She was surprised at how good it felt to say that. She finally had somebody on her side in the battle of the sexes, somebody who was looking out for her best interests. Somebody with a smart, discerning mind prescreening the men who wanted to date her. Never again would she meet a guy online and then find out later that he was tall, dark, and handsome only in a roomful of ugly albino dwarfs.

Then she scrolled down to the man's photo, and the slow burn of excitement she'd felt for the past few minutes turned into a full-fledged bonfire.

"Wow," Heather said. "Not bad."

No. Not just "not bad." He looked good. Really good. He had sandy brown hair, green eyes, and a nice smile. He looked pleasant and responsible and friendly, the kind of man she might actually be able to have a future with.

No. Stop. Don't jump the gun. Last time you thought any old guy would do, you ended up with Randy.

"So are you going to go out with him?" Heather asked.

Alison swallowed the hell, yes that almost shot out of her mouth. "He looks like a decent candidate," she said instead. "Why shouldn't I give him a try?"

"Just watch yourself," Heather said. "And remember First Date Protocol."

"Always." Wherever you're going, meet him there. If he rambles on about his mother, run. And no matter how hot he is, no sex on the first date.

Alison looked back at Greg's photo and couldn't resist feeling a little vindicated. "It looks as if my matchmaker may have come through for me, huh?"

"We'll see," Heather said. "Come on. Let's go have that drink."

A few minutes later, they came through the door of McCaffrey's. The early evening crowd was light, with soft country music playing. Tony leaned over the bar as they approached and gave Heather a quick kiss.

"How was the meeting?" he asked them.

"Your wife is a smart ass," Alison said.

"Ah. Judith Rittenaur must have been there." He smiled at Heather. "You just can't keep quiet, can you?"

"I need something to entertain me during those damned meetings." She rolled her eyes. "Now I know why the last treasurer embezzled two grand and disappeared."

Alison started to pull out a stool to sit down, only to see a familiar face at the other end of the bar. She came to attention.

"My father's here again," she said, her eyes narrowing. "What's my father doing here?"

"Uh...having dinner?" Tony said.

Alison looked at her father's plate, and even at this distance, she could tell what was on it. And she was not happy about it.

"Has he been coming in a lot lately?" she asked Tony.

"Well...yeah."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"He kinda...swore me to silence."

"Tony!"

"Hey! Haven't you ever heard of bartender-customer confidentiality?"

"Oh, for God's sake," Alison muttered. "Who do you think you are? A priest?"

Tony looked at Heather, and Alison read his expression loud and clear. Poor Charlie is so screwed.

"There's bound to be something for me to do in the kitchen," Heather said, already walking away. "Call me when the bleeding stops."

Chapter 8.

As Heather hurried away, Alison walked down the length of the bar. "Dad? What are you doing here?"

He froze, his fork halfway to his mouth. "Oh. Hey, there, sweetie."

"What are you eating?"

His fork continued its journey into his mouth, and he talked as he chewed. "What does it look like I'm eating?"

"Chicken fried steak and onion rings. My God. Do you have any idea how much fat is in those things?"

"Yep. That's what makes them so damned good." He grabbed an onion ring, swirled it in ketchup, and stuffed it into his mouth.

Tony looked over his shoulder as he poured a beer. "Hey, I tried to sell him on the turkey burger, but he wasn't buying."

"Only pussies eat turkey burgers," Charlie said to Alison. "You want your old man to look like a pussy?"

"I want my old man to live to be an old man," Alison said. "What good does it do for me to clean out your kitchen and fill it with decent food if you just come here and eat this stuff?"

"You're a broken record, just like your mother was. Back then it was Dr. Whatever's protein diet. If you ate carbs, you were going to die. I ate carbs. I didn't die."

"Cholesterol is different." Alison slid onto a barstool next to him. "If your cholesterol is too high, your arteries will get all clogged, and then you'll have a heart attack. Do you want to have a heart attack?"

"How about I eat some green stuff once in a while? Will that make you happy?"

"As long as the green stuff isn't guacamole dip and a margarita."

"Oops," Tony said to Charlie. "Looks like she's on to you."

Charlie glared at him. "Hey, kid. Don't you have some other customers to bother?"

Tony just smiled and moved on down the bar to set beers in front of a couple of the regulars.

"How was your doctor's appointment this morning?" Alison asked.

"Like every other doctor's appointment. They poke around on you, stick you for blood, tell you to pee in a cup, and send you home."

"When do you get the results of your lab tests?"

"When they call me."

"Which is going to be-?"

"When the phone rings."

Alison sighed. "Are you taking your medication?"

"It gives me the runs."

"But are you taking it?"

"Yes, I'm taking it." He slid his plate toward her. "Here. Why don't you eat some of these onion rings if you don't want me to?"

