I followed Naomi out of the study. Damn it, she looked adorable, walking away from me with her shoulders squared, mad as ever even though she'd been quaking with pleasure in my arms five minutes ago.

"Joe!" she called happily, darting forward.

Joe leaned down to hug her. Naomi looked petite next to him, dwarfed by his lean height, although I noticed that he held his damaged right leg behind him protectively.

"I heard y'all were desperately in need of a body guard," Joe told us as he squeezed Naomi tight. "Even an old one."

"I think this boy is in desperate need of a body guard," Naomi said, jerking a thumb at me over her shoulder. "Delaneys seem to have enemies everywhere. Maybe including me. I haven't decided yet."

"Naomi," I chided, but I could never finish what I'd been trying to say in the study with an audience. Joe might not care -- Joe always kept the family secrets -- but I couldn't say anything in front of Liam. They were taking note, I was sure, of Naomi's messy dark hair sliding out of her ponytail, her flushed cheeks.

I felt a wave of anger. What had happened between Naomi and me, what I wanted to happen again, was private. I hadn't had the chance to tug Naomi's hair and untucked top back into respectability. She'd flown out of the room at Liam's knock. It had seemed as if she wanted to escape me.

Joe grinned. "Yeah, yeah, since you guys were kids. Love and hate." He ruffled Naomi's hair as if she were still a kid.

She rolled her eyes, grinning. I felt a flare of odd jealousy. Naomi seemed so at ease with people like Joe who had been in her life since she was a child. Just not with me. Everything between us seemed to grind awkwardly.

Except for the sex, of course.

“We should go through everything like we said,” Liam said impatiently. “Rob, you’ve got to let Naomi go. She has a life of her own.”

Naomi gave Liam a look that I couldn’t quite decipher. Then she said, "Joe, you’ll keep Rob safe, okay?"

"I don't want you to go." I heard the authoritative note in my voice, the words an order, and I winced internally. That was the wrong note to take.

"Okay," Naomi said, nodding. “The thing is, I could go hang out with my parents. Get my work done. I wouldn’t be alone.”

She turned and walked out of the kitchen.

I shot Liam a dark look

"What did I do?" Liam demanded.

"Don't even," I said. I strode after Naomi, whose steps squeaked faster across the marble, as if she were racing for the door. "Naomi, stop!"

She spun on her heels. "No, Rob. No. You don't get to talk to me like that."

"I'm not trying to talk to you like that," I said. "But I know you aren't stupid. Going out there alone is stupid."

"I'll be with people."

"Great, then maybe you’ll put your family in danger. This isn't a joke."

She hesitated, and I felt guilty for scaring her all over again, as much as I needed her to listen to me. I rested my hands on her slender shoulders.

"Hey," I said, softly, trying to ignore the spectators. "You want me to say I'm sorry, I used the wrong tone? Sure. I'm sorry. But don't be stupid to get back at me."

Naomi glanced away from me, and I thought for a second that she was looking at the stairs, and I was about to turn to see who was there. Then I realized she was blinking away tears. Oh my god. Now I was making her cry. How was I making her cry?

"Rob is right," Joe said, stepping forward.

"You'll pay me to sit around your house and watch movies?" Naomi’s lips flickered as if she were trying to smile through her tears.

"Maybe you can vacuum," I said, "If you really feel the need."

Her lips quirked up slightly, half-heartedly, but it was something.

"I'll go look for some takeout menus," I said. “We could order in lunch. I have to have a planning meeting with the guys, though.”

“But not with me.”

Liam rolled his eyes. “Oh, let it go, Naomi.”

“Don’t be a jackass!” I told my brother. I thought of Mitch, warning us to always stick together, never to let anyone see the cracks between the Delaney brothers.

But Naomi looked at Liam coolly and didn’t answer. “I could go for calzones.”

“Great,” I said. “Thank you.”

Liam and Naomi walked away from each other as soon as I turned away. Liam strode quickly up the stairs to finish his search of the master bedroom. Naomi headed for the library.

It had to be transparent – me worrying about take-out when really, all I wanted to do was find and kill the men who were a danger to his family -- and Joe took it the way I meant it, following me into the kitchen.

"She drives me crazy," I mused out loud to no one, leaning back against the kitchen counter.

"That's not the problem," Joe said.

"The sooner we find out what was going on with Dad, the sooner we can make sure the girls are safe. That we're all safe." I looked at Joe. "Is there anything you know about the trouble my dad got into? Anything you can tell me?"

Joe shook his head. "I overheard a lot, the nature of my business, and there were certainly deals made. Enemies made. I can work on a list."

I took a seat at the breakfast bar. "All right. Why did Dad have a bodyguard? That's not typical, right?"

"Mitch was never typical. He made a lot of enemies. Fast, once he turned to politics." Joe shook his head, his dark brown eyes sympathetic. "I know it was hard on you guys, what happened when you were teens. When everyone turned on him. But your dad did a lot of good, too. He was fearless."

"Fearless about where he put his dick," I said.

"Rob," Joe said. "I could hate your dad for how it all ended. But I don't know. I saw him do a lot of good. He wanted to stop big banking from hurting the little guys, that was why he left investment banking in the first place."

"After he made his millions."

"He introduced legislation that kept Americans in their homes." Joe nodded towards the door. "You know that he helped Naomi's parents keep their house? When her dad took that fall off a ladder, put him out of commission for six months? It wasn't abstract for your dad, even if he tried to work on the big picture. It was little things, too, like paying their mortgage for that year until they got on top of things."

I didn't want to think about Mitch as a complicated person. I'd felt so much pride in my dad as a kid. I'd brought him in for show-and-tell in kindergarten. I had been proud of the tall guy who sat on the floor, criss-cross-applesauce despite his expensive three-piece suit, and charmed my schoolmates. Sometimes it was hard to reconcile that guy with the one who had all the mistresses, who said awful things to his sons sometimes.

"Dad also used to say," I said, "The rich don't get rich because they're known for their generosity. So what am I supposed to make of that?"

Joe was looking at me hard, though, and he wasn't so easily sidetracked.

"I'm going to go to his house." I said abruptly, changing the subject. "See what I can find."

"The police aren't going to let you in there." Joe said.

"I know," I said. "Luckily I have my own little lock-picker."

Joe said, "If you don't want to forgive your father, that's fine. But you're going to have to try to make sense of him and what he did if you want to protect that girl."