by Lynn Kellan
Given their friendship, perhaps Mark sacrificed some profit to help Jeff. Unfortunately, the money hadn’t been recouped another way. The barn looked near collapse. The only thing holding up the roof were the spider webs laced between the beams.
“You might have to find someplace else to buy feed,” Hale acknowledged. “I don’t know what Danielle plans to do with the farm.”
“That must hurt, knowing your brother shut you out of his will.” A malevolent grin twisted Jeff’s mouth. “All this land belongs to a literature professor who doesn’t know the first thing about farming.”
An image of Danielle struggling with the tiller sprang into Hale’s mind. The awkward way she’d tried to start the engine filled him with empathy. Even though she might not know the first thing about cultivation, she wasn’t short on determination.
He looked at the fields that permeated his dreams and a surge of bittersweet longing pinched his chest. “I trust her instincts. She’ll take good care of this place.”
“Unlike your brother.” Jeff kicked an empty box of nails out of the way. “Did you see the hole in the ceiling?”
“What hole?”
Jeff motioned for Hale to follow him into the cavernous interior of the barn. When they reached the far end of the structure, Jeff pointed to a gash in the floor above. “That’s where your brother fell.”
A sharp pain sliced through Hale’s stomach when he looked up at the rotten planks that gave way to send his brother hurtling to the hard concrete below. Not trusting himself to speak, he stared at the floor in mute anguish.
“He survived the fall, but he had a massive coronary on the way to the hospital. Danielle told you, right?”
“Yes. She sent me a text.” He touched his back pocket to make sure his cell phone was still there. For too long, those text messages from Danielle were his only connection to home.
“She sent you a text? That’s cold. Why didn’t she call you?”
“Reading a text is easier than hearing someone over the phone.”
“Oh, right.” Jeff’s narrowed gaze dropped to the dry straw scattered near his boot. “You still smoke?”
A rash of anger prickled across Hale’s skin. “No.”
Jeff’s brow rose. “You ought to tell Danielle. She’ll be happy to hear a Cooper can quit an addiction.”
Hale gritted his teeth. “What’s your addiction?”
“Women.” A tight smile touched Jeff’s mouth. “But at least I’m not hung up on one, like you. Don’t make the mistake of thinking Danielle might keep you around. She’s a professor now. A girl like her belongs on campus, not a farm. As far as I can tell, she can’t wait to get off this piece of dirt. Even though she didn’t accuse you of setting the blaze, that doesn’t mean she thinks you’re innocent.”
“Good to be around family again,” Hale muttered, stunned at Jeff’s unprovoked attack. Then again, Coopers made a point of remembering each other’s vulnerabilities. What better way to keep the wolves at bay?
“Speaking of family, thank your brother for making sure Danielle never wants to get involved with either of us.” Jeff slapped on his baseball cap as he headed out of the barn. “You know what it’s like living under the same roof with a Cooper. Imagine being married to one.”
Hale jerked, wishing his sleek, new hearing aid hadn’t picked up every single syllable of Jeff’s departing taunt. Truer words were never spoken. After Mark failed her so abysmally, Danielle had good reason not to trust anyone elseespecially a Cooper. The hollow fear in her eyes convinced him his family had picked her apart until all she had left was the brittle conviction to get by on her own.
He could relate.
Leaving this place was the only way he could have healed. He found peace when he drove all the way to the windswept fields of grass in Oklahoma and took a job on a ranch, tending cattle.
He couldn’t blame Danielle for needing to start over, too. Still, he didn’t want her to go. Now that he was strong enough to claim the farm, Hale wondered what it would take to win the woman who lived there, too.
Chapter Two
Danielle rubbed the band of tension along the back of her neck. She told the boys their uncle would join them for dinner, but there was no sign of him. The clock read five minutes after six o’clock, the boys were hungry, and she had no idea who was going to melt down firsther twins or herself. If Hale was like Mark, he might not show up for another hour.
She drained the spaghetti and put some onto her sons’ plates. If she didn’t get some food into them, their squabbling might spark the next world war.
