THE COWBOY’S BABY
By: Cristina Grenier
Table of Contents
Title Page
Bonus Book
Chapter One: Selfless
Chapter Two: Gone Girl
Chapter Three: Filling the Gaps
Chapter Four: Complications
Chapter Five: Developments
Chapter Six: Pretend
Chapter Seven: Entangled
Chapter Eight: Contentment
Chapter Nine: Off into the Sunset
About the Author
Publisher’s Notes
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Chapter One: Selfless
It was perfect
Absolutely perfect.
Her lips curving upward in a wide smile, Esme placed an artful sprinkle of grated dark chocolate on top of the dessert she had spent the last week formulating. She had, of course, had to do it in her spare time. At La Reina, sous chefs were kept busy with the most menial of tasks – chopping veggies, preparing spices, even washing dishes.
Every time she was relegated to scrubbing frying pans, the young woman tried to tell herself it was all worth it. If she worked hard enough and kept her head down, one day she’d have her own kitchen to run. No one started from the top – that she knew. It just seemed like she’d been at the bottom for so long…
But after a week of finding ten minutes here, and twenty there to work on her project, she had finally concocted something she could be proud of. The desert was three tiered with a strawberry cream cake base. It was set into a gleaming glass bowl with layers of sweetened cream and pieces of fresh strawberry. Chocolate wafers were stuck into the edges of the dish to provide some color contrast and the fresh grated chocolate on top finished it with a bite of bitter flavor.
She couldn’t wait to try it.
Esme sidled through the kitchen to find a dessert spoon. Humming softly, she sifted carefully through the silverware until she found what she was looking for. When she returned to the prep table, however, her heart sank. The head sous chef, Laurent, was standing over her creation, spoon in hand. A huge portion was missing from Esme’s dish, and when she stepped toward the table, the dark-haired man turned to her with a perfectly manicured brow arched.
Laurent ruled the kitchen with an iron fist. It was he who directed all below him to menial tasks so he could take credit for everything that went right in the kitchen. A blue-eyed French transplant with a thick accent, the man looked down on everyone who worked beneath him– despite his paltry five foot six height. Now, he gave Esme a once over that made her distinctly uncomfortable.
“What is this, Esme?” The man’s inquiry was sharp and clipped. Esme’s face flushed and she looked away. She’d been hoping to present the dish discreetly to the head chef. It figured that Laurent would come upon it first.
“It’s just…something I’ve been working on. When I haven’t been busy, of course.” She hurried to add the last portion so that the man couldn’t accuse her of being idle. He practically lived to imply that no one but him ever did any sort of work – when in fact, the opposite was true.
“It’s shit.”
He tossed the spoon onto the table with a sneer. “The dark chocolate is completely overwhelming. And this plating? An abomination. Aren’t you supposed to be grating carrots for garnish?”
Esme swallowed her shame and rage, resisting the urge to give the man a piece of her mind. How would he know what real food tasted like? He never seemed to be making any of it himself. As he strode away, leaving her defiled dessert on the table, she frowned. Raising her own spoon, she dipped it into the confection to taste herself.
It was absolute heaven. The chocolate added just enough bite to keep the cream from being too sweet, and the texture of the cake was divine. She glanced after Laurent, who would make sure her recipe never saw the light of day, and then back to the dessert before her. Then, with a low sigh, she dumped the entire thing in the garbage.
She managed to keep her cool for the rest of the night and into the next day’s shift. It wasn’t until the head chef added a new item to the menu – the very one Laurent had told her was absolute shit – and gave the head sous chef credit for creating it that she resigned from the position.
It was her fourth restaurant job in a year, and quite frankly, Esme was exhausted. The moment she returned to her tiny apartment, she dropped her bag on the couch and collapsed, burying her face in the cushions.
Why the hell had she gotten into this business again? To be taken advantage of and ridiculed? To be told that she had no talent by people who had gotten to where they were on the backs of those far more gifted them themselves? The young woman groaned, turning onto her back to stare up at the cracked ceiling above her.
