She laughed low and sweet, a soft wind-chime sound that ought to calm, but her naughty-arsonist grin lit a flash fire south of his belt. "Does someone need a hug?"
"Jeezus." He fished his sunglasses from his shirt pocket, slipped them on. "Do not hug me."
"You can't stop me." She trotted after him, arms wide. "I'm gonna hug you like I did when I was a kid. It used to drive you crazy, so I did it even more."
Ridge sidestepped her, but crashed into Casey's mom, Nancy. He apologized, and turned right into Kaia's hug.
"There . . . there . . . you antsy, uptight city feller." She poured on the Texas drawl. "Hug it right on out."
Oh hell's bells, pressed up against her body he was getting hard all over again. She was bound to notice. Quick! Stock quotes, stock quotes.
Fortunately, the priest picked that moment to clap his hands and announce, "Let's get things moving along, shall we?"
Kaia giggled and released him.
Ridge finally breathed.
"She's up to her old childhood tricks I see." Archer leaned in to Ridge. "Pushing your buttons."
"You out to keep her on a chain," Ridge mumbled, watching Kaia's butt bounce as she walked into the chapel ahead of them.
"She's irrepressible. No holding that one back." Archer slung his arm around Ridge's shoulder. "Man, it's good to have you home."
"Good to see you," Ridge mumbled. The jury was still out on whether it was good to be home or not.
Kaia stood at the back of the church as the second bridesmaid, waiting her turn to follow Aria down the aisle, holding the banana-turned-microphone-turned-pretend-bouquet in her hand. All she could think about was the fact Ridge had gotten aroused when she'd hugged him in the mansion kitchen, and then again just now on the chapel porch.
Her face flushed from her cheeks to her scalp. She had turned him on.
That thrilled and scared her beyond words. The guy she'd had a crush on for years, her first crush to be exact, was hot for her.
Finally.
In her heart of hearts, she'd not ever believed he would ever reciprocate her feelings. He'd considered her nothing more than a bratty kid sister. But apparently, a decade apart had changed things.
Oh gosh, oh wow, what now? Be cool, fool. Right. Pay attention. Don't go spinning fantasies. It was a wedding rehearsal. Rehearse.
She took a deep breath, started down the aisle. Ridge was already standing at the altar in the best man spot next to Archer.
Ridge met her eyes across the chapel and smiled the tiniest bit. So slight she wasn't even sure he had smiled.
In an instant she was sixteen again, her knees going weak, her pulse rate kicking up, her stomach shaky and unsettled like the last time she'd seen him. College diploma in hand, his things crammed into a beat-up old pickup truck, denim jacket hugging his lean muscular shoulders, dark wild hair curling down his collar.
Today, his hair was close clipped in a CEO style, and a suit jacket had replaced the denim. But he still wore jeans and a cowboy hat and boots. How did a man age so well? Fountain of youth? Deal with the devil?
Knowing Ridge, it was probably the latter.
He'd always bucked convention, swam upstream, spurred gossip. That wild Lockhart boy born out of wedlock to a mother who abandoned him on his father's doorstep and then died in a car crash rumored to be suicide.
His past was a lot to overcome.
For most of her childhood, she'd lived just across the pasture from him, her family in the foreman's farmhouse where Archer now lived. Ridge and his brothers in the mansion.
Her family servants. His masters. Another divide between them.
Except Ridge was something of an outsider. Not fully fitting in either world.
As she grew older, and adolescent hormones took over, she'd grown acutely aware of Ridge's presence in that big house across that patch of desert ground.
Sometimes at night, she'd sneak up on the roof of the farmhouse with binoculars and watch for a glimpse of him through his bedroom window. Once in a while she got lucky and the curtains would be open and he'd strip his shirt off to do push-ups. She lived for those sightings.
Oh, the midnight fantasies she'd had!
The one day when he was a senior, she saw him sneak a girl in his room and her heart had been crushed when he kissed her. She'd stopped spying on him after that because she couldn't bear to watch him with someone else.
The music tempo changed, cuing her that it was her turn to walk down the aisle. She pulled herself from her memories, met Ridge's navy blue eyes.
He sent her a significant look.
A hungry look.
A sexual look.