The Memory of You

by Laurie Kellogg

  “I will. Thank you for your help.”

  He hoped his so-called help hadn’t made more trouble for her than she already had.

  ~~~

  Matt returned to Abby’s house and stopped in the garage for his duffel bag before he slipped quietly in the back door and locked it. Passing the living room, he saw her standing at the front door, kissing Robert goodbye. Pain plowed into Matt’s chest like a sledgehammer.

  He smacked his hand against the guestroom doorjamb. “Shit.” Even though Abby was a virtual stranger to him, it still tied his gut in a knot to have another man put his mouth on his wife—even if he couldn’t remember ever actually kissing her himself. Unless, of course, he assigned Abby’s beautiful face to the ambiguous green-eyed blonde he’d made love to again and again in his dreams.

  He yanked open the buttons on his shirt and sank onto the bed, thinking about a conversation he’d had with Ben Danvers, one of his other POW buddies.

  Ben hadn’t understood how Matt could have such vivid memories of sex and not recollect any of the women he’d slept with. Ben had gone on for hours about how much he missed making love to his wife, Julie. He’d been positive he was being punished for the mess he’d made of his marriage and worried constantly his wife would find someone else.

  After their first attempt to escape, they’d been hunted like animals and beaten unconscious before being locked in the ankle stocks for several days.

  “Damn it.” Ben groaned. “If I knew for sure I’d never get home to Julie, I’d let them kill me.”

  “Not me,” Leonard said. “Now that I have a lot better appreciation of what my ancestors endured, this place just makes me more eager than ever to go home and join the fight for civil rights.”

  Three years after Matt’s capture, his whole cellblock had been moved to a new camp, which made life a little more tolerable since they were no longer kept in solitary the majority of the time. Shortly after the transfer, they’d gotten word from a recently captured prisoner that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated.

  Upon witnessing Leonard’s anguish, Matt had confided to his two friends how profoundly empty he felt. “Most of the time, I’m happy living in ignorance about my past. But when I listen to you talk about your lives and families, it makes me wonder what I’m missing. I feel sort of dead inside. They’d be doing me a favor if they put a fucking bullet through my head.”

  “Hey, don’t give up.” Leonard punched his shoulder. “There’s always a chance we’ll find a way out of here. And who knows, you could discover you’re a millionaire.”

  “Or find out I’m a dirt-bag.”

  “Nah.” Ben waved at him. “A dirt-bag wouldn’t play medic and take care of everyone. I doubt a guy’s character would change that much simply because he’s forgotten his past. I believe you’re a good man—no matter what name you go by.”

  “For all we know, my portrait could be hanging in the post office. Not knowing anything about my past scares the shit out of me. I’ve got a feeling I had something great at home, and I’m afraid I’ll go nuts if I find out I’ve lost it.”

  “Yeah.” Ben laughed without humor. “You, me, and every other guy in this rat-hole.”

  ~~~

  After Robert left, Abby glanced at the back door. Had Mac come back yet? She stopped halfway down the hallway and tapped on the door of the guestroom. “Mac, are you in there?”

  Getting no answer, she knocked again and opened the door a crack to peek in. He sat on the bed with a haunted look in his eyes, his shirt hanging open and his jeans unzipped. It appeared he’d zoned out in the middle of undressing.

  She crept in and touched his arm, and his whole body jolted. The same trapped look he’d gotten when she’d woken him earlier returned. Mac stared blankly at her for a moment, wearing a confused expression and then stood. “I’m sorry. What’d you ask me?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to tell you to help yourself to towels in the linen closet in the bathroom.”

  Her gaze drifted to the patch of midnight sprinkling his chest. A thin line of hair tapered to his navel where it grew dense again and disappeared into the snowy briefs peeking through the V of his open zipper.

  Without a spare ounce of flesh, his torso consisted of an impressive array of solid, well-defined muscles that formed an intricate network of ridges down his chest and abdomen, suggesting he must have passed a lot of his idle time in prison exercising. Still, his ribcage stood out so prominently she could count each bone.

