[Always a Marine 11] • Combat Barbie

You’re so beautiful…

The words haunted Mary Phillips from childhood on. Her mother’s love of beauty pageants included dressing her up like her own personal Barbie doll. She was the face of baby food, the darling of surfing commercials, and the exotic stunner who walked away with the Miss California title at eighteen, but she traded in her tiara and a lucrative modeling contract for combat boots and life as a Marine. She’s lost good friends to IEDs and sent home more walking wounded than she cares to admit, but this Marine wouldn’t trade her assignment for all the Manolo Blahniks in the world.

You’re such a nerd…

Kyle Stewart heard every variation on a theme as he went through school: nerd, geek, four-eyes, weirdo—and he rolled with it. He could count on one hand the number of girls who ever deigned to talk to him about something other than tutoring. But he had the last laugh, the only self-made millionaire in his graduating class. His start up software company went huge and his private ownership netted him two hundred million dollars at sale.

A high school reunion…

Despite the invitations, Mary didn’t plan to attend the ten year reunion. The last thing she wanted to hear was—”you could have been so much, what happened?” But running into Kyle at the local coffee shop reminded her that not everyone judged by appearance. Kyle once swore to rub his former tormentors noses in his success, but when the reunion rolled around, he was reluctant. A chance meeting with the best looking girl he never could get the courage up to ask out on a date and he dares the request.

Can one night change the nerd and his combat Barbie’s lives?