Ignite (Cloverleigh Farms #6)(3)

I knew guys in the military who could shrug that stuff off, but I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t want to be one of them.

“But you’re not going away anymore, right?” Hallie reached over and took my arm, hugging it close like a stuffed animal.

“No. I’m not going away anymore.” Thanks to gunshot wounds in my right leg that had rendered me unfit to be a SEAL, my Navy career was over. No fucking way was I going to take some boring desk job. I’d been offered a teaching position at sniper school, and I’d considered it, but Naomi had made it clear that if I took the position, she wasn’t coming with me to Indiana—that she and our daughters would remain in Michigan where we’d grown up. She wanted a familiar home, she wanted family nearby, she wanted stability, for herself and for the girls . . . and I couldn’t blame her.

I’d told the Navy I was out and moved back here, taking a job as a firefighter and trying to ease back into civilian and family life. But the marriage hadn’t survived, and I was now a single dad.

Truth be told, I liked it better this way.

And most days I thought I was doing a decent fucking job of it, although I swore too much, burned a lot of dinners, and couldn’t get Hallie’s pigtails even to save my life.

But I was here, I was trying my best, and I always put my children first—which was more than my father had done.

And despite the charred hamburgers and constant F-bombs, the girls liked being with me, and they always gave me extra long hugs when it was time for them to go back to their mom.

They often told me they loved me, and I was still getting used to hearing it—and saying it back.

On one side of me, Hallie snuggled closer and brought up her knees, which jabbed me painfully in the hip. On the other side, a sleeping Luna rolled over, slapped a hand on my chest, and kicked me. But they were still breathing, which meant I’d successfully kept two humans alive for one more day.

I called that a victory.





I woke up before my alarm went off and carefully snaked my way out of bed without waking the girls, which required tactics in stealth and breath control that rivaled what I’d learned in sniper training. But today was going to be hectic, and I wanted just one cup of coffee in the calm before the storm. With one final glance at them, I silently threw on a TCFD T-shirt and traded my sweatpants for a pair of jeans.

In the kitchen, I stuck a pod in the machine, and finished packing up a kitchen box while it brewed. My lease wasn’t up here until the end of the week, so I didn’t have to completely empty the place out, but I wanted to get as much done today as possible. My sister’s husband, Justin, who was also a firefighter on the same shift as me, was helping to move the big stuff this morning—not that there was much of it. The plan was to drop the girls off at their house and then go get the truck. Bree, my younger sister, would bring them over later.

While the girls were still asleep in my room, I stripped their twin beds and stuffed the bedding into big garbage bags. Then I lugged the mattresses aside and grabbed a screwdriver, removing the headboards from the frames. The dresser they’d used at my apartment was already empty, and each of them had a suitcase packed and ready to go. Their clothing for today was laid out on the dresser top.

I was double checking that the closet was empty when they came shuffling into the room.

“Is it time to get up now?” Luna asked hopefully, scratching her belly.

“Yes,” I said. “Get dressed and we can go for donuts on the way to Aunt Bree’s.”

“Mom doesn’t let us have donuts,” she said.

“Mom’s not fucking here,” replied Hallie.

“Hey!” I gave my older daughter a sharp stare. “No cursing.”

“But you do it all the time.”

“That’s because I’m a grouchy old man, and I earned the right.”

Hallie stuck her hands on her skinny little hips. “How come Mom says she’s still young and you say you’re old, but you’re both thirty-four?”

“Mom says she’s young?” Luna sounded surprised as she tugged off her nightgown.

“Yes,” Hallie answered, spying the mattresses I had propped against the wall. She began running at them full speed and bouncing off again. “Last week when she told us she and Bryce were getting married, I said I didn’t know brides could be as old as her, and she said brides could be any age as long as they believe in happily ever after.”

At the mention of Naomi’s boyfriend, a wealthy guy we’d gone to high school with I’d never much liked, I snorted. The thought of that asshole succeeding where I’d failed made me want to punch things.

And as for happily ever after, good fucking luck.

“What about you, Daddy?” Hallie asked, flinging herself at the mattress again.

“What about me?”

“Do you believe in happily ever after?”

“No.” I handed Luna her socks. That’s when I noticed she had gum in her hair. Frowning, I examined the remnants of the watermelon Hubba Bubba the girls had begged me for at the store yesterday.

“Why not?”

Annoyed, I turned to face her. “Because most adults outgrow fairy tales once they stop thinking like children. I’m one of them.”

Hallie made a face. “That’s stupid. No one is too old to be happy.”