The mansion where his father lived with his third wife, Vivi.
Yep. Gossip of the decade. Vivi Courtland. Ridge's onetime girlfriend was now his old man's spouse.
His stomach churned and deep-rooted resentment covered him, thick as the hard pack soil. Back. All the useless feelings he thought he'd conquered were back, as layered and nuanced as ever.
Anger. Shame. Fear. Guilt. Disgust.
"Damn it," he muttered, settled a straw Stetson on his head, and climbed from the cockpit, an unwanted lump in his throat and the morning sun in his eyes.
He forced himself to breathe. In. Out. Smooth and steady. Nothing disturbed him. He was the boss. In control. In charge. Tough.
Ridge pocketed the plane's key remote control, turned to the cargo hold to get his gear, and . . .
. . . that's when he spied her.
Lumbering up in a battered, blue, Toyota Tundra extended-cab pickup truck and parking catawampus beside the tallest barn on the ranch.
He cocked his head. Who was she?
The woman hopped from the tall truck with the fluid grace of a playful water sprite more at home underneath a cascading waterfall than smack in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert.
She wore faded blue skinny jeans that fit like spray paint, cupping rounded hips and a firm lush fanny. A neon-pink, V-neck T-shirt showed off a hint of sweet cleavage. Her flat-heeled cowboy boots were scuffed and dusty. From this distance, it appeared as if she didn't have on a lick of makeup, and her thick dark hair was pulled into twin braids. A gust of hot, lazy June air blew across the sand, and her nimble fingers reached up to tuck a tendril of loosened hair behind one ear.
Ridge had a startling vision of easing the elastic bands from her hair, undoing the braids, and watching that tumble of hair fall over his hand soft and smooth as liquid silk.
What the hell? Why the instant lust? Normally, he went for tall willowy blondes like Vivi. Not petite, shapely brunettes.
Why?
That was easy enough to answer. A) The brunette was smoking hot. B) There was something familiar about her, something warm and cozy and inviting. C) He hadn't had sex in so long he'd almost forgotten what it felt like.
Hope cut into him, gutted him open, leaving him raw and hungry. Hey, who knew? There was a wedding this weekend-alcohol, food, music, slow dancing. Maybe they'd hook up.
Easy Lockhart, getting ahead of yourself.
He didn't even know her name, or if she was involved with someone, or if she'd even been invited to the wedding.
No, but that didn't stop steamy sexual fantasies from unspooling inside his head. Nor could he shake an odd feeling that he'd gone fishing for shad and managed to hook a mermaid instead.
The woman opened the extended cab's passenger side door and bent over, butt wiggling as she ducked her head inside to retrieve something from the backseat. That round wriggly rump robbed the air from his lungs, highjacked his brain as effectively as a gun-toting bandit.
As the owner and CEO of Lock Ridge Drilling, he made snap decisions on a daily basis and he'd honed the skill of sizing up people at a glance.
From the click-quick snapshot trapped in that breathless time of his mind, Ridge knew she was the spunky girl-next-door type. Able to climb trees, make chicken soup for a sick neighbor, organize a charity drive, spike a witty barb at smart-ass-know-it-alls, passionately root for her favorite sports team complete with face paint and logo jerseys, park her butt in the church pew every Sunday morning, and cheerfully answer three a.m. phone calls from friends in need.
She was, in fact, everything Ridge was not-perky, happy-go-lucky, laid-back, a rule-following, people-pleasing team player.
Not his type. Not in the least.
Which probably explained the pounding lust. He had a knack for picking women who were all wrong for him.
At this distance, with the width of the landing strip between them, he hadn't gotten a clear view of her face, but his initial impression was that she was more pretty than beautiful, while her body language exuded a come-sit-by-me friendliness that drew him. She was curvy enough to let him know that she enjoyed a good splurge meal now and again, but she was also healthy and fit. Her skin was tan and supple, her eyes soft and bright, her teeth straight and white. She took good care of herself.
But it was the way she carried herself that totally wrecked him. Confidence mixed with humility. She had an authentic stride full of wholehearted openness. The last person he'd known who'd possessed that special combo was Archer Alzate's kid sister, Kaia.
He hadn't seen Kaia face-to-face since she was sixteen and she had attended his and Archer's graduation from the University of Texas. But two years ago, Archer called him to tell him that while working on her doctorate in veterinarian medicine at Texas A&M, Kaia had been in a terrible car accident and fractured her pelvis. Ridge had flown straight to College Station to see her only to discover she was in a medically induced coma.