Free Talk of the Town by Mary Kay McComas Page B

he spoke of her.
    "You're staring at me," he said, uncommonly self-conscious.
    "I'm amazed."
    "By what?"
    "By what a sweet man you are."
    "Sweet?" he asked, pretending to have a bitter taste in his mouth, making believe that he couldn't feel the uncomfortable warmth seeping into his cheeks. "I spend days trying to sweep you off your feet with my all-male charm and studly physique, and you're amazed by sweet?"
    "Those are pretty amazing, too," she said, her gaze wandering across his broad chest and straight, thick shoulders; lifting to his mouth and then his eyes once more. "But sweet gets to me."
    It would have been the wine talking, she thought, if she'd had any. It had to be the night. The excitement. It would wear off and tomorrow she wouldn't care if his heart were made of pure cane sugar from Hawaii.
    "Well, getting to you is my prime objective here, so . . . sweet it is," he said in his best debonair voice. He gave her a libertine look. "Would you like something sweet for dessert?"
    She chuckled. "I couldn't eat another mouthful."
    "Hmmm. You like sweet, and I love women who talk dirty. We were made for each other," he said, teasing her, his eyes hooded, a sly smile on his lips.
    Dirty? Her? What had she said?
    "Oh! No, I didn't mean—I thought you meant . . ."
    He started to laugh. "I'm sorry," he said.
    "But you walked right into that one, and I have no self-control. Would you like some coffee?"
    "No," she said thoughtfully, enjoying the relaxed, untroubled calm inside her and reluctant to disturb it by getting rewired with coffee. "But maybe some fresh air. Could we walk a little?"
    Perfect. Gary loved it when a plan came together.

 
     
    FIVE
     
    The ocean had a way of fooling people into thinking it was something gentle and benevolent. Slow lapping waves lulled you into forgetting that the water could rise up and swallow you whole. Unseasonably hot spring days deceived you, too, allowing you to hope that the evenings would be warm as well, but they never were.
    "Take my brother's operation as an example," he was saying as he removed the sport coat he'd worn over a cable knit sweater and jeans. "He can pull off enough methane gas from three million tons of garbage to meet the needs of eighteen thousand homes for the next fifteen years." He held out his coat and waited for her to slip her arms into the sleeves. "Huge underground pockets of methane gas, just sitting there waiting to explode or leak into the atmosphere and destroy the ozone."
    "So you think these waste-to-energy programs are the answer to pollution," she said, tingling as her muscles uncoiled in the warmth left in his jacket.
    By the lapels, he turned her to him and began to button her in. "I think they could be part of the answer, yes. A small part;"
    "Then why are people so upset about your incinerator?"
    "They don't understand it. All they know is that burning garbage has been banned in this country for the last fifty years." He took hold of one arm, then the other, rolling up the jacket sleeves. "And rightly so. The old furnaces released dioxin and acid gases into the air."
    "Those cause cancer, right?"
    "Among other things," he said, casually slipping his hand around hers as they walked on, heading north as if by random choice. "But the new ones burn hotter; even glass and pottery melt and crumble. For every ten truckloads of garbage, there will be one full of ash to bury."
    "So, where's the energy?" she asked, going over it in her mind. "Didn't you say it was a waste-to-energy thing . . . or is burning the trash down to ash considered energy saving?"
    “No, no. The incinerator will be an energy source," he said, pleased to explain to her. "Water, running through rows of pipes on all sides of the furnace, picks up the heat and eventually expands into a powerful steam. That's channeled through more pipes to keep an electrical generator spinning, like a steam engine."
    "So the incinerator produces enough energy to run itself."
    "Itself and