As she ladled the meatballs over the pasta, the kitchen went dead silent. She looked past the oak cabinets separating the kitchen from the eating area and saw Hale standing near the table.
“Is that your dog?” Luke asked, his small voice full of wonder as he eyed the big chocolate lab.
“Yes. Her name is Cocoa.”
“Mom won’t let us have a dog. She’s scared of them ever since she got bit by Jeff’s dog.” Drew met Danielle’s gaze. “Do you want me to put Cocoa outside?”
Gratitude gushed through Danielle at Drew’s concern, but her sweet boy had no idea his uncle needed that dog. “Cocoa can stay. She’s very well behaved.”
Hale’s unwavering gaze met hers. “My dog won’t hurt you.”
The solemn vow in his sky blue eyes made her insides clench with surprise. She’d gotten so used to hearing empty promises mumbled by her husband, she didn’t know how to react when Hale held her gaze with steadfast confidence and assured her safety.
She acknowledged his statement with a wan smile, not sure she believed him.
“Boys, this is Uncle Hale. He is your father’s brother, but you haven’t met him until now because he lives far away. He came to help me figure out what to do with the farm. Would you please introduce yourselves while I finish serving supper?”
Mark had always teased her for speaking to the boys so properly, but her calm way of explaining things had a wonderful side effect. Her boys were well spoken and polite, as evidenced by her firstborn, who stood by the kitchen table as he made introductions.
“I’m Andrew Drake Cooper, but everybody calls me Drew. This is my brother, Lucas Hale Cooper, but call him Luke. We’re five years old and we’re twins. You can tell us apart by our hair.” He tugged on a gold curl above his ear. “I have light hair, like Mom. Luke has dark hair, like Dad.”
“Hullo.” Hale’s brow furrowed as he studied his namesake. When he sat, he cast a searching look in Danielle’s direction.
Ignoring the question in his gaze, she brought the plates of spaghetti to the table and settled across from Hale. “Drew, would you say the blessing?”
“Lord, thank you for bringing Uncle Hale to help us. And I pray Cocoa will let us pet her tonight. Amen.”
“You’ll have to ask permission to pet Cocoa,” Danielle informed Drew. “She’s a working dog.”
He scrunched his nose. “You mean she gets paid to be a dog?”
“Kind of. She has very good ears, so in exchange for food and a soft place to sleep, she helps me hear.” Hale pointed to his right ear. “I’m deaf in this ear, but I’ve got some hearing in my left ear when I wear a hearing aid. Cocoa pays attention to the things I miss. She’ll nudge me if I don’t hear something. You might have to nudge me, too. At times, I won’t know you’re talking to me if I can’t see your lips move.”
“How did you get deaf?” Luke twined spaghetti around his fork. “Did you catch it?”
“I have a condition that affects my hearing. I inherited it from my father.”
Luke’s expression crumpled. “Are we going to get deaf, too?”
“No.” Hale’s voice lowered to a reassuring murmur. “Your dad didn’t have the gene, so you’re safe.”
“Oh.” Luke slurped up a strand of pasta and stared in wide-eyed wonder at Hale’s hearing aid. “That thing on your ear makes you look half man, half machine. Like the Machine Man.”
&nb
sp; “I shouldn’t have let you watch that cartoon last Saturday,” Danielle murmured, amused by the hero worship in her son’s avid gaze.
“How come you never visited us?” Drew reached for a roll.
Hale paused for a moment before offering an explanation. “My father got angry at me a few years ago. He told me to leave and not come back. I didn’t feel right returning until I was asked.”
Drew scratched his head, leaving a clump of blond hair sticking out from his temple. “What did you do wrong?”
“I couldn’t stop one of our barns from burning down. The damage cost my father a lot of money.”
Danielle gave Hale a grateful nod, silently thanking him for softening the truth so the boys’ grandfather didn’t look so heartless.
Drew passed the basket of rolls to Hale. “Didn’t anyone help you put out the fire?”
“By the time everyone got to the barn, the flames were too strong.”
