His Marriage to Remember - By Kathie DeNosky Page 0,25
a good idea for you to get whatever it is.”
He shook his head and led her over to the bed. “If you’re getting sick, that’s all the more reason for you to be in bed with me so that I can take care of you.”
His statement was like waving a red flag in front of a bull and helped shatter the sensual spell he had been casting over her. “Sam, that doesn’t make sense.” She pulled away from him. “Why is it perfectly acceptable for you to take care of me when I’m not feeling well, but it’s unheard of for me to help you?”
“Because I’m your husband,” he said, frowning. “The day I married you, I promised to take care of you.”
“And wives are supposed to do the same thing for their husbands,” she retorted. She could tell by the stubborn set of his lean jaw that, as usual, he wasn’t getting what she was trying to tell him. “I repeated the same wedding vows you did, Sam.”
“Bria, sweetheart, you’re getting too upset and not making a lot of sense.”
“I pledged to be with you in sickness as well as in health,” she went on. She pointed to his head and the now-fading bruise along his cheek. “You having post-concussion syndrome certainly qualifies as the ‘in sickness’ part of those vows. But from the moment you came home from the hospital you’ve insisted that there’s nothing wrong and won’t let me do things to help you. How am I supposed to keep my promise if you won’t let me?”
“Does this have something to do with your monthly—”
“Oh, good grief! This has nothing at all to do with my cycle,” she said, cutting him off. “Why do men think that every time a woman disagrees with him or becomes upset, she has to be experiencing PMS or some other hormonal imbalance?”
He looked mystified by her outburst. “Are you sure? You do get a little cranky sometimes.”
She wanted to find something and smack him with it. “If you’ll remember, we’ve had this argument before and you’re not listening any more now than you were when I—” she stopped herself just in time “—then.” She had started to say before she left him, but he didn’t remember any of that, and telling him now wasn’t going to accomplish anything and might just make things more difficult in the long run.
“Bria, you know I can’t do that,” he said, his frustration causing lines to etch his forehead. “I don’t remember anything since the first part of the year. If there’s something I need to know or that you want to tell me, I’m listening.”
A sudden feeling of utter defeat settled over her. There was so much she wanted to tell him about needing him to rely on her as much as she did him, about how she wanted to feel as if she was an equal partner in their marriage. She wanted to ask him why he had waited to come home after she lost their child, and when he did, why he’d acted as if the pregnancy had never existed. But he couldn’t remember her pregnancy, much less the last time she had confronted him with all her questions, so there was really no point in repeating herself.
“Go to bed, Sam,” she said tiredly. It really wasn’t his fault he couldn’t recall anything, but it didn’t make it any less upsetting for her. “Maybe you’ll understand once you’ve regained your memory.”
When she turned and started toward the door, she might have escaped had he not put his hand on her arm. “Stay in here with me, Bria. It’s where you belong.”
His touch and the sincerity in his voice were her undoing. She didn’t have the energy or the will left to protest.
“We can’t—”
“I know, sweetheart,” he said gently. “I’m just going to hold you.”
Lying down on what was once her side of the bed, she held her breath when Sam stretched out beside her and gathered her to him. The feel of his strong arms holding her so securely against him, the steady beat of his heart beneath her palm where it rested on his chest and his clean masculine scent caused her to blink back tears. She was back in his arms for the first time in months and it felt as if she had come home. The only problem was, as soon as he regained his memory and their divorce became final, she would no longer have the right to