Of course not. She’d gone to culinary school because she loved food. The four year degree had taken up nearly all of her savings, but she’d never regretted it because she’d never doubted that, one day, she’d be running someone’s kitchen.
Seven years later, suffice it to say she was getting to be slightly disillusioned with her own optimism. She hadn’t had a decent kitchen job yet, and she was coming up on her thirties. For as long as she could remember, she’d lived paycheck to paycheck, and now, she was out of another job.
Her face set into a scowl, the young woman rose to traipse into the bathroom. After her last day at La Reina, her white chef’s coat was splattered with an all matter of sauces and gravy, her dark hair unkempt and her necktie in disarray. For a moment, she stared into the mirror, assessing the woman who stared back at her.
Esme Carter was twenty eight years old – her dark mahogany locks yet untouched by grey. The long, wavy strands spilled halfway down her back when they weren’t piled beneath her chef’s hat, setting off her caramel hued skin and almond shaped, brown eyes. It was hard to be a woman in a kitchen on any day, but a woman of color? In the Midwest? Even getting herself taken seriously was a major task.
She removed her hat, letting her hair drop free down her back before she shrugged out of her coat and black pants. Beneath, she wore a black camisole that clung to her slender figure. Esme had always lamented the fact that she didn’t have her mother’s curves. Instead, she’s inherited her father’s lean, muscular forms. She could hardly call her breasts a b-cup and the round behind that should have been hers by virtue of her ethnicity alone was suspiciously absent.
She was a size four on a good day, and it didn’t matter how much she stuffed her face, she never gained a single pound. Her parents called it high metabolism – she called it a curse. Stripping off the rest of her clothes, the young woman stepped into the shower, letting the hot water melt the stress of her day away.
There were other restaurants, she reminded herself. Veritable tons. She would have a new job within the week. But would that make her happy? She seriously doubted it. Another job meant another lazy chef lording over her and stealing her recipes to slap his name on them. It was a cruel lesson to have to learn, and Esme had been taught her fair share of times.
There had to be something else she could do – even on the side- just to supplement her income. As it was, she was going to have issues making the rent for that month - and where next month was coming from, she had no idea.
As she toweled her hair, the dark-skinned girl moved back into her living room, completely naked. She’d never been modest, and since she lived alone, it was a luxury she could afford. As her body slowly air dried, she pac
ed leisurely back and forth across the small room, watching TV with only moderate interest.
She was exhausted.
Being someone’s food slave all day was no easy task, and restaurants could chew you up and spit you out with ease. The fact that she’d survived ten sous chef positions with her sanity intact was a testament to her fortitude. She just didn’t know how much longer she could hold out. Esme moved into her small kitchen. The space was hardly big enough to turn around in, but she had worked magic there. Now, she extracted a beef stew she made the previous day with a duck fat and rosemary base. It would be even better on day two, and she was sure the hearty flavor would serve to cheer her up a bit.
She was sitting down to her dinner when an ad popped up on the TV that caught her attention. Blowing on her steaming stew, Esme listened to a woman prattle on about being a surrogate – the vessel which provided needing, unable parents with an outlet to create their own children. It was a position, the woman attested, for those with large hearts, who understood the struggle that infertile parents went through.
Esme didn’t know how much she personally understood the struggle, but she certainly empathized. She had been the product of a surrogate pregnancy when her own parents couldn’t conceive. To this day, her mother cited the surrogate experience as one of the best in her life – how a young woman she’d barely known had given her the greatest gift she could ever have imagined.
It seemed like the system worked. As long as the surrogate herself didn’t develop an attachment to the child and cause legal issues for the parents, the process usually went off without a hitch. Personally, Esme wasn’t looking to have children anytime soon – perhaps not ever. But perhaps she could lend her body to someone else?
For as long as the young woman could remember, she had been healthy as a horse. She had a resilience that seemed to protect her from bugs that went rampant, affecting everyone she knew. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d been sick in her entire life and even her parents admitted to being shocked at her never being ill as a child. Despite her own mother being able to have children, Esme had no such problem. She’d even been told by her doctors that she was healthy enough to have extended birthing years and would probably be fertile into her late forties – perhaps even her early fifties.
