Joe went straight back to the office, doing his damnedest to set aside his personal emotions. There was a job to do, and the job always came first. But his chest ached like a son of a bitch with something he wasn’t used to feeling—fear.

Fear of losing her.

But he’d made his bed so he texted Archer because it was time for reinforcements. Archer agreed and luckily the team didn’t blink about coming in at three a.m.

As they did for every job, they gathered intel and went through it with a fine-tooth comb. Joe had already done most of the legwork, with the exception of looking into Kylie’s mom’s boyfriends.

And that’s where they hit pay dirt.

Or more correctly, Lucas did. He pushed his iPad to the center of the table in the conference room so everyone could see it.

Joe stared at the intel in disbelief. Kevin was indeed an art buyer now, but there were some ugly things deep in his past. The guy had been arrested on suspicion of arson.

Twice.

And both times had gotten off.

“Coincidence?” Lucas asked.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Archer said.

Neither did Joe. He wanted to go into the marina hot and drag that ass-munch right to jail, and he wanted that like yesterday. But he no longer ran on sheer emotion, balls, and lack of common sense. Patience had been drilled into him, along with the ability to make and execute a plan under any circumstances.

“Best to go in at dawn,” Archer suggested. “In that area, if we go in now, any lights we use will be reflected off the water and too easily seen.” He looked at Joe. “What time will Kylie be here?”

Joe hesitated and Archer went brows up. “You’re leaving her out of this?”

“Yes.”

“Your funeral,” Archer said with a shrug. “Let’s catch that asshole with enough evidence so she can be done with this.”

By that time it was four a.m. Everyone agreed to meet back in one hour and they all scattered, either to find food or catch a catnap.

Except Lucas. He stayed in the conference room, waiting until he and Joe were alone.

“What else is going on?” he asked quietly. “You’re off.”

“I’m fine.”

“You get in a fight with Kylie?”

Joe gave him a back the fuck off look, which Lucas ignored. “How did you screw it up?”

“Why would you assume I screwed it up?”

“Because you’re a moron when it comes to keeping a good woman,” Lucas said.

Hard to be insulted at the truth. “It’ll be fine.”

“Yeah?” Lucas asked skeptically. “What’s the last thing she said to you?”

“Why?”

“Did she smile at you? Touch you? Kiss you goodbye?”

“Actually,” Joe said, “she laughed at me.”

“Hell, dude. When a female laughs at you during an argument, she’s turned the corner from pissed to psycho and she’s about to murder your ass. You need your six covered?”

“I think I’m good,” Joe said wryly. Kylie wasn’t going to kill him. She was going to do worse—she was going to dump his sorry ass.

Knowing it, he drove home to shower and recharge. But when he pulled up to his place, there was the glow of an interior light that he knew he hadn’t left on. Pulling his gun, he let himself inside.

Molly was curled up on his couch with a bottle of tequila and his hidden stash of Girl Scout Thin Mints.

“It’s early to be drinking,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not drinking—though I thought about it. I’m just eating.” She shrugged. “And nothing’s wrong.”

“Then why are you robbing me blind?”

“I was hungry. Why did you have the cookies in the freezer behind the booze?”

“To keep them safe from you.” He snatched the box from her and helped himself to a rack. Breakfast of champions. “How did you know to search for them in there?”

She gave him a long look. “I know all your secrets.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do,” she said.

“Shit.” He blew out a breath and sank to the couch next to her. “You want to talk about something. Just say what you need to say. We both know you’re not going to give me any peace until you do.”

She nudged her elbow into his side. “Look at you, understanding the female psyche. So you can do it.”

Leaning back, he closed his eyes. “I don’t have the time or patience to play guessing games, Molly. Spit it out.”

“Okay,” she said. “Whatever’s going on with you and Kylie—”

“Nothing. Nothing’s going on.”

She raised a brow.

“It’s not,” he said.

“You blew it?” She looked him over. “You did. Dammit, Joe.”

He decided to plead the fifth on that one. It was the only play he had.

“Fine, whatever, it’s your love life. But she’s got the right to confront this dickwad who’s been terrorizing her. You can’t cut her out. She’ll never forgive you.”

