"Have a seat," he said.

She perched on the edge of one of the sofas and glancedaround the room.

It was big and open, but lacking in windows. Not a surprise, whatwith the entire campaign office being in a warehouse. From what she'd seen so far, the senator didn't believe in spending a lot of money on appearances. The desk was old and scarred, and the only color on the wall came from large-scale maps of different parts of the country.

"Are you really running for president?" she asked. That someone she'd just met could be doing so now was beyond astonishing. It was just plain weird.

"We're exploring the possibility," he told her as he settled in a chair opposite the sofa. "This isn't a permanent arrangement. If my campaign looks like a go, we'll move to a more accessible location, but why spend the money now if we don't have to?"

"Good point."

He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. "I can't believe you're Marsha's daughter. It's been what? Thirty years?"

"Twenty-eight," Dani said, then felt herself blush. "Although I suppose for you it's been closer to twenty-nine."

He nodded slowly. "I still remember the last time I saw her. We were having lunch downtown. I remember everything about how she looked. So beautiful."

There was a darkness in his eyes, as if he were lost in a past Dani couldn't begin to imagine. She had so many questions and wasn't comfortable asking any of them.

Mark hadn't been married then, but her mother had been. Dani barely remembered either of her parents. The man she'd always thought of as her father, at least until she'd found out otherwise a few months ago, was little more than a blur.

Still, she found herself thinking about him, wondering when her mother had stopped loving him and whether Mark Canfield had been a part of that decision.

"I never knew why she ended things," Mark said quietly. "A couple of days after that lunch, she called me and said she couldn't see me anymore. She wouldn't say why. I tried to get in touch with her, but she'd taken the boys and gone away. She wrote me and told me she was serious about us being over. That she wanted me to get on with my life, to find someone I could have a real relationship with."