Page 8 of A Soldier's Secret Romance

“This mission definitely makes you want to rethink a lot of things,” I mutter

“Do you think you could leave all this behind?” Jonathan asks me curiously.

“I don’t know, man, some days, I want to say yes, and other days I think I’m crazy for wanting to give all this up. What about you? Do you really see yourself giving all this, us, up?”

“I don’t know. Maybe my feelings will change again once I’m at home,” he says with a smile.

“Anyone heard from Gray and whether he made it home safely?’ I ask

“I haven’t had time to check my emails since we returned,” Jonathan says, and everyone else at the table nods as well.

“True, I haven’t either,” I say as I finish eating.

Once we are done, we all grab our trays and take them to the rack window and make our way back to the barracks.

When I get in my room, I boot up my laptop and unpack my rucksack. I log in to my email and immediately see an email from Gray. I click on it. He lets us know he made it home, but his dad is back in the hospital. His mom didn’t want to worry him, so she didn’t call. He promises to keep us all informed.

I also notice another email, this one from the Date Set ‘N Match site. I click on it to see they found me a match. She has blond hair, brown eyes, five foot three inches, and a publicist.

“Wow. Not what I was expecting,” I mutter as I continue reading the email. “So, what do I do now, that is the question.”

I walk away from the laptop, and pace my room trying to figure out what I want to do, until I decide to just get some sleep and deal with it in the morning.

I lay down on the bed, barely remember closing my eyes, until I’m woken up by the sound of the reveille. I change into my gym gear and head over for a workout. An hour later, I finish the gym, head to the shower, then grab breakfast, before our debriefing with the Commanding General.

We spend three hours going over everything that happened during the mission. The take aways of what was expected versus what actually happened.

No one wants to go through the ambush the last team went through. Captain Valentini almost died, their First Sergeant did die, and everyone else suffered injuries that cost them their military careers. We try to avoid having another incident at all cost.

As soon as we are done with the debrief, I head back to my room in the barracks. I open the laptop and see I’ve received an email from my match.

Hello,

I'm not sure what I’m doing. I really hope you don’t think I’m some brainless twat. I didn’t expect to be matched with anyone when I did this. You’re probably thinking, “then why did you sign up?’ well it’s simple, my mother thought I needed to do this.

I still don’t really understand why, or even why I did it, but here we are matched, so I thought I would break the ice so to speak, and get your thoughts on this.

I’m not sure where to begin, or what to say, so I’ll start with the basics. As my occupation says, I am a publicist to multiple award-winning authors, who keep me entertained and busy. I would like to say, I only read for leisure, but that’s not the truth with my job, I read for both.

I see you are a soldier, so you are probably traveling a lot, and have lots of stories. I expect you probably can’t talk about a lot of it, but I would love to hear stories that you are able to talk about.

I have always wanted to travel, and I do travel to other cities for book signings with my authors, however, I have yet to leave the good ol’ USA.

Well, I think I’ve rambled enough, and you may be regretting opening this email, however, if you want to respond, I look forward to hearing from you.

Until next time,

Ellie

I realize I have a smile on my face. Good to know I’m not the only one with a meddling mother.

I hit the reply button and begin typing in my response.

Hello Ellie,

Thank you for reaching out. Seems we both have meddling mothers. Ha Ha.

Being a publisher sounds exciting and yet boring all at the same time. I hope that doesn’t

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