Her Cowboy Protector by Roxie Rivera Read Free Book Online Page B

crazed, nightmare state, Cruz had locked the door and wedged a chair under the knob. It wouldn't stop him if he went on a sleep-induced rampage but it might slow him down long enough for him to wake. It was a terrifying thought but Cruz's experiences had taught her never to take her safety for granted.
    Her throat tightened and a prickly heat burned her eyes. She blinked back tears, refusing to cry over her situation. In the grand scheme of things being stuck in a house with a crotchety cowboy who may or may not go berserk in the middle of the night wasn't so bad. Things could be much worse.
    She was alive. She was healthy. The baby was growing just fine. Sure, Niall had scared her with all that knocking around and yelling but she had to trust Carlos. Her brother wouldn't have dumped her out here with someone mentally unhinged. She remembered some of the long nights with Carlos. He'd had some terrible nightmares in the early days of being home from his deployments.
    Cruz inhaled a cleansing breath. There was no way she'd be able to fall back asleep. She was thirsty too. After a quick stop in the bathroom, she approached her door and put her ear to the wood. She heard nothing and assumed the coast was clear. Out in the hallway, Cruz held her breath and listened again. This time she heard the shower running in the shared bathroom smack dab between the two guest rooms.
    With Niall safely installed in the shower, she headed downstairs quickly and without having to tiptoe. Some of the floorboards creaked awfully loud. One creak and Niall would probably fly out the door and strangle her. Hopefully the noise of the shower drowned out her movements.
    Cruz segued into the kitchen, not bothering to turn on the light, and fixed herself a glass of water that she carried into Niall's office. She plopped into the swiveling chair behind Niall's messy desk and surveyed the stacks of paper and manila folders. After a day of reading and playing solitaire, she'd been desperate for work. Niall had shown her the disorganized office and she'd immediately gotten to work. It had taken her most of the day to sort everything into piles of like documents. Certain she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, she dug into the piles of papers.
    As she scanned slips of paper and hastily scribbled figures, Cruz noticed the many mark-throughs and the odd placements of numbers. She'd served enough time as a TA in lower level college math courses to immediately recognize the problem. In one instance, she spotted the letter P where there should have been a nine.
    Why Niall hadn't mentioned his dyslexia? She tried to imagine how frustrating it was for an extremely capable man like Niall, one of the country's most decorated and highly skilled soldiers, to struggle with simple concepts like writing numbers in the correct order. Obviously he'd learned to work around his learning disability while serving his country and studying for his bachelor's degree.
    Still there had to be a way to help him. Technology could be a godsend for a man like Niall. She smacked the spacebar on the keyboard connected to his desktop to wake it up and launched an internet browser. She typed in some keywords and hit enter.
    There were products like receipt scanners that could do a lot of the mundane work for him. If she couldn't find a good ranch accounting software, she'd just make one herself. A spreadsheet was simple enough to put together. Her programming capabilities were better than the average person. This wasn't exactly the degree of computational and applied mathematics she was used to but at least it was somewhat related to her field of study.
    As she clicked around various websites, Cruz ignored the temptation to log on and check her email. She'd been dying to get in touch with her colleagues and friends but she'd promised Carlos and Niall she wouldn't. Touching base with folks back in Austin wasn't worth risking the tiny little boy presently stretching his arms and kneeing her