The look in his eyes echoed the soot-stained anguish on his face when he stumbled out of the flames that summer night. She remembered hugging him tight, asking if he was okay. His body shook as he buried his face in her neck with a groan. The hay caught fire. I couldn’t stop it, Dani. It spread too quickly. She assumed the hay combusted, which sometimes happened when any type of grass wasn’t thoroughly dried before baling.
She never thought Hale’s father would blame him for setting the blaze.
“Where do you live now?” Drew sopped up some sauce with his bread.
“Oklahoma. I work on a cattle ranch.”
Luke gasped. “Are you a cowboy?”
Hale chuckled as he spread butter on a roll. “Yeah, I guess you could say so.”
The boys traded wide-eyed looks of amazement. Danielle could tell their mysterious uncle suddenly possessed the same star power as their favorite baseball pitcher.
“Our uncle is a cowboy and we have meatballs!” Drew speared one on the tines of his fork and held up the delicacy in celebration.
Hale frowned down at the six grape-sized meatballs on his plate. “Don’t you usually have meat?”
“I’m budgeting, trying not to spend too much.” Danielle twirled a precious strand of spaghetti on her fork as though nothing was wrong. She honed that skill to perfection toward the end of her marriage.
When she looked up, she realized Hale was comparing her meager serving of noodles to the hearty piles of food on the rest of their plates.
Without a word, he pushed his chair from the table and scraped half his dinner on top of her thin lump of pasta.
“I’m not very hungry.” Danielle’s mouth watered as four meatballs tumbled onto her plate, releasing the luscious scent of cooked beef.
He fired a determined look from across the table as he sat again. “I’ll give you money for groceries.”
“There’s no need.” Shame flared across her face in a hot blush. She didn’t want his charity. In this family, asking for help set you up for years of criticism. “We’re fine.”
“I know you are, Danielle.” He met her gaze. “After dinner, I’m heading back into the barn to do more work. Then we need to talk.”
She nodded, unused to seeing such forthrightness in a Cooper’s eyes. Over the last few months of her marriage, guilt had marred her husband’s unsteady gaze. Shaking off that sad memory, she swallowed a mouthful of saliva as she quartered the meatballs to make them last longer.
Luke’s brow crinkled like it did whenever he tried to figure something out. “Is Uncle Hale going to sleep on the couch like Dad did?”
The fork slipped out of Danielle’s hand and dropped onto the plate with a loud clatter. She didn’t dare meet Hale’s gaze, but she watched his big hand grip his water glass tight enough to make the suntanned skin across his broad knuckles turn white.
“W-we don’t have a guest room, so Uncle Hale will sleep in the living room.” Desperate to escape the smoldering tension blanketing the kitchen, she hurried to finish her dinner. Thanks to Luke’s accidental revelation that his father slept on the couch rather than with her, the prized meatballs tasted like sawdust on her dry tongue.
Three hours later, Danielle sank onto the dark navy blue couch in her family room and watched Hale settle on the hassock across from her.
He placed a yellow legal notepad on the coffee table between them.
From what she could tell, he’d written down everything that needed to get done around the farm. She rubbed her fingertips along her brow, trying to remember if she’d ever seen Mark with a to-do list.
“This place is a mess.” Hale stared at the notepad and shook his head. “The workshop is a wreck, none of the machinery has been tuned-up, and the barn needs a lot of work.”
Shame throbbed under her skin as Danielle looked down at her chapped hands. The small red nicks scattered across her knuckles reminded her she’d spent the past four months trying to stop everything from going to pieces.
“You don’t have many options,” Hale continued. “You can rent the fields to other farmers, but that revenue may not cover your bills.”
“I’ve already asked around. Nobody’s interested in renting the land.” Danielle leaned forward, voicing the idea that had been percolating ever since she embraced Hale’s solid shoulders that morning. He was the one man who knew these fallow fields well enough to make them green again. “Would you be willing to form a partnership? If you could help me plant crops, we could split the profits.”
