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
