Chapter Ten
Kayne knew the day was going to be a disaster the moment Danica Giordano arrived at Chloe’s gym in full hurricane form.
She flung open the office door as if she expected confetti to rain from the ceiling. “Chlo-ee!” she whined. “Tell me you’re not serious about the new manager.”
Kayne had been leaning against the counter, scrolling through messages on his phone.
He’d asked Tyler to pursue the text sent to Chloe last night, but, shocker, it was untraceable.
He caught the way Chloe’s shoulders stiffened before she turned, the reflex of a woman bracing for impact.
Then she faced her sister with the polite smile of someone trying very hard not to commit a misdemeanor before lunch.
“Morning, Danica.”
Danica stomped inside on heels that could double as medieval torture devices. “You hired Robin? Robin with the box dye and unfortunate eyebrows? Seriously? I would’ve done it. I told you that.”
“You hate gyms,” Chloe reminded her.
“I don’t hate gyms. I hate sweating. There’s an enormous difference.”
Kayne took a slow sip of his water, silently filing that away under Things That Explain Danica.
Only then did Danica notice him. Her face lit up, body language flipping from tantrum to flirt in a single blink. “Oh! You’re here again. Hi, Kayne.”
He gave her the polite nod he reserved for rattlesnakes and malfunctioning machinery. “Ma’am.”
Her smile twitched. His work here was done.
Chloe stepped in before her sister could escalate into full performance art. “Danica, I have a shipment coming in any minute. Can we talk later?”
“Ugh. Fine.” Danica spun toward the door, hair swishing with enough velocity to stir air traffic. “But you owe me brunch.”
She left in a cloud of perfume and emotional chaos.
The door clicked shut.
Chloe slumped against the desk. “She’s exhausting.”
Kayne arched a brow. “I’m guessing this is the toned-down version?”
“That was one of her better moods,” Chloe admitted, rubbing her forehead. “Usually there’s crying involved. Or accusations. Or both.”
He wanted to tell Chloe she didn’t owe her sister this level of patience, but he already knew why she did it. Chloe loved people who didn’t deserve it.
And some stupid, bruised part of Kayne loved that about her too.
He opened his mouth to say something actually supportive for once, but his phone buzzed with Tyler’s ringtone.
He glanced down, and every hair on his arms stood up.
Violation alert: Talbot, Frasier; GPS ankle monitor tampered — signal lost; Time: 6:17 a.m. yesterday. No hits on his credit card, and no listing on plane, bus, or train manifests.
Kayne’s stomach dropped. He excused himself to make a few calls. When he disconnected, he turned to Chloe. She was watching him now, reading his face the way she’d already learned to do when something mattered. Her own expression tensed cautiously.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
He didn’t sugarcoat it. “Frasier Talbot took off his GPS yesterday morning. The parole office confirmed he’s missing.”
She blinked once. Twice. “Oh.”
That was it. Oh.
His blood pressure spiked. “Chloe, that man threatened you. He stalked you. Tried to grab you.”
“Correlation isn’t causation,” she said softly.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Correlation is absolutely causation in this case.”
“That’s not how data works.”
“Cher,” he said, exasperation bleeding through, “I am begging you not to bring data into this.”
She folded her arms, adopting a quiet, defiant posture. The one that made something in his chest ache. “It’s probably nothing. Maybe it malfunctioned. Or fell off.”
“Devices don’t just fall off,” he snapped.
The second the words left his mouth, he regretted the callousness.
Chloe flinched slightly, but visibly. Then she straightened again, jaw firm.
There it was. The courage he kept seeing in her.
It wasn’t the loud kind. It grew out of a hundred tiny heartbreaks and still refused to quit.
She was braver than she should ever have had to be.
“I can’t panic every time something happens,” she said. “If I do, then he already wins.”
Kayne stared at her, throat tight around a dozen things he wanted to say, all of them dangerous in their own way. “You’re allowed to be scared,” he murmured.
She shook her head. “If I let myself be scared every time a pin drops, I’ll stop functioning.”
He set his water bottle aside and stepped closer, his voice dropping low. “Chloe, somebody tried to hit you with a damn car twice yesterday. Now Talbot’s out pretending he’s Houdini. That’s not coincidence.”
Her eyes softened with understanding. Somehow, that was worse.
“So,” she said with a brittle smile, “what do we do?”
Kayne exhaled slowly. “We tighten security. We don’t take risks. And you don’t go anywhere alone. Not negotiable.”
