose tendrils spill over her forehead, and she swats at them with a black press-on nail. “I know.”
“So let me have the bathroom.”
“No.”
The point of this argument is that her alarm started blaring a minute after mine, and she’s claimed dibs on the shower. I need to get in, get out, and get to Napa, so I’m not having it.
“Do you also know that it’s six-thirty? Why are you up? You don’t have to be on campus until eight, and it’s a ten-minute walk—twenty if you stop at Café Strada for coffee.”
It’s her “guilty pleasure,” as she calls her foolish coffee habit. The stipend that comes with her work/study scholarship doesn’t leave enough spending money for daily cups of four dollar coffee. She only has coffee money at all because she’s dating a guy who doesn’t think twice about paying for her dinners.
Just for emphasis, I let the electric kettle’s whistle blare for a bit longer before running it through the French press. Fifty cents a day when I buy the beans at Trader Joe's and grind them at the store. I calculated it.
The smell of brewing coffee will make my sister think twice about spending her money on coffee, even if it won’t change the outcome. Habits are built one day at a time. I can’t tell her what to do because she’ll never do it, but I can drop very subtle hints, and eventually, she’ll think it’s her idea to drink the coffee here.
