The Cowboy's Baby(4)

As his girlfriend wasn’t there, Daniel allowed himself the luxury of a scowl. Another vacation? Just the previous month, he’d allowed her to wheedle him into going to Spain, only to be relegated to their hotel room while she went out shopping and dining. It wasn’t the money itself that irked him – after all, he had plenty of that. It was the fact that she’d sold him on the vacation by telling him how much time it would give them to spend together. Then, the moment she’d been able, she’d gotten rid of him.

He had no doubt that Greece would be much the same. “Darlin’, I don’t know if I have the time right now. It’s breeding season and they need me here on the ranch.” It wasn’t a lie. He couldn’t stop what he was doing to take a vacation right this moment. He had far too much to do.

“Daniel, you’re the head of a multi-billion dollar company. You can’t take a break and get someone else to do that for you?”

He could.

But that wasn’t the principle of the thing.

Daniel Hartsford had spent the last two decades of his life building up his cattle business. He came from humble beginnings – both of his parents had been involved in the beef business in Texas. They, however, had worked under a larger subsidiary, only sending a few of their best cows each year to the beef markets. Daniel, however, had never forgotten exactly how well his parents celebrated after getting the paycheck for those cows. While they worked to make ends meet for the rest of the year, the check they got from the company was enough for them to buy toys for their only son – to take him out to dinner at their favorite restaurant, and once, to buy him the colt he’d begged for over the course of an entire year.

Beef, he’d always known, was good money. Which was why, despite going to school for business, he’d gone against his parents’ wishes and come back to ranching. He’d taken over their farm and slowly converted it to a beef producing establishment. The process had taken five years and a lot of money invested – which meant long hours at an office job he despised – but ultimately, the small Hartsford farm had made back enough to pay off its own mortgage – in addition to seeing both of his parents retire in comfort.

With the money he had earned from that venture, Daniel had taken the ultimate leap of faith. He’d left his small hometown in Texas and moved north to South Dakota where, with the help of a loan, he’d purchased two hundred acres of rolling farmland to create his own ranch. He had started with all of ten cows and one hundred thousand dollars investment.

Over the past fifteen years, he had carefully maneuvered his business into the top spot for beef exportation in the world, outdoing even the Kobe breeding centers in Japan and the Kaluski steers in Russia. At the age of thirty nine, he was the head of a ranch with over thirty thousand cattle, all carefully bred and cared for by some of the top zoologists and biologists in the business. He liked to make personal assurances that his beef was pesticide and hormone free, as well as non-genetically modified.

It had taken him thousands of hours of sweat, blood and effort to get Hartsford Beef to where it was today. And through the entire process he’d promised himself that he’d never go the way of so many CEOs when they made their first million. He wouldn’t relegate himself to an office, locked away boozing and spending his own money faster than he could make it.

He’d been born an outdoors-man and an outdoors-man he would remain. If he couldn’t really get his hands in what he was working with, his own idleness would drive him out of his mind. He felt more at home rounding up cows and their calves in the wilderness than he felt in a starched suit in a boardroom.

Something Alyssa had yet to understand.

But he would have patience with her. When you loved someone, you had to have patience. Alyssa had stuck by him for three years when other women didn’t have the patience. He himself had very little wherewithal when it came to women just after his money and success. Alyssa was different.

Or at least…she had been. Now things could get a bit…complicated.

“I can’t leave in the middle of breeding season, hon. How about in a few weeks?”

“Daniel, they say now is the best time to go. Lots of important business people…lots of hobnobbing-”

“Yeah, but what about us? Are you sure you should be getting on planes while we’re trying to…you know?”

At the inquiry, a loud huff ensued from the other line. “Daniel, I’m not pregnant. Not yet. I’d know if I was.”

“I know, honey, but the doctor said that as long as we were going to continue to try -“