EXTRACT FOR
The Soldier's Wife
(Maggie Abrams)

      Sitting in a cold room agonizing over the exact curvature of his lips, should they be more angular and hard or more giving and soft?  His eyes should be a piercing blue that could cause a woman to lose her very thoughts.  His body should be hard yet soft enough to give when she curled up next to his heat on a cold wintry night like tonight.

      Macayla, Mac to all her friends, sat pondering the image in her head.  She could see him perfectly, as she had always been able to do since their first encounter.  His image had haunted her for the past five years.  The last time she had seen him was at their wedding reception.  Two men had come in black suits to give him orders to be ready to leave within the hour, to parts unknown.  Mac had been crushed but she had done her best to put up a brave face for Colin.  She didn't want him to see her cry in pain like that.  He had told her that he would be back before she ever got a chance to miss him and he would make up their wedding night to her as soon as he came back home.  His parting kiss had left her aching and hurting.  

      The only reason she was sure he was still alive was because she still continued to get his paycheck deposited in to their account, by the government.  No one had ever come to her door to tell her he was missing or hurt or killed so she took the continual paychecks as her sign that he was okay wherever he was.   Mac knew he was a soldier but she wasn't sure exactly what he did and he never talked about it.  

      Tomorrow would be their five-year anniversary.  She had never received word from him in all that time and once more she would celebrate it alone here at home.  Tonight she was trying once more to work on her romance novel about Colin, but without the proper experience she found it difficult to put any true feeling and meaning behind her words.  The Playboy and Hustler movies she had watched just weren't enough to give a physical and emotional understanding behind the words.  She had been faithful to Colin for five years and she planned on being faithful to him until either he returned to her whole or she received a flag on her front door step.  Her heart constricted at the second thought.

      Before she could begin to feel too sorry for herself Mac decided to take a relaxing bubble bath and curl up on the satin sheets she had bought for the first anniversary and laid out on the King sized bed every year after that in hopes Colin would return to her and they could finally begin their life together.