Chapter 14

Kellan had a hard time sleeping that night. And it wasn’t the normal reason—because he couldn’t get Shiloh’s scent out of his head long enough to drift off. It was because they were reaching a tipping point.

No longer could he pretend everything was going to go back to normal as soon as he and Ivan decided Shiloh didn’t need a bodyguard twenty-four hours a day. His friendship with Ivan would remain intact. But nothing else would be the same, not now that he’d gotten a taste of what domestic bliss with Shiloh would be like.

He wanted that. So badly. To have a life where he could bump into his wife in the kitchen and indulge in a serious make out fest right then and there because they were both too crazy about each other to stop.

But then she’d inadvertently reminded him of the reason he couldn’t ever cross that line again. Because Vivo was his permanent shell. And he couldn’t let it be crushed by his own weaknesses.

Shiloh wandered into the living room rubbing her eyes and yawning as if she wasn’t too happy about being awake. When she realized he was still flat on the couch under a blanket, she flinched.

“Sorry, I hope I didn’t wake you,” she said. “You’re usually up by now.”

She was wearing a fleece robe over flannel pajamas with flying pigs printed on the legs. Probably one of the least suggestive outfits he’d ever seen, and his pulse still sped up. “I wasn’t asleep. Late start today.”

He’d been thinking about next steps, and really it was time to have a long talk with Ivan. The saturation point had crept up on him fast, but he couldn’t deny that he was there. When he started drooling over flannel, it was time to admit defeat.

“You should think about taking clients again,” she suggested casually but there was a curious catch in her voice that he should not want to unravel so much. “You’ve already given up enough of your life for such a dumb reason.”

“It’s not a dumb reason.”

Sitting up, he pulled the blanket to the side before he remembered he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Her gaze snapped away from his bare torso as if his skin had scorched her eyes. Not the reaction he typically got.

It was enough to give a guy a complex…except he caught the hitch in her breathing that would be normal if she’d just run a mile. What did it say about him that he enjoyed getting her bothered enough for it to affect her breathing?

“It certainly isn’t a great reason,” she argued. “I haven’t even seen that handsy creep in ages.”

“Of course you haven’t. That was the whole point of this fake engagement.” Kellan had seen him a few times, always at a distance, and every time, his impression of the man’s intelligence went up a notch, because of how fast the creep went in the other direction. “Let’s keep it that way.”

She still wasn’t looking at him, and the last thing he wanted to do was make her uncomfortable in her own home. He fished around under the blanket, yanked his shirt out from under it, and slipped it on. Which did not change the strange dynamic going on this morning.

There was a bristly undercurrent between them that he couldn’t put his finger on. He didn’t like it. He should like it. It was uncomfortable and kept him from thinking about how much nicer it would be if she’d come over and snuggle with him on the couch.

“What’s wrong? You seem upset.” Oops.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

A lie. When a woman said nothing’s wrong, it either meant something was wrong and it was his fault, or something was wrong and he was an idiot because he didn’t already know what it was. Or both.

“Okay.” When guys talked, they also warned each other that it was not a good idea to push her into an explanation, or the pushee would be sorry. He’d never been that good at following instructions. “Because it seems like you’re mad at me. Did I not properly thank you for dinner last night?”

She shrugged, her expression blank. Despite the fact that he’d donned a shirt, she hadn’t moved from the spot just outside her bedroom door, where she’d frozen in place as soon as she realized he hadn’t vacated the couch yet. “I’m pretty sure you said thank you.”

Wasn’t this fun? They’d fallen into what he’d call an easy camaraderie during dinner, at least as tension free as possible given that he’d ached to throw his fork down and curl a palm under her chin so he could lift her lips to his. But he’d pushed all those unrequited longings away and participated in the conversation.

Today, it felt like an uphill battle to recapture that. “I’m kind of flying blind here then. I thought we were friends. Friends talk to each other.”

Funny how when she’d first mentioned that, it had annoyed him that she didn’t want more. Now that it felt like even their friendship might be slipping away, he was desperate to hang on to what few crumbs of her affection he could get his fingers around.

Some Shiloh was better than no Shiloh. A philosophy change that should scare him more.

“Yeah. What would you like to know?”

Why you’re being so standoffish today. But he’d try a different tactic since his early question to that effect hadn’t gotten him very far. “Why you thought it was time for me start taking clients again. We never put an expiration date on this gig. Are you done with me already?”

