His Marriage to Remember - By Kathie DeNosky Page 0,52
you.”
“I would have survived,” Sam said, shaking his head. “It wasn’t fair to ask that of her. She had to put her new life up in Dallas on hold while she waited on me to remember we’d called it quits.”
“But the divorce wasn’t your idea,” Nate pointed out. “And I don’t think it was what Bria really wanted either. You didn’t see how upset she was that first night at the hospital when we didn’t know how badly you were injured.”
“It doesn’t matter. She wants the divorce now,” Sam said, rising to scrape his untouched breakfast into the garbage disposal and pour the cold coffee down the drain.
“She’s left?” Nate asked.
“Yup.”
“So go after her and talk things out,” Nate said, his tone emphatic.
“That’s the problem,” Sam said, shaking his head. “She wants me to tell her things about myself that are better left buried in the past.”
“She doesn’t know about us?” his younger brother asked, clearly astounded.
“Nope.”
“Not even about Mom dying and the authorities having the good sense to take us out of that miserable situation once Dad took off?”
“Nope.”
“Hell, Sam, that was eighteen years ago,” Nate said, shaking his head. “I figured you had told her all about us and the fact that you attempted to take the rap for me when I tried to hold up that convenience store.”
“What good would come of it?” he asked pointedly.
“What harm would it do?” Nate retorted. “We were both kids and I’m positive Bria would understand. Besides, she’s your wife, bonehead. The last I heard, married folks share stuff like that with each other. Why the hell didn’t you tell her?”
Sam stared at his younger brother for several long seconds. “What do you know about marriage?”
“Apparently a hell of a lot more than you do.” Nate checked his watch. “I think it’s about time for us to hit the road, bro,” he said, rising to his feet and heading for the back door. “You have a doctor to see and I have a date for lunch and a little TLC from a cute little nurse.” He paused to see if Sam followed him. “And while we’re driving down to Waco, I think you had better give serious thought to making a trip up to Dallas to tell your wife what you should have told her years ago.”
As Sam grabbed his hat from one of the hooks beside the door and walked out to get into Nate’s truck, he couldn’t stop thinking about what his brother had said. Was Nate right? Would Bria understand that because of their run-in with the law, the Rafferty boys had become charges of Hank Calvert and learned to rise above their raising?
She had just said there wasn’t anything he could tell her that would make her stop loving him. Had she really meant it? Did he have the guts to tell her all his dirty little secrets and find out?
* * *
Sam stood poised to open the gate as he waited for the rider to climb on the dusty back of Black Mamba, wrap the bull rope around his hand and give the go-ahead nod to turn the bull out into the arena. As dark as the snake he was named for, the bull had never been ridden and with any luck this rider wouldn’t be the first. The fewer men who could stay on the animal for the full eight seconds, the bigger demand there would be for his appearance at the national finals at the end of the year.
“Still feeling up to par?” Ryder asked as he positioned himself beside Sam at the chute gate. It had been two weeks since Sam had returned to the rodeo circuit and all his brothers were still asking him if he was doing all right.
“Ask me that one more time and you’ll think having a bull chase you around this arena is a picnic compared to dealing with me,” Sam warned.
Ryder threw back his head and laughed. “Yup, you’re feeling just fine. Nate was right. You’re as ornery as a bear with a sore paw.” Ryder grinned. “You know, you really should do something about that, bro.”
Sam didn’t like that his brothers had been discussing his mood, and no doubt the reason for it, behind his back. They all knew Bria had left him again. But instead of leaving him be as they had the first time, they seemed to feel the need to needle him about it with little or no provocation. Of course, none of