The garbage disposal worm composter

"The garbage disposal worm composter," Cat said. She'd

nudged her shoes off, and now she curled her up under her

with a coltish grace that made Luke thoughts drift in

directions he was determined not to them go. "Vermiculture

is a really big business, know."

"Vermiculture?" Luke raised his brows. "Growing

vermin? I thought the idea was to get rid of them, not

cultivate them."

"Not growing vermin," Cat said, chuckling. "Worms.

Growing worms. I guess wormiculture doesn't sound or

maybe 'verm' is Latin for worm or something." She frowned

over that possibility for a moment before shaking her head

as if physically dismissing the thought. "Anyway, people

grow worms and then sell them to bait shops for fishing,

but the really big business is dumps, I guess. I'm not sure

exactly what they do with them, but apparently they use

lots of worms. Supposedly you can make a lot of money that

way."

"And Larry was going to become the southern California

worm king?" Luke asked with lazy interest.

"No, he wasn't going to grow the worms himself. See,

you can feed the worms chopped-up leaves and coffee

grounds and stuff, so he had this great idea for a garbage

disposal that would chop the stuff up and feed it directly to

a worm bed under the sink. It was really a great idea, only

it had some...problems."

Luke waited, but, when she didn't immediately continue,

he prompted her. "Okay, I'll bite. What kind of problems?"

"Well, it chopped up the garbage just fine, but there is

something wrong with the way it fed stuff into the worm

bed, and instead of feeding the garbage to the worms,

it...well, it chopped up the worms, too." She tried frown at

Luke's shout of laughter, but her mouth twitched in

sympathy. "You know how, supposedly, if you chop a worm

in half, you get two worms? Well, I don't know if that's true,

but I can tell you for sure that you chop them into a bunch

of pieces, all you get is chopped-up worms."

"I can see where that would be a problem," Luke said

when he could control his laughter enough to speak.

"But the basic idea really was good," Cat said, and for

some reason that set him off again.

God, he couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed

like this. It had been years. It was a shame he couldn't take

her up on her insane suggestion that he marry her instead

of Devon. He was willing to her that Cat would make a

much more interesting wife.

"So tell me why you'd want to marry me." He hadn't

planned on bringing the subject up again, but the words

were out before he could stop them. With a shrug, he

decided to go with it. "What's in it for you?"

She looked at him, and there was something in those big

green eyes that he couldn't read. Some emotion that was

there and gone before he could figure out what it had been.

Her gaze slid away from his for a moment, and when she

looked at him again, there was nothing there but a cautious

sort of hope.

"Well, Devon said you guys had a business arrangement,

and she mentioned something about a settlement."

Money. Luke felt a surge of cynical satisfaction mixed

with a completely illogical twinge of disappointment. In the

end, most things came down to money. She and Devon

might not be related by blood, but apparently they had

quite a bit in common after all.

"How much?"

"What?" The pretty confusion was very well done, he

thought cynically. She wasn't as good at it as Devon had

been, but the blank surprise was quite effective in its way.

"How much did you have in mind?" He took a swallow of

brandy, letting the smoky heat burn the bad taste out of his

mouth.