Page 7 of Bear My Heart

Shanti was nearly certain he'd started to say we'll have to go. Bewildering, the idea made her heart leap. Far, far more than the idea of going on her own, for some reason. She managed a smile and shook her head. "The train doesn't go there."

"I'll build a railroad just for you," Peter promised, and although it was an absolutely ridiculous idea, somehow Shanti believed he would if he could, and the belief filled her with warmth and comfort.

CHAPTER 4

Pete added, "Or maybe buy you a plane ticket," a bit wryly. "It's not as—" He stumbled over romantic, which is what he wanted to say, but Shanti Davis seemed like a woman who wouldn't take words like romantic thrown around lightly. He chose, "—dramatic. I'm a good railroad worker, but I'm not sure even John Henry could have built rail tracks across the surface of the Pacific Ocean."

Shanti's shy smile blossomed momentarily. "Probably not. Maybe someday, though. It's a nice idea. How much longer will the track take, do you think? It seemed like it took forever to get the new train station started, and then all of a sudden it was built, and now…I don't even know how long you've been working on laying the new tracks. It's been almost four years since the town voted to have the line come back. I know there's been construction during that time, but…"

"Virtue wasn't the last town to decide it wanted the rail line back, but it was close. And then there were the last negotiations with Ontario for the cross-border clearance, but..." Pete paused, trying to judge how interested Shanti might be in the minutia of building a railroad. "There are basically four major steps to laying a railroad," he said cautiously, and her eyes lit up with interest, so he went ahead, trying to explain it as simply as possible while she finished her dinner. "Basically there's getting everything in place so you've got the material to work with, so we've got depots set up along the whole track."

"Right, there's tons of material behind the station in what I guess will eventually be the actual train depot? That's what you'll be using?"

Pete nodded. "Yeah. And we've done all the pre-line laying that we can do, getting the ballast—that's the official name for all that crushed stone that rail tracks lie on—getting that down and tamped into place. And the concrete sleepers that the rails are set into, those are next. For this line, we've already got the track and the sleepers combined for a lot of long stretches, so we put that down, and then add more ballast. It's faster than you'd think, once we get to this stage. The line should be done before Christmas."

Shanti caught her breath. "Really? That soon?" She knew it—the town was talking about nothing else—but hearing somebody who was working on the railroad actually say it aloud made it seem much, much more real, suddenly.

"I could make a bunch of mistakes, slow it down a little," Pete said, but knew that would be for his own benefit: anything to stay in Virtue longer, at this wonderful woman's side. He couldn't even try to think forward yet about how this was going to work. Fate was easy if both sides were settled in the same community, but he was from Alaska and Shanti was from Virtue, and he was beginning to think her heart might be in Nepal.

Maybe they needed railway workers in Nepal.

She smiled again and glanced down, shaking her head. That smile of hers was so shy, as if she somehow felt she wasn't allowed to smile. Shy and, Pete thought, maybe sad. He wanted to ask about that, but he didn't want to push her, either. He was having a hard time remembering he'd only met her about half an hour ago. All he wanted to do was curl her into his arms and make whatever had made her sad go away.

"No," she said to her plate, then looked up. "No, I'm looking forward to taking the first train out of here, so don't delay it."

"Yeah? Where are you going to go?"

Shanti looked caught, her gaze darting sideways before she hunched in on herself and shrugged. "I don't know."

"I can never decide, either," Pete said easily. There was obviously something weighing on his mate, but she wasn't ready to talk about that yet, so he spread one hand and said, "My favorite game is 'If I Had All The Money.'"

He had more to add onto that, but Shanti gave a soft laugh, and nodded. "Yeah, I play that game too. If I had all the money, I wouldn't care where I went. I would go to New York and go to the port or the airport or the train station and I'd look at all the places I could go and I'd say, there. And I'd get on the plane and go, without thinking about it any more than that. I would…I'd get on a cruise ship and I'd go to Europe and then I'd get on the Orient Express and I'd go across the world on trains. Back and forth, stopping wherever I wanted to for as long as I wanted to and then starting up again when I felt like it."

Her cheeks flushed warmly with passion as she spoke, and though the sadness in her eyes didn't disappear, it faded. Her gaze was distant, wishful, hopeful, and then she remembered herself and shivered a bit and looked back at Pete and shrugged one shoulder. "If I Had All The Money. What about you?"

"If I had all the money I'd build new railroads everywhere," Pete said with a laugh. He'd finished his burger as she spoke, and now pushed his plate aside so he could put his elbows on the table and lean toward Shanti a little, smiling. "High speed ones, so you could zip from New York to Chicago, or overnight to Los Angeles. Seattle to Portland in an hour. But I'd have to be a government of my own to really do that."

"We did say all the money," Shanti murmured, and Pete grinned.

"Yeah, but on a more personal scale…I don't mean to steal yours, but seeing the world by rail would be amazing. I'd go to Australia," Pete admitted. "It's not quite the exact opposite side of the world from Alaska, but it's pretty close. South Africa, too, for the same reason."

"Chile," Shanti said, sounding impulsive. "And…Barrow, right? That's the farthest-north town in Alaska?"

"It is, yeah. Utqiaġvik, now, they changed the name back to its original Inuit name a while ago, but yeah."

"Oh! I didn't know that. Ut…say it again?"

"Uut kee AHG vik." Pete touched his fingers against his throat. "It all kind of happens in the back of the throat. If you push it forward into the front of your mouth and lips you'll get it wrong. The Q in it makes the kee sound and that's where people go wrong."

"Utqiaġvik," Shanti echoed carefully, then smiled with surprise. "I like that. It's a good sound."

"Yeah, it is. But if we've got all the money and are going north to south, why stop in Chile? McMurdo Bay, here we come."

"McMur…where's that?"

"Antarctica!"

Shanti's eyebrows went up. "You know places in Antarctica?"