  “Oh, Mac,”—she reached out toward his ribs—“those monsters really did starve you, didn’t they?”

  He grabbed her wrist before she could touch him. “I know you don’t mean anything by this, Abby. But please remember I’m a man who’s been without a woman for a really long time. You’re incredibly beautiful.” He closed his eyes and sucked in a shuddering breath. “And very sexy. You’d better go.”

  Her breasts grew taut, and a nearly forgotten warmth unfurled in the pit of her stomach, radiating southward. Why did it feel so good to hear him admit he wanted her?

  And Robert worried Mac would be attracted to her.

  She stared at him, unable to pull her hand away. He had a little more body hair than Matt ever had. As his heart pounded under her palm, she lowered her gaze to the white bulge pushing past his open fly. She squashed the urge to let her hand slide down his corrugated stomach. He looked as huge as Matt had been—maybe even bigger.

  It was only after she’d been held by several of her dates in the last few years and stroked Rob that she’d realized how well-endowed her husband had been compared to other men.

  The thought of freeing Mac’s thick length from his underwear and having him thrust his hard flesh into her left her panties damp. She shook off the mental image of their naked bodies joined. What was wrong with her? She’d never fantasized about a man’s privates like this before.

  She had to leave. Right now. Only—how could she with her feet glued to the floor?

  ~~~

  Abby’s high color told Matt she’d seen the intense excitement she’d stirred in him. The desire flickering in her eyes left him completely confident he could have her in his bed naked in thirty seconds flat if he told her who he was.

  However, the strategy his lower half was demanding would destroy the one his head had previously decided to pursue. He gritted his teeth and whispered roughly, “You’re still here, Abby.”

  He would hate himself later if he let his dick do his thinking. But he was so damn tired of having sex by himself. Lately, he’d gotten as bad as Ben with how much he thought about it.

  He longed to sink inside Abby and find out if the reality of making love to her compared to any of his fantasies starring the green-eyed blonde he’d conjured up all these years. If it felt as incredible as....

  No. He couldn’t even think about it. If he did, he’d give in to his pecker and blurt out his identity. He had to get Abby out of there or else he’d end up throwing her on the bed and screwing her until she couldn’t see straight.

  At the moment, revealing their relationship was the only way he’d get her to sleep with him—unless he seduced her. And she’d hate him in the morning if he did that.

  She stood riveted to the carpet and stared at him. His breaths came hard and fast. It took every bit of self-control not to pick up the ball and run one of the plays he’d entertained. Nonetheless, neither game plan would achieve anything other than to relieve the ache in his groin.

  He bore no resemblance to the man she’d married, either inside or out, and to allow her to think she was getting into bed with that guy would be wrong. He’d never be sure of her feelings for him if they jumped in the sack together just because he had the same name as the boy she’d loved so long ago.

  If Abby truly cared for Robert, Matt wanted her to stay with him. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life with a woman who imagined someone else was holding her at night.

  He caressed her cheek and whispered, “Abby,
if you don’t leave this room in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to kiss you.”

  Disappointment mingled with relief when she finally fled as he muttered through gritted teeth, “And I’m not altogether sure I’ll be able to stop with just a kiss.”

  Chapter 6

  “. . . you look like a sergeant, and you act like one—”

  A rocket-propelled grenade shrieked past the Huey, cutting off the men’s rowdy birthday chorus. The projectile self-detonated in a blinding flash only ten meters away, illuminating the dark hillside below.

  “Damn, that was close.” Matt heaved a breath of relief and braced himself.

  “Just some belated New Year’s fireworks,” the pilot muttered as he banked the helicopter in another evasive maneuver, slicing through the smoke trail.

  “Fireworks, my ass.”

  Seconds later, a tooth-jarring blast overhead told Matt another RPG had most likely clipped the main rotor. Seven pairs of terrified eyes stared at him as he prayed for a controlled crash so they could twirl gently to the ground like a maple tree’s seedpod.

  Instead, their damaged chopper plummeted toward the earth like a three-ton meteor.

  “Shit! Mayday! Mayday!” the pilot shouted and then rattled their coordinates into his headset.

