Page 10 of Bear My Heart

"Pie or cake?" Peter asked, still smiling, still playing the game even if she'd been distracted by Alaskan rainforests.

"…brownies? I don't know. Cake, I guess? You?"

"I'm a pie man."

"Snow, pie, lemon… it's starting to sound like we're incompatible."

Peter leaned forward and folded his hands on the table in front of him, his dark brown eyes intent and smiling. "What if I said none of that mattered? That I've got a feeling we are compatible?"

Warmth flushed through Shanti and she dropped her eyes. She felt the same way, but she couldn't imagine saying it aloud. After a moment, with effort, she looked up again and as seriously as she could, said, "Beaches or mountains?"

Peter said, "Mountains," instantly and sat back, his gentle smile still in place.

"There we go, then," Shanti almost whispered. "The rest is details, right? But mountains, those are important."

"A woman after my own heart," Peter said lightly, but the rumble in his deep voice made it feel warm and comforting and promising. "Of course, the best thing about Shkalnik is it's got both. Water and mountains."

Shanti's eyebrows did a little dance of interest, all by themselves. "I actually can't quite imagine that. Nepal is only mountains, and Virtue…well, there's a river. And some…hills…"

Peter threw his head back and laughed out loud, bringing his big hands together in a delighted clap before righting himself to grin hugely at her. "You are a woman after my own heart. I know that when in Rome, but the mountains here are the foothills we put in front of the mountains in Alaska."

"It's not that they're not mountains," Shanti said earnestly.

"It's that when you're used to eight-thousand-plus foot peaks, three and a half looks cute!"

"Eight thousand feet," Shanti said dismissively. "Try eight thousand meters."

Peter laughed again, a big round sound that Shanti could hardly imagine ever indulging in. "Be fair now, there aren't that many of those."

Shanti found herself actually grinning at the man across from her. "No. And also to be fair, the Adirondacks are pretty nice mountains. It's one of the things I like about Virtue, the way it's kind of settled in among them. It doesn't feel really mountainous, but…"

Peter glanced out a dark window, as if he could see the surrounding landscape. "But there's enough. I've been working my way through them, on this job. The thing is we're at about, what, two thousand feet above sea level here? So the mountains are only a couple thousand feet higher, so they don't feel as impressive as the ones that run straight up from the water. Which is what happens in Shkalnik."

"Nothing comes straight up from the water in Nepal," Shanti said wryly. "The closest ocean is about three hundred miles away. I've really only seen oceans flying over them."

"See, I can hardly imagine that. Shkalnik's right on the water. There are millions of mountains around so it's not like you can see to the edge of the world, but it's always there. Oh my God." That last was to the waitress and the giant, platter-sized brownie sundae she was carrying toward them. Peter fell silent with awe, and Shanti watched speechlessly as the young woman skillfully planted the enormous dessert between them on the table.

Peter, after a long, incredulous moment, whispered, "What have we done?"

Both Shanti and the waitress laughed. The waitress said, "Good luck," and went away while Shanti shook her head.

"I think I've gotten full just looking at that. Oh my God. It's…"

It was genuinely the biggest sundae she'd ever seen. She'd had skillet brownies at restaurants before, with the brownies being round and maybe six inches across. This looked like it was a whole 9×9 pan, overturned onto the platter and soaked through with a hot fudge sauce, and there was another brownie on top of it, held up by dark chocolate ice cream and strawberries. On top of that was vanilla ice cream surrounded by more dark chocolate scoops, all drowned in hot fudge, berries, whipped cream, praline pecans and enough maraschino cherries to satisfy even Shanti, who thought three was the absolute minimum a sundae should be topped with.

"No one could possibly eat that," Shanti breathed. "Not all of it. Could they? No. No…?"

Peter lifted his spoon in a solemn salute. "I don't know, but I'm willing to try."

"You go first," Shanti said faintly. "I don't think I'm brave enough."

He nodded and went to take a bite, although it took him two or three tries to decide where to begin. Shanti honestly couldn't blame him. It was a work of art, and the first bite would reduce it to mere food. After considerable examination, Pete finally just went for a corner of the base brownie, with ice cream and a berry piled on top. He popped the bite into his mouth, froze, and after several long seconds, said, "Oh my God," around it.

"Really?" Shanti poked at her side of the sundae a little, too, trying to find a good place to start, and then, like Peter, just went for it with a bite of fudge-soaked brownie. She heard herself give a little, high giggle as the taste melted onto her tongue, and covered her mouth, trying not to laugh harder. "Oh my God."

It took them well over an hour to eat the entire concoction, interrupted by phrases like I can't possibly eat any more and take it away NO I DIDN'T MEAN IT! when the waitress offered to do just that. The ice and whipped creams had long since melted before they finished, leaving the brownies heavy and crumbling from the liquid they'd absorbed. Peter ate the lion's share, but Shanti ate more than she'd thought was physically possible, and when they'd finally cleared the plate, they were both snickering and bleary with exhausted effort. Even Peter said, "I live here now. I can't possibly move after that," while Shanti giggled and nodded and slumped in her seat.

The waitress came back to clear the table, but this time she had a chef, a pleased-looking fat woman about Shanti's height, with her. "You'd be surprised how many people don't finish that," the chef said, which reduced both Peter and Shanti to chocolate-drunk laughter again.