Natural Blond Instincts

© 2003


Dear Reader,

First of all, let me come right out and say that my heroine, Kenna Mallory, has a bit of an attitude problem. As I have attitude issues myself-just ask anyone, especially my husband and editor; they’ll be happy to confirm this as fact-you’d think she would have been easy to write. Nope.

Kenna Mallory just didn’t want to conform. She had to torture me the entire way. She didn’t want to wear what I wanted her to wear, didn’t want to say what I wanted her to say and she didn’t want to fall in love because I said she should.

I’m afraid she didn’t torture just me. She tortured everyone she came in contact with-her family, her co-workers and especially one Mr. Weston Roth, the man sharing her position on the corporate ladder.

But don’t feel too sorry for Wes. Tall, muscled and sharp as a tack, he thought he had Kenna all figured out. Unfortunately he was wrong. As a matter of fact, he was a lot wrong. Ah, the mess these two had to go through before they came to somewhat of a shocking realization.

What realization, you ask? You’ll have to read to find out. I’ll give you one hint-this is a romance!

Happy reading!

Jill Shalvis

P.S. I love to hear from readers! Come visit my Web site at www.jillshalvis.com to drop me a line and to check out my new releases.

1

KENNA MALLORY thought she’d turned out okay, though she supposed that depended on who you asked. Zipping alongside the Pacific coast just outside Santa Barbara, the sun at her back, the radio blaring…she herself couldn’t have asked for more.

But her parents…undoubtedly they could have filled volumes on how they might have changed their only daughter. Changed and molded and created.

Unfortunately, they’d blessed Kenna with her own mind. Hence, the Mallory family issues. She didn’t toe the line, she didn’t follow the rules, she didn’t fit the mold. Their mold.

Which explained the slightly exasperated voice of her father in her ear, courtesy of the cell phone she’d won in a mail sweepstakes.

“Kenna, honestly. You baffle me.” This was said in a paternal tone suggesting impatience, superiority and that mind-boggling emotion called love. A powerful combination on the best of days, designed to crank the guilt factor up to maximum overload. “I’ve got the perfect job for you, and you have no response.”

None that he wanted to hear, anyway.

Since he’d been doing his damnedest to run her life from the moment she’d been born, and she’d been doing her damnedest not to let him, the result had made for some interesting arguments over the past twenty-seven years. “Dad…thank you. I appreciate it, but I’ve got my own job, remember?”

“Washing crap out of poodles’ tails is not a job, Kenna.”

She glanced at the waves pounding the shore because it was calming, and at the moment, she needed calming. “I don’t do that anymore and you know it.” She purposely avoided reminding him exactly what she did do for a living. Did she really need to say-again-that she wasn’t in his world because he’d kicked her out of it?

Since then, sure, she’d had some, uh, creative jobs to earn her way through college. But recently, she’d landed herself a position in the accounting department of Nordstrom’s. One thing she’d gotten from Kenneth Mallory, III, was her love of business and finance. She was good at it. So good, in fact, that on her better days she’d call herself a whiz.

“The job I have for you is important,” he said. “As opposed to, say, slinging beer at that bar where the women wear those tight white tank tops.”

“Now, you know I only did that for one week.” And she’d made enough money to cover an entire semester’s tuition. Who could complain about that?

“Kenna, for once, listen.”

“Fine.” She pretended his tone didn’t sneak past her defenses and stab at her. Was it so bad to want to make her own way? To want to be successful and please him at the same time, without compromising herself and her beliefs just because they were different than his?

“You’re a Mallory-”

Oh yeah, here it came. The Mallory card. She could recite it verbatim. As a Mallory, you owe it to the family… As a Mallory, you must present yourself this way… As a Mallory…

Never mind that she didn’t consider herself a Mallory, and that she hadn’t for a long time. It wasn’t the name she minded, but the baggage attached to it that she could definitely live without. She just wanted to be her own person.

Her own person who lived quite happily in a four-hundred-square-foot studio apartment in Santa Barbara. Sure, she had neither an adequate bathroom mirror nor a tub, not to mention only enough closet space for one pair of shoes, but she had her pride and her freedom, and she valued both. “I just really want to manage on my own.”

