His Marriage to Remember - By Kathie DeNosky Page 0,26

be there.

* * *

When he woke up the next morning, Sam wasn’t overly surprised to find that Bria was already up and had most likely gone downstairs to make breakfast. Hopefully, she would be more rested and in a better mood than last night.

Staring at the ceiling, he thought about what she had said just before they had gone to bed. What made her think he didn’t need her?

Just because he insisted on doing things for himself didn’t mean she wasn’t a vital part of his life. Why couldn’t she see that he worked hard and had bent over backward to make things easier for her? That it was important to him that he provide her with a nice house to live in and nice things to wear? Or that by gritting his teeth and not allowing her to see his weaknesses, he was actually putting her needs before his own and showing her how much he cherished her? Didn’t she realize how amazing he thought she was? How honored he was to be her husband?

Unlike what his father had done for his mother, Sam intended to see that Bria wasn’t saddled with a man who was too lazy to do anything for himself. Of course, she didn’t know anything about his life before he and Nate were put into foster care, didn’t have a clue what had sent them to the Last Chance Ranch or how it drove him to be a better man now. And that was just the way Sam wanted it to stay. The few times she asked him about his childhood, he had told her that she didn’t want to know and found a way to divert her attention.

He wasn’t proud of his past, didn’t want to talk about it and didn’t want Bria to think less of him for where he came from and the mistakes he had made in his youth. Hank Calvert had assured his foster sons that no one had to know about what they had done to land themselves in his care. It was how they acted and what they did moving forward that counted.

A sudden dull ache seemed to wrap around his skull and, groaning, Sam closed his eyes against the pain squeezing his brain.

“Sam, I’ve tried to tell you what’s wrong with our marriage, what’s wrong with us,” Bria said tearfully as she put stacks of her clothes into a suitcase. “But you won’t listen and I can’t live like this anymore.” She stopped packing to turn and face him. “Husbands and wives are supposed to communicate and tell each other what’s wrong, then work out a solution together. But your idea of ‘fixing things’ is to ignore whatever problems we have and hope they’ll miraculously go away. Maybe I could understand you better if I knew why you’re so self-contained, but I don’t know anything about your life before you went to live with Hank Calvert. Husbands usually share something like that with their wives, but you won’t even give me that much. It’s almost as if you didn’t exist before you went to live at the Last Chance Ranch.”

As the pressure in his head eased, Sam’s heart thumped against his ribs like a war drum. Opening his eyes, he threw back the covers and sat up on the side of the bed. Had Bria actually left him? She was here now. But what the hell had happened and how had they resolved the situation?

Rubbing his temples, he desperately tried to remember what had taken place and where Bria had been going. But as had been the case each time he recovered a scrap of his memory, the events surrounding it were elusive and just out of reach.

He stood up and headed for the shower. Lying in bed was not going to get him the answers he needed. And whether he liked what he learned or not, he had to know.

After a quick shower, Sam got dressed and started downstairs. He had no idea what he was going to do in order to figure things out, but questioning Bria wasn’t on the table. For one thing, he didn’t remember enough about what took place to know how to approach the matter. And for another, not revealing the fact that his memory was returning might buy him the time he needed to know how to deal with the situation when it did come back.

He was halfway to the bottom step when he stopped dead in his tracks and