Wow, he had not meant for that to come out sounding so needy.

She didn’t seem to notice. “More to the point, you should be done with me.”

“Because why?”

Her long-suffering sigh didn’t bode well. “Because, Kellan. We’re obviously at that place where I’ve pushed you too far. You made that abundantly clear last night. This is where you run screaming in the other direction. But since you can’t, I’m trying to give you as much space as possible.”

“Shiloh,” he rumbled but he couldn’t get out all the things in his heart around the lump in his throat. Because what was he supposed to do? Confess that space was the last thing he wanted?

He couldn’t.

Crossing to her, he gathered her up in his arms before he could remember why not touching her was a better plan.

She melted into his arms. Not necessarily a given. But the moment she did, everything made sense again. She made sense. Just like this. Her warmth and scent infused his blood, righting his world with nothing more than this simple contact.

Except it wasn’t simple. He couldn’t stop at just an embrace. His fingers found her jaw and levered it up. Really, he only meant to reassure her with as much non-verbal communication as he could convey via his gaze. But the second he lifted her face toward his, his will dissolved, and his mouth ended up on hers before he’d consciously registered the decision to kiss her.

Like it had been a decision. He needed her more than he needed to breathe, and now that he had her in his arms, his insides greedily drank her in, reminding him how much better everything functioned when he got enough of her in his system.

The little sound she made took away what little rational thought he might have had left, which might have led him to do something dumb like end the kiss. He deepened it and she rewarded him with little swirls of her fingertips on his back. Which felt like heaven.

All at once, she pulled back, breathless and clearly dazed. “What are we doing Kellan?”

Wasn’t that the million-dollar question?

“I don’t know,” he said and it was the most honest thing he could say at the moment. “If nothing else, it’s important that you know nothing you’ve done has scared me off.”

“I’m starting to realize that.” Her voice had gained texture that shouldn’t work so well for him, not while she was still snug in his arms. “I thought…in the kitchen yesterday. It seemed like you weren’t all that into me anymore—”

“Stop,” he growled, thoroughly unable to take another second of having his own stupidity thrown back in his face. “Last night was fantastic. I enjoyed every bit of it.”

“I did too.” Her gaze flittered around his face as if seeking further validation for why he was being such an idiot about everything then. “I was worried that maybe I’d misread what was happening between us, and we weren’t moving past this ridiculous idea that we’re still faking this relationship. But we’re not. Not anymore. Right?”

The roaring sound in his head drowned out the rest of her words. She knew. She’d figured out that he was in love with her.

“I—Shiloh.” Geez. There was no good way to finish that statement. Desperately he cast about for some way to salvage what little of his cover story he could. “Sure. We’re having fun for real.”

The look she gave him pierced something inside. “There’s more going on here than fun. You want someone to care about, but you’ve created this shell around yourself. I get that you don’t want to come out. That’s fine. What I can’t figure out is why you won’t let me come inside with you.”

He almost laughed at the absurdity of that statement. She’d been inside his shell for an eternity already. What he was struggling with was how to be okay with it. How to take the next step toward what she was so clearly saying she wanted.

Because he wanted that too. So badly. To just drop all the pretense and give in to what felt so inevitable. But he couldn’t.

“That’s not what’s happening here,” he croaked.

“Really?” She slanted her gaze sideways to his arms, which were still tightly wound around her. “This is the first time I’ve gotten a good morning kiss in my life. If I’d have known that this robe would do the trick, I’d have been wearing it twenty-four seven.”

He snatched his arms free and stepped back, which did nothing to help the situation he’d been too weak to prevent. He should not have kissed her. Not this morning, not ever. “We can’t be in the same shell.”

No matter how amazing that sounded. Why had he never realized that was exactly what he wanted? He’d never even considered that having Shiloh in his shell meant there would be two of them to hang on to it. He’d never lose it then.

It made reality so much worse. There was no happy ending here, not for him anyway.

Her eyelids shuttered and when she opened them, it was clear that he’d failed in warning her off. “You forget that clinging to a man is my superpower. You can’t get rid of me that easily. I suggest you start figuring out how to be okay with the fact that we’ve found something bigger than a fake engagement and bigger than a friendship. I’m not giving you up.”

With that, she kissed him on the cheek and vanished back into her bedroom, leaving him to contemplate all the ways he’d ruined his life. Except it seemed as if he was being offered the one thing he wanted.

