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“Right, you’re rooming with me, Becca and Paula. Becca’s by the pool. Paula, this is Kit, Kit, Paula. Anyway I said, Paula, I met Kit on the bus. She’s really sweet and she thinks Last Frontier is the greatest thing since sliced bread. And since Carmen had to cancel on us, at least we’ve got Kit.” Georgia inspected the view out the window. “Look! I can see the building where we checked in!”
“Nice to meet you, Paula.” Kit offered her hand automatically to hide her shock. Oh, no. Not one, but three roommates. And they all believed she loved a television show, one she’d never even seen! Somehow she remained calm. “I’m Kit O’Brien.”
“Paula Sullivan from Sandpoint, Idaho,” Paula replied, returning the handshake. She assessed Kit for a moment, her direct gaze speculative. “You look familiar. Have you ever been on television?”
“Um, no,” Kit said quickly, ignoring the time she had been on Hard Copy for chaining herself to a fence to stop an historic building from being torn down.
Paula ran a hand through the long black hair that fell to her waist and shrugged. “Probably not.”
Kit shuddered with relief as Georgia bustled about the claustrophobic room like a mother hen. “I want a top bunk. Be sure to take one of the bottom bunks if you want, Kit.”
“Thanks.” Kit sat down on the bottom bunk opposite the bathroom as Georgia continued to open drawers and explore every inch of the tiny cabin. She hoped Georgia didn’t snore. She hadn’t thought to pack earplugs.
“It’s 3:45! Time to get moving, y’all.” Georgia remained in motion, this time heading toward the door. “I want to get registered for the events and then get a good spot to watch the boat sail. They’ve put all of us on late seating at 7:15. Since we’ll go directly to the party afterward, everybody needs to wear their dresses to dinner. Did I tell you about the last theme cruise I went on, Paula?”
Kit ignored her roommate’s conversation, her brow furrowing. She was terribly unprepared for this assignment. Normally she did tons of research, not just stuff clothes into a carry-on and wait for an assignment sheet to arrive.
“Are you ready, Kit?” Georgia was still in motion. “We sail in thirty minutes, and Paula and I want a good spot. Let’s move it, y’all.”
For the lack of having any better idea or plan, Kit decided to just let her roommates sweep her along. The way her luck was going, it couldn’t hurt.
JOSHUA PARKER LET the warm ocean breeze flow through the brown shoulder-length locks that had less than one week until shorn short. He turned his face toward the sun, inhaling the salt-tinged air deep into his lungs. Even the fact that the boat was still docked in port, with the oily port smell mixing in, did little to discourage the feeling of well-being now filling him.
He had to admit, despite his initial reservations of participating in a theme cruise, the ship was nice, the weather wonderful. And he definitely could do without the cold dreary New York City November he had left behind. He was tired of slush melting around subway vents, tired of gray skies and tired of the gloom caused by buildings that refused to let the elusive sun touch the ground.
Even winter in Upstate New York would feel freer than the city that had snared his soul and held it captive for nine years. Escape was just around the corner, almost in sight, and Joshua wanted, with a passion, to permanently claim the open skies that hovered above his apple orchards. Even under a foot of snow his land remained unmarred by progress for miles and miles on end, glistening in its infinite whiteness.
Joshua sighed and admitted the truth—the rebel inside his soul was gone. No longer a wild child, now all he wanted was to return to the life of a gentleman farmer, as his father had phrased it many times before their big fight. It was a Jeffersonian phrase Joshua had once hated, but now it meant freedom, and freedom was what he craved.
Joshua turned from the enticing view of blue-green water that his private balcony afforded and opened the sliding glass door to reenter his suite. A blast of cool, manufactured air greeted his face, and as he surveyed the sitting area of the penthouse suite, he wondered how many other people had two love seats and a coffee table in their cabin. It was more space than he needed. He walked over to the minibar. Since he wasn’t paying for this cruise he might as well indulge in luxuries like three-dollar bottled water and penthouse suites.
In fact, if the cruise hadn’t been so important to the executive producers and owners of Last Frontier, Joshua doubted he would have even bothered to attend. With the hit television show in its final season, he wanted to permanently close this chapter of his life. Sure, the fans loved the show he had created and nurtured, but the success of Last Frontier had left him oddly empty. In fact, it had burned him out and soured him on writing.
