Chapter 6
Virtue didn't really have airs, any more than Shkalnik had only two streets. Its downtown was compact, at least compared to Shkalnik, although nowhere with a town square as enormous as Virtue's could really be considered small.
They'd already come down School Street on their way to the gastropub, so Shanti took them to their left out of the pub and they wandered down a longish block, past a veterinarian's office and eventually around a couple of corners that had them walking back up toward the square past a boutique hotel and a corner store.
Shanti was all bundled up, little more visible than her nose and puffs of warm breath on the cold air.
She told him what she knew about the town—"The hotel used to be a row of houses, but they were converted six or eight years ago"—as they walked around, her quiet voice not much louder than the snow squeaking beneath their feet.
They paused at the church end of the town square, Pete's attention torn between the biggest gazebo he'd ever seen, and what looked like the world's greatest playground off to its right.
Shanti's soft voice turned wry with fondness and admiration.
"The gazebo's been here forever. I think it originally dates from the late nineteenth century, although it's been rebuilt at least once recently because somebody ran a bulldozer or something into it.
The playground is new, just a couple of years old.
One of the kids in town pushed an initiative for it through the town council. "
Pete laughed, startled. "No way."
"Really." Shanti smiled up at him. "I heard his argument was there was tons of room for soccer and baseball already but there wasn't anything to climb and they should do something about that. Apparently he's very persuasive."
"I guess so! We've been trying to push a skate park through in Shkalnik, but that's been the grown-ups, not kids.
Maybe we should get some of them involved," Pete said thoughtfully as they fell into step together again.
Shanti took him up past a little two-screen movie theatre and out to what she called 'the new library,' which had opened a good ten years ago now, she said.
"But it'll always be the new library, I think.
The old one was back on the square and it wasn't big enough for the community, much less the librarian's ambitions.
She has half the under-threes in town running around in there most days of the week, I hear.
There are houses out that way, mostly abandoned," she added, waving past the library as they turned back toward the town.
"And Imelda runs her summertime coffee cart down there. "
"And…the doughnut store in the winter, is that what you said?"
Shanti's earmuffs bobbled with her nod. "They're really good doughnuts.
That's 'Jewelry Row' up there, three whole jewelry stores," she said with amusement in her voice.
"If you go right on that street you end up at the grocery store, and there's an ice cream parlor where you can get an old-fashioned soda with the syrup mixed, kind of like my ginger ale, in between the jewelry stores. "
"I've never had a ginger ale that good. I'll have to try the sodas.
" They walked through 'Jewelry Row' and were at the town square again, with a B&B off to their right and the fantastic playground more or less in front of them.
"Are adults allowed to climb around on that thing? " Pete asked hopefully.
"Yes, which is a good thing, because it's impossible to stop them. There are even a couple of sections that are built to scale for grown-ups."
"Was that the wonder kid's idea too?"
Shanti's quiet laugh spilled onto the cold air. "I'm not sure, but it's had a lot more grown-ups out playing and exercising than you'd think. Apparently adults miss having somewhere to play."
"Yeah, that makes sense." They veered right, past the B&B, and cornered at the doughnut store, although Shanti pointed down the street stretching right beyond it.
"The Italian restaurant is down there." She swung her point to straight ahead of them, past the doughnut shop.
"And that's the town hall and courthouse.
If you keep going this way far enough past the gastropub you'll get to the diner.
And that's Virtue, pretty much. Most of the rest is residential.
" They paused at the far corner of the square, the town hall and courthouse now behind them and Shanti glancing around. "Yes, that's pretty much it."
"It's great," Pete said sincerely. "And I couldn't have asked for a better local guide."
Shanti dimpled shyly. "I'm pretty sure anybody else could have given you the exact same tour."
"Wouldn't have been as good," Pete declared. "And the walk was good for me."
Shanti put her hand over her stomach and almost laughed as she nodded. "Me too. I don't feel as much like I might explode."
