Page 16 of A Baby to Make Her His Bride

“This is a weird situation,” she said as they started down the path. “I feel like we’re strangers on a train, both waiting to arrive at a new place in our lives. I want to make conversation to pass the time, but we keep falling into really heavy topics.”

“Where are you headed?” he asked with dark humor. “Freedom? I’m going all the way to revenge.”

“Oof.” That just made her feel melancholy. “What if we did meet on a train, though? And our destination was Edmonton and none of this other stuff was happening? What would you talk to me about?”

“Rocks. That’s why I’m still single.”

She had to chuckle at that. “Really? Well, good news. I don’t know anything about rocks. Why did you decide to study them?”

“I don’t even remember. Dinosaurs, I think. There was a school trip to a place not far from where we grew up that got me excited about fossils. Looking for those is like gambling. You only need to find one trilobite and you’re hooked for life. I started learning how they were made and that led me into geodes and stalagmites and diamonds. Pretty soon I needed to know where every kind of rock came from.”

“The universe?” she joked.

“Time,” he replied. “And the power of nature. The fact I can stand here and hold something that existed millions of years ago fills me with awe.” He stopped and pointed at the ground. “In some ways, it’s beyond comprehension, but it also makes me realize how small I am. How little I matter.”

“There is a strange comfort in that, isn’t there?” she said, captured by that thought.

“What would you talk to me about?” he asked curiously.

“Oh, I wouldn’t talk to you.” She shook her head. “I’d be too scared.”

He dipped his chin. “I admit I’ve been in a very salty mood lately, but none of this has happened.” He flicked his hand toward the house. “Tell me about your relatives in Edmonton.”

“What makes you think I have relatives in Edmonton?”

“It’s not exactly a hotspot for tourism. Unless you’re going there for work? That’s why I went there.”

“I don’t know why I’m going.” She hugged herself as even this silly game devolved into something more serious. “I’ve never taken the time to figure out who I am, so I can’t tell you.” Dear Lord, that sounded tragic.

“You’re single?”

“On the train? Yes,” she said firmly.

“Maybe you’re visiting a lover.” His eyelids drooped with speculation.

Her heart lurched. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

Because then she couldn’t talk to him on the way there. Not like this, with possibility beginning to sparkle on the air between them.

Was she imagining it?

She nervously licked her lips.

His narrowed gaze followed the tip of her tongue, making wanton urges seesaw in her stomach.

She nervously looked past him to where the path continued.

“We should talk about it,” he said in a rumbling voice that was as low as a train car rattling over the tracks.

“What?” She flashed her attention back to his mouth and the way his lips shaped words. She pressed her folded arms to her middle, practically hunched into a ball of apprehension and yearning.

“About the fact that we’re two people sharing a house, and whether that’s all we’ll share.”

She opened her mouth, but her throat closed.

“That’s not pressure or presumption on my part,” he continued quietly. “Shake your head and we won’t talk about it ever again.”

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