Anything You Ask Read Free Page B

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