“Want has little to do with family obligation. Remember your great-great-grandfather Philippe, who-”

“-came over on the boat from France with only the clothes on his back,” she intoned along with him. “Walking to work every day in the icy, freezing snow, ten miles uphill each way-” She stopped when she heard his reluctant chuckle.

“Okay, so I’ve mentioned him before.”

“Only a few billion times.” She smiled at his admission. “I get it, Dad, honest. We work hard. But I am working hard, just not for you.”

“It doesn’t make sense. Explain it to me. Make me understand.”

As she came into Santa Barbara, a sprawling, hopping, happy beach town that liked to party, the glittering summer sun set its edges down on the ocean, creating a glorious end to the day. Never one to pass up a sky-gazing moment, Kenna shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head to see better. “Well, for starters, you and Mom live in San Diego.”

“Not a good enough excuse.”

“It’s four hours away, Dad.”

“Like you’ve never moved before.”

“Well then, how about because we spontaneously combust if we’re together in the same room for more than five minutes?”

“So we’ve had a few obstacles in our day. That’s no reason to stop trying.”

Obstacles. Meaning, of course, her wild and crazy years. The years Kenna had spent battling her insecurities and inadequacies in the face of her brilliant parents had been long and rather ugly. But she’d paid the price-dearly-when, at the age of eighteen, she’d had all funds yanked from beneath her feet, leaving her as accused.

Wild and crazy.

And penniless.

It had been their version of tough love, and it had been tough. Extremely so. But she hadn’t been born a Mallory for nothing. Stubbornness and tenacity had been bred into her, and she’d marched off to college determined to prove she could manage on her own. She’d been the principled, idealistic rebel, an activist on campus staging sit-ins at the administrative building whenever she thought an injustice had been committed.

She’d horrified her parents on a weekly basis, but because they’d already overplayed their hand by cutting off the money, they were powerless to do anything about her actions. With such freedom in front of her, she’d never looked back, not until the day she’d graduated.

Granted, she’d graduated by the skin of her teeth, at a far less prestigious school than her parents had planned on, but she had finished. She’d done it on her own, grooming poodles, doing the aforementioned “slinging beer,” mopping up at K-Mart, you name it, she’d done it for the little luxuries like food and tuition. She’d done it because she’d wanted to, and because she figured her parents had not expected her to. They probably had planned for her to last a week-two, tops-without their financial support. Then, when she came begging for money, they could have pulled out the Mallory family rule book, forced her to agree to follow said rules in exchange for that support and signed the whole deal…in blood. One more time their rebel daughter had not performed according to plan.

Her father had tried to get her to work for Mallory Enterprises after graduation. Pick one of our hotels, he’d told her. Take an entry-level position and learn the ropes.

It had been a decent idea. After all, she’d studied the hotel industry in college, but the bottom line was that their ideologies clashed. Her parents were conservative fiscally and socially, whereas she was about as liberal as you could get.

They thought in terms of dollars.

She thought in terms of people. She believed minimum wage should be high enough that everyone could live without hunger and poverty. They’d like to see minimum wage abolished.

Clash, clash, clash.

“You’re ready for this now,” her father said. “Taking over this newest acquisition for us is just the beginning for you at Mallory Enterprises. Admit it, you love business the way your mother loves performing surgery. You’ll be a natural.”

“I don’t have the image.”

“You’re a Mallory, aren’t you?”

“Maybe I meant physical image.” She certainly could have meant that. At fifty-eight, her father defined elegant and sophisticated, a self-made man who had turned a small fortune into millions. Her mother could have passed for a young Audrey Hepburn…who just happened to be a brilliant surgeon.

And then there was Kenna. An untamed blonde. A good six inches taller than her parents and stacked to boot. Her Saxon looks were a throwback to the grandmother she’d never gotten to meet.

“I understand there will be a learning curve,” her father said, most likely referring to the reforming of her strong-willed, strong-minded and, on the best of days, somewhat unpredictable nature. “Think of it, Kenna. Working for me, you could buy that Ferrari you always dreamed of. Maybe I’d even buy it for you.”