Maybe that’s why he had bought the farm, doing four years ago what his father had first wanted for his only son.
The age-old cliché fit best, Joshua thought. Hindsight was twenty-twenty. At age thirty-two he had come full circle, finding himself in the same place he would have been, anyway, only now he met his father man-to-man.
The boy who had once selfishly destroyed his father’s chance of a political career, not once but twice, had disappeared. In his place was a man who knew that parents were to be treasured, not tormented.
It was something the childish Kit O’Brien would find out in her own time, if she ever stopped running away long enough to grow up.
He took a long sip of the cold water and remembered the look of interest flickering behind Kit’s green eyes when he boarded the plane.
Joshua grinned, recalling her expression at his proposition. The words had somehow rolled easily off his tongue, the idea of seducing New York’s most notorious heiress in an airplane lavatory too irresistible to pass up.
She had almost taken him up on it, he thought with an ironic smile. She had almost consented without even knowing who he was, which had made her all the more interesting to him.
Usually people wanted something from him in return for their attentions, ever since the first Last Frontier convention, when he had become a fan idol. He hated it.
Worse, as much as he understood Bill Davies’s reasons, he still blamed Bill for forcing him into the public light. The producer had insisted Joshua make a few cameos in the show, and he’d insisted Joshua make appearances at fan conventions.
All Joshua had wanted was to fade into the background and let only the actors’ stars shine, but Bill hadn’t listened to Joshua’s arguments until the show had manifested into a cult phenomenon with a life of its own.
But by then the damage to Joshua’s privacy could never be repaired. Now there were Web sites where people who knew nothing about him discussed his personal life and speculated on it. Stemming from that were the women who wanted Joshua Parker, the man who could possibly make them a star, not Joshua Parker, the person. Once bitten, twice shy. Been there, done that, never again.
Joshua shook his head. From her champagne-and-caviar reputation of having careened through at least three fiancés, he knew Kit probably had men pursuing her all the time.
But except for his blatant proposition made for the heck of it, he wasn’t pursuing her. Nor would he want to. The price of being associated with Kit O’Brien would be too high, too public. His philosophy was to only read the tabloids, not be in them. No, long ago he’d learned the hard way to give tabloid reporters a wide berth, knowing now that they always printed the worst.
But after meeting the infamous Kit O’Brien, he’d decided she backed up all the press and rumors about her.
And the rumors said she wasn’t currently available, anyway, despite last night’s fiasco. The morning tabloid headlines revealed for everyone her public humiliation of Blaine Rourke, the man everyone pegged as Kit’s current fiancé. Despite Kit’s dumping Meaty Choice dog food over Blaine’s head and down his tux at a charity dog show, “her father’s favorite godson” wasn’t likely to give up on getting Kit to the altar, even if one daily paper had snidely headlined the story Kit’ten Dogs Fiancé.
Although he hated the press, he had to admit he was somewhat curious as to why the society brat had done it. At the local newsstand where he normally purchased his Times, he had instead picked up the tabloid and skimmed the entire article. Of course the article didn’t give any clues as to her motives. He had replaced the tabloid and paid for his New York Times newspaper.
She probably didn’t have an excuse, doing it only to see her face in the papers. He’d done the same thing himself, when he was young and immature. No wonder her desperate need for escape, Joshua thought wryly as he sipped his water. Her father’s wrath was bad enough that she had flown away at first light.
Still, unlike his own father, Joshua knew as well as Kit probably did that Michael O’Brien was more smoke than fire. He had tolerated Kit’s well-publicized antics each time, no matter how outrageous. Joshua particularly remembered the people at the newsstand discussing her swimming with the seals in a skin-colored bikini to focus on animal rights. If he also remembered it right, there was a time she spent the night in a cardboard box in the middle of winter with some drunk ruffian to call attention to the plight of the homeless.
The grass was always greener, Joshua mused with a tinge of bitterness. Kit didn’t realize how lucky she was. Time after time her father forgave her and bailed her out of her messes. He hadn’t been so lucky. After costing his father his dream, his father’s disappointment measured in a very long, silent period. Maybe that’s why she remained so spoiled, and had been such a temptation to him on the airplane. She clearly had a passion for life.
