Page 9 of Bear My Heart

That rosy flush tinted her cheeks again and she squinched up her face, looking like she was trying not to laugh. "No! I just said I wasn't!"

"So you totally are!"

"They're hard to miss!" Shanti gave up on not laughing and hid her face in her hands, muffling her, "I'm sorry! I don't mean to be rude!"

"I'm not sure there's ever been a man on earth who thought his shoulders being appreciated was rude," Pete said. "Nothing to be sorry for. So the brownie platter?"

Shanti nodded without lifting her face from her hands, and Pete grinned, signaling the waitress, who had been watching the whole thing from down the aisle and was grinning widely herself. She came over, Pete said, "We'll share a brownie platter."

"Oh yay, I love it when people order that. But the menu's not kidding, it really does take half an hour. Can you wait?"

Pete glanced at Shanti, who nodded, still with her face in her hands. He, in turn, nodded at the waitress, whose name tag said Robin. "We can wait."

"Great. I think you'll like it. And I hope you don't mind me saying you two make a cute couple."

Pete took a breath to correct her and let it out on a, "Thank you," instead. Robin-the-waitress hurried off, and Shanti lifted both her face and eyebrows. Pete made a little face in response. "I thought it was easier to say thanks. Trying to explain we're not a couple…" Especially when he wanted to be. When fate told him they would be. But mostly, "It always feels awkward, because they're basically trying to give us a compliment and it's usually nicer to just say thank you to a compliment."

"Is that what you're supposed to do with them?" Shanti made a face of her own. "No, I know you're supposed to. I'm just really bad at taking them gracefully. Which is okay, I guess, because I don't get them often."

We must compliment our mate immediately! And often! Pete's bear sounded horrified and determined, and he couldn't help but agree with it. Shanti seemed like the kind of woman who would, and should, get compliments regularly. "I'd like to try to make up for that."

"Oh, God, don't. I wouldn't believe you anyway, and it would make me uncomfortable."

"The last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable, so I'll just go with 'so far you seem pretty great,' and try not to be any more complimentary than that."

"So far you seem pretty great too," Shanti said quietly. "And thanks."

Pete nodded. It wasn't quite killing him to ask why she didn't think she was worthy of compliments, but it was pretty close. Instead, trying to keep it light, he said, "Down to the important stuff, then. Chocolate, or lemon?"

CHAPTER 5

For a heartbeat, alarm had spiked in Shanti as Peter said he was moving their conversation on to important topics. That alarm turned to a giggle, and she clapped her hand over her mouth to silence it. Through her fingers, she said, "We did just order a huge brownie dessert."

"But chocolate might not be your preference," Peter said very solemnly. "You might be indulging my weakness."

A little shiver went through her. She had no idea what Peter Baranov's weaknesses might really be, but the idea of indulging them seemed appealing, somehow. Which wasn't the kind of thought she usually had at all, and truthfully, her imagination mostly failed her on the topic. But still, it made her shiver happily, and she bit her lower lip before shaking her head. "No, I like chocolate. Better than lemon? Maybe not better than it. You?"

"I just admitted it was my weakness." Peter smiled at her, and Shanti felt herself…melt.

Melting was not a familiar sensation for her. She hadn't had time to melt over anybody in years, and even then, she wasn't really sure melting had ever been part of the limited dating she'd done. She'd had some nice dates, but nothing that made her shiver or melt or really even want to curl up against a guy's side. Peter made her do all of those things, which was ridiculous. They'd just met. But still, the feelings persisted, and Shanti thought they might be…nice. She would have to think about it some more, but…yeah. Nice.

"Right," she managed to say aloud. "Chocolate weakness. What else? Sunny days or rainy ones?"

"Snow," he said with a sparkle that suggested he was deliberately being just a little difficult. "Snow or sun. Rain's not my favorite, which is too bad when you grew up in a rainforest."

"A rainforest? I thought you were from Alaska!"

"Believe it or not, a huge chunk of the Alaska Panhandle—where Juneau is—is a temperate rainforest."

Shanti sat back, goggling at Peter. "My entire worldview has been disrupted. I know there are rainforests in Nepal, but it's so much farther south than Alaska! You know! It's where it's warm and there are rainforests!"

"Yeah," Peter said, visibly trying not to laugh. "Nepal, where the famously tropical Mount Everest—Sagamathra?—is."

"Sagarmatha, but good try. And, well, yes, but…Alaskan rainforests?" Shanti raised her hands and made an indignant throw-away gesture, which broke Peter's attempts not to laugh. He guffawed, and she spluttered.

The truth was, she couldn't remember ever being quite so noisily huffy before. It was kind of fun. The idea that Peter Baranov, railroad worker from a rainforest in Alaska, might be good for her passed through Shanti's mind, but she put it away again. He was only in Virtue for a couple of weeks, and she…

…well, she was still pretending that when she got on that train out of town, she wouldn't be coming back. He wouldn't be here when she did, anyway, so she could pretend that he would be left with an impression of a woman who knew what she wanted and was brave enough to go get it. That was a much better image than of the person she really was.