It was a surprise for a woman who had never seriously contemplated having children.
But if she could have them for someone else…someone willing to pay all the medical expenses and a little something extra beside…well, why not? She’d be giving someone a gift she didn’t think she’d ever desire, and besides that, at least she’d get to experience the magic so many people gushed about without caring for the child itself.
She took down the number at the bottom of the screen, shaking her head as she did so. She had no idea how surrogacy agencies worked. At one time, Esme thought she might have been offered a chance to get in contact with her biological mother, but she had declined. Christine Carter had always been enough for her - a loving mother and a close friend. Would any child she had have that option? Would she have to find prospective parents herself, or would it be done for her?
It was something she’d have to discover, she decided, if she even got through the screening process; which, despite her good health, she doubted she would. There was probably some sort of psychological evaluation involved as well, and any psychiatrist that interviewed her would quickly find that she was out of her mind. After all, who willingly went into the restaurant business? Who spent hours in the kitchen working on a recipe no one else would taste for personal satisfaction?
No one she knew.
Sighing, Esme took a bite of her stew, savoring the thick, velvety texture. This was one recipe she would have to keep in mind. If this surrogacy thing didn’t work out – if she didn’t find some kind of job she could accept soon, her recipes might be the only thing she had to keep her warm.
A daunting prospect, to say the least. Even for someone who loved food as much as she did.
**
He did it without thinking.
Roping steers came as easily to Daniel Hartsford as breathing. A flick of his wrist sent the loop flying through the air a calculated fifteen foot distance to encircle the horns of a particularly ornery bull. The animal bucked and turned as the noose slowly tightened about his horns until he was drawn taut.
Daniel maneuvered his horse within easy range of the animal as it slowly calmed. He’d been tracking this one along the outskirts of the ranch for almost two hours. It was breeding season, and Dante was one of his most fertile animals.
Now that he had him in hand, he could end his long day and head back to the house. As Daniel steered Dante in to step beside his horse, his phone rang, startling the huge animal slightly. Frowning, Daniel took another five minutes to calm him to the point where he walked calmly once more. Then, retrieving his phone from his pocket with his free hand, he glanced at the missed calls screen.
At the sight of Alyssa’s name, he groaned. He’d told her he would be out all day working with the cattle and that his phone ringing may spook them, so she should refrain from calling him. It was only three in the afternoon – far too early for him to be finished working – and so it was obvious she had completely ignored his warning. He didn’t know how many countless times he had reminded the woman that his life was on the line when he was dealing with animals as big as the ones on the ranch, but his words seemed to pass completely over her head.
He called her back, careful to keep his voice low when he spoke. “Hey darlin.” Despite having lived in South Dakota for the last Decade, Daniel maintained the southern twang his youth in Texas had trained into his speech. “What’s the problem?”
“Problem?” Alyssa’s high, sweet tone came back somewhat irritated. “Why would there be a problem?”
“Well, sweetheart, I’m out with a particularly difficult steer that could up and gore me if the notion struck him. And I wouldn’t want to worry you.” He attempted to keep the sharpness out of his voice and failed miserably
“What the hell is that tone for, Daniel? If you didn’t want to speak to me why did you even call me back?”
Daniel repressed a groan, reminding himself to be tactful. It was one of the most important qualities he’d picked up in the time he’d been with Alyssa. The gorgeous Dominican could be an angel when she wanted, and the spawn of Satan when something upset her. “Honey, it’s not that I didn’t want to talk to you. I want to talk to you.” He tugged at Dante’s lead to redirect the bull, trying to keep his voice low. “What’s going on?”
There was the customary silence while Alyssa decided if she actually wanted to talk to him or not before she spoke. “Honey, I was just thinking…we should go on vacation together. I’ve been looking at this really nice town in Greece with villas overlooking the sea. They’ve got fantastic shopping and the social scene is amazing.”
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 b
eginnings – 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.
The Cowboy's Baby: A BWWM Billionaire Cowboy Pregnancy Romance Page 1
