Page 12 of A Baby for the Billionaire Cowboy

She flashed him a rueful look. “Sometimes I wonder how women ever managed to have babies in the past, before we had hospitals and obstetricians and all this research on the danger of bagged salads and deli meats and cat poop.”

In the days before modern medicine, they’d lost a lot of babies, and some of the mothers as well. He figured he shouldn’t mention that, or how until the mid-eighteen hundreds, doctors didn’t wash their hands between doing an autopsy and delivering a baby.

“I’m not even allowed to eat blue cheese,” she went on, “and Gorgonzola is my favorite.”

He made a mental note of that. He’d get her some as soon as it was safe. “What else do you miss?” Maybe that was a mean question, if it got her thinking about all the things she couldn’t have. But he was already picturing a party where they’d have all the food she missed and wine or whatever she liked to drink—could women have alcohol while nursing, or not until after the baby was weaned? He’d find out.

“Oh, you know, mostly it isn’t that I desperately want the food. It’s simply an inconvenience, having to remember what I’m allowed to have. Then you come across all these fussy rules, like you can have this type of fish but only once a week and no other fish that week. And I’m supposed to get more protein, but not meats that are cured without cooking, but meat that’s cooked as it’s cured is fine.” She rolled her eyes. “Like I’m supposed to know the different ways they make salami.”

“Yeah. That sounds like a pain.” He’d get a list and share it with Mama and Bernajean, TC’s cook, so they could avoid buying food Daisy wasn’t supposed to have or at least make sure it was marked.

They stepped into the barn, dim and cool after the sunshine outside. A brown horse with white on her face whinnied and stuck her head over the stall door. Daisy clapped her hands together in front of her chest. “Oh! You said horses are safe, right?”

“Yeah. At least petting them. You might not want to ride at this stage of pregnancy, and you should avoid the back end.”

Her eyebrows went up. “To avoid being kicked or to avoid the manure?”

He chuckled. “Both. That’s Lady whose flirting with you. She’s Carly’s horse. If you want to ride later, after the baby is born and everything’s... um, feeling better... she’d be happy for the exercise. Lady, I mean. Carly would be happy to have you borrow her horse. Or any of them, but Lady is smaller, which tends to be more comfortable for petite women.”

“Yeah, I suppose I might be petite again someday, though it’s hard to believe it now.” Daisy stroked Lady’s cheek. The horse blew softly at her and gently nosed at her belly. Soon they were nuzzling each other affectionately. “I always wanted a horse,” Daisy said. “Like a lot of girls, I suppose.”

“Did you at least get to ride some?”

“No.” She pressed her cheek against Lady’s muzzle. “Things like that weren’t a priority for my family.”

Xander hesitated. He didn’t want to pry, but he wondered why she was here with Rhonda rather than home with her parents or the baby’s father. “What was?” he asked. That was vague enough to let her talk about anything she wanted.

“Oh, sending the boys to college or trade school. Not me, of course. No point in educating a girl who’s only going to quit her job to get married and have babies, as is appropriate for a female.” She made a face. “I guess they weren’t entirely wrong, although I skipped the marriage and only quit my job because I didn’t want to keep working for the baby’s father.”

“Oh.” He couldn’t think of anything to say.

“You didn’t hear?” She leaned against the stall door, one hand on her belly and the other playing with Lady’s mane. “I guess Auntie Rhonda keeps her gossip to a minimum where family is concerned.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“I’d rather y’all knew. I didn’t mean to get pregnant. I didn’t even mean to start a relationship with my boss. At least he wasn’t married, in case that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I wasn’t.” He didn’t know what he was thinking.

“He wanted to marry me, for which I was supposed to be suitably grateful. I wasn’t.” She stepped away from the horse stall and brushed her hands together. “So here I am. I ran away on my wedding day, and that’s when—” She broke off. Finally she finished, “when I came to Last Stand.”

That night at the fundraiser. He’d thought her a beautiful princess, but sad. No wonder, if she ran away from her own wedding.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

Her smile broke out like a sunrise. “Me too.”

Chapter Six

Daisy was gladto get that out in the open. They headed back to the office, where Xander approved her suggestions for reorganizing the files. The minimalist system the Tomlinsons were using looked like it had been in place for decades, and they were collecting too many papers for that. She was tempted to suggest they go paperless, but the printed versions did act as a backup if systems went down or files got corrupted. Besides, some of the ranch suppliers and beef buyers still did things the old-fashioned way. Apparently, sometimes that meant sending contracts through the mail because people didn’t even have computers. Sometimes it meant showing up in person and doing a deal on a handshake.

Within another week, Daisy had the paper files reorganized. During the process, she’d stumbled across a few papers that weren’t properly alphabetized, which caused her to look at every piece of paper and make sure it was in the right place. Then she worked on the computer files and set up a new folder system that would make it easier to find things. The prior system might have been fine for the person who built it and knew from experience where everything was, but it was hardly user-friendly. Xander grumbled a few times when he couldn’t find things right away, but once she led him through the new systems, he caught on quickly. Ava simply asked Daisy to find what she needed.

Daisy wasn’t sure if she was proving her worth or putting herself out of a job by getting everything organized so quickly. Well, maybe she’d convince Xander and Ava to let her take on more and more of the office work. Ava seemed to enjoy helping manage the family charitable foundation, because wouldn’t it be fun to choose who got big chunks of cash? You could make people’s dreams come true or simply ease the stress of rough times. They said money couldn’t buy happiness, but it sure could buy relief from certain kinds of misery. But after her lengthy vacation, Ava seemed more interested in finding other uses for her time and willing to pass basic tasks on to Daisy.

The Tomlinsons kept the family foundation work separate from the ranch accounts, which Xander handled. Really, Daisy couldn’t understand why he was still doing any of it himself. As far as she could tell, he’d hardly changed his habits since the family won the lottery, calmly going about his usual business of taking care of animals and paperwork, while everything changed around him. Granted, he seemed to enjoy working with numbers, and everyone said he’d been a math prodigy, taking over the family accounts at age fifteen. But surely he could find better—and more interesting—uses for his skills, while Daisy took over the day-to-day stuff.

It was almost funny, the way he kept trying to do things for her, so she wouldn’t have to work as hard, while she kept trying to do things for him, so she’d secure her job long term.

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