Jen_C’s Reviews > Maximum Force: Fort Lee Tour of Duty > Status Update

This girl . . . this flower child, this passionate woman who loved with abandon and yet had taken on the very last man she’d ever expected to love . . . she’d stolen my heart, and all I wanted for the rest of my life was to be with her, to love her and to hear that laughter.

“Max, seriously. Are you sure about this? I’m not the kind of woman you’re used to. I don’t fit the Army mold. I might end up being more trouble than I’m worth.” My heart melted a little more.
“Flower child, I don’t doubt for a minute that you’re trouble with a capital T. But I also have a feeling you’re just the kind of trouble I’ve been missing in my life.”

“Samantha.” My eyes fluttered open to gaze up into his. “What you said before about the dance being worth the pain? I’m not sure I’m totally on board with that, but right now . .  . whatever this is between us . .  . I wouldn’t miss it for anything in the world. I’d stay here . .  . inside your body . .  . forever if I could.”

“Thanks again.” I realized I didn’t want to shake her hand, but it wasn’t because I didn’t want to touch her. It was because I was afraid of what would happen when I did. But I couldn’t leave her hanging, either. I manned up and rose to my feet, too, closing my fingers around her much smaller ones.

Samantha Crewe was never far from my mind. When it came right down to it, this woman I’d met once and for less than an hour was camped out in my head all morning, and it was annoying as hell.

I was going to need someone like me: someone who understood what service to our country meant, someone who could make sacrifices while she understood that the Army was always going to come first for me . Samantha Crewe might have been sexy and tempting— and a spitfire, to boot— but there wasn’t any doubt that she was a free spirit who questioned authority on every level.

I became abruptly aware of two things: one, that I was still staring at him without speaking and two, that all my lady parts were singing the song of my people. Oh, happy day, oh, happy day. We want him! Take us now! “Uh, you okay?” Since I still hadn’t spoken , he was probably beginning to assume that I was somehow challenged.

I trudged back to my car, feeling every one of my twenty-six years. “It didn’t used to be this way,” I muttered to myself. “I used to leave these things feeling uplifted and energized. I was ready to take on the world, or at least to go out and have dinner with friends. Now I’m just exhausted and want to crawl into bed.”

“Oh, and just in case you didn’t hear this— now there are protesters outside post with signs chanting about us training killers & turning them loose on the civilian population.”
“That’s just peachy. When there are terrorists blowing up shit, though, who’re they going to scream for? Us trained killers, that’s who.”