LITMIR.BIZ

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plain gloomy.

      The original furnishings were gone, except for the long counter that had served as a sign-in place for campers, when Joe McCall was still running River’s Bend, and the ancient woodstove. Brody slept on a roll-away bed he’d borrowed from Kim and Davis, never made up now that he and Joleen were in an “off” stage of the onagain-off-again thing they had going. He’d had a shower installed in the small rest room, and he did his laundry either at the Wash-and-Go on Main Street or out at the ranch. He owned a double-burner hot plate and a minifridge with a microwave the size of a matchbox sitting on top, and his desktop computer served as TV, DVD player and general, all-around communication device. He used a cell phone when he had something to say to somebody, or he went to see them in person, face-to-face.

      What a concept.

      Tricia’s dad had always referred to the shack as a lodge.

      Brody called it a log cabin—or a shit-hole, depending on his frame of mind.

      That night, despite his best efforts to alter his attitude, it was a shit-hole.

      HE’D KISSED HER.

      Try though she might, even after the ride on Blossom and the meandering drive back to town, Carolyn could not get past the fact that Brody Creed had had the nerve, the unmitigated gall, after all he’d done to her, to haul right off and kiss her.

      “Unbelievable,” she told Winston in the apartment kitchen as she set his nightly kibble ration down in front of him. “The man is unbelievable.”

      “Reow,” Winston agreed, though he went straight to his food dish.

      Carolyn shoved up one T-shirt sleeve, then the other, still agitated. She was hungry, but not hungry enough to cook. Remembering the flat bologna sandwiches from lunch, she went downstairs, retrieved them from the refrigerator in Natty’s former kitchen and pounded back up the inside steps.

      She tossed one wrapped sandwich into her own fridge—maybe she’d have it for breakfast—and slowly removed the plastic from the other one.

      Winston was still noshing away on his kibble.

      Carolyn washed her hands and then plunked down in a chair at the table, along with her sewing machine, the day’s mail and a rapidly cooling cup of herbal tea.

      “I’m talking to a cat,” she told the cat.

      Winston didn’t look up from his bowl. “It’s pathetic,” Carolyn went on. She took a bite out of her sandwich, and it was soggy, tasteless. The crusts of the bread were curling a little, too, and none of that even slowed her down. The meal wasn’t about fine dining, after all. It was about making her stomach stop grumbling. “I’m pathetic. And do you know what, Winston? I’m no closer to achieving my goals than I was last year, or the year before that, or the year before that—”

      Winston paused at last, gave her a disapproving glance for talking with her mouth full and finished off the last of his supper.

      Carolyn offered him part of her sandwich, but he wasn’t into people-food, except for sardines, and he’d already had his daily ration of those.

      “You tried to warn me, didn’t you?” she prattled on, dropping the remains of her supper into the trash and then washing her hands again. She squirted a dab of lotion into one palm and then rubbed the stuff in with vigor. “You made your opinion of Brody Creed absolutely clear, but did I pay attention? Did I keep my defenses up?”

      “Reoooooow,” Winston said wearily.

      “This is ridiculous,” Carolyn said, addressing herself now, instead of the cat. Was talking to herself better than talking to a pet? Seemed like six of one thing and half a dozen of another. “I’ve got to get a grip. Do something constructive.”

      Winston, curled up in his cushy bed now, yawned, wrapped his tail around himself with typical feline grace and dozed.

      “Am I boring you?” Carolyn asked sweetly. Then, getting no answer, naturally, she laughed, flung her hands out from her sides and let them slap against her blue-jeaned thighs. “I’m certainly boring myself.” She approached the laptop, drew back the chair and sat down. Pressed the on button and waited.

      Maybe she could find a helpful website. Say, getalife.com, or something along those lines.

      She checked her email first—nothing much there.

      Then she went to the online banking site and posted the day’s sales receipts.

      “Look at that,” she said, squinting at the screen, though she knew Winston wasn’t listening. “If we have many more days like today, Tricia and I are in serious danger of making a profit.”

      There was more bookkeeping to do—there was always more bookkeeping to do—but, being in a lowgrade funk, even after a horseback ride, Carolyn decided not to do today what she could put off until tomorrow. Things were usually slow in the shop on weekday mornings and, besides, she’d be fresh then. Capable of left-brain pursuits like balancing debits and credits in a virtual ledger.

      She’d brew another cup of herbal tea and sew, she decided. Let her ever-energetic right brain run the show for the rest of the evening.

      It couldn’t hurt to just look at the online dating services, though, she mused, still sitting at the desk and sinking her teeth into her lower lip as she entered a request into her favorite search engine.

      The number of choices, as it turned out, was mind-boggling.

      There were sites for people who wanted a samereligion partner.

      There were sites for dog-lovers, cat-lovers, horselovers and just about every other kind of lover. A person could sign up to meet people who enjoyed the same hobbies, political beliefs, movies, foods and wines, books, etc.

      Hooking up by preferred profession was an option, too. Just about every legal vocation—and a few that were distinctly iffy—was represented by not just one website, but dozens of them. If she wanted to meet men with a certain first name, or a particular sign of the zodiac, no problem.

      It was overwhelming.

      It was also intriguing, especially for a woman who’d eaten a squashed bologna sandwich for supper and carried on an impassioned and fairly lengthy discourse with a cat for her only audience.

      Reminding herself that fortune favors the bold, not the lily-livered, Carolyn settled on one of several sites based in Denver, and serving the surrounding area. The main page was tastefully designed, and the questionnaire for trial members was short and relatively nonintrusive— some of the sites required enough personal data to trace a person’s ancestors back to the Ice Age.

      Well,practically that far.

      The first two weeks of the proposed trial period were free, giving her plenty of time to pull out, and all she had to do was post one photo of herself and give her first name, age and a few minor details.

      Carolyn decided to call herself Carol for now. She uploaded a recent picture, taken at the town’s Independence Day picnic, admitted that she’d hit the big 3-O, and then—well—lied. Just a little.

      She loved to bowl, she wrote, in the little panel labeled Little Tidbits About Me, and she worked in a bank. She had two rescued dogs, Marvin and Harry, and she’d been married once, when she was very young.

      Reading over what she’d entered, Carolyn sighed, propped an elbow on the desk and sunk her chin into her palm. None of this was true, of course, but she couldn’t help being creative—it was in her nature. Besides, she was starting to like the fictional Carol.

      She sounded like a good person.

      Reassured by the certainty that prospective dates could contact her only through an assigned email address connected with the site, Carolyn moved the cursor to the little box in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, marked Go For It!, and clicked.

      Dater’s remorse struck her in the next second, but it was too late now. She was out there in cyberspace,

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