Michele Dunaway - Taming The Tabloid Heiress

“Our cabin?” Kit blinked as Georgia released Kit and another woman stepped into the cabin.

“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.