Chapter 5

Self-defense lessons were Kellan’s wheelhouse. He’d taught hundreds of women how to hold their keys between their fingers and make a fist so they could jab the points at anyone trying to attack them. How knees were the most vulnerable spots on an assailant’s body. Easy stuff.

None of those women were Shiloh Anderson. His newly acquired fake fiancée.

Kellan cleared his throat and shifted his focus from her to the others who had joined them on the green patch of grass in the residents’ courtyard of Vivo. Carolina Kline, the coolest blonde he’d ever met, stood at one end of the row and Eliza Moore, one half of the dynamic duo who ran the spa called Relâcher, on the other.

He was trying not to stare at Shiloh, who was sandwiched between them. Hard when she’d swept up her dark blonde hair into a ponytail that showed off her neck. He liked looking at her. Always had.

“So,” he said and pretended like it had come out with something approaching authority. “Remember that prevention is the best self-defense. Don’t go places by yourself at night. Don’t park in a parking garage unless you have a clear line of sight to the elevator or stairway.”

“That’s crap,” Carolina informed him with a cocked brow. “Just because we’re women we can’t park the same places men do? I categorically reject that.”

Definitely not the first time he’d heard that. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. I’m not saying it’s fair. But I am saying it’s like being mad that I can’t get pregnant. Some things are just facts of life and we have to learn to deal with reality.”

“Ha. You can have all my babies for me,” Carolina said with an amused smile, which he unashamedly took as a checkmark next to his name in the pro column. “And I’ll park wherever I please while carrying a can of pepper spray.”

She was a tough nut to crack, one he’d spent zero time getting to know, but she and Ivan’s girlfriend were tight, so more often than not, they all ended up together in a booth at Paulo’s eating a large pizza together. So, he was aware that she hosted a very popular YouTube relationship show called Ask Carolina and that it was generally best for anyone with guy parts to keep his mouth shut around her.

But he couldn’t zip his lips when he was the one in charge of the class. Not for the first time, he questioned his sanity in suggesting this public self-defense demonstration.

“Pepper spray is an approved defense mechanism,” Kellan explained patiently. “But it can’t get you out of every bad situation. Don’t put yourself at risk in the first place if possible. Stay alert. Then if everything goes south and you’re cornered, here’s a great move.”

He demonstrated a knife-hand strike to the throat, showing the ladies how to keep all their fingers together and hit the carotid artery. With an easygoing smile, he walked behind the three of them, correcting their arm positions as needed. Just like he’d done a million times. With Carolina and Eliza, it was easy. They got it right nearly on the first try.

Shiloh, not so much.

“I’m so bad at this,” she said with a self-conscious laugh. “I just can’t imagine actually striking a real person.”

Not even the creep who’d been hassling her? He and Shiloh had very different ideas about that. “Hence the reason I mentioned all that about prevention.”

She threw him a glance over her shoulder, whipping her ponytail around. “Yeah, I heard you. Isn’t that why we’re engaged now? Because I didn’t learn that lesson fast enough.”

Kellan eyed Carolina and Eliza but they didn’t seem overly shocked to hear that bit of news. “I thought we were engaged because we loved each other and wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.”

“Oh, yeah, that too,” Shiloh said sarcastically enough that it actually tugged a laugh out of him. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on keeping up the fake engagement ruse in front of my friends. They know we’re not really going to get married.”

Okay. Great. Now he’d have two different audiences—one for the fake engagement and one where he had to pretend he wasn’t in love with his fake fiancée.

Any more complications to add to the mix, ladies?

“But we do appreciate the sacrifice you’re making for Shiloh.” Carolina chopped at the air and then jerked her head at his fake fiancée. “Like this, honey. Are you even watching the man? Because if you’re not, I’m getting your eyes checked.”

“I’m watching,” Shiloh muttered and shot Kellan a look. “Or I would be, if he was doing anything worth watching.”

“Don’t be shy,” Eliza entreated him gaily when he didn’t move. “Carolina and I were just bemoaning how there’s so little good to watch on TV now that Lilith and Dane’s show has wrapped for the season. This is way better than TV anyway.”

Nice. So he was the entertainment now that Eliza’s business partner wasn’t filming her reality TV show anymore.

If Kellan was the blushing sort, this whole conversation would have put some color in his cheeks. He wasn’t too keen to put himself on display in the first place, but he’d been the one to start this rodeo. He could finish it.

