The Gift of Love Read Online Free

front. The guy at the FedEx Office store looked at him a little oddly when he explained what it was but he knew Allison would love it when he presented the finished product to her sometime during their long weekend at the coast. He’d known from the first time he’d met her how perfectly she fit into his plans for his life. All he had to do was show her, with his research and report, the logic of their being together permanently as a married couple.
    Ever since high school, Taylor had planned each step of his life with the same care he gave each client report. He was determined not to end up like his father had, making and losing several fortunes with asinine business decisions and harebrained investments. Only too aware his childhood could hardly be called stable, Taylor had done everything within his power to minimize the risks of things going wrong in his adult life.
    For example, to ensure he’d get into the right college, he participated only in high school activities that looked good on his college applications or gave him experiences he deemed important to his goals. He researched classes, teachers, and colleges with a thoroughness astounding to his advisor in high school. She gave up trying to give him advice when she discovered all the groundwork he’d already done before he came into her office.
    In college he never put a foot wrong. No stupid drunken parties. No bad grades. No careless relationships with inappropriate women. Grad school was the same.
    His plan included work for a high-tech firm in some capacity for a short time then a switchover to a management-consulting firm where he would focus on helping high-tech businesses start up, grow, and succeed. No one associated with any business he helped would ever end up the way his father and his family had.
    When he left grad school, he had offers from a dozen or more firms in his field of choice. He carefully vetted each one and chose a small company where he worked for two years. Then he signed on with MBA Consulting. It had been the right move. He was challenged by the variety of clients he worked with, able to use his extensive education in business management, and was considered an asset to the company. He would only miss one goal. He set out to be a partner by the age of thirty-five. If he made it this year, as it now looked like he might, he would only be thirty-four.
    Part of his plan had been to find a woman sometime in his middle thirties who could appreciate his commitment to his career as well as to his future with her. Of course he hoped they’d care for each other, but love wasn’t at the top of the list of things he was looking for. Love hadn’t played much part in his parents’ relationship. It never could if there was no financial security, in his opinion.
    He was sure he’d found everything he wanted in Allison. An engineer with the Bellevue office of a big international firm, she was as much a professional as he was. She worked hard, knew what it took to get ahead. Craig, an old college friend of hers and an acquaintance of his, had introduced them at a business-after-hours cocktail thing, and she’d impressed the hell out of him. They had so much in common it was astonishing—even having attended Stanford at about the same time and on full-ride scholarships, although they’d never run into each other on campus in the year they’d overlapped. Both were Seattle born and bred; both were enthusiastic fans of their hometown and everything in it (although her favorite sports team was the Mariners baseball team and his, the Seahawks football team).
    She was smart and ambitious. She dressed professionally for work and attractively when they went to dinner. In heels, she was only a couple inches shorter than his six feet four. And her blond hair and blue eyes, which almost perfectly matched his, would guarantee, genetically, children who would be tall, fair, and good looking.
    All the signs were there. This was the relationship he needed for