Page 38 of Savior
“Well, look who you married.”
My grin fades. “Not cool.”
Ben holds his hands up. “I’m just sayin’. It’s about time you found someone real.”
“You two are worse than your wives,” I say.
“Just wait until they find out you’re dating someone.”
Ben laughs, and I consider banging my head against the steering wheel.
Piper
“This is just beautiful,” Lena, a newcomer at the B&B, comments that evening as she sits down at the table where the dinner I’ve spent the last hour arranging awaits the guests.
“I can’t take all the credit,” I tell her. “Diane is absolute magic in the kitchen.”
In the time since I started working at the travel agency, I’ve learned vacationers become a sort of temporary family. There is a small, but intense, connection, almost a fantasy, that forms.
It has to do with memories, I’ve concluded. People go on vacation to make memories, so they’re choosing to include you in them. There’s something beautiful about it, especially to me, since so many of my recent memories are too bleak to recall. It’s much more fun to run away from my real life and make all new ones.
“I’m a baker, and I can assure you, presentation is half the battle.” Lena closes her eyes and draws a deep breath. “Smells amazing.”
“I’ve sampled some, it tastes better than it looks—or smells.” We share a smile as I arrange a rolling service cart with the beverages.
“Are you from around here?” Lena asks.
Without a pause, I say, “Alabama and South Florida, yes, but I’ve moved around quite a bit.”
Lena groans. “I’m so jealous. I wish I had the time to travel. I bet you’ve seen a ton of amazing places.” She leans forward on her elbows, her dark blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders.
I think back to those horrible months spent on the road, running blindly from city to city. I hedge the question with a vague, “Oh, tons,” and hope she swallows down the lie.
“I’m so jealous. I’ve always wanted to get in a car and see everything. Just start on one side of the country to pick a direction. See what I’ll see and all that.”
“Why didn’t you?” I ask, moving the conversation further away from myself.
She sips the wine I put in front of her and gestures with her free hand. “Oh, you know. I had college first—my parents wouldn’t let me start the bakery without a degree in business.”
I think of my own parents and wince. They were so excited when I got into college. We haven’t spoken much since I dropped out.
Lena doesn’t notice my expression. “Then after that, I went to train with the most successful baker in the country.”
“I bet it was exciting.”
She laughs, sips again, then snorts and starts coughing, which makes me laugh, too. “It washorrible.”
I stop arranging the spoons and forks and shoot her a horrified glance. “Horrible?”
Nodding emphatically, she explains, “He was French and he was a bonafidetyrant.”
“Sounds delightful.”
“Nightmare,” she insists. “Night-freaking-mare. I worked for him for two terrible years after I graduated. My blood, sweat, and tears went to perfecting the perfect ganache, the most delicious crème brûlée. And he never gave praise. There was always something I could have done better.”
“Probably makes you the best damn baker, though.”
She grins and points at me. “You’re right about that. He may have made me want to kill myself at the end of every shift, but after my internship there, I went on to have the most successful bakery in the tri-state area.”