Terms of Surrender Read Online Free PDF Page A

it while she was at her interview.
    And in order to check out what was wrong with the car, he might need to get the owner’s manual.
    And while reaching into that glove box for that manual, he might just grab a fistful of recently worn lingerie.
    Oh, God.
    Under normal circumstances, a superhot, sexy dude touching her underwear might give her a little thrill. Normal circumstances being if said underwear happened to be on her person at the time.
    But superhot, sexy dude finding them balled up in her car, and wondering what the hell kind of psycho takes off her underwear right before an important job interview?
    Uh, yeah. Not so much.
    “You are so screwed,” she muttered with a groan.
    “I’m sorry, what did you say?” asked the woman.
    Things just go from bad to worse.
    Fortunately, her interviewer was distracted, flipping through a file, and had barely glanced up. Yanking her thoughts together, Marissa stammered, “Uh, you’re so…shrewd. I mean, the way you have everything organized.” Forcing a laugh, she added, “My home office is a mess, I can never find anything.”
    “I see.”
    The woman offered her a tight smile. It could have been genuine, or it could have been her way of humoring Mari while she figured out a way to make sure the crazy blonde who talked to herself in the middle of a meeting didn’t get hired. The woman probably already disliked her because she had to work on a Saturday, the Deputy to the Commandant being too busy with end-of-the-year activities to schedule a weekday interview.
    Sighing deeply, Mari said, “Forgive me, I’m a little nervous. I’m mumbling.”
    The woman’s face softened. “It’s okay.” Lowering her voice and leaning closer, she added, “And don’t worry—you’re not screwed. In fact, I think you did very well.”
    Oh, Lord. Definitely bad to worse. “I’m so sorry!”
    “Don’t worry about it. Believe me, I work around a bunch of sailors all the time. The language can be…salty.”
    The ice broken, they spent the next half hour talking about the job, which Marissa wanted more than ever. At first, it had just been about employment—getting paid to do something other than peddling overpriced shoes at a Harbor Place boutique so she could pay the bills. Now that she’d come here and learned more about the guest lecturer position—what she’d be doing, who she’d be talking to, why she was needed—she knew she wanted it. Badly.
    As someone who’d had to play mom for her younger siblings from the age of fourteen, Marissa knew she was good with teens and young adults. She could relate to them—maybe because she’d still been a kid herself when she’d been thrust into such an adult role.
    She could manage both mindsets. Could dish with her eighteen-year-old sister about some hot guy she’d met in Bio 101, but also put on the cautionary Mom hat and remind her that college was about learning, not about guys.
    She could support her twenty-one-year-old brother when he decided to go to art school rather than finish college, and also worry about how he was going to support himself drawing comic books.
    And as for her twenty-six-year-old brother, well, hers would be the shoulder he would lean on when he finally decided to come out to their incredibly old-fashioned, rigid father…who so wasn’t equipped to deal with having a gay son.
    Yes, she was definitely part old soul, part young adult, and had been for fifteen years. So she had the right background to deal with college kids.
    Plus, she’d grown up in the military. She’d been a victim of one of its most common negative side effects—spouses unable to deal with it, families wrecked because of it. Kids raised by distant, rigid, militaristic parents. She knew what happened to the children of weak mothers who couldn’t cope and cheating fathers who couldn’t love.
    “The Deputy to the Commandant told you why some midshipmen will be returning here before the official start of the summer semester?”