  “Heads down!” Matt ordered, ensuring his men obeyed before folding himself into the crash position. Please, God, no. Abby and the baby need me.

  On impact, every bone in his body vibrated like a tuning fork quivering to the pitch of his men’s agony. Mercifully, an airborne M-16 clobbered him, hurling him into a black void.

  In what seemed like only seconds, Matt groaned, regaining consciousness to the crunch of footsteps and voices cutting through the black night. If the artillery barrage in his head would stop pounding, maybe he could think straight. He wrinkled his nose at the suffocating petroleum fumes, and his heart revved into overdrive. Please don’t let this damn thing explode.

  Wincing, he shoved Black Jack Lewis off him. The wound to the card-shark sergeant’s neck had nearly decapitated him. Matt retched from the gruesome sight, and pain shot through his head and battered body.

  He peered into the dark. The vacant stares of his men gleamed back in the shaft of moonlight shining through the helicopter’s open door. He snapped his eyes shut again.

  Men? Yeah, right. Most of them still had zits. Only the pilot had racked up more than Matt’s twenty-three years.

  He rubbed his throbbing forehead and counted three separate voices echoing off the mountainside. Since some asshole had shot them down, the odds said they weren’t the Welcome Wagon rolling out the red carpet.

  The chopper had crashed a good ninety clicks north of the seventeenth just west of Dong Hoi. He and seven of his men had been deployed out of Da Nang on a classified detail. After their successful mission, his squad had headed back and broken into song to celebrate his birthday with their victory.

  Matt trembled as he dragged himself between his men’s bodies, checking for signs of life and mourning each of them. The voices stopped outside the helicopter. An armed soldier stepped through the door of the wreckage. Matt froze, praying the guy wouldn’t spray them with lead.

  He peeked at the soldier going through the other fellows’ pockets, and when the Asian man eventually grabbed his wrist, Matt held his breath. Damn it. Did the son of a bitch have to take his watch? It had been a graduation present from Abby.

  The scavenger’s fingers stiffened, and Matt cringed inside. Somehow the guy must have sensed he wasn’t dead. Probably because, despite the cool temperature, Matt was sweating more than a cold beer in July under his heavy flak jacket. Even his hair, clipped to barely an inch, was soaked.

  As the soldier felt for a pulse, Matt sprang up, ramming the heel of his hand into his opponent’s jaw. Boned crunched, and his adversary slumped to the floor, yanking Matt’s dog tag chain.

  Thank God, the bastard was out for the count. Matt grabbed an M-16 and scrambled toward the opening in the side of the chopper, ready to drop and play possum again. He rubbed the irritated spot on the back of his neck and frowned. The bastard must have broken the chain with his ID.

  The hell with it. He had to get out of there before the others discovered their buddy. He glanced out at the moon and waited for a cloud to cover it. Next to the door, he held his breath and pressed against the shadowed fuselage while the two remaining North Vietnamese goons strolled by the opening.

  As soon as their backs turned to him, he slipped out and crept away from the twisted aircraft, trembling as he glanced over his shoulder to keep an eye on his six. Turning to face forward, he ran smack into the muzzle of an AK-47. The soldier behind the trigger motioned for Matt to raise his hands and relieved him of his weapon.

  So much for his brilliance in counting voices.

  He glanced down at his jacket pocket bulging from the pack of cigarettes where he’d tucked Abby’s last letter and the rabbit-eared picture of her swollen belly.

  Only nine weeks until her due date. She would be royally pissed when she found out he’d actually volunteered to lead this colossal clusterfuck.

  The mute soldier shoved his rifle into Matt’s gut and motioned for him to back up. He complied, praying in a hoarse whisper, “God, please don’t make my kid grow up without me.”

  Seconds later, the helicopter burst into flames. The bastards laughed as the wreckage became a funeral pyre for Matt’s team. He’d only been with his unit eight weeks, but in the short time he’d commanded these guys, they’d formed a bond he’d never forget.

  Watching the inferno, he retched from the stench of burning flesh and wiped the blood running into his eye from the gash in his forehead. Granted he might be totally screwed, but at least he was still alive—something none of the men he’d personally chosen to accompany him for this mission could claim.