Joshua blinked and tossed the now empty water bottle effortlessly into the wastebasket. His calves ached, so he kicked off his shoes. Here he was, on a cruise, and despite his exhaustion he was still wired. Normally he tried to catch a nap on the plane, but sitting next to Kit had made napping absolutely impossible. As he stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes, he again pictured her face as he asked her if she had ever made love on a plane. Her mouth had puckered into a surprised O and her green eyes had darkened to almost an emerald. Her soft reddish hair had shimmered as she shivered.
Too bad he hadn’t discovered what the rest of her body felt like next to his. If it was anything like the sparks that erupted between them when she had tripped on the plane and he had caught her against his chest…loving her body would be phenomenal.
In fact, as a male who lately had chosen a long period of celibacy, he had needed to make a quick retreat from the plane in order to hide his body’s immediate reaction to the feel of hers.
Joshua opened his eyes and glanced at his watch. Five minutes before he had to leave for the Last Frontier staff meeting. He let his thoughts drift. Kit hadn’t mentioned where she was going. Miami was a connection to just about anywhere.
Not that it mattered at this point in his life. Kit O’Brien would never fit into his world. She was parties and fancy clothes. He was jeans and a cowboy hat, mud and muck and the farm near Syracuse, New York. Her limo probably took her everywhere. He always took the subway in the city.
In a little less than three weeks he would ride his horse every morning through the orchards, supervise the dairy operation and return full-time to his nonfiction writing, a career he had put on hold once he had begun scripting Last Frontier. She’d be deep in the party rounds of the “A” list society Christmas season.
Still, he thought with a grin as he closed his eyes and pictured the way Kit’s yellow knit skirt clung to and revealed her shapely, toned legs, she was something to behold.
Chapter Two
Four hours later Kit attempted to concentrate on figuring out the world of Last Frontier. Her roommates hadn’t sighted any of the cast members, although they’d certainly talked about one of them, a Joshua Parker, more than the others.
“Kit!”
Kit looked over at Georgia, who was waving a hand in front of Kit’s face. “Yes?”
“You’re looking a little pale. Are you okay? Do you need me to wrap your ankle? I brought an elastic bandage.”
“No thanks, Georgia, I’m fine. Really. I told you it’s nothing.” Kit smiled reassuringly. Just her luck to have twisted her ankle in front of a hypochondriac.
Georgia looked like a dubious mother hen. “If you say so. If you change your mind I’ve got the bandage right here in my purse. I never travel without an emergency kit.”
With that Georgia began watching a video on one of the Topsider Lounge’s screens. Reminding Kit of a hotel dance club, the lounge consisted of chrome rails and raised seating areas. The topmost seating was upstairs on the Compass Deck, which sounded glamorous but was really just a deck surrounding the outside of the lounge.
Kit wasn’t quite sure what to make of her roommates. Freely admitting to being a rabid fan of Last Frontier, Georgia was obviously the leader, even picking out the table on the main level.
“Here comes the waitress. What does everyone want? This round’s on me.” Georgia announced. Paula and Becca, Kit’s other roommates, offered no resistance and ordered cocktails.
Kit shook her head in refusal, but to no avail. Georgia ordered, anyway, and the waitress moved away.
“I got you some wine.” Georgia studied Kit matter-of-factly. “You only had one glass of champagne with dinner.”
“Really, I usually try to have only one.” In fact, it had been months since she had had more than one glass of wine, except for wine tasting, and then the procedure was to spit it out.
Kit’s protest fell on deaf ears as Georgia cut her off. “You’ll have one glass of wine, honey. It’s good for the arteries, and it’s not like you’re driving anywhere, sugar. Has anyone seen either Bob or Joshua yet?” Georgia turned to search the room for her idols.
Kit smiled wryly. Again Georgia had told her how life was going to be. Georgia and her father would probably get along great, but Kit just didn’t have the heart to upset Georgia the way she would her father.
