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dried ruts in the road, he groaned. He hated getting old. He'd been lonely for years, ever since his Dolly had passed, but he'd still had his health. Yet for the past five or six years, it seemed as if he'd been going downhill. There had been that prostate cancer scare, which had turned out to be false; then arthritis had set into his joints from all the heavy lifting at the logging mill where he'd worked all his adult life.
      He would be sixty-five his next birthday. That was too close to seventy. He could file for social security. It didn't seem possible. Where had his life gone—and how could it have gone so fast? Danny and Porter would be okay when he was gone, but he worried about Ally. He knew what was said about her on the mountain, and unless he did something about it, she would be alone for the rest of her life.
      Then, today, it had seemed an answer to a prayer when Freddie Joe Detweiller had approached him at the cafe and asked his permission to call on Ally. Gideon had alternated between uncertainty and relief. He knew Detweiller was desperate, which meant he was more willing to overlook Ally's handicap. Detweiller's wife had been dead almost a year, and he was trying to raise their three kids on his own. Still, he wasn't sure that what he'd done was right.
      He continued up the driveway, parked, then sat for a minute before getting out, trying to figure out what would be the best way to introduce the subject of Freddie Joe to Ally without making it sound like an insult. He couldn't help but feel that if he pushed this relationship, he would be selling his daughter short. She deserved more than becoming a convenience in some man's bed, as well as an unpaid babysitter to his motherless children. But he felt the burden of his duty, as well as the uncertainty of how many years he had left. The least he could do was give them a chance. Who knew? Maybe they would hit it off. Stranger things had happened.
      Having settled the uncertainty in his mind, he got out of the truck and headed into the house. But when he called out her name, she didn't answer. Frowning, he moved through the rooms, searching for her whereabouts. When he got to the kitchen and saw the stack of dirty dishes yet to be washed, he couldn't believe it. This wasn't like Ally.
      He started to call her again when he glanced out the window and saw her lying in the glider as if she didn't have a care in the world.
      Surprise mingled with the guilt he'd been feeling. He stared at the dirty dishes, then back out at the sleeping woman, and it all came out in anger. She couldn't be like this. Her crippled foot was already enough to put off most men. She couldn't appear lazy, as well.
      He hit the screen door with the flat of his hand, then stomped out into the yard in anger.
      "Girl! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Startled by the rude awakening, Ally woke with a start. Instead of landing on her feet, she fell out of the glider, catching herself on her hands and knees.
      "Ow," she muttered; then she looked at her father in disbelief. "You yelled at me."
      Ashamed that he'd inadvertently caused Ally pain, he reached down and pulled her to her feet.
      "Get on in the house and put some medicine on them scratches," he muttered. "Don't want to go and get them infected."
      Ally wasn't in the habit of being yelled at and told him so.
      "You shouted at me, Daddy. I want to know why." Unwilling to apologize, Gideon continued to push when he should have pulled back.
      "What's a man to think, coming home and finding the woman of the house outside sleeping when there's work to be done?"
      Ally felt as if she'd just been slapped. She moved backward, unconsciously putting distance between herself and her father. On another day, she would have meekly taken his anger as her due. But today was different. She felt different—more empowered. And she knew that, more than anything else, she didn't deserve to be treated like this. Suddenly