“Knife-hand strike.” He threaded his way through the ladies to stand in front of them so he could repeat the motion, suddenly conscious of the fact that there were all at once quite a few more female eyes on him.

They’d earned the attention of a small crowd, mostly people he knew in passing from living and working in the same building. It was a benefit of belonging to a unique community like Vivo.

At first, he’d only moved here at Ivan’s suggestion. Then he’d started hitting the tiny, non-descript gym that management had thrown together. Plans for improving it began forming in his head immediately, practically writing themselves, and before too long, he’d presented his ideas to Vivo’s owner, who had promptly hired him to manage it. Ivan had been the one to encourage him to counteroffer—to buy the business instead of merely managing it for someone else.

So he’d done basically the same thing as Shiloh. Toured an empty facility, worked through the math, and with a lot of pushing from Ivan along with a loan, opened his own gym. He’d used some of Vivo’s existing equipment, which the owner had sold to him, and a lot of blood, sweat and tears.

This was his place. The first one he’d ever belonged to because of his own efforts. He refused to do a single thing to lose it, like take even a tiny step toward Shiloh. If Ivan could be believed, she’d do her level best to latch on to Kellan like a barnacle.

The part he was struggling with was why that was a bad thing.

And why Ivan would warn him away.

Obviously, it was a reverse psychology trick designed to keep Kellan from wanting to take a shot at his sister. Ivan didn’t think Kellan deserved to be with his sister either. But it didn’t matter. Kellan knew that forbidden always coated something with an irresistible shell. And he’d been ignoring the temptation for long enough that this fake engagement should be a snap.

Shiloh tried again, bending her elbow as she swung her arm in a slicing motion. “Why doesn’t mine look like yours?”

“Because you’re not straightening your arm,” he said and moved around behind her so that he could grasp her wrist to help her see the difference.

Big mistake. Huge. She smelled like strawberry shampoo, and she was close enough that he could easily wrap her up in his embrace, the way he would if she’d been say, cooking in the kitchen. The tang of whatever she’d been cooking would have teased him into the room and then the sight of her with her hair up in a ponytail as she stirred a pot would be too much for him to resist. So he’d lean her into his body as he nestled her backward for the best sort of impromptu reminder of how good it felt to connect with the person you were in love with.

That was the fundamental problem with Ivan’s pep talk about how Shiloh rushed into relationships. His buddy had no clue that Kellan craved a simple domestic scene like the one he’d just envisioned.

One he couldn’t have. Didn’t deserve, obviously.

Everything he’d ever tried to hang on to had been stripped away. Even the family he’d found to be a part of had lost its patriarch not long after Kellan had started hanging around Ivan’s house. When Ivan’s dad had died, it had devastated Kellan too.

So there was little danger of him attempting to create his own family. No matter how much he wanted one. Fate would have delivered such a thing if that was really in his cards.

While it wasn’t easy to stop himself from tugging Shiloh backward into his embrace, despite her proximity, there wasn’t a good excuse for it like there had been the other day when the creep had needed a visual aid of how together he and Shiloh were.

He released her wrist and told her to try again, which she did with much the same results. “Wow, you are really bad at this.”

She laughed, a silvery sound that waterfalled over him, spilling into all the parts that had just gotten primed for a much more hands-on experience. “Thanks, you do know how to turn a girl’s head.”

He’d managed to forget how much he liked Shiloh’s charm and sense of humor. Yeah, it was a very good thing they were in public.

He could tell himself that it was easy to live with his unrequited feelings—and it was as long as he didn’t have the temptation thrown down in his path on a minute-by-minute basis.

“Maybe you need some one-on-one lessons,” Carolina suggested drily, her gaze full of mischief. “Where you can focus on the techniques without an audience. Get some personal attention.”

Oh sure, that sounded like exactly what needed to happen. Kellan could envision that scenario perfectly, like what he might do if he had Shiloh’s exposed throat right there in front of him as he ran his fingers down her outstretched arm to correct her position. His lips would find the hollow of her ear, that’s what. And it would be a forgone conclusion that he’d trail them down the column of her neck to explore the part she’d left bare when she’d swept her hair up in that ponytail.

“That would be amazing,” Shiloh agreed enthusiastically, and it literally took a full thirty seconds before Kellan registered that she’d been talking to Carolina and not putting a stamp of approval on his imaginary additions to the private lessons.

This fake engagement was not going to be a snap.

“Sure, whenever you want,” he said faintly because how was he supposed to say no?