The waitress returned with the drinks at the same time a cruise representative arrived on the dance floor with a microphone. Kit took a small sip of her wine, rolled it over her tongue and wrinkled her nose. Bottom-grade white zinfandel. Her father had subjected her to a wine course when she was twenty-one. While she had found the class boring, it had been the way he’d finally let her into her chosen profession. Her father didn’t want her to work, and writing about wine had been her entry into magazine features.
She snapped to attention as everyone began clapping and cheering. She had missed the introduction of the man who now took the stage. Kit craned her neck and surveyed him. He was about fifty. Could this be her subject?
“Who?” She whispered at Paula’s back.
“Bill Davies, the executive producer. His production company owns and distributes the show. He bought Joshua’s pilot.” Paula didn’t even turn around.
“Oh.” Kit leaned back in her chair. Frustrated that she wouldn’t know until tomorrow, she studied the crowd of people who called themselves LaFrofans. Second only to Trekkies in their loyalty and devotion, Kit knew that each had shelled out at least $1,000 to come on the cruise. The room was about 60 percent women, and many of them were obviously with husbands or significant others. The participants’ ages ranged from a few women Kit’s age to some appearing about seventy, with the average age somewhere around late thirties to early forties.
A confused awareness suddenly caused her spine to prickle. Someone was looking at her. Kit swiveled around in her seat to look behind her, her gaze instantly connecting with that of the man from the plane.
What in the world was he doing here? He stood watching her from the doorway, the look of surprise on his face quickly masked. He didn’t even have the decency to turn away. Instead he continued his obvious stare, a slight sardonic smile turning his full lips upward. Kit straightened her back when his raised eyebrows signaled his amusement, and then, after a haughty shake of her head, she turned forward again.
“What is it, Kit?” Georgia frowned. “Is anything wrong?”
“Uh, no. I just saw some guy I sat next to on the plane.” Whoever the man from the plane was, she could not acknowledge him now. It was better to pretend they’d never met. She had a job to do.
“Georgia!” Paula’s whisper seemed to echo, and Kit started. “Look! There! In the doorway! Look!”
Georgia turned around, as did just about everyone else in the vicinity of Paula’s loud whisper.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! It’s him!” Georgia’s voice came out in a breathless rush, and Kit thought Georgia was about to have a major heart attack.
The buzz hummed loudly in the room, and Georgia began babbling about how good he looked in black, and as the room erupted into a thunder of cheers and clapping, the man from the plane strode easily into the room and joined Bill Davies on the dance floor. Fans jumped to their feet, but Kit stayed rooted to her chair, doomed.
Oh, my God, Kit mentally repeated Georgia’s words, but with dread instead of enthusiasm. The man from the plane was none other than Joshua Parker, the man her roommates fawned over. Kit’s mortification flared. She’d never expected to see him again, the man she’d shared sexual innuendoes with. Yet here he was, and worse, he was someone famous!
Somewhere she must have crossed a leprechaun, because she certainly didn’t have the luck of her Irish ancestors.
“Sorry, Kit,” Georgia said, breathlessly fanning herself with her hand. “Every time I see him I can’t believe a man can be that beautiful. He’s been our idol since a group of us saw him at a convention eight years ago. I just can’t believe I didn’t sense him—he looks so wonderful in black. Don’t you think so?”
He’d look much better somewhere else. “He looks great,” Kit lied with a nod, inwardly seething behind her perfect poker face. She took a long, slow swallow from her glass, letting the cheap wine burn its way like bitter medicine down her throat. She’d almost accepted this man’s proposition, and worse, he knew she’d considered it.
Now here he was in front of her! Obviously comfortable in his environment of being center stage, Joshua easily answered questions and told light jokes. Kit had to give him credit, when he was with an audience he was a true performer, and they loved him.
He had changed again. This time he wore a simple black long-sleeved shirt and black weekend trousers. Both failed to hide his well-toned, lithe, six-foot body, and Kit could see why the women in the room were absolutely crazy about him. Not only had he given them their favorite television show, but he was gorgeous to boot.
Because of the lounge’s lighting, auburn highlights shimmered and danced through his hair. And those lips. Those lips that had so sexily asked her if she had ever made love on a plane.
