Why did it feel like he was sitting in a police station, hands cuffed behind his back, a spotlight shoved in his face? Kaia’s inquisition was innocent enough and yet it felt like she was testing him on some moral level.
And then you’ll be happy?
Her words spoken so kindly, so softly, shimmered in the air like a heat mirage.
And then you’ll be happy?
Good question.
He was thirty-two and he’d achieved everything he’d ever dreamed of. Showing up his father, besting him in his own industry, earning more money than he could spend, eating in the best restaurants, wearing the finest clothes, driving the fastest cars, flying his own plane, having the prettiest women on his arm.
Why did he feel so empty?
How was it she’d put it? Lost. Lonely.
None of it—not the money, not the possessions, not his position, not the women—had made him happy. It was supposed to make him happy. Why wasn’t he happy?
That, friends and neighbors, was the million-dollar question.
Christmas on a cracker. Now that everything he’d ever dreamed of was within his grasp, he didn’t want any of it. How had this happened?
“What do you want, Ridge?” Kaia asked. “Independent of this need to show up your father?”
“I’d like for my father not to be an asshole.”
“I have no magic wand for that,” Kaia said. “But you know in your heart of hearts, he loves you in his weird way.”
“I suppose. At least he didn’t disown me like my mother and my grandmother did. But he might as well have disowned me. The results were the same. I felt all alone in the world.”
Kaia slanted her head. “I’ve got news for you, Ridge.”
“Yeah?”
“You’ve disowned yourself.”
What the hell was she talking about? He frowned, grunted.
“Your mother obviously had some mental issues and so did your grandmother. Their behavior wasn’t about you. It was about them. Duke too. He was trying to make a new marriage to Ranger’s mom work when you showed up. He was between a rock and a hard place.”
“Still, he didn’t have to be a total dick about it.”
“No, but you’re still beating yourself up for the way they behaved. As if you were the cause of the problems. You weren’t. But you internalized it and now you can’t let it go.”
“Oh yeah?” He narrowed his eyes.
“You’re terrified that if you stop doing, achieving, moving and shaking, you’ll cease to exist. Wanna know the truth?”
“Because you have all the answers?” His tongue tasted poisonous.
“Not all the answers. No, but I can see what you can’t because you’re too close to it. The truth is when you stop all the doing, achieving, moving, and shaking, that’s when you’ll finally be found.”
Anger bubbled up inside him. Who was she to tell him how to live his life? She knew nothing about him.
“You’ve lost touch with the real you, and no amount of grasping and striving will help you find the peace you’re so obviously searching for. You can own the biggest house, drive the fastest car, eat in the most expensive restaurants but that will never make you happy. You’re using external things to salve those childhood wounds that cannot be healed by tangible things.”
“Wow,” he said, icing up inside, feeling as if she’d turned against him. “Seems like you got me all figured out.”
“You never got over losing your mother at a young age. She made the choice to leave you, but you keep holding on to that grief with both hands. Blaming yourself. You still think that it’s your fault. That if you’d been a better kid she would have loved you enough to stay.”
“Is that so?” he asked through gritted teeth, as if he’d just chewed glass.
“You’ve got a hole in your heart that’s never going to heal as long as you keep seeing money and status as the Holy Grail.” She reached out and touched his arm.
He pulled back, hurt.
She flinched, retreated, leaned away from him.
They stared at each other for a long, hard bite of time.
“I’m only telling you this because I care about you,” she said. “I also know that giving up on the belief that you have to keep chasing that brass ring feels like failure to you.”
“That’s because it is failure.”
“Oh Ridge.” She said it so sadly, as if he’d disappointed her in some monumental level.
He hardened his face, hardened the quicksand in his heart. “You’re just like every other woman I’ve ever met. You want to change me. Mold me in a role of your own making.”
Kaia’s mouth dropped, and she raised a protective palm to her cheek as if he’d struck her.
Immediately, he felt like a shitheel. “That came out wrong.”
“No,” she said. “It’s how you feel. But you’re wrong. I don’t want you to change to suit me. I want you to find out who you really are. I only want you to be happy. What do you truly want, Ridge? In your heart of hearts?”
He had no answer for her. None. Things had taken a dark turn, and this was supposed to be a fun afternoon.
“I want that drumstick.” He laughed.
Beautiful woman that she was, she let him get away with it.
“Easy enough,” she said, opening the picnic basket and producing the one remaining piece of fried chicken, and extending it to him wrapped with a paper napkin.
Except now that he had the drumstick, he didn’t want that either. He shook his head. “Lost my appetite.”
She looked crushed, and he realized belatedly that she thought she’d offended him somehow.