  ~~~

  The sun finally peeked through the narrow slats of the box truck, turning the interior into a sauna. Matt sat up and rubbed his eyes, tugging his sweat-drenched underwear away from his rear. If he didn’t change his shorts soon, some sort of flesh-eating fungus would start breeding on his ass.

  January should be the cool season. Yeah, like hell.

  The sweltering truck certainly felt like Hades. Despite his discomfort, he was grateful the soldiers had locked him in the back alone. He hadn’t had to endure their hostile stares while the sadistic driver hit every pothole, torturing Matt’s battered body all night.

  He didn’t want to imagine what the bastards planned to do with him. But the tales he’d heard of the abuse used to break GIs and force them to divulge information and record lies about their humane treatment insisted on flashing through his mind. The fact he was still breathing probably meant he’d be interrogated and eventually tortured. The brutality he envisioned left him trembling.

  Great. He snorted. If he didn’t somehow distract himself from his terrifying future, he’d definitely need a change of underwear.

  He absently patted his pocket, forgetting they’d confiscated his cigarettes along with Abby’s letter and picture. Leaning back, he closed his eyes and mentally recited the last few paragraphs of the three-page letter he’d read so many times he’d memorized it.

  . . . I’m lying awake, missing you so much I hurt, Matt. I know you still regret making love to me, but I’m not one bit sorry. I love you and I love knowing your baby is growing inside me.

  I wish you could see how huge my breasts are. I thought about posing naked for your birthday, but knowing my luck, the picture would get lost in the black hole the military calls APO mail. Rather than ending up in Playboy’s February edition with a staple in my overstretched navel, I decided you’ll have to be content with just a shot of my bare belly.

  I realize you didn’t want to marry me before you left because you think I’m too young. But believe me, I’m not. I go to bed every night aching to have you here with me and counting the days until you come home and we can make love again. The few, short nights we
had weren’t nearly enough.

  All my love,

  Abby

  He swallowed hard past the giant lump in his throat and patted his pocket again, unconsciously searching for his cigarettes.

  Damn, he needed a smoke. Where the hell had he gotten the birdbrained idea to get his education paid for through ROTC?

  Right. Abby’s brother. Matt sniffed past a humorless chuckle. He was definitely going home and kicking Pete Larson’s ass around the block a few times.

  If I ever get home.

  Since there was no way these motherfuckers were returning him, he might never run his fingers through Abby’s thick blonde hair again or see her laughing green eyes. They’d always reminded him of fresh clover bathed in sunshine.

  “Ah, Baby, I’m so damn scared.” Matt squeezed his eyes shut to dam the tears threatening to spill. The last thing he needed was to start blubbering like a little girl.

  He sucked in a labored breath, and the image of his dead friends flashed through his head. He should be grateful simply to be alive, right?

  The horror stories about the atrocities committed by the North Vietnamese insisted on flooding back into his mind, making him shudder again.

  Maybe his friends were the lucky ones after all.

  ~~~

  Matt woke in a pool of sweat, once again unable to recall a single detail about his nightmare. He rolled to his back and breathed deeply. Bacon, coffee, cinnamon? He must have died and gone to heaven. It was the only explanation for why the air could smell that good.

  Was Abby trying to make him fall in love with her? The aroma alone could convince him to stay the rest of his life.

  He flung the covers back and pulled on his pants. Once he made the bed to military standards, he unpacked a set of clean clothing from his duffel bag and headed to the bathroom.

  After enjoying ten days of hot showers in the hospital, he’d hated having to make do with sponge bathing in frigid water from the spigot behind Abby’s house. He couldn’t wait to get completely clean again. A moment after he stripped off his shirt in the bathroom, the door sprung open, and his son stared up at him. “Sorry.”