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first seen her and thought she was even more beautiful, he'd been seeing the glow pregnancy gave her. Had she looked like this while she was carrying his child?
    Looking at him, Brittany must have been able to read something of his thoughts. Her smile faded, replaced by a look of concern. She reached across the table to touch the hand he'd unconsciously clenched.
    "Dan..."
    "Congratulations, Brittany." He deliberately cut her off, knowing it was rude and not caring. He didn't want to listen to her tell him that he'd find a wonderful woman soon. In fact, if he didn't get out of here soon, he was going to do something he'd regret, like break the table in two with his bare hands.
    "Look at the time." He glanced at his watch without seeing it. "I told Lee I wouldn't take too long. Lunch is on me."
    He threw a few bills on the table and started to slide out of the booth, pausing when he caught the look of distress in Brittany's eyes. He was behaving like a first-class bastard. His face softened as he reached out to catch one of her hands.
    "I'm really happy for you, Brittany. Truly happy. No one deserves this more than you and Michael." He stood, still holding her hand and bent to kiss her on the forehead.
    She clung to his hand for a moment, her eyes serious. "Don't be such a stranger. Come and see us."
    "Sure," he promised, knowing he had no intention of doing any such thing.
    Dan left the diner and started across the street to the garage, changing his mind at the last minute and angling away from it. He wasn't ready to talk to anyone. He shoved his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders against the cold as he strode down the sidewalk.
    Brittany was pregnant.
    The knowledge settled like a lead weight in the pit of his stomach. It wasn't that he begrudged her and Michael this happiness. It wasn't even the thought that, had things turned out differently, this child might have been his. He'd come to terms with the fact that he couldn't change what had happened.
    In his more rational moments, he even faced that maybe what he and Brittany had had wouldn't have survived the stresses of marriage. She'd been so young. And he'd had so much growing up to do. That was one thing you could say in favor of Central American prisons: people tended to mature very quickly in them.
    No, he was genuinely glad for her. But seeing her so happy, so settled, made him wonder when he was going to find even a portion of that happiness. Maybe it was being the only one to survive the plane crash that had killed his father and everyone else on board; maybe it was the time in prison that had made him realize how short life could be.
    He wanted a home, a family, the things that really counted in life. He wanted something to anchor him, a reason to get up in the morning, something to look forward to as the years went on.
    When was he going to find any of those things?
    * * *
    Kelly shook convulsively. The gas station bathroom was unheated and the bare tiles seemed to intensify the chill outside, driving it bone deep.
    But it wasn't the cold that made her shake. Crouched against the wall, Kelly was hardly aware of the temperature. The cold she felt was lodged deep inside her, spreading outward to drive the color from her skin, leaving her as pale as the white porcelain fixtures.
    It was early in the morning, so early the sun itself still held a sleepy look about it Kelly had crept out of the house just after dawn, leaving her father sleeping. She hadn't slept at all last night. Knowing what she was planning, terrified that if she fell asleep she might not wake up in time to slip out of the trailer before he awoke, she'd lain awake all night, listening to his mutterings, counting every tick of the clock.
    And now she'd gotten her answers from the little pink-and-white box. The test tube sitting on the edge of the cracked sink confirmed what she'd already guessed. The gap in her schedule, the nausea in the mornings, the feeling that something had