Eliza glanced at her phone and squealed. “I have to go. I have an appointment to do Mrs. Horowitz’s hair in fifteen minutes. Why does time always go so much faster than you want it to?”

“Go stand in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles,” Shiloh said with another silvery laugh. “That’ll slow it down to a crawl.”

“I have a video to edit,” Carolina added as she redid her ponytail to recapture some escaped chunks of hair. “Thanks, Walker. This was illuminating.”

Shiloh waved at her friends as they took off, taking the small crowd with them as they apparently realized the show was over. Which left him alone with his fake fiancée. Exactly the thing he wanted.

Did not want. Did not want. The more he repeated it, the truer it became, right?

“Your technique isn’t really all that bad,” he told her earnestly. “I’ll give you a few more pointers and it’ll be fine.”

She shrugged. “I figure I’ll just drag you around everywhere I go, and then it doesn’t matter whether I keep my elbow straight or not.”

“That’ll work too,” he responded gruffly. “It’s in the job description.”

“I was kidding.” She elbowed him in the ribs good naturedly. “Wasn’t that the whole point of the self-defense lessons? I can’t depend on you to always be around. I mean, are you going to follow me into the shower?”

Do not go there. His eyelids slammed closed in a half-hearted attempt to ward off the sudden image of that scenario.

Too late.

“I’m not going to follow you into the shower. But I will always be right outside between you and the outside world.”

Curiously, she blinked up at him, her eyes that foamy green that he could never quite forget. “You don’t think that creepy guy will forget about me after a few days of this? He’s got to find better things to do eventually, right?”

Well, logic would dictate that, but Kellan had never been able to give up his obsession with her. Why assume anyone else would? She had this energy about her that his soul just absorbed without any effort on his part. Everything inside seemed brighter when she was around. And when she left, a small bit of that stayed behind, glowing from some secret place that no one else had ever touched.

Which would sound really stupid out loud, so he made it a point to never talk about the way she made him feel. To anyone.

“This could drag on for weeks,” he said instead. “It all depends on how seriously the police take it. I’ve seen cases where they file a report and provide absolutely zero protection for the victim. We’re not taking chances here.”

“I don’t get you, Kellan Walker.”

She was eyeing him so intensely the back of his neck actually got hot. “What’s there to get?”

“You and I have known each other for ages, yet I moved to this building several weeks ago and we’ve never so much as waved at each other. Then bam. Within forty-eight hours, we’re pretending to be engaged, and you’re moving into my condo. This goes way beyond a favor. What are you really getting out of this? Is Ivan paying you?”

“What? No.” Dang it, he should have said yes. Now what was he supposed to say to weasel out of the pointed question? “Ivan is my family. There is literally nothing I wouldn’t do for him. When he mentioned you were being hassled, there really wasn’t much of a decision process.”

“But you just jumped right in without argument? Why not suggest Ivan move in? No one would raise an eyebrow at my brother sleeping on my couch.”

Well, that was a very good point, and one he’d failed to consider in the grand scheme of things. “Have you looked at Ivan lately? He’s a great guy, but he’s not going to scare anyone away with his skinny arms.”

That put a grin on Shiloh’s face that he enjoyed far too much. “You are not wrong. He should have been down here learning some self-defense moves.”

“Besides, he works ninety hours a week.” Kellan shrugged. He and Ivan had already hashed this out. “I’ve already gone a round with lover boy. Not to mention the fact that it would be weird to spend twenty-four seven with your brother. No one will blink an eye if they see us together all the time.”

“That is true.” She sighed. “Ivan is a great guy but he’s definitely not someone I can be around too much, you know? If you look up overprotective in the dictionary, that’s where you find his picture.”

“He just cares about you,” he corrected automatically. Ivan’s motivation for his attitude toward his sister had never been anything but crystal clear to Kellan. “He promised your dad he’d fill the gap.”

“I know, I know.” Shiloh reached out and her fingers found a hollow at his inner elbow that he’d never realized needed her warmth. “What I’m trying to say—badly—is thank you. You and Ivan have a unique bond, the kind that most people will never get to experience in this life. It’s a bit humbling to be on the receiving end.”

Perfect. He’d totally sold it. And just like always, any chance he might have had to take a step closer to Shiloh fell apart. She was like a river that constantly rushed away from him and the longer he stood at her shore and tried to scoop up the water with his bare hands, the more she slipped through his fingers.