Her lips twitched as if she wanted to fight him but was too tired to win. “Okay.”
He should’ve been relieved she agreed, but he wasn’t. Because she didn’t look scared. She looked resigned. Something dark and ugly burned through him at the sight.
Kayne wanted to put his fist through a wall. Or find Talbot and introduce his face to one.
Instead, he reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“You’re safe,” he told her. “Whether you believe it yet or not.”
She swallowed, breath shaking just a little. “Kayne . . .”
He stepped back before he did something monumentally stupid, like pull her in and promise things he had no business promising.
“Let’s go,” he said roughly. “We’ve got work to do.”
#
Kayne had done protective details for celebrities, politicians, undercover assets, and once, a blowhard billionaire who’d insisted someone was trying to poison his green juice.
He’d never tailed anyone like Chloe Giordano.
Because Chloe didn’t walk. She floated. Drifted. She got distracted by plants, puppies, and construction workers who somehow forgot she was the CEO of a small empire and treated her as if she was their friendly neighborhood fitness fairy.
She also had a bad habit of wandering off the second he blinked. Which was exactly why his jaw was clenched so tight he was one molar away from a dental emergency.
They were in her gym’s loading area, checking a new shipment of equipment. Kayne hovered two feet behind her, scanning the space, every nerve humming as if a live wire had been plugged directly into his spine.
Chloe signed a delivery form, thanked the driver with an earnest smile, and started toward the back door. Then, of course, she veered left toward the side lot out of his line of sight. Long enough for his pulse to spike into the this is how operatives develop ulcers zone.
“Chloe!”
It came out harsher than he meant. Harsher than a man faking a relationship with a woman he was absolutely not supposed to be falling for.
She froze mid-step, ponytail swinging, eyes wide. “What?”
He closed the distance in three strides. “You don’t go out of sight. Not today. Not with Talbot out and whoever’s driving that damn car playing demolition derby with your life.”
Her lips parted, shocked.
Then he saw it, a flicker of hurt, quick as a shutter click, before she smoothed it away. “Kayne, I wasn’t going anywhere. I was checking the recycling bin. The truck comes tomorrow.”
“I don’t care if you were checking your horoscope,” he shot back, breath choppy. “You don’t disappear on me.”
A long, tense silence stretched between them, thick enough to lean on.
Chloe folded her arms with a quiet, steady resilience that punched the air out of his lungs.
“I’m trying,” she whispered. “I really am. But you’re acting like every move I make is a mistake.”
He scrubbed a hand down his face. Damn it. He hadn’t meant to scare her. But fear and love shared too many of the same hallways in his heart, and Chloe had a talent for wandering down both.
“That’s not what I think,” he said, voice lower. “I know you’re capable. Hell, that’s half the problem.”
Her brows pulled together. “How is capability a problem?”
“Because you think being strong means being alone.” The truth slid out before he could stop it. “And I’m not letting you do that.”
The next breath she took trembled.
And Kayne felt the exact moment she stopped pretending everything was normal.
Not because she was afraid. Because she realized he was.
Her breath hitched barely, but he felt it like a tremor through the ground beneath his boots.
“Kayne,” she murmured, “come here.”
He stiffened. “Cher, we’re in the middle of a parking lot.”
“Come here.”
He stepped toward her before his brain caught up, stopping only when she placed a hand over his chest. Her touch seeped through cotton and bone and into the parts of him he’d duct-taped shut years ago.
“You’re scared for me,” she said. “Not because you think I can’t handle myself. But because you’re used to handling everything alone.”
He swallowed hard enough to qualify as exercise.
“And?” he deflected, because emotional honesty was clearly trying to kill him.
Her thumb brushed his shirt, light, sure.
“And you don’t have to.”
The heat that surged through him was absolutely not appropriate for a parking lot they were very much not supposed to be making out in.
He stepped back before instinct took over and he kissed her in broad daylight. Although they were supposed to be dating . . .
“Let’s go inside,” he said, forcing air into his lungs. “Too exposed out here.”
Chloe nodded, but her eyes didn’t leave his, not right away. There was something in them. Something innocent and brave and terrifying as hell.
When she finally turned toward the gym, Kayne fell in at her flank, scanning every shadow and possible threat.
But his mind replayed the feel of her hand on him, and the words he didn’t deserve, but she’d given anyway: You don’t have to handle it alone.
Kayne wasn’t sure what scared him more—the danger circling closer, or the breathtaking speed at which he was falling for the woman he was supposed to protect.