Read Online Her Perfect Gift by Theodora Taylor - Free Book Online Page A

she said after she did it a fourth time. “It’s just…Lake Michigan is so beautiful, and I almost never get to see it at night.”
    “Why not?” he asked.
    She was surprised by the question, since he hadn’t asked one the entire time they’d been eating. “Well, you know, my hours are weird, so I don’t get much leisure time after the sun goes down.”
    “You work too much,” he said.
    She shrugged. “Obviously you make a lot of money doing high-end security, but paying for Sparkle’s schooling isn’t exactly easy for me.”
    “Yet you refuse to apply for a scholarship.”
    She lowered her fork and pasted a smile on her face. “Nope. There are students who need them more than Sparkle, and I don’t mind working. It keeps me busy.”
    He lifted his eyebrows. “Either that or you didn’t want to provide the school with your financial records, so you’re working what amounts to three jobs to pay her tuition.”
    Her smile wobbled. That had been exactly why she hadn’t applied for a scholarship.
    “Speaking of that third job,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to ask is there anything else you want me to do on the accounting side of things.”
    He steepled his hands over his plate. “Anything else like what?” His onyx eyes met hers and it sent a small shiver down her spine.
    “Tony calls it ‘creative accounting,’” she said, trying to keep the shakiness she felt out of her voice. “If I have to explain it, then you probably don’t need it. It just that you make enough to buy Tony’s business and pay for Sparkle’s tuition without blinking and I thought that might mean you were involved in something more than high-end security.”
    His gaze kept her pinned. “If I was, would you think less of me?”
    “I—I don’t know,” she said. “I guess it would depend on what exactly you do besides high-end security.”
    He regarded her for a few seconds before saying, “You’re right, what I do isn’t as simple as high-end security. It’s highly specialized and very few other men in the world do it as well as I do, that’s why I’m able to live as comfortably as I do. Also, I inherited a substantial amount of money from my mother.”
    “So your mom’s dead?” she asked, her heart going out to him because she hadn’t known they had this in common.
    The same sadness that she’d seen in Montana flickered across his face then. “Yes. Less than fifteen years into their marriage, my father decided he’d made a mistake in marrying my mother for love and started divorce proceedings. You see, she is Chinese, and though her family was very well off in her country, my father’s family never approved of their marriage. Her answer to this insult was to take her own life, making him a widow, before he could throw her away. Technically the money should have gone to him, but my father held it in trust for me and gifted it to me on my wedding day.”
    “That was nice of him,” she said, thinking of her own father, who had always put her best interests ahead of his own.
    “No,” he said, placing his napkin on the table. “It was a manipulation, a gift for marrying the woman he had chosen for me and for assuming the role he designated for me in the family business. If he could have found away to take the money back upon our divorce, he would have done so.”
    “So you and your father don’t get along?” she asked.
    “No, but I remain grateful for his presence in my early life.” He gave her an up and down look that made goose bumps raise on her arms. “He taught me to be ruthless, and that quality has served me well over the years.”
    The subject, she could sense, had changed. When he talked about his inherited ruthlessness, he wasn’t really talking about his father or even his current job. Something pulsed in the air between them like a tiger ready to pounce.
    “Wow, would you look at the time?” she said, making a big show of checking her watch. “I took the El, so I should probably be