Читать книгу Committed to the Baby онлайн | страница 41

Justice had made the change over to natural grazing and organic ranching nearly ten years ago, as soon as he took over the day-to-day running of King Ranch. His father hadn’t put much stock in it, but Justice had been determined to run the outfit his way. And in that time, he’d been able to expand and even open his own online beef operation.

He only wished his father had lived to see what he’d made of the place. But his parents had died in the same accident that had claimed Justice’s chances of ever making his own family. So he had to content himself with knowing that he’d made a success of the family spread and that his father would have been proud.

“Oh, and we got another offer on Caleb,” Phil was saying, and Justice focused on the man.

“What was it?”

“Thirty-five thousand.”

“No,” Justice told him. “Caleb’s too valuable a stud to let him go for that. If the would-be buyer wants to pay for calves out of Caleb, we’ll do that. But we’re not selling our top breeding bull.”

Phil grinned. “That’s what I told him.”

Some of Justice’s competitors were more convinced it was his breeding stock that made his cattle so much better than others, and they were continually trying to buy bulls. They were either too stupid or too lazy to realize that fresh calves weren’t going to change anything. To get the results Justice had, they were going to have to redo their operations completely.

The door to the study swung open after a perfunctory knock, and both men turned to look. Maggie stood in the open doorway. Faded jeans clung to her legs and the King Cattle T-shirt she wore in bright blue made her eyes shine like sapphires. She gave Phil a big smile. “You guys finished?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Phil said.

“No,” Justice said.

His ranch manager winced a little as he realized that he’d blown things for his boss.

Maggie looked at her husband. “Which is it? Yes or no?”

Frowning, Justice scowled at his foreman, silently calling him traitor. Phil just shrugged, though, as if to say it was too late now.