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. Utqia?vik, 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."
"Utqia?vik," 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?"
"I always thought it'd be cool to work there for a while. I'm from Alaska, how different could it be?"
Very, his bear said almost gloomily. No bears there. No salmon.
Lots of penguins, though. And leopard seals.
Pete wasn't sure leopard seals made good hunting for grizzly bears, though.
He had the vague idea they were in similar weight classes, and grizzlies were good swimmers, but nothing like their cousin polar bears.
Pete would put money on himself on land, and a leopard seal in the water, but he didn't know how much time they spent on land.
"Utqia?vik to McMurdo, then," Shanti murmured, but looked hopeful. "Do you think we can take a train?"
"It'll be one of the lines I build," Pete promised.
"Perfect. Oh, here comes the waitress. She'll ask if we want dessert." Shanti's gaze flickered beyond Pete and back to him, and he lifted his eyebrows.
"I always want dessert. You?"
"I wouldn't mind seeing what they have." Shanti almost whispered it, looking nearly guilty, and Pete tried not to let his surprise and confusion show.
Ordering dessert shouldn't be that big a deal, but he had to remind himself that even though her dark eyes and sweet smile and gentle presence spoke of home to him, he didn't really know this wonderful woman yet.
"Dessert it is, then. Although I gotta say, the burger was so good that if the desserts look promising I might order everything on the menu."
Shanti gave a startled laugh. "You wouldn't!"
"I would." Pete grinned and they each took a dessert menu as the waitress cleared their dishes away. After a few moments of looking over it, Pete laughed again. "Oh my God."
"I think it's a good thing I went for something small," Shanti said almost faintly. "Everything on this menu looks…"
"Illegal," Pete said. "Illegal in at least seventeen states. Wow. Okay. Are we ordering one of everything?"
"No! That would be crazy! I don't care if we share, there's no way we could eat all that!"
Shanti was almost certainly right. There were eight desserts listed, unless each of the kinds of pie was counted separately, in which case, there were an even dozen. "We could try a bite of everything?" Pete suggested.
"We could come back for two weeks and have something new almost every day, too, without wasting all that food!"
Pete made no attempt to hide the slow smile that blossomed over his face. "So…that's basically dinner every night while I'm here to work on the railroad?"
"Oh." Shanti looked startled, then bit her lower lip and shrugged a little, as if she, unlike Pete, was trying to disguise her pleasure at the idea. "I don't have anything else planned…"
"Do you mind late dinners? The shift usually goes until six and I promise you do not want me to come from the railroad without showering first."
Shanti tilted her head. "It's not quite six yet today and we met almost an hour ago now? Do you have Thursdays off?"
Pete chuckled and shook his head. "No, today's an exception. We're moving the base of operations to Virtue now, but tomorrow I'm back to the usual hours."
"Is seven late enough, or do you need to make it eight?"
Delight rose in Pete's chest. "Split the difference? Seven-thirty? And to be clear, I don't actually expect to go out to dinner with you every night for two weeks in a row. You might not find me as charming as I do."
"Oh, I don't know, so far you're pretty charming. And like I said, I don't have anything else planned, but…thanks for the out. Just in case. For your sake, too. I'm very boring and you'll probably want to find other people to talk to."
"I don't think anything about you could possibly be boring," Pete said with complete sincerity. "And I think we should order this…this brownie platter thing. The Chef Charlee Special."
Shanti glanced at the menu, but she'd obviously already read the description, because she also shook her head no. "I cannot possibly eat all of that. If it's half as big as it sounds, absolutely not."
"We'll share it. I can eat an embarrassing amount of ice cream and brownies."
She glanced at him, too, mumbled something, and nodded. Pete leaned in a bit more. "What was that?"
"You're twice as wide as I am, that's all. Not in a bad way. Shoulders. Broad chest." Shanti moved her hands apart, indicating the width of his shoulders, then looked embarrassed. "Not that I'm staring at your shoulders."
Pete fought down a grin. "But are you?"
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?"