“Won’t be enough money to split.” Hale’s solemn gaze met hers. “How much did you and Mark make last year? Given the drought, you might’ve netted twenty thousand dollars at most. Dividing a small profit will make us both suffer.”
“To be brutally honest, I’m not convinced this place will ever be profitable again.” She sighed and stared down at the long list on the coffee table. “I don’t see how I’ll ever get out of here.”
“I do.” He rested his elbows on his thighs. “I want this place, Danielle. Being kicked off the farm hurt like hell. I’d like to buy this land from you. Problem is, I’ll have to sink my savings into a mortgage. That won’t leave much money to fix up this place, and you’ll still have a ton of debt. I have a solution to both problems.” Eyes narrowed, he drew in a deep breath. “I’m willing to take on the farm and the debt if you marry me.”
“Marry you?” Shock stiffened her muscles, and her voice shot up an octave. “Are you insane?”
He opened his hands and shrugged. “If you marry me, I’ll have a stake in the farm. I can use my money to get things working again and put crops in the ground. The proceeds from the harvest will pay off your debt. Once that’s taken care of, you can get a place of your own and start a new life. I only ask that you give me the farm in return.” The muscle along his jaw flexed and his gaze narrowed. “I can’t walk away from my life in Oklahoma and sink my money into this place without some guarantee I’ll get the farm when you leave. Filing a legal agreement would take too long and cost too much, but we can get married in three days.”
“No. I married Mark because I was alone and scared. I won’t make the same mistake again.” She stood and started to walk around the coffee table.
Hale rose to block her escape. “What do you mean by mistake?”
This was a chance to explain why Mark slept on the couch, but she couldn’t. Admitting she and her husband lived separate lives hurt too much. “I knew Mark for five months before we got married. That wasn’t long enough.”
“You’ve known me for over six years.” Hale pointed in her direction. “You’re the only one who stayed in contact with me after I left.”
“Texting each other once in a while isn’t the same as being together every day. We’ve both changed, Hale.” She escaped by winding around the other side of the table.
“Your boys inhaled those meatballs tonight like they haven’t had beef in weeks. There are dark shadows under your eyes, which tells me you’ve been working like a dog to scrape together enough money to feed them, but it’s not eno
ugh to feed yourself.”
Anger spurted from the pit of desperation deep in her gut. Was he insinuating she couldn’t take care of her boys?
“Never mind. I can fix this. I’ll think of a way.” She narrowed her eyes and walked past him.
With a swift move, he grabbed her arm. “Damn it, Dani. I thought you needed me.”
“I’m willing to consider a partnership,” she hissed, pulling out of his grip. “Not marriage.”
“Marriage is a partnership. You don’t have to do this alone,” he insisted, jabbing his index finger at the list on the table. “This place needs a ton of work. Let me help. Marry me.”
She let out a strangled laugh. “Are you asking me to sleep with you in exchange for bailing me out?”
The corner of his mouth tightened as he drew a hand through his dark blond hair. “I’m asking you to make a commitment to me so I can do the same for you. That’s what marriage used to be about, right? Forming alliances, transferring property, and securing wealth. It’s the only way I can think of to take the farm off your hands and get you out of debt.”
The clock on the fireplace mantel ticked as Danielle tried to think of a better solution, but her brain kept flicking back to the growing pile of bills on her desk.
Hale hooked his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans. “Besides, this place has belonged to the Cooper family for over a hundred years. Give your boys a chance to live here a little while longer.”
Resentment balled up in her stomach. “I don’t want to stay in this weed-infested prison.”
“Then leave. I’ll give you fair market price for the farm.” He spread his arms wide, palms up. “What will you do about the loans? Let them chew up every dollar you earn? Or file for bankruptcy so Mark’s mistakes will stain your financial record for the rest of your life?”
Danielle looked down at the beige carpet in mute fury as she thought how Mark’s bad decisions threatened to destroy her. No way could she erase the loans, not on the salary she earned as an adjunct professor. Even if she were lucky enough to find a full-time tenure track position, she would work for ages to pay off everything.