Page 19 of The Price of Protection

“I could use a real friend,” Nate said. He stuck out his hand, and she shook it, and at that moment, their fate was sealed.

9

Present Day

It was the beginning of October when Rose next saw Harry Orlett, the journalist who’d given her the creeps on the first day of school. When he came into the bakery, all smiles, wearing that same expensive jean jacket, Rose’s heart dropped into her stomach. “Good afternoon,” she said, nostrils flaring. “Are you back to get the cookie you forgot to pay for and eat?”

Harry laughed. “You have a brilliant memory! Do you ever think your talents were wasted, being a baker? Maybe you could have been something else. A journalist, for example.”

“I don’t know why I would have wasted my life doing that,” Rose said.

Harry put both his hands on the glass counter and gazed down at the selection of sweets: blondies and brownies and lemon bars and Halloween-themed donuts, which Rose had worked tirelessly on all morning.

“Those are cute,” he said, nodding at the Frankenstein ones. “My niece would love them!”

“You can buy them for your niece, then,” Rose said.

“Oh, she lives in Hawaii,” he said. “And I don’t think she’s allowed to eat sugar right now.”

Rose made a soft sound in her throat. “What about a coffee? A cup of tea?”

Harry chuckled. “You’re tirelessly selling your wares, huh?”

“That’s sort of the point of having a bakery,” she said.

“I suppose you’re right!”

Now that an entire month had passed since Harry first came in and asked her about “what she’d been up to in high school,” Rose had more or less let her fears die. If Harry really knew anything, if he really understood what had happened back in the early 2000s, she felt sure that her image would be plastered across countless magazines and newspapers by now. He already would have ruined her life, collected his money from whatever newspaper or elite member of society had hired him, and moved on to the next victim.

“How long have you been in Nantucket, now?” she asked, wiping down the counter.

“It’s been about five weeks on your glorious island,” Harry said.

“And how are you finding it?” she asked.

Harry laughed. “To be honest with you, I imagined that I’d be gone by now. But I suppose you can’t plan everything in life. You know that more than most, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that, Mr. Orlett,” she said sweetly. “Would you like to taste-test one of my new baked goods? I have a pie in the oven that’s about to come out.”

Without waiting for him to answer, she went into the kitchen, removed the pumpkin pie, and brought it into the front room. The smell of cinnamon and baked pumpkin filled the air. Could anyone resist it? She watched Harry’s expression, waiting for him to melt.

“Tell me, Rose,” Harry said. “What might you have done with your life if things had worked out better for you? Would you be somewhere else, anywhere else? Would you have still opened a bakery? Would you have still married Mike and had Maxine?”

For the briefest of moments, Rose let her jaw click to the left in anger. But she knew that Harry was trying to get a rise out of her. Efficiently, she sliced a piece of pie, set it on a plate, and tapped it toward Harry with a fork.

“I wouldn’t change anything in my life,” she said. “Would you?”

Harry raised a fork and slid it into the point of the pie, his eyes still locked on hers. “You know, it’s a fun thought experiment, isn’t it? Would I, given the chance, break up with my college girlfriend again when I did?” He raised his fork to his lips, put the pumpkin in his mouth, and closed his eyes. He swallowed and didn’t show any rapture on his face, although Rose knew it was there. She knew this was one of her best recipes, and he wouldn’t be able to resist.

“My college girlfriend went on to have four children,” Harry said. “They live in London. She works in books, which is a dying field, as everyone knows. And her husband is this terribly ugly Englishman with, you know, enormous teeth that stick sideways out of his head.”

Rose didn’t give Harry the joy of showing how annoyed or shocked she was. She knew, in her heart of hearts, that a part of Harry ached to be in London with his ex, that he felt unaccepted and alone in the world, and that was probably why he spent his time chasing people like her.

Almost as though he’d heard her thoughts, Harry said, “But if I hadn’t broken up with her, I wouldn’t be here, eating this pie with you, would I?”

“Who knows?” Rose asked.

“Indeed. Who knows,” Harry said, taking another bite.