Chapter 7

Kellan waited until Shiloh had shut the door to her bedroom before he levered off the couch to double-check the bolt locking her front door. Shockingly, his legs still worked even though he’d have sworn they’d gone completely numb the second Shiloh had sat down on the next couch cushion over.

Idiot. She was just a woman. Why did he always have such a hormonal-teenage-boy type reaction to her? It was ridiculous. And totally beyond his control, obviously, since no amount of stern talking to himself had changed it.

This was it. Where the rubber met the road. He’d signed up for this gig, now he had to lie in the bed he’d made, namely the couch in Shiloh’s condo. It was on the smaller side, but then he hadn’t been able to stretch out on a couch since eleventh grade and he hadn’t expected that to magically change just because he’d agreed that the best place for him was between Shiloh’s bedroom and everything else in the world.

Altruism had its rewards but a comfortable place to sleep wasn’t it.

Kellen made use of his wide-awake status by ensuring the windows were all shut and latched properly. Odds were good that Shiloh’s creepy friend wouldn’t try that as an entry point, but the dude was in management and might have access to building maintenance equipment that would allow him to reach her condo on the third floor.

The reason he was here instead of in his own condo. Sure, they could have maintained the fake engagement during daylight hours and skipped the nighttime routine, but he’d never be able to sleep in his bed knowing that Shiloh was potentially vulnerable. This way was much better.

He was questioning that hours later when he still hadn’t found a comfortable position on the couch and the ticking clock on Shiloh’s mantle had started to rake across his last nerve. Not just because it emitted this constant tick-tick-tick but as a bonus, it had a faintly illuminated dial so he could watch the time crawl toward midnight.

Finally he got up and bolted toward the fireplace with the intention of grabbing the clock and shoving it under a pillow or something. But the second he picked it up, the illuminated face highlighted the initials carved into the base.

G.A. George Anderson. Ivan and Shiloh’s dad. He rubbed a thumb across the letters, which had been embossed into the wood. Had this been George’s clock, or had Shiloh gotten the initials added as a form of remembrance?

“Is the clock bothering you?”

Shiloh’s voice cut through the darkness. His fingers tightened on the frame, but he wasn’t really in any danger of bobbling it. He’d sensed her the moment she’d swept into the room.

“Maybe a little,” he confessed and debated whether he should turn around. She probably had on a filmy white robe that would add an ethereal quality to her already angelic beauty and that was more than he could bear at this hour. “It ticks pretty loudly.”

“I know. I can hear it in my bedroom, but it’s always been soothing to me. It was my dad’s.”

Her low voice cut through the darkness and it occurred to him that he wouldn’t be able to see her anyway if he turned around. There was some safety in the darkness.

“I saw his initials. I don’t remember this from your house though.” What, like he was the authority on what may or may not have belonged to George, a man he’d only known for a year before he’d died? “I mean, I spent a lot of time there and I just would have noticed something like this.”

The molecules around him heated as Shiloh came up behind him, obviously not at all bothered by the darkness and the implied intimacy of being alone with a man in it while she wore nothing but a nightgown. That was the problem with the dark. He could let his imagination run wild, and there wasn’t any way of reining it in since he couldn’t precisely tell what she’d put on to sleep in.

“He kept it in his bedroom. I can bury it in my closet.” She held out a hand to take the clock, accidentally brushing her fingers across his.

That was when he made the mistake of looking at her, and it turned out there was enough light to register that she had swept her hair up into a ponytail, which had become his favorite look on her very fast. And she was wearing a long shirt plus a pair of pants. So there was that.

It didn’t fix anything to find out that she slept in boxy pajamas. Were they whimsical with fluffy sheep printed on the fabric? Silky satin that would allow his fingers to glide around her waist as he pulled her closer?

He let the clock go and cleared his throat as she vanished to get rid of the offending timepiece. Which, of course, made him feel awful. When she came right back—probably to keep him company since she’d clearly realized he wasn’t tucked into his makeshift bed—the light from her bedroom answered his questions of a moment ago.

The shapeless flannel top and pants she wore matched, both enormous on her and ratty besides. The fabric had been washed so many times it had started to turn gray and the original print had faded to the point where it was unrecognizable.

“Sorry if I woke you with my prowling around,” he muttered as she rejoined him by the fireplace.

“You didn’t. I wasn’t sleeping.”

Because she had the same heightened awareness of him that he had of her? Unlikely. “Want me to sing you a lullaby?”

Her soft laugh tumbled across his skin, raising goosebumps that shouldn’t feel so good.

“I should be volunteering to do that for you. You’re the one being made uncomfortable. You should have brought more with you from your place that would help you settle.”

There wasn’t a thing in this world that could do that. Not when Shiloh graced the planet. “I’m good. A pillow is all I need.”

“Forgive me for pointing out the obvious,” she said wryly. “But obviously you’re not good or you’d be asleep. What kinds of things do you have at your house that make it a home?”

Nothing. That was what made it easy to pick up and go. Old habit. One he should have axed since he’d hoped that wouldn’t be his fate this time. But since she’d asked and was standing there like she expected an answer, he gave her one. “I have shells. From Galveston.”

“Really?” He heard the smile in her voice. “I do too. From Stewart Beach.”

“My aunt dragged me down there for a little while.” That was more than he usually volunteered because his childhood wasn’t like most people’s. But Shiloh likely already knew that from Ivan. “We lived in an RV at the state park near Jamaica Beach.”

“And you saved the shells as a memento?” she guessed.