“Not your fault,” he croaked, pushing the words past dry lips. “Not your fault at all. I didn’t mean to take everything out on you.”
“You didn’t.” She put the chicken back in the basket, raised her eyes to his. “How can I help?”
He didn’t answer her unselfish question. Instead, he yanked her into his arms so forcefully that she gasped a surprised little “oh!” and then erupted into a smile as he pulled her closer and dipped his head.
She turned her eager mouth to greet his.
He kissed her. Fiercely claiming her. Ah! This was what he’d been hungering for. This was what he wanted. This was what made him happy.
Kaia and her amazing lips.
She slipped her lithe arms around him, hugging his neck tight, pulling his head down, and lapping at his mouth with heat, moisture, and rampant zeal.
They kissed for minutes, hours, days, eons.
He lost track of all time and space.
They floated in a bubble of joy. Just the two of them. Surfing each other’s lips. Surrendering to the moment. To the water and the sun and the sand and the sensuous feel of skin touching skin.
He breathed her name. “Kaia. Kaia. Kaia.”
A mantra. A prayer. A song of his soul. Such a beautiful, powerful name to describe a beautiful, powerful woman. Kaia.
“Thank you,” she murmured, pulling her mouth from his, but still clinging to his neck. “Thank you so much.”
“For what?” he asked, slightly confused.
He should be the one thanking her for caring enough to put the screws to him and force him to look at himself in a new way.
For shining a light in the dark places he didn’t want to go and urging him to see what he’d been so reluctant to face.
To understand the lonely, shallow man he’d become. A man who pursued success at all costs without even having an endgame, a man who viewed prestige as the ultimate goal, even when it turned to dust in his hand. A man with no real home, no place where he truly belonged, no one to make success worth having in the first place.
Her smile was a life raft filled with hope and encouragement. A smile that said, grab on, I’ll save you. Did he dare trust that smile?
He tucked her into the crook of his arm, squeezed her tight. He wasn’t sure what to say. All he knew was that he was overjoyed to be with her. Kaia. A sweet ray of sunshine in his stormy world.
She stared into his eyes, a look of wonderment on her face, the same stunning wonderment coursing through his veins.
“Thank you,” he said in a voice as rough as the desert terrain.
“For what?” she asked.
“For being you.”
They got past their argument and spent the rest of the day hiking Balmorhea State Park. They skipped stones in the lake, watched birds, and had several “remember when” discussions about their childhood, but kept things on the lighter side.
Being with Ridge like this was as comfortable as a favorite pair of old jeans, but it was exciting too, as they carved out a new way of being with each other. The best of both, familiarity mixed with the thrill of the unknown, because there was so much to discover about each other.
Ten years and three thousand miles had created a lot of distance and differences. It encouraged her that they were working on ironing those differences out.
When she was in the hospital recovering from her accident, she’d dreamed of moments like this. It was how she’d survived. Envisioning herself in Balmorhea. In water. Using her imagination to transport her to a happier time and place.
But now she was here, living the dream, she got anxious.
“I’ve thought about moving away from Cupid,” she said, studying his face, waiting for a reaction. “When I graduate vet school. I’ve always wanted to live near water.”
He looked cool, unruffled, unconcerned. Damn him. “You always were a water baby.”
“Corpus maybe, or when I’m feeling really brave, I envision leaving the state. I’m thinking Florida.”
“It’s nice there.”
“You’ve been?”
“Many times. Go for the Gulf Coast side.”
“I’ve heard that. But then I think of everything I’d be giving up. My family, my friends, my entire community, and then poof . . .” She snapped her fingers. “The water dreams disappear. No matter how much I long for water, my family means more.”
“You should follow your heart,” he said.
Follow her heart? If she followed her heart, she’d throw herself into his arms and beg him to love her in the way she loved him. But Kaia had too much dignity for that. If she couldn’t have Ridge, water was the next best thing. Maybe she would move away. For a few years at least. Get the water out of her system.
“But honestly,” he said, “I can’t see you leaving your family. You’re stuck to them like glue.”
“I’ve lived in College Station.”
“Knowing it was just temporary until you finish school. There’s a difference between moving off to get your education and starting a new life all on your own. It will change you.”
She wanted to ask him to elaborate, to tell her what it had been like for him to leave everything and everyone behind. But the look in his eyes warned her off. He lowered his lashes, turned his head away, letting her know he was done with revealing secrets for one day.
After they left the park, they stopped outside of Cupid for gas at a kitschy truck stop filled with tourists.
He held the door open for her as they went inside, and out of now where, a long-legged preteen girl, engrossed in her cell phone, pushed between the two of them on her way out the door.
Startled, Kaia stepped to one side and almost lost her balance, but Ridge was there, righting her with his steadying touch.
