Free A Green Knight and a Hot Night by Rona Valiere Page A

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    Callie tried to put Barry out of her life and move on, which proved a challenge . For the first couple of months, learning her new job occupied much of her thoughts and kept her busy, but eventually Callie could not escape fac ing the reality of the hole in her life. Barry was gone , leaving her evenings empty, and her heart in quite the same condition . A couple of months had passed since the breakup, time enough to start healing, time enough that she felt ready to at least attempt to move on.
    A proposal now in front of the city council would ban dog-walking by the lakeshore , and a s a dog owner, Callie objected vigorously. When she heard that a new group called Pro Dog had been form ed to oppose the proposal, Callie decided to get involved. Maybe it not only would be worth it to invest her time for the cause but would take her mind off her being alone, too. Most of the group ' s activities and communication took place online, in a Yahoo group.
    In a preponderance of caution, Callie got a " throwaway " email address and joined the group under the online handle " Furbaby, " using her new email addy. She met a lot of new people online in a short time, a dizzying number, and she had trouble keeping them all straight in her head, but one in particular caught her attention early on. " GreenKnight, " as he called himself, spouted fresh and often innovative ideas for how to combat the anti-dog-walking proposal. Unbounded zeal sparked his every post. If he could have, he would have taken on the city council single-handedly. Fortunately, of course, he had a whole organization behind him.
    The force behind a lot of the group ' s machinations as they fought the council ' s proposal , GreenKnight wangled TV interviews on two different local stations for the group ' s spokeswoman. He organized a letter-writing campaign. He staged a protest in front of City Hall.
    He even attended that one himself. For the most part, GreenKnight stayed behind the scenes, not appearing in public. But when none of the other Pro Dog members expressed willing ness to put on a Saint Bernard costume to take part in a demonstration, GreenKnight donned the costume and wore it downtown during lunch hour. He got a lot more people to sign the petition, a lot more people to join Pro Dog, and he also caught the attention of the local newspaper, which sent a reporter and photographer to interview him and take his picture…in costume, of course. The newspaper article identified him only as " GreenKnight, the code name of a local resident who ' s upset about the city council ' s new proposal to…. "
    Callie wondered if GreenKnight might be her " white knight, " the man who would sweep into her life, rescue her from her aloneness—and her residual anger and hurt over Barry—and bring new joy and a new dimension into her world. But of course, she had never seen his face. She didn ' t know if he was young, old, or possibly even had an off-putting face in some way. Well, she could even handle it if he turned out to be disfigured, but if she was spinning fantasies over a teenager or a geezer.…
    And she was spinning fantasies. There was no denying how caught up she had become , enraptured with this crusading do-gooder with the can-do attitude and the get-it-done results. But she had to know if she was chasing up a blind alley.
    They had begun a correspondence by now. Callie took it as a good sign that " Green " (as she now called him) appeared interested enough in her to write back and forth to her, and she used this opportunity to try to find out more about him. " It ' s unusual to find someone with the energy of a teenager yet enough free time to do as much as you do, such as usually only a retiree would have at his disposal. Am I stereotyping here or what? " she wrote cautiously.
    Callie held her breath when she got his reply, but she exhaled deeply and gratefully when she read , " I am neither a teen nor a geezer. LOL. Try splitting the difference. I am in