Free Parallel Desire by Deidre Knight

elsey stared into the bathroom mirror, allowing her robe to fall open. Her belly button had practically stretched to nothing, and as she stared at her stomach, she could actually watch Erica move, a bumping glide from one side of her belly to the other. Sliding her hand over the warm skin, she whispered to the baby, murmuring sweet words of comfort and welcome. That's what all the pregnancy books had told her: Always talk to your baby, even when she's still inside your stomach.
    With an anxious lurch, she thought of standing before another mirror, just five months earlier. It had been before a presidential fund-raiser her father was hosting in Jackson, and he'd paid to put her up in an expensive hotel right at the base of Jackson Hole Ski Resort. The view from the swanky lodge had been fabulous, her room's windows opening to slopes already covered with fresh snow, even then, in mid-November. The bed itself was a solid wooden sleigh bed, the kind she'd not slept in since her teenage years, when she still lived in her father's home. A gas log fire roared in the hearth, and with the easy flick of a switch she could manipulate the temperature up or down. Rustic, but luxurious; she could definitely get used to that kind of life.
    Little had she known that within weeks she'd become a queen.
    After years of low-budget academic life, the bathroom at the hotel was a veritable palace, filled with lavender-scented bubble baths and aromatherapy shampoos.
    Kelsey smiled, picturing the black cocktail dress she'd chosen to wear for the fundraiser, a night she'd known would be special—even if it meant tolerating her father's new girlfriend—so it demanded something ultra-sophisticated, not her usual faded blue jeans, knit cap, and hiking boots. After all, the president had flown all the way to their Wyoming hometown to glad-hand her father's people.
    Closing her robe, she reached for the hairbrush resting on the marble counter and remembered how she'd battled her hair the night of that fundraiser. The thick hair that spilled across her pale shoulders hadn't cooperated then, any more than it did this morning. Wetting one fingertip, she secured an errant lock that sprang loose above her left eyebrow like an unwieldy corkscrew. Her hair had always been too thick, the curls prone to tangling and difficult to manage, but at least she loved the color. It was deep auburn—not brassy or garish—just like rubies caught in sunlight, her father used to tell her when she was a little girl.
    That night had seemed magical, the last time she'd seen her father before meeting Jared again and leaving everything—and everyone—she'd ever known behind. And then the evening had turned ugly; if only her dad hadn't brought his new girlfriend out from D.C. That had turned out to be the big deal, not the fundraiser. Patrick Wells had carted his twenty-something little hottie home for one reason and one reason only: to obtain Kelsey's approval. Whether he got it or not hardly mattered in the end since, like everything else her widowed father tackled, he had been determined to have his way.
    Her thoughts drifted back to the past again as she absently brushed her hair in long strokes.
    "Angel, you'll like Blaire." They'd been standing in the elevator, her father in his tuxedo, striking as always, and Kelsey glaring at her own reflection in the mirrored doors, still wishing she'd bought a new dress. "She works for CNN in their Washington bureau," he continued. "She's a real up-and-comer. A bright woman, just like you, darling."
    A comer. Kelsey had a pretty good idea of exactly what this Blaire woman wanted to come into: her father's money. Why else would a twenty-four-year-old find her forty-six- year-old father of interest? He'd saved that little age difference bombshell until moments earlier, at which point he'd decided he should warn her.
    She turned to him, gazing up into his clear blue eyes, and schooled her face into the most innocent