Wild Revenge: The Dangerous Jacob Wilde / The Ruthless Caleb Wilde / The Merciless Travis Wilde. Sandra Marton
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still am, inside. Okay?”
There was no disputing that okay. Addison nodded.
“You must be glad to be back.”
His fingers wrapped around hers.
“I am. And I’m not.” He gave a rueful laugh. “Man, I’m really decisive, aren’t I?”
“It can’t be easy, coming home after everything you saw.”
He looked at her. “What I saw is that the world isn’t what I grew up thinking it was.”
“It’s not the place hardly anyone grows up thinking it is.”
He knew she was right, but it went deeper than that for him. When you grew up on tales of heroes and warriors, when men fought and died for reasons that were always clear and always honorable …
“No,” he said, after a minute, “it isn’t.” Jake turned his hand palm-up so that their fingers were intertwined. “Tell me about your father,” he said. “Losing him must have been tough for you and your mom.”
Her silver eyes darkened.
“It was awful. I adored him. He understood me, you know? I wasn’t into dolls or stuff. I loved reading and math and science.”
He smiled. “The future lawyer, hard at work.”
She smiled, too. “He used to tell me to grow up strong and independent enough to be whatever I wanted.”
“Good advice,” Jake said softly. “He sounds like a great guy.”
“He was.” She swallowed hard. “Did I tell you he went back into that burning building because a little boy was trapped?” She nodded, looked down at their joined hands. “The roof collapsed on both of them.”
“Honey. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“The boy’s mother came to see us. She wanted us to know what my father’s heroism had meant to her.”
A muscle bunched in his jaw.
“Even though she’d lost her child.”
“Yes. Like those policemen and firemen who lost their lives on 9/11. They died heroes.”
She was right. Of course they had. Heroes did the right thing. It was the determination to do that right thing that mattered.
But if a man wanted to do the right thing and didn’t do it, nothing else he’d done could possibly make him a hero.
“Everything was different after that. My mother— my mother couldn’t deal with his loss. Things went downhill. We lost our house and she—she changed.” She gave him a small, obviously painful smile. “He was a hero but I wish he’d come home to us, you know?”
He knew.
He knew, absolutely.
Heroism was in the eye of the beholder.
Coming home …
Coming home was everything. He’d known that from the beginning—but what if you couldn’t bring all your men home …?
“Breakfast,” Angie announced, and slapped two huge platters of food on the table in front of them.
Addison looked at hers. Two eggs, over easy. Bacon. Sausages. Biscuits.
Grits.
“Fry cook said he don’t know how to poach eggs,” Angie said cheerfully. “And turns out we’re all out of wheat bread.” She put her hands on her ample hips. “But I left off the home fries. Figured you was one of them health-food nuts, or somethin’.”
“Or something,” Addison said, still staring at the food.
“You try those grits, girl. They’ll put meat on your bones. Texas men like their ladies with somethin’ they can grab hold of. Right, Jake?”
Jake tried not to laugh.
“Absolutely,” he said.
Addison narrowed her eyes at him as Angie walked away.
He was the very picture of innocence.
And he was waiting.
Okay.
What were a couple of pounds compared to the challenge in her lover’s eyes?
She looked at the grits, picked up her fork and dug it into the cooked, coarsely ground corn.
“I’ll get you for this, Jacob Wilde,” she said, trying to sound stern as she brought the fork to her mouth.
Jake waggled his eyebrows. “God, I hope so.”
She glared at him. Then her lips curved and she burst into laughter.
“Me, too,” she said—and that was the moment when Jake realized that against all odds, despite the ugly reality of his life, his smart, sexy, sophisticated-but-trailer-park-tough Adoré was starting to mean something to him.
Something that scared the hell out of him even to contemplate.
They drove home with the windows down and the radio on, singing along with Willie and then Waylon.
Well, no, Addison thought, as Jake switched stations so he could harmonize with Johnny Cash. He was singing. She only hummed.
She’d never listened to country music before tonight.
Turned out, she liked it.
The lyrics were honest and real.
Like her Jacob.
He was a man who’d grown up with wealth, and yet there was no pretension to him. He was a warrior, and yet he could be tender.
But there was a darkness in him that had to do with the war.
Travis and Caleb hadn’t told her much, only that he wasn’t comfortable in the role of hero.
She could understand modesty, especially now that she knew him, but there was more to it than that….
“Addison?”
She swung toward her lover.
She’d been so deep in thought that she hadn’t even realized they’d reached the ranch and were parked in the driveway.
Her heart swelled at the way he was looking at her.
“My Adoré,” he said softly, and she stopped thinking and went into his waiting arms.
The first faint light of dawn, touching the bedroom with crimson and gold streamers, woke him.
Addison was curled against him, sound asleep.
Jake looked at her, drinking in her beauty, her honesty, her essence.
He had never known a woman like her.
No pretense. No girlish gushing. No treating him with breathless wonder because he was rich or because he was a so-called hero. No averting her eyes from his damaged face or displays of cloying sympathy,
He just made her happy.
God knew, she did the same for him.
He was happy. And he’d never expected to feel that way again.
Gently, he kissed her bare shoulder.
Then he rose from the bed as carefully as possible, so he wouldn’t wake her.
He pulled on his jeans, made a face when he realized that though they’d showered a couple of times, he hadn’t changed them in—hell, in however many days he’d been here.
He’d lost track of time.
Was it Sunday? Monday? It was important to know. Addison had told him she was leaving at the end of the week.
He didn’t want to think about that now.