The Creed Legacy by Linda Lael Miller

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