He opened his mouth to correct her because there was nothing about his childhood that required props to ensure he recalled exactly how much he’d hated it. But she’d removed a ticking clock from her mantle that had belonged to her father and they were talking about shells that he’d hung onto into adulthood and it seemed like the least he could do was be honest.

“My shells are the kind that crabs live in,” he blurted out, and then he had to keep going or else that statement made no sense. “You know, with the long opening in the side? Crabs don’t stay in the same one their whole life. They move from shell to shell and have to adapt each time. Maybe it’s a smaller shell than the last one. Maybe it’s a different color than they’re used to. But they make it their own each time.”

Out loud, the metaphor for his own nomadic life sounded stupid. This was why he didn’t chatter on about himself. There wasn’t much to say in the first place and when he did try to share, it came across as needy and pathetic. Who cared that he’d had to constantly reinvent his home? It wasn’t that big of a deal. Everyone had challenges.

“That’s beautiful, Kellan,” she murmured because of course she’d read something poetic into it. “My shells are ugly. Brownish and chipped. But they’re from the last vacation we took together as a family. All of us, including my dad. Before he got sick. I tried to save something from everything we did together.”

“Yeah,” he said gruffly as emotion tightened his throat. Maybe some poetry was allowed when you were talking about life changing events. “I get that. You have a reason to be sentimental about things like shells and clocks.”

“Maybe. Sometimes I think I hang on to things because I’m afraid of losing them, of losing that feeling of being in the moment that the memento represents. Why did you keep the shells?”

As a reminder that the next move was always right around the corner. But not this time. He wasn’t going to mess up and lose his place here. That had always been how it happened for his aunt. She’d lose a job, or whatever man she was currently seeing would dump her. The second she’d come home with that look on her face, Kellan would know. It was time to move on. Again.

He didn’t remember his own parents. They’d died when he was a baby. Car crash. His father had been drunk, according to the police report he’d eventually looked up online since his aunt wouldn’t give him any details. The wreck had killed both his parents instantly and forced his aunt to take responsibility for Kellan, which she hadn’t been too thrilled about. A fact she’d mentioned multiple times.

So he’d learned to take care of himself from an early age. Rules weren’t heavily enforced in their household, and Ivan had saved him from falling in with a dark crowd. That’s where Kellan had learned the difference between blood relations and family. The Andersons were good people and had taught him what was missing from his own life, what he wanted. So he hung on with both hands.

Maybe it was okay to be a little sentimental about his own mementos.

“My dad thought the world of you,” she said after a long enough pause to clue him in that she’d been caught up in the emotion of the moment too.

“He did?”

“Sure. You were so fiercely loyal to Ivan, even back then. Everyone could see that. He was happy that Ivan would have someone like you in his corner after he was gone.”

That planted a great big ball of warmth in Kellan’s chest, and no amount of blinking could clear the moisture that clung to his lashes. “I liked your dad a lot too.”

“I miss him,” she confessed with such broken honesty that he couldn’t stand it.

He pulled her into his arms. This was one time he wouldn’t apologize for ignoring the rules. She needed something from him, and there was no force in existence that would keep him from giving it to her.

But then she melted into his embrace with a soft little sigh as if she’d found a combination of nirvana, a warm bath, and a puppy all rolled up into one. That unique strawberry Shiloh-y scent that laced his dreams occasionally—often—engulfed his senses, and that was it. He was officially in trouble.

Maybe he always had been but it was so much easier to pretend when he wasn’t holding Shiloh as if he had every right to and this was his life.

“Sorry,” he mumbled and stepped back before he lost his mind. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Yes, Kellan, you absolutely should have,” she shot back immediately and he wished for once he could see her face. But it was too dark to search her expression for a clue as to why she sounded a little mad. At him.

“We’re not… I mean, our engagement is fake.”

“But our friendship isn’t.” It wasn’t so dark that he couldn’t tell she’d slammed her hands down on her hips. “In my world, friends hug each other. All the time. Especially when one of them is crying.”

Yeah, well in his world, hugging his best friend’s little sister while impure thoughts rolled through his head got him a one-way ticket to another city where he wouldn’t have to face Ivan’s wrath.

At this point, he might yell at himself for the things he’d been thinking. Except all of that had been suddenly crowded out by how amazing it would be if he got to hug Shiloh like that on a regular basis for no reason at all other than because they were in this together. Because they had each other’s backs. Because they were in love with each other.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered again and scrubbed at his face. It didn’t help. Nothing made any of his secret longings go away. “I’m not very good at this.”

She inclined her head with more grace than he deserved. “Most men aren’t. It’s hard to admit when you’re vulnerable and even harder to take comfort when offered.”

“I think I was comforting you,” he corrected her wryly.

“It was mutual, Kellan. You needed that hug as much as I did.”

The sentiment hung in the air between them, not fading, not becoming less true. He had needed her warmth, her crazy-good brand of sweetness and light. She represented everything about this world that was worth fighting for, worth protecting. If only he deserved a bit of that for himself…

But he didn’t. At best, he was a hired hand, her bodyguard, the one thing between her and evil and he’d never betray the trust her brother had put in him. The fact that she seemed hypersensitive to what was going on under his skin didn’t matter. Maybe she’d clued in on some nuances that he hadn’t had quite as tight a rein on as he’d have liked. But that didn’t mean anything. He had to try harder to remember his place.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s late and we’re both tired, that’s all. I’ll leave you in peace and stop dredging up things you’d rather not dwell on.”

And he let her go without correcting her assumption that he’d meant he wasn’t very good with a crying woman or emotional subjects that left him feeling raw and defenseless.

What he’d really meant was that he wasn’t good at faking any of this.