Cowboy Take Me Away Read Online Free PDF

forgetting cat psychology. What’s hers is hers, but what’s yours is up for grabs.”
    Which was why Shannon had once found Bridget sleeping inside her open purse, with nothing but her head, her tail, and one paw hanging out. How she’d managed to cram her colossal feline self in there, Shannon didn’t know. She was still picking cat hair out of her purse.
    Shannon had adopted Bridget as a kitten from a shelter in Houston, and she’d been the queen of Shannon’s townhome. But now she knew Bridget would be much happier wearing that crown at the office rather than being home alone all day. Here there were plenty of people coming and going to give her all the attention she was entitled to.
    “Anything happen while I was gone?” Shannon asked as she sat down.
    “Uh…yeah,” Freddie Jo said. “I opened the mail.”
    “Is that a problem?”
    “Which do you want first? The good news or the bad news?”
    Shannon cringed. “I hate it when you say that.”
    “Your choice.”
    “Better give me the good news first. That way I can enjoy it for a whole ten seconds before the bad news comes.”
    Freddie Jo handed her an envelope. “You remember that grant we applied for from that pet pharmaceutical company? Check this out.”
    Shannon took out the letter and scanned it quickly, feeling a rush of pure joy. Times were tough, and grants were competitive. But this one had come through. Five thousand dollars wouldn’t go very far, but every little bit helped.
    “Oh, thank God,” she said, putting her hand on her chest. “This gives us a little breathing room.”
    “Don’t take that breathing for granted just yet. You haven’t heard the bad news.”
    Freddie Jo handed her another letter, and when Shannon saw who it was from, she felt a horrible sense of foreboding.
    “No,” Shannon said. “No, no, no . Don’t you dare tell me Henry Stockton is the bad news.”
    “Just take a look at it.”
    Shannon opened the letter, and as she read, her body grew weak with disbelief. Bad economy…difficult times…maybe next year…
    “He’s giving us nothing this year?” Shannon said, feeling as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. “Not a crying dime ?”
    “The guy is made of gold,” Freddie Jo muttered. “He could singlehandedly keep this place running and never miss the money.”
    Shannon closed her eyes, feeling more dejected than she had in months. “It’s my fault.”
    “Your fault?”
    “I didn’t make a good enough case this year. I didn’t explain how much we needed his contribution. If only—”
    “Now, you stop right there,” Freddie Jo said. “You turn yourself inside out going after donations, and that man knows quite well what things are like around here. Stop beating yourself up.”
    But it was her responsibility to ensure the financial health of this organization, and she had the most terrible feeling she was falling down on the job.
    “Don’t worry,” Freddie Jo said. “The festival’s coming up soon. We always see a bunch of donations then. And a lot of animals get adopted. It’s like this every year.”
    No. This was worse. Shannon wanted desperately to be the savior these animals needed, but with every day that passed, she felt less and less certain she was living up to that.
    When she’d left her job in Houston as an accounting manager at Marks, Wentworth and Halliday, she’d been on the fast track to a partnership. When she told her boss she was quitting to return to her hometown to take a pitifully low salary at a struggling nonprofit, he had literally questioned her sanity. But she’d been full of hope. Confidence. Audacity, even, thinking that if she could handle the accounts of multimillion-dollar clients, surely she could keep a place like this in the black. But she hadn’t counted on a depressed economy, runaway pet food prices, and an out-of-control population of homeless animals that seemed to expand before her very eyes.
    She grabbed an Excel spreadsheet from the corner