"I can't," Alison said on a sigh. "They go straight to my hips."

"Suit yourself," he said.

But as he was pulling the plate back, she grabbed it. "Well, maybe just one."

She doused an onion ring with ketchup and took a bite, feeling as if she'd just been transported to heaven. Good Lord-was there anything better than a big ol' greasy fried onion ring? Anything?

"So what's new with you?" Charlie asked.

Alison started to tell him she was going on a date with a new man, but he'd only ask her where she'd met him. She couldn't lie-her father had the eyes and ears of a human lie detector. And then the rant would begin. If he thought a guy who ate turkey burgers was a pussy, he'd definitely go off on a matchmaking man.

"Job okay?" Charlie asked.

"Yeah. Focus groups out the wazoo. Turns out people love chocolate-covered pretzels, but they hate pretzels with chocolate in the middle. Go figure."

Her father stopped eating and looked at her. "Pretzels with chocolate in the middle? How do they do that?"

"I don't really know," Alison said. "Maybe the same way they get that cream in the middle of a Twinkie."

Her father shrugged and kept on eating.

"Heather and I just got back from a board meeting of the Preservation League," Alison told him. "The home tour is going to be great this year."

"I don't get it," Charlie said. "People pay good money to see inside other people's houses. What's with that?"

"It's because they're historic homes."

"So's mine, but nobody's beating down my door wanting to see it."

"Dad, your house was built in 1972. Not exactly a banner year for interesting architecture."

"Good thing. I don't like strangers in my house."

"That's because you're a grumpy old man. Next you'll be yelling at kids to get off your lawn."

"Nah. I like kids. It's adults I can't stand."

Her father's crabbiness was nothing new. He'd been that way since Alison could remember, but underneath that gruff exterior was a surprisingly big heart and a giving nature. Not that there weren't strings attached. He'd give a person the shirt right off his own back, but not before he told him exactly how to wash it, hang it, and wear it. Men didn't come any more opinionated than Charlie Carter, and Alison was still in awe that he'd managed to find and marry the one woman on earth he couldn't intimidate. The way the two of them had gone at it sometimes would have convinced a casual observer that divorce court was just around the corner.

Charlie, do I look like the maid to you? Pick up your damned newspapers off the bathroom floor.

Listen to me, Lorena. I don't care if I end up weighing four hundred pounds. I want Bud. Not Bud Light. They made that Bud Light crap just to get girls to drink beer.

PMS? You're damned right I have PMS! It stands for Pass My Shotgun, which means you'd better sleep with one eye open, buster.

Hey, Lorena! What the hell is with that new laundry soap? It makes my clothes smell like a freakin' flower garden. Another man smells that, I'm gonna get my ass kicked.

But no matter how sharp the words were that they threw at each other, they seemed to bounce right off. As a child, Alison had never sensed animosity. The older she got, the more she understood the underlying fondness they shared, and by the time she was a teenager, she saw it as a dance of pure love. They'd hurl their halfhearted insults, and then five minutes later Alison would glance into the kitchen to see her father goose her mother in the ribs as she washed her hands at the sink. She'd spin around and he'd pull her into a kiss, then slap her on the fanny as he headed back out the door.

And so it went for thirty-four years, right up to her mother's last hours. Find another woman, Charlie, she'd said. You're not happy unless you have somebody to torment. But Alison still remembered the tears in her mother's eyes as she spoke, and the way her father had held her hand in a desperate grip, silently begging her not to go.

That seemed like a thousand years ago. Another lifetime. And her father had never even looked at another woman since then, no matter how often Alison encouraged him to. He said he and Blondie got along just fine by themselves, but the company of a golden retriever went only so far when it came to filling the void in his life. And as much as Alison loved her three cats, they couldn't do the job for her, either.

"Gotta go, sweetie," Charlie said. "Need to let Blondie out before she pees on the rug."

"I'll see you on Thursday for movie night."

"Fine. But we're not watching another one of those girly things. I'm still getting over Titanic."

Alison frowned. "A ship sank. I thought you'd like that."

"Yeah, and if that DiCaprio kid and Whatserface hadn't gotten in the way, I might have been able to enjoy it."

"Don't worry, Dad. We'll make sure there are cops and guns and car chases. And maybe some kung fu."

"Now you're talking." Charlie slid off the stool and tossed a few bills on the bar.

"Promise me you'll at least try the turkey burger next time," Alison said. "With a side of coleslaw, or maybe a green salad."

He made a face. "That sounds like crap."

Sounded like crap to Alison, too, but she didn't have clogged arteries. "You'll thank me at your ninetieth birthday party."

"No thanks. I don't want to live to be ninety."

"That's because you're not eighty-nine."

"You need to stop worrying about me," he said as he walked away. "I'm healthy as a horse, unless you count the damned hemorrhoids. I'll see you on Thursday."