A SEAL's Heart (14 page)

“If I didn’t have to get up at the ass crack of dawn...”

Zuly grinned as she reached the family room and walked backwards toward the kitchen. “Commuting is a bitch, isn’t it?”

Fitz now worked an hour away as a mechanical system design and analysis engineer for a Stark Industries-like company by the name of Vetrov Corp. After about a year of both group and private therapy for veterans with PTSD he finally felt comfortable enough to go back to school and then put his degree in mechanical engineering to use. He still attended his meetings once a week and regularly updated his therapist but his nightmares had been few and far in between, and they’d learned the best way to deal with them when they did occur.

After getting married in a small, intimate ceremony on Carrigan Mountain, he began having the cabin remodeled and modernized, adding expansive ceilings and a few extra rooms. Just the way Zuly had always dreamed.

Once Zuly got pregnant, Fitz began to work from home more often so he’d be around to help with little things, and when they’d brought little Zara Carrigan into the world, he took a leave for a month until he was sure that both Zuly and the baby didn’t need to be watched every hour of the day.

Now, just a few years later, it had become quite clear to Zuly that Zara
did
need to be watched every hour of the day. She loved her daughter, her parents loved her daughter, her sister loved her daughter,
Fitz’s
family loved her daughter...but Christ alive, was the kid trouble.

With her huge golden eyes, wild hair and cream-touched complexion, Zara had already figured out it didn’t take much to get her parents to melt. Well at least Fitz
.
Zuly had learned quickly that her child was clearly Rosemary’s baby and possibly had a hand in the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Zuly started opening cabinets and doors, looking for said demonic spawn when Fitz pulled her to a stop and whispered, “Do you hear that?”

She slowly shook her head.

He nodded toward the sunroom out back. “Listen.”

Her brows lowered. “Is that...
howling?”

Grinning, he nodded and pulled her until they reached the sunroom and opened the door. From the distance they could hear the echoing howls of coyotes, one after the other. But the thing that made Zuly smile, the thing that had her heart all warm and fuzzy, was the fact that their daughter, their little touch of hell, was pressed up against the door and howling right back.

She looked to Fitz and, without even a second thought, they simultaneously pulled their heads back and joined in.

The End

Other Works by

Nikki Winter

Beautiful Trouble Publishing:

Sweet Temptations

Sweet Surrender

Sweet Victory

Sweet Words

Sweet Allure

Sweet Seduction

Truth or Dare