“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.”