Despite her resolve to be nonchalant and impassive, Kit wanted to drop right through the floor. If she had known she was going to see him again she never would have answered him the way she had on the plane.
As if he had a sixth sense of her scrutiny, Joshua turned and looked directly at her. He saluted her with his eyes, sending his straight brows arching upward gently before they turned downward at the corner.
Kit returned his gaze of devilish delight with a haughty, dismissive stare. The corner of his mouth tilted upward in secret amusement, and Kit watched a grin rake across his face. Then he broke eye contact and whispered something to Bill Davies.
Kit took another long, slow sip of her wine. He still could be a cowboy, she thought, massaging her battered ego. He had the primal, all-male desperado look, despite his wearing dress shoes and not cowboy boots.
Kit idly fingered her now-empty wineglass. She wasn’t sure how that happened, and she looked up in time to catch a small, self-satisfied smile crossing Joshua’s face. For a brief moment Kit felt challenged, and she concentrated on the introductions Bill Davies was making as the Last Frontier actors began to cluster together on the stage.
“Fellow LaFrofans, now that you’ve met everyone, we’re about to get started. Tonight is simply one big happy party. Mingle with your Last Frontier family and enjoy the evening. We have only one request. There are over eight hundred fans on the cruise, and over five hundred in here tonight. Please, no autographs. We have a long autograph session scheduled tomorrow, and we promise you will get as many as you need then. Tonight let’s just dance, drink and be decadent! Joshua?”
Joshua stopped whispering to the people Kit guessed to be the various actors and took the microphone from Bill’s outstretched hand.
“Thanks, Bill.” His voice was low and seductively husky. Given the collective sigh reverberating throughout the lounge, Kit figured that half the women in the room must have believed that they had died and gone to heaven. Knots formed in her shoulders as he continued.
“Tonight we’ve decided to start the fan cruise off on the right foot.” His French-Canadian accent caused her stomach to plummet. She took a sip from the new glass of wine in front of her. Not knowing what she was up against, some liquid courage couldn’t hurt.
“Each of the members of the Last Frontier family are going to go out into the audience like this.” Joshua threaded his way past several tables and moved to stand inches from Kit. “We’re each going to dance with one of the fans to start the evening. In the middle of the song, the DJ will invite the rest of you to join us on the dance floor.”
Kit didn’t know which was worse, the fact everyone was staring at her or the fact that Georgia was fanning herself with her hand and hyperventilating simply because Joshua Parker was standing behind Kit’s chair. Kit’s stomach churned, and for the first time in her life she understood fear-induced nausea.
“May I have this dance?”
Kit froze like a deer in the headlights. Despite her shock, her mouth opened. A “no” started to form but never materialized as Joshua’s strong and demanding fingers closed over hers. His firm grip burned, sending waves of desire pulsating through her.
Kit pulled to free herself from his tenacious grip, but instead Paula and Georgia gave her a helpful shove that sent her right into his waiting arms. Joshua smiled and passed the microphone to a steward, who appeared from nowhere. The touch of his fingertips against her elbow felt like a flame as he led her to the dance floor.
The lights dimmed, and the first song was a soft, almost waltz-like wedding reception number. Her concentration evaporated when Joshua Parker expertly took her hands. Years of dance classes came in handy, and she moved automatically while he held her at a polite distance. Laughter and squeals of delight reached her ears as other cast members retrieved their dance partners. Kit gritted her teeth and reminded herself that she had been in trickier spots before and survived the experiences. Barely, but she’d survived.
“You did this deliberately.” Kit’s words sounded biting, but she made her face radiate only happiness.
“So what if I did? Imagine my surprise to see you, ma chérie. Shocking. I never would have pictured you to be a LaFrofan. But here you are, in the flesh.”
The way he said flesh made Kit shudder.
“Anyway, after our brief encounter today I wanted to feel your body close to mine again.” Joshua moved her smoothly and expertly around the floor. “And it definitely fits mine, don’t you think?”
He chuckled softly. As his deep laughter tickled her ear, Kit’s nerve endings sent illicit thoughts racing to her brain. Joshua’s fluid movements impressed her, as did the heat coming from his steely chest, a chest she longed to lean against. His next words brought her back to reality.