When he just narrowed his eyes, she gave him the look right back. No one, and he meant no one, could give him shit or call him on his shit like his sister. No one else was allowed. And actually, she wasn’t allowed either. She just didn’t care that she wasn’t allowed. “I’m not cutting her out of anything,” he said.

“Oh please. Don’t forget, I work where you work. I run the office, for God’s sake. I get the same texts and e-mails all the guys get. You’re going in at dawn and you’re doing it without her. My question is this—are you insane or just stupid?”

Honestly, there was a strong chance that he was both. His phone buzzed an incoming text. “Hold that thought,” he muttered and pulled out the phone to look at the text in order to make sure it wasn’t one of the guys or Kylie.

Joe shook his head and put his phone away. “What does Dad want you to talk to me about?”

“He wants you to fall for Kylie. We have meetings about it. I’m to report back.”

Joe just stared at her, trying to absorb this. “And you’re going to report back what, exactly?”

“That it’s too late. You’ve blown it to smithereens.”

Joe’s eyes began to twitch. “I didn’t—”

“Look,” she said, mercifully cutting him off. “I’m going to tell you something.”

He grimaced. “Do you have to?”

She shook her head. “You can’t joke this away, Joe. You need to hear it. If you handle this without her and it all goes down and it turns out that this Kevin guy really is the one, you take away her chance of getting closure.”

He opened his mouth, but she held up a finger and then pointed it at him. “Just like you took away my closure,” she said.

He stilled in shock. “Fuck that, Molly. I didn’t—”

“But you did.” She nudged her shoulder to his. “I mean, yes, you came for me when I was in trouble. After they took me, you never gave up searching for me, 24–7, even when the cops told Dad that I’d just run away. You knew that I hadn’t taken off on some teenage whim. You knew I was in trouble, and thankfully you were like a bloodhound on the scent.” Her voice went soft and emotional. “And I’m so, so very grateful for that.” She inhaled a deep, shaky breath. “You have no idea how grateful.”

He closed his eyes, sick to his gut because she was grateful? He’d nearly gotten her killed. He was the fucking grateful one, grateful that she’d ever spoken to him again, that she’d kept him in her life. That she still loved him was his own little miracle. “Molly—”

“But you didn’t give me closure, Joe. After you got me to the hospital, you went back and handled the situation on your own, and by ‘handled’ I mean you went all vigilante on their asses and put your life in jeopardy in a very large way.”

At the memory of her battered body lying still on the sidewalk after her fall, he jerked to his feet, unable to sit. “I’d put you in that situation,” he said tightly. “You were innocent—”

“And so were you,” she said, standing too, going toe-to-toe with him, her voice rising.

But his voice didn’t. She was the passionate one in the family, the only one who let her emotions fly high and proud and loud. Very loud. He buried his, always. “I was never innocent,” he said.

“You were! Joe, you never did what they wanted you to! It wasn’t your fault that they were asshole punk-ass thugs. You got to me as soon as you could.”

“Not soon enough.”

They stared at each other. Finally, Molly broke the eye contact. She blew out a breath and they both looked down at the leg she still had so much trouble with.

“I got myself into trouble,” she said quietly. “You know this. They told me if I just sat there and kept my mouth shut, they weren’t going to hurt me. They just wanted to scare you. But I got impatient.”

“This is a shock.”

A small smile curved her lips at his quip and, relieved, he reached for her hand. It was the one thing he knew how to do for her, defuse her temper.

She held on and squeezed. “I got impatient,” she said again. “And I got hurt because my fourteen-year-old self came up with the brilliant idea to try and escape. Please let that sink into your thick skull, Joe. When you went after them and nearly killed them, and then got in all that trouble because of it—”

“I couldn’t just let them get away with what they’d done.”

“Of course you could have!” she said. Actually, she was back to yelling. “The system would’ve taken care of them. You saw to it that they were caught, Joe, and that was amazing. You were just a kid and yet you still managed to do what no one else could. But then you took it upon yourself to mete out the justice.” She dropped his hand and gave him a hard push to the chest. “And because of that, you were taken away from us. From Dad. From me. And I know you feel guilty, Joe. I get that. But don’t you get it yet? I feel guilty too.”

He was dumbfounded. “What the hell for?”

