Read Online Lonestar Sanctuary by Colleen Coble - Free Book Online Page A

islands" by the locals, and she'd already fallen in love with their brooding presence. They held up the sky in the distance as the cold night
gave way to sunshine, warming the rocks and vegetation.
    So far she'd avoided Rick this morning. She still couldn't believe
she'd been stupid enough to mistake a mountain lion for a woman in
trouble. What should she do about Rick's suggestion? Part of her
wanted to let someone else shoulder her burdens for a little while, but
they'd been with her so long, they'd become part of her. She didn't
know if she could even let them go.
    Through the open window she could hear Charlie talking to himself as he tried to figure out how to catch a calf that had slipped through
the gate.

    The door opened behind her, and Elijah stepped out. "There you
are, mujercita. I have time to show you the books now. To my office, if
you would be so kind."
    The books. A ball of dread coiled in her throat. While bluffing it
came easily to her, this might be more than she could fake her way
through. "I should probably check on Betsy."
    "The nifia is on the back porch playing with the kittens. This will
not take long. They are not difficult." Elijah beckoned her with a
brown finger.
    Allie swallowed her excuses and followed the old man to the office
off the living room. A large, high-ceilinged space, the pale yellow walls
were further warmed by the sunlight streaming in the four large windows. An oak desk dominated the center of the room. The chair's back
was to the window, and the light fell on the vast expanse of the desk.
    Her eyes were drawn to the ledger in the middle of the desk. It
lay open, the squiggly black lines of letters and numbers crawling
across its pages like scorpions. Such small text would make the job
even more difficult. She'd hoped for a computer that let her make the
fonts larger.
    Elijah swept his arm over the chair. "Be seated, please."
    Allie went around the desk and sank onto the cracked leather desk
chair. She stared at the ledger. Clasping her hands in her lap, she told
herself the nursery rhyme that usually calmed her:
    Once I saw a little bird
    Go hop, hop, hop.
    So I cried, little bird,
    Will you stop, stop, stop?

    And I was going to the window
    To say, how do you do?
    When he shook his little tail
    And away he flew.
    Something about the cadence stole her flustered feelings away. She
eased back in the chair and listened to the singsong in her head until
her confidence surged again.
    It was only numbers in a book. She would work hard and learn.
    Elijah stood beside her. A stack of bills lay in a wire tray on the
desk, and he took the first one. "This is the electric bill." He ran a
gnarled finger down the rows to stop on the third line down. "You
find the month by going across." He moved his finger in a vertical
direction to the third column. "This is the February bill, so it is to be
written down here. Very easy, much as you have likely done in your
private affairs."
    Allie clamped her teeth against the hysterical laughter rising in her
throat. If he only knew what a mess her private affairs were.
    When she didn't pick up the pencil, Elijah did it. "I'll show you."
He carefully inscribed the date and some numbers in the boxes.
    She forced herself to look at the page, trying not to feel sick at the
way the black text jiggled on the white paper. She squinted and managed to make out one entry. "Your electric bill is over five hundred
dollars?"
    "It costs money to run the pumps for water for the livestock, for
showers when we have a bunkhouse full of children."
    "How do you pay for all this?"
    He smiled. "I made much money in my younger days as a child
psychologist in Houston. The ranch, we bought when our daughter
was a baby, but we did not come to live here until she was a teenager." His face grew pensive. "This was maybe not so good a choice. My
wife, she was very frugal. I have enough for many years to come. The
agencies who send the children,