"How about I give you my number and you can text if you want to have dinner again tomorrow? I promise not to order a dessert the size of the table."
Her laugh escaped that time, soft and sweet.
Peter didn't know why she tried so hard to keep it contained all the time, but he loved hearing it come alive.
She took her phone out and handed it to him, and he put his number in, then returned it.
"I can find my way back to the train station if you'd like to get out of the cold.
Or I can drive you home, if you want, though I understand if you'd rather not. "
"I don't live too far from here, so I'll walk, but thank you." Shanti's eyebrows crinkled with consideration as she looked up at him. "You're very thoughtful. Thank you for that, too."
Pete wanted to think that it didn't require a lot of thoughtfulness for a man to understand why a woman might not want to show him where she lived a few hours after they'd met, but he knew that wasn't really the case, so he nodded.
"My pleasure. I hope I'll hear from you tomorrow. Good night, Ms. Davis."
Shanti's soft laugh sounded again and she put out her hand for a very formal, but obviously amused, handshake. "Good evening, Mr. Baranov."
They grinned at each other and turned to go their separate ways, although Peter couldn't resist a glance over his shoulder after he'd taken a dozen or so steps.
To his absolute delight, he caught Shanti glancing back over her own shoulder, and her smile blossomed to catch him in the act, too.
Pete headed back to his truck, a huge grin spread across his face, and was still grinning the next day as he came on for his shift at the railroad.
The good-natured roughnecks he worked with gave him hell about it all morning, too, with commentary ranging from sly winks to crude suggestions.
As long as they stayed polite about his imagined hookup, he was fine with that, though one guy got rude and even Peter's bear rumbled a warning about that.
Pete himself sent the guy a look, and although he wasn't the biggest man on the job, the other guy raised his hands in apology and kept his mouth shut after that.
Pete's bear settled, satisfied, and Peter went back to whistling cheerfully as he worked.
He was starting to be afraid Shanti wouldn't text, though, until a message from an unknown number came in around mid-afternoon.
All it said was, I'd love to have dinner, if you're still interested, but it made Pete's heart soar.
He saved Shanti's number, responded with Name the time and place, and they had another dinner date at the gastropub set up within minutes.
He usually didn't mind working late to finish up the bits of the job that would make the next morning easier if they were done now.
There was no point in doing them badly, so he made himself take his time to finish then up well, but he was also out of there like a shot when their shift ended.
The roads were clear on the drive back to town, and he had plenty of time to get showered and dressed in something clean and halfway decent before he was supposed to meet Shanti, but he was…
Nervous, his bear said, amused. Why are you nervous? She's our fated mate and you got along fine last night.
"I don't know! Because last night was a chance meeting and now I want to impress her!" He pulled a comb through his hair, considered the result a disaster, and threw it into a braid to keep it out of his face.
You impressed her enough, the bear said calmly.
On one hand, Pete couldn't argue with that.
On the other, his hair was stupid and terrible and the braid had pieces coming out already, even though it was still damp.
With a grunt, he unbraided it and tried again, this time starting higher on his head and folding the stubborn strands inward until he'd gotten them under control.
Then he straightened his shirt and looked at himself in the mirror. "Do I look okay?"
His bear stared at him. Actually stared at him for once, Peter able to see the animal's presence in his own brown eyes, instead of just feeling the expression in his mind. After a long time, the bear said, You look exactly like you always do, which was not the reassurance it intended.
"I want to look nice!"
You look very nice. There was a distinct 'for a human' air about that statement, but Pete guessed he'd have to take it.
He'd at least changed his usual flannel for a nice soft blue cotton chamois button-down and his black jeans maybe fit a little better than usual.
He pulled his boots on and grabbed a coat, more so he wouldn't draw attention than because he needed it, and took his truck into town, parked at the train station, and walked over to meet Shanti at the gastropub again.
It was Friday, and the town was busier even though he'd arrived later than the day before.
People were clearly out doing their holiday shopping, though a lot of that seemed to involve standing around in the cold cheerfully conversing, or waving at distant friends as they went different directions around the town square.
