His Marriage to Remember - By Kathie DeNosky Page 0,57

tell her the rest. “So we started shoplifting food from a little market in the neighborhood.”

“You were twelve years old and hungry, Sam,” she said gently. “You did what you had to do to survive.”

“It still wasn’t right.” He shook his head. “But that wasn’t the worst of it.” Running his hand across the back of his neck to ease the building tension, he continued, “We found a gun the old man had stashed away on a closet shelf, and at first we only carried it in case someone tried to stop us from taking the food we needed. We figured all we would have to do is point it at them and they’d let us go. By the time I turned fifteen, the old man had disappeared completely and we had graduated to robbing stores at gunpoint in order to pay the rent and keep from having to sleep in the streets.”

“Oh, my God, Sam!” The shocked expression on her pretty face just about tore him apart. It was the look he expected, but it didn’t make it any easier for him to see. “Is that why you were sent to Hank Calvert’s ranch?”

He nodded. “Nate had tried robbing a convenience store on his own and it didn’t go well. He got away, but detectives had been watching us for several weeks and knew we were the ones they were looking for. When they found us, I told them I was the one who pulled the robbery.”

“Why?” she asked, frowning.

“Fifteen-year-old boys don’t think things through,” he said, smiling sardonically. “I got it in my head that if the police thought I had acted alone, they would let Nate go.”

“But they knew you were both involved,” she guessed.

He nodded. “They had enough evidence from the previous robberies that had we been of age, they would have locked us up and thrown away the key.”

“What kept you out of juvenile detention?” she asked, clearly surprised that they hadn’t been sent there to begin with.

“We were assigned a children’s advocate who took the time to find out about our mom dying and the old man abandoning us. I don’t know whether it was out of pity or if she recognized that we had only been trying to survive, but she worked a miracle.” Sam shook his head. “I don’t know how she did it, but she made a deal with the D.A. to have us both sent to the Last Chance Ranch and the judge went along with it.”

Sam would forever be grateful to the overworked, underpaid civil-service worker. The woman had spared him and Nate from being sent into an environment that might have hardened them beyond redemption, as well as saving them from themselves.

“You might have started down the wrong path, but Hank turned you and Nate around,” Bria pointed out.

“Hank helped us realize that the life we were leading wasn’t what our mother would have wanted for us.”

“What gave you the idea I wouldn’t understand about your childhood, Sam?”

“Pride, I guess.”

Bria could tell that Sam was ashamed of his past and would just as soon forget that it ever happened. But he had to understand that he was the man he was today because of it.

“You and Nate have both risen above your problems,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “No matter what happened when you were younger, you grew up to be honest, hardworking men. Good men.”

She watched him take a deep breath. “This isn’t easy for me to say, but I guess I’ve always been afraid I’d revert to the kind of no-good man my father was if I didn’t keep my nose to the grindstone.”

“Oh, Sam, that’s the last thing you would do,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s not who you are.”

Bria wanted to go to him, wanted to wrap her arms around him and erase all the hurt and disillusionment that he had experienced during his youth. But she didn’t dare. Although she understood now why he was so driven to succeed, it didn’t mean he was willing to abandon being a workaholic.

“There’s something else you need to know,” he said, walking back over to sit down on the couch.

“What’s that?” she asked, wondering what other injustices he might have suffered as a boy.

“The reason I have a hard time accepting that you want to do things for me is because I don’t want you to see me any other way but strong and capable,” he said hesitantly. “A man who can take care