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ridden a gentle mare . . . and she’d loved it. It was just so far from Dallas. She often thought of going again, but there never seemed to be enough time. There was always a party to go to, or a ribbon-cutting ceremony, or some sort of event to attend.
    He was sitting off to one side in the corner of the wide wooden stairs, so quiet and still that she almost didn’t see him at all. Or maybe seeing him sitting there instead of milking a cow or throwing some hay confused her. He seemed to be taking the slower pace of the Amish culture very seriously.
    “I—” she started, unsure of what to say now that she had actually found him. “I was looking for you.”
    “And you found me.” Louie V. lay at his feet as if he had found a new master in Gideon Fisher.
    “Right.” Avery rocked back on her heels, enjoying the prickly feel of the straw beneath her feet. “I came to see if I could help you with anything.”
    “No.” Simple man, simple answer.
    “Yeah . . . well . . . okay. I just thought I could do something. I feel okay, you know. Farms are busy places, aren’t they? I mean, isn’t there always something to do, sun up to sun down and all the time in between?” Why was she rambling?
    “I s’pose.”
    “Well, then, what can I do?”
    “Nothin’.”
    “Nothing?”
    “It’s the Lord’s Day. We only do what is required of us on Sundays.”
    Avery nodded. “Right. I was wondering about that. Church and all. I mean if you need to leave . . .” She couldn’t very well go with him dressed in her clothes or his.
    She wasn’t sure, but she thought Gideon’s eyes hardened just a fraction, hiding that vulnerable light which crept into them when he thought she wasn’t looking.
    “No.”
    “You don’t have to stay here for me.”
    “I’m not.”
    “Okay.” Avery didn’t believe him. She waited for him to load up another excuse, but he didn’t.
    After several tense heartbeats, she turned to go. A pile of quilts and a pillow stacked on the landing next to her host captured her attention. She didn’t know much about horses or the soft equipment they used, but these surely didn’t look like horse blankets. And she had never heard of a horse needing a pillow. For anything.
    She turned to face him. “Did you sleep here last night?”
    “Here?”
    “Here. In the barn.”
    Gideon crossed his arms over his chest, his nonchalant pose of earlier vanishing in one fluid motion. “And what’s it matter to you if’n I did?”
    “Well . . .” What truly did it matter to her where he slept? “It seems sort of silly to me that I slept on the couch and you slept in the barn and nobody slept in that big, old bed in there.”
    “It is not silly.” He stood and even with the distance between them, Avery was impressed by his formidable height. “We are not married. We are not chaperoned. The elders will be vexed enough to discover you’re here with me, sleepin’ in the house.” He shrugged. “That is not somethin’ else I need on my conscience.”
    “What isn’t something you need on your conscience?” Avery eyed him, her brow furrowed.
    “Compromisin’ your good standin’.”
    Was he serious? “Because I’m here with you? Alone?”
    Gideon nodded. “ Jah .”
    He was serious! And Avery was touched.
    “But I’m an Englisher.” She uttered the term she’d heard Jack use to refer to non-Amish folk.
    “ Jah ,” Gideon agreed. “But you are still a woman.”

    Gideon’s comment rang through Avery’s ears for the remainder of the morning. Even after he pulled on his mud-caked rubber boots and loaded her into a wheelbarrow to take her down to look at her car. It was an odd, but fun way to ride down the country lane with the sun on her face and her fanny planted in a piece of farm equipment. She enjoyed it. And there was no way she could have made the quarter-mile trek down the road and back barefooted. She had a few tough spots on her feet from wearing high heels, but she had those regularly