“Tessa,” scolded the girl’s mother, coming up behind them. “Get your head out of that phone or I’m taking it away. You almost knocked those folks down flat.”
The girl, thumbs flying madly over the phone screen, never glanced up.
Ridge tipped his hat. “No worries, ma’am. I’ve been guilty of paying too much attention to my phone a time or two myself.”
“Honestly,” the mom said, putting a restraining arm on her daughter’s shoulder to keep her from crashing into a metal cage of propane bottles. “We get such spotty cell reception here on the outskirts of town, the only time Tessa really has to text her friends is when we come to the store.”
“We should blame the Davis Mountains,” Ridge said. “And the scarcity of cell phone towers.”
Kais couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. He was smiling, but he kept his hand securely latched onto her elbow. Just in case the preteen made another clueless move?
Whatever his motives, she was enjoying the feel of his hand on hers. Her mind hopped ahead, wondering how this day was going to end. Would he ask if he could spend the night? Knowing Ridge, he wouldn’t ask. Just take charge and sweep her into bed.
Her heart fluttered crazily. Did she want that?
“If anything, I’m to blame for being too lax with her,” said the mom, giving Ridge an appreciative glance.
Hey, hey! Standing right here, lady, she wanted to shout. Jealousy kicked around her stomach, made a nice muddy mess. The woman kept eyeing him up one side and down the other.
Oblivious to her surroundings, Tessa’s thumbs flowed like lightning.
“See what I have to deal with?” The mother gave a sexy little moan and fluttered her lashes. “It’s not easy being a single parent.”
It took everything in Kaia’s power not to roll her eyes. Seriously? Did women come on to him like this every day of his life?
“Tessa,” Ridge said sternly.
The sound of his deep masculine voice calling her name managed to shake the preteen from her social media–induced trance, and Tessa finally glanced up.
Ridge sent her a fatherly look and Kaia could have sworn the girl’s mom literally swooned, clasping her palms to her chest, bracing her wobbly knees against the side of the building.
“Yes?” Tessa blinked.
“Could you do me a favor?”
“What’s that?” The girl looked suspicious.
“At least put the phone away when you’re crossing the street. I’d hate to see you become roadkill. Those buzzards up there”—he waved at half a dozen vultures circling the pasture across from the truck stop—“look pretty hungry to me.”
Tessa eyed the buzzards, uneasily switched off her cell phone, and shifted it into her pocket.
“Thank you for being so understanding,” the mom said, and shooed her daughter toward the parking lot.
“Hmm, sort of like the pot calling the kettle names,” Kaia whispered to him. “Mr. King-of-Phubbing.”
“Takes a phone addict to know one,” he said glibly, not the least bit ashamed. “Besides, have you seen me look at my phone even once this entire day?”
“We were in the state park out of cell phone range,” she pointed out.
“Darn. That’s what I get for hanging out with a smart woman.” Ridge winked and guided her into the truck stop. “But FYI, I turned it off before I ever pulled into your driveway.”
His conspiratorial glance eased her possessiveness and left her feeling petty for getting jealous in the first place. He didn’t belong to her. She had no claim on him. Yes, they’d had spectacular sex last night and shared a few secrets. But hot sex and whispered confidences did not a relationship make.
Which begged the question, where were they going?
And what were his plans for the rest of the evening? Was he envisioning spending the night with her? She had certainly been hoping he’d stay the night. But what if she’d misread things?
Argh! Kaia pressed a palm to her forehead. She had to get a hold of herself. Splash some water on her face. Do some deep breathing. Knock off the constant mind chatter.
“Here’s your chance to check your cell phone,” she muttered, gave him a quick wave, and headed off to the restroom, her mind a jumble of doubt and second-guessing, her heart beating far too fast.
When she came out of the restroom, she couldn’t find him. Assuming he’d also gone to the restroom, she perused the aisles, and honest-to-Pete, she didn’t mean to end up on the prophylactics aisle, but she rounded the corner and found herself staring at rows of condoms.
She was about to run away, but glanced up and spied Ridge in the next aisle over.
“Ssst,” she hissed, seized by impulse.
He raised his head, grinned when he saw her. “Uh-huh?”
“Should we buy these?” she whispered, holding up the box of condoms just high enough so he could see them over the top of the shelf.
His grin spread from ear to ear. “Why, Kaia Alzate, is that an invitation?”
“If you want it to be.”
“Hell yes.” Quickly, he joined her on the condom aisles, plucked the box of Trojans, ribbed for her pleasure, from her, took her by the hand and dragged her to the checkout counter.
Leaving no more doubts in her mind about whether or not he wanted to spend his last night in town with her.