The Prodigal Bride. Beth Cornelison

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       Chapter 1

       Pregnant.

      Zoey Bancroft stared at the pink plus sign on the test stick, and her world tilted. She was going to have Derek’s baby.

      “Leapin’ lizards,” she muttered, her favorite expression since she’d starred as Annie in her junior high school’s production of the musical. She sank onto the edge of the Las Vegas motel bathtub and pressed a shaky hand to her swirling stomach. So maybe her nausea wasn’t from a bad burrito after all. Sucking in a slow deep breath, she tried to wrap her brain around the truth.

      Pregnant. Judging by the date of her last period, she had to be two months along. And how do you feel about this? she imagined her sister Holly asking her.

      Stunned. Confused. Scared.

      And alone. Derek had made a hasty retreat when she’d suggested she might be carrying his child. The jerk. She’d believed in him, sacrificed for him, shared herself with him. But when she needed him most, he’d left her, unwilling to take responsibility for his child.

      The whoosh of blood filled Zoey’s ears. Again her world tipped, until it listed precariously over a black void. A flutter of panic beat its wings in her chest. She’d believed Derek was her future. She’d thought herself in love with him, an illusion that had begun cracking weeks ago. What she’d wanted to believe was love, she saw now, had just been a fantasy, just the latest wrong turn in her search for her place in the world. Derek had left her dangling over this fathomless pit of isolation and fear. How could she have been so blind?

      Her father had been right about Derek. She’d argued with her father, severed ties with her family and defended Derek and her choice to travel the country with him as he competed in poker tournaments, hoping for his big break. Dejection and regret settled in her chest like a cold rock when she saw how wrong she’d been to trust Derek. He’d used her, strung her along, dumped her when her money ran out and the chips were down. Just as her father had predicted.

      She frowned as she stared in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door. The green-eyed reflection gazing back at her sought answers she didn’t have. Her appearance wasn’t substantially different from normal. She didn’t look like she thought a mother-to-be should. Instead of a healthy glow, her freckled cheeks seemed pale in the harsh fluorescent light. But wan complexion aside, the auburn-haired woman who stared back at her was the same lost-and-searching soul who’d been looking for herself, auditioning different life roles for all of her twenty-four years. She huffed her disgust.

       Another screwup. How typical of you.

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