It’s Always Been You by Jessica Scott

A love story built around career military people in thrown together to fix real issues that the military faces today – it could have been trite except the author is a career army officer.  With that basis how could it go wrong? A sweet romance about two people thrown together preparing a company for its next deployment and having to clean up their battalion due to issues with drugs, gangs, even TBI (traumatic brain injury).

Ben never wanted command. In fact he had been fighting it for years – cared too much for the men and too little for the politics.  Olivia, a military lawyer, assigned to help keep the new chain of command on schedule getting trouble-makers out of the army has a history of seeing the army protect the soldier – forgetting their duty to the family when abuse becomes involved and commanders who use the loyalty as an excuse to not enforce the rules.

Ben doesn’t really care for the rules. His loyalty is to the men.  When a man that saved his life in combat ends up with Child Protective Services called on him with the accusation that he hurts his daughter Ben doesn’t believe it – not possible not the man he knew – and tries to protect his buddy.  Olivia thinks this is just another commander in the Old Boy school assuming the worst.  Seeing their biplay as they interact and work to clear the trouble from their group is quite interesting since Ben comes at it with loyalty and history with the men in his mindset.

Honestly, it is a sweet love story. Well written, characters well developed, story written with a writer that has the officer background.  That is worth the read.  I will definitely look into other stories by this author – a man (or woman) in uniform makes a wonderful center to a romance, or well any novel.

4 stars