A dangerous sense of hope began filtering through his misery.

What if he’d been imagining that Ivan wouldn’t approve of Kellan dating his sister? What if he’d been denying himself what he yearned for out of fear, blaming it on Ivan when it was really due to Kellan’s own inability to believe he deserved something good and permanent in his life?

He let that percolate until that afternoon, heavily contemplating doing the one thing he’d sworn he never would—ask Ivan. Flat out have an honest conversation with him. See what he said. Kellan had never hesitated to do exactly as he pleased with anything else in his life. What was so different about this?

Everything.

He could not unsay it. Once that cat was out of the bag, it was out. He could never again remove the idea from his friend’s head that the one person he’d trusted had betrayed him.

Shiloh’s mom came to pick up the wedding party that consisted of Shiloh, Carolina and Katie. He walked the three chattering women down to the curb in the parking garage where Clare sat idling in her Subaru and he tucked Shiloh into the car after securing her promise that she’d text him as they were pulling back into Vivo later so he could meet them.

The ladies all tittered over how cute it was that he couldn’t stand to be apart from his bride-to-be, and he let them have their fun because it was true. The fact that it was for her own protection was a bonus.

For the first time in a couple of weeks, he didn’t have to shadow his fake fiancée and it left him at loose ends, not to mention way too preoccupied. He was at Shiloh’s door before he realized he didn’t actually have to hang out at her place if he didn’t want to.

As providence would have it, Shiloh’s next-door neighbor—her brother—picked that moment to poke his sandy-blond head out of the door. “Hey. Shiloh just texted me that she’s shopping with Mom, so I thought it would be a good time for us to circle the wagons. Unless you have something else planned?”

“Nah,” Kellan mumbled. “We should talk.”

Maybe he could feel out Ivan, carefully throwing out some tidbits to see how his buddy took to the idea of something the opposite of fake between Shiloh and Kellan.

Ivan widened the door to allow Kellan to enter his condo. “I checked on the police report. Apparently, the creep is a repeat offender. A couple of women have filed restraining orders on him, which is something I’m going to encourage Shiloh to do.”

“That’s a great idea.” One Kellan would have thought of if his head had been screwed on straight. “It doesn’t mean the creep will stay away from her though.”

That didn’t seem like the kind of news that would allow for his stint as her protector to end. He could still torture himself some more. Yay.

“No. But it does mean that if he makes a move, he’ll be locked up. So that’s a positive.” Ivan crossed his arms and leaned a hip on the countertop in his kitchen. “How are things going with the fake engagement? I hate that Shiloh is perpetuating this thing with Mom. I had no idea she was going to do that.”

“It’s cool.” It wasn’t, but he at least understood her reasons for doing it. “It makes Shiloh happy and that’s all that matters.”

All at once, Ivan’s gaze got a whole lot narrower as he contemplated Kellan with way too much scrutiny. “When did you start caring about what makes Shiloh happy?”

Kellan lifted a shoulder. “You know. We spend a lot of time together. She tells me things. Am I supposed to make sure she’s unhappy?”

“She got to you, didn’t she?” Ivan shook his head in disgust. “I should have known she’d dig in, even though this whole thing wasn’t supposed to be real. I’m sorry.”

“Uh, for what?” This conversation was quickly going off the rails. “Shiloh and I are friends. That’s okay, right?”

It wasn’t the segue he’d have preferred, but Ivan had him off-kilter all of a sudden.

Ivan just snorted. “Is that what she’s calling it these days? I’m telling you man, she’s going to mess you up if you fall for her. Don’t do it. Back slowly away and thank me for it later.”

“What are you even talking about? Are you warning me away from her to protect me from getting hurt?” This conversation was making his head spin.

“You know why she’s so clingy, right? She does it on purpose. It’s her safety net. She knows the harder she pushes, the faster the guy is going to bail, and that’s what she wants.”

“Why would that be what she wants?”

“After Dad died, she never really got over the idea that she’d end up a widow like Mom. So, she developed a foolproof way to ensure that would never happen, by sabotaging all of her relationships. Works like a charm.”

The rushing sound in Kellan’s ears threatened to deafen him. Ivan hadn’t been warning him away from his sister because he was worried about Shiloh. He’d been trying to save Kellan from getting his heart broken.