He had his own fight coming up. Working with her was taking time from that. And no doubt he thought the effort was a complete waste of time. “You know, if you need to go work out or spar or something, I can train for a while on my own . . .” Her heart still pounded whenever she thought about having to spend the day under his intense, watchful, unreadable gaze anyway.

He shook his head, turning his attention back to her. “You have been training, but it’s not working. What kind of meal plan did Dane give you?”

She frowned. “Meal plan?”

“Right. He didn’t. The guy barely follows one himself,” he mumbled. “Okay, well, that’s where I would have started.”

Which is why she’d wanted him to train her in the first place, she thought, annoyed that they’d wasted precious time already. But she held back the comment.

Huh, all of this new self-discipline and awareness she was supposed to be learning must be paying off.

“Okay, so what should I be eating?” Her diet was restrictive. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d even eaten something that looked vaguely like a carb, and she rarely ate breakfast, preferring coffee in the morning—or dinner, not wanting to eat too late in the day. Consuming the majority of her calories at lunchtime, there was still plenty of daytime to burn them off. Though lately with all the training, she had been starving . . . so maybe a few extra calories a day wouldn’t hurt.

“You need about three thousand calories a day,” Tyson said.

She laughed. “Not on your life. I don’t want to get fat. I just need to look toned.”

He picked up one of her arms, and bent it at the elbow. “There’s nothing to tone. This is skin stretched over bone.”

Did he just shudder? This was the first time any man had had a problem with her thin appearance, and her old body-conscious self-doubt returned. She pulled her arm away and folded them across her chest. “Okay. Three thousand calories. How am I supposed to do that—hamburgers and French fries?” She’d have to eat all day, every day, to consume that much food. He was insane. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure she was in such great, capable hands.

“No.” He checked the time on the wall and looked to be having some sort of internal struggle before saying, “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” she asked as she followed him back downstairs.

“Grocery shopping.”

Her mouth dropped.

*   *   *

Tyson picked up several cartons of egg whites and placed them into the cart at WinCo Foods a half hour later and then reached for a dozen eggs . . . then another dozen.

“Are you shopping for yourself as well?” Parker stopped him as he tried to put the eggs in the cart.

“No.”

“Well, I’m not a big fan of eggs, they kinda make me gag . . .”

“Get over it,” he said, slapping her hand aside and putting them in. He was taking time out of his training to grocery shop with her? He really must be out of his mind. And he didn’t need her resistance to his help. She was lucky to be getting it. He didn’t exactly include personal shopping on his usual coaching résumé.

He stopped in front of the meat section, and she shook her head, eyes wide. Oh hell no. “If you say you don’t eat meat, I’m done.” How was he supposed to transform this woman’s body if she was opposed to protein?

She placed her hands on her hips and her jaw clenched. “Fine. I guess I can eat cute, cuddly little animals for a few months,” she said tightly, looking disgusted as he placed several packages of skinless, boneless chicken breasts into the cart.

“When was the last time you tried to cuddle a chicken?”

She sighed. “Okay, I get it. But I’m better with fish. Can I eat that?”

Finally. Something out of her mouth that made sense. “Yes.” He led them to the seafood section and selected some salmon and halibut, adding it to the cart, which was filling quickly. He’d wait until they got back to the gym to tell her this was only a week’s worth of food.

“So will I be eating anything other than protein?” she asked as they moved on.

“Yes. But you will need at least two hundred grams of it a day . . . and because your body can only absorb so much at a time, you’ll need to eat about every four and a half hours.”

“Even at night? Cause I try not to eat anything after six.”

Oh for the love of . . . He turned to look at her, stopping the cart in the frozen fruit section. “Look, you need to forget about your own misconceptions about diet, okay? Starving yourself on tofu might have worked for this”—incredibly tempting body—“but if you want to look like a fighter, you need to listen to me.”

Her hopeful expression made him continue quickly.

“Or Dane, once he gets back.” Which couldn’t be soon enough.

She nodded, hopeful expression gone.

“So at night, you’ll have a protein shake. Set your alarm for around two o’clock, get up, drink it, go back to bed.” He tried to make it sound simple, but he knew this wasn’t going to be easy. The exercise was almost the easier part. But the goals were attained through proper nutrition. His father had put him through all of this when he’d started fighting. At six feet and 150 pounds, he’d had a long way to go to get to where he was now. It was tough—but he’d wanted it bad enough and it had paid off.

They would see if Parker wanted it bad enough.

She was nodding. “I can do that.” To her credit, she almost sounded convincing.

“Good. When we get back to the gym, I’ll write up a full menu for you . . .” More time he couldn’t afford out of his day. Opening a cooler, he reached for several bottles of Omega 3 fish oil.

She wrinkled her nose. Taking a bottle from him, she read the label. “Flaxseed oil. What is this for?”

He took it and dropped it into the cart. “An essential fat that your body needs. You’ll drink about half a bottle a day. Add it to your shakes, etc. It helps you burn fat while building muscle and it will add to your daily calorie count.” If she wasn’t used to eating so much food, the oil would at least help her reach the high caloric target he’d set for her.

She studied him. “How do you know so much?” She leaned against the cart handle and the swell of her breasts spilled over the top of her neon pink sports bra beneath her white tank.

He looked away. “It’s my job. It’s my life.”

“Yeah, I noticed that,” she said. “You live above the gym, you train other fighters, and you work out and prepare for your own fights . . . What else do you do?”

What else was there? She’d just described his life for the last twelve years. “That’s all I need.”

“What about a girlfriend?”

“You mean, what about a distraction? A headache? A pain in the ass? Someone to sit around and watch late-night television with while getting fat and lazy?” Nope. Not for him. Regular relationships didn’t work with his lifestyle. He’d seen too many fighters fall into that trap. Eventually, they got married and had kids and fighting wasn’t the most important thing anymore, so they started to lose. Then he’d also watched the same relationships fall apart over time, leaving the former fighters with nothing. He refused to go out that way.

Beside him, Parker was laughing. “No. What I meant was someone you could wrap your arms around, that would hug you back instead of the training dummy you make out with all the time . . . someone you could share a dozen eggs and a protein shake with at the end of the day . . .”

He felt his face curl into a grin.

“Someone to talk to besides that cactus plant in your office that really could use some water, by the way . . .”

Plants couldn’t argue or cause him any grief, he thought with a smile. One of the few living objects in his life these days that didn’t seem to have only one purpose—to piss him off.

“And someone to have mind-blowing sex with every night,” she continued.

His smile vanished as his gaze met hers—the look in them easy to read. He’d had trouble erasing that same look from his mind on the drive home from the club the night before. Well, if she really insisted on playing this game . . . He could give her something to think about as well. He took a step closer. “Who says I’m not already giving mind-blowing sex every night?”