Book excerpt: In Flirting with Pete, bestselling author Barbara Delinsky weaves together two fascinating narratives that merge in a dramatic, highly emotional, and totally unexpected conclusion, as a daughter's struggle to win the approval of the father she never knew becomes a journey of self-discovery. Psychologist Casey Ellis never met her father—but that didn't stop her from following in his professional footsteps. Now he has died, and Casey is shocked to have inherited his elegant Boston town house, complete with a maid and a handsome, enigmatic gardener. When she finds a manuscript that could be a novel, a journal, or a case study of one of her father's patients in her new home, she becomes engrossed in the story of Jenny, a young woman trying to escape her troubled life. Convinced the story is true and that her father left it as a message for her, Casey digs deeper. As she pieces together the mysteries surrounding her father, Jenny, and the romantic new stranger in her life, she discovers startling links between past and present, and unexpected ties between what is real and what is imagined.