There were colorful lights going up at businesses, and doors standing open despite the cold so that shoppers could get in and out with their bags.
The doughnut store on the far corner was filled to overflowing even though it was after seven, and there were kids outside it, scraping together snowballs to assault each other and their adults with.
It looked nothing at all like Shkalnik, but it made Pete miss his home town.
He had a brief, wistful thought of bringing Shanti home for the holidays, but let it go almost as quickly as it came.
Alaska was a long way away from everything.
Even if fate told him that what he and Shanti had was real, that did not mean she was going to want fly to Alaska in two weeks' time to meet the family.
It certainly didn't mean she'd want to move to the far ends of the earth to be with him, in the long term.
He was already out in the world, away from home.
Better to assume she'd want him to stay in Virtue.
And there would be worse places to stay.
Pete laughed as a nearby kid threw a snowball and it went wide, nearly hitting him.
The kid—a girl who was probably under ten—froze in horror, eyes and mouth perfect Os of apology.
Pete waved it off, bent to scoop his own handful of snow, and pitched it at the girl.
She shrieked in happy relief, kicked more snow at him, and ran off giggling.
"I see you," Shanti said from a little way ahead of him. "Beating kids at their own game."
Peter brushed the melting snow off his hands and grinned at the woman waiting for him at the corner. "Hey, snowball fights are my native territory. I can't help it if they messed with a master. You look…"
He wanted to say 'cute,' which was true, but mostly, he had to settle on, "…warm…."
Shanti glanced down at herself and smoothed her gloved palms over the puffy coat she wore over what looked like very heavy tights, or maybe several layers of heavy tights.
She had a pompom hat pulled over her ears, and a fluffy scarf wrapped up to her nose, leaving hardly more than her sweet shy brown eyes visible.
"I am. You look like you should be freezing, but I don't think you are. "
"Honestly, I'm a little too warm, but that just means if you get cold I can heroically give you my coat."
Her eyes crinkled, telling him she was smiling even if he couldn't see her mouth. "If I need another coat between here and Hold My Bear I'll be embarrassed."
"Well, we'd better not waste any time, just in case." Pete offered her his elbow, and she tucked her hand into it as if it was perfectly natural. He couldn't see her face, then, but he got a sense of surprise from her, as if she hadn't expected herself to do that. "How was your day?"
"Oh…quiet. Yours? Get a lot of work done on the railroad?"
"We're moving right along," Pete reported, pleased, but he also noticed that she hadn't really volunteered anything about her day.
He hoped she would confide in him soon, let him know why she seemed so reluctant to talk about herself, but the last thing that would get her to talk was being nagged about it.
"Tell you what, though, I ate so much last night I didn't need to eat again until lunch. "
"I had an apple at about four," she said, sounding like she was smiling again. "I was hungry enough for more by then, but I thought if we were coming out to the pub again I might want to just tide myself over. I'm not planning to order another one of those brownies, though!"
"No, me either." They turned up the gastropub's little walkway and Peter pulled the door open for Shanti, only for them to both nearly walk into a very large man on his way out.
Grizzly! Pete's bear said instantly. A big one!
A very big one. The other shifter stood several inches taller than Pete himself, and had an extremely imposing physical presence that was immediately disarmed by his dismayed laugh and the way he spread his hands as he backed up.
"Welcome to Hold My Bear, I'm Steve, I own the place along with Chef Charlee, and I'll be running you down in the doorway as a greeting today! "
Peter's bear exhaled. A friendly big grizzly.
Not that Pete had expected less, but even in a town full of shifters, walking straight into another enormous predator was a bit of a jolt. "Peter Baranov," he replied, trying not to sound like his heart had all but jumped out of his chest. "Nice to meet you."
"We ate here last night," Shanti volunteered. "It's so good we thought we'd come back again tonight."
Steve-the-owner looked between the two of them, clearly came to the conclusion that they were Together, and said, "Well, then, I guess it's fate!"