“Because every day that you had to be in the military and become even tougher and harder than you already were, that was my fault. Now you’re so far removed from us that I can’t even reach you half the time. I thought you weren’t ever going to find your way back to feeling human, and then Kylie came along. She changed you. She brought you back to me. And now you’re going to blow it all over again by taking away her closure too.”

“How?” he asked, baffled. “How am I taking away her closure?”

“Because you’re going to finish this for her, without her. I never got to look those asshole thugs in the eyes and say, ‘You did your worst and I’m still breathing’! And I needed to do that, Joe! And so does Kylie. She needs to be in on the play for Kevin. You have to see that, right? Tell me you see that.”

Just bringing all this up had him feeling . . . raw. Hollow. And something else he hadn’t felt in a long time. Emotional. “I wasn’t trying to take away your closure,” he said. “But God, Molly, you almost died. I had to—”

“Be at my side,” she said. “That was all you had to do and all I ever needed.” She took a deep breath and lowered her voice. “Listen, you can’t protect me all the time, and no one expects you to. It’s the same with anyone in your life, okay? Kylie’s a big girl. She’d rather have you at her side while she fights her battles than have you fight them for her.”

Shit. That actually made sense. Which meant she was right.

She stepped closer and put her hand on his chest. “I need you to really hear this, Joe, and believe me. And then let it go. And then I need you to understand you’re doing the same thing all over again to Kylie and she’s not going to be as forgiving as your sister. See, I have to forgive you. We’re blood. I’m going to always love you whether I like it or not. But Kylie doesn’t have to forgive you at all. And if she doesn’t, and she dumps your sorry ass for real, I’m afraid you’re going to go back to . . .” She clamped her lips tight together, her eyes going suspiciously damp.

“To what?” he asked softly.

“To the man who doesn’t smile or laugh or let himself feel.”

He closed his eyes. “Molly,” he breathed, and pulled her in for a hug. She held on tight, so damn tight that it was almost impossible to swallow the lump in his throat.

She was right. He couldn’t protect her all the time and he had to accept that. Same with Kylie. And if he loved her—and damn, but he really did—he had to let her do this.

I love her?

Holy shit. He actually had to drop his ass to his couch because his legs got wobbly. Pulling out his phone, he texted the guys that there was going to be a change of plans. Kylie would go in first and talk to Kevin and get her damn closure if it killed him.

And it might.

They’d have her back, they’d make sure she was safe, and when she was satisfied by whatever answers she could get, they’d be there to finish it if needed and to drag Kevin’s ass to jail. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

Molly smiled. “Tell her hi for me.”

Joe drove through the early morning wondering why the hell it’d taken him so long to realize that this was the only way it could go down.

And then there was the bigger epiphany of the night, the one he was trying damn hard not to dwell on.

He loved Kylie, a fact far more terrifying than any job he’d ever taken on.

He parked in front of Kylie’s place. The lights were no longer on. It was four thirty in the morning. She was undoubtedly asleep. He hated to wake her, but this couldn’t wait. There wasn’t much time before they’d meet up with the team.

But she didn’t answer the door. Or her phone. And when he helped himself and broke in, he just about stopped breathing.

She wasn’t home.

He knew exactly where she’d gone. And why. He’d cut her out and now she was doing the same to him. He tried calling her again. Still no answer.

Joe was trained to handle himself in any situation, but nothing had prepared him for this moment. For knowing she’d gone off on her own—because of him.

He should never have tried to shield her. He should’ve just gone with her and trusted she could handle whatever they’d found, together.

Worse, he realized something else—that as much as he couldn’t stand the thought of losing her, he’d lost her anyway by not trusting her. In his life, he tried really hard not to do anything stupid, but he’d definitely failed there. People tended to make assumptions based on words, but in Joe’s experience, people rarely said what they really meant. So he didn’t go by words. He went by steady, consistent actions.

And all of Kylie’s actions told him she loved him too.

Unfortunately, his actions hadn’t told her the same thing in return. Which really did make him an ass. His chest hurt, no doubt from understanding that this was how his life was going to feel without Kylie in it.

Empty.

He ran to his truck, calling Archer and the guys to move everything up to right this minute. He called the police. He called everyone and hoped he wasn’t too late.