Military Romance: A Marine's Love (Marine Corps Contemporary Romance "A Marine's Love" Series)

Welcome SSgt. Patterson.

A series of sounds streamed from the commander s mouth, swirled around in the air, and landed inside the pair of audible bookends on each side of my head. I tried to process his words but my mind was still back home, wading ankle-deep in the waters of Crescent Beach, Florida, where my biggest worries were drinking pi a coladas and embracing tan lines.

Vacation was definitely over.

The humming sound of the commander s voice stopped, snapping me out of my memories and back into my body. In danger of coming across as a ditzy mime, I accessed, organized and decoded his words to understand what he said.

Thank you, sir. I answered.

The desert heat threatened to extract the life force from my body, one drop of water at a time. Being in Iraq for even ten minutes was like wearing a set of full-body footie pajamas made out of electric blankets set on hell with no off button. I arrived last night, so there wasn t much of a chance to get acclimated to anything yet. Although, I m not sure how anyone really gets acclimated to walking around in a blazing inferno.

I assumed the commander was sufficiently satisfied that I had wasted enough of his time, because he dismissed me with a polite, non-descriptive hand-waving gesture.

I dragged my jet-lagged ass to my trailer and changed over. I wanted to get in a good P.T. session before heading to chow, and by good I mean exhausting myself into immediate unconsciousness. Right now, anything would be better than remembering SSgt. Ryan Atwood.