Kit had said.
“If you’re sure. They say they have one passenger spot available.” Eleni had pushed a stray brown hair out of her face. “You’d have to be willing to share a cabin.”
“A roommate?” Kit had blinked, but at that moment Eleni’s intercom had buzzed with the announcement that Michael O’Brien was on his way up. Unwilling to face her father, Kit had said, “I’ll take it.”
“Get going.” Eleni had waved at the door to the side hall. “You can pick up your tickets at LaGuardia. Just enjoy yourself until the information arrives tomorrow. And, Kit, be sensible!”
With that Kit had fled. And so here she was, sharing a cabin with someone she didn’t know, and all of this in order to do an interview she wouldn’t know anything about until tomorrow.
Kit glanced at her watch and wondered how Eleni had fared with Kit’s father, the domineering patriarch of O’Brien Publications. Knowing her father’s temper and his belief that his society daughter should not work, Kit was sure the morning meeting had not gone well. No, her father would be furious she had escaped to an out-of-town assignment. She grimaced. She owed her editor a big one.
Still, Kit needed these next four days. Not only would she prove herself a worthy journalist, she might even get to relax before going home. By that time, perhaps, her brother, Cameron, would have yet another new girlfriend. Her father loved the idea of getting Cameron married even more than he liked the idea of Kit marrying. Every time Cameron had a girlfriend it usually took the heat off Kit for a while.
She rotated her neck to stretch out the kinks left over from the flight. After the press packet and assignment sheet arrived tomorrow, she would do the interview, write the story, and get her father off of her back in the process.
The door opened and Kit waited for her roommate. More than one person entered, but Kit ignored the conundrum and smiled.
“Kit!” The woman Kit had had the misfortune of being seated next to on the bus from the airport screeched shrilly in delight and gave Kit a big, smothering bear hug. “I didn’t believe it when I saw that you were in our cabin! I’m Georgia, remember?”
“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