The Gift: A Novella by Sandra Marton Page B

his Katie, his Ekaterina, until she wept with joy in his arms.
    * * * *
    They showered together, and had breakfast at the little round table by the window. Then Katie put on what she had worn last evening—the heavy white fisherman’s sweater, black tights, black boots. She tied her hair back in a ponytail.
    She looked as if she were eighteen, Kaz thought, and his heart clenched like a fist.
    He put on what he’d been wearing yesterday: suit, shirt, tie, shiny black shoes. The doorman hailed a taxi that took them downtown, to Kaz’s Gramercy Square penthouse. They held hands through the twenty-minute cab ride, held hands as Kaz hurried Katie through the lobby, and when they got into the elevator, he hauled her into his arms and kissed her.
    He linked his hands at the base of her spine.
    “You are,” he said softly, “the most beautiful woman in the world.”
    She laughed and leaned back in his arms. “Liar.”
    “Never about you,” he said, with such seriousness that her smile faded. “You’re beautiful, Katie. Everything about you is beautiful.”
    Her smile was all a man could ask for.
    “And you,” she said, “you are—you are wonderful. You are all that I ever hoped—all that I ever dreamed—”
    He kissed her. A very good thing, she thought, because she’d come close to saying something impossible.
    She’d almost told him that she’d hoped and dreamed of finding a man like him.
    A man to whom she could give her heart.
    * * * *
    Kaz changed into jeans, a navy turtleneck sweater, a leather bomber jacket and well-worn Tony Lamas. At the last second, he recalled that he’d turned off his phone, so he switched it on, scrolled through message after message.
    He answered the ones that had to do with business.
    And hesitated over the ones from Sardovia.
    His jaw tightened.
    By now, they would know that Zach had handed responsibility for Ekaterina to him.
    He called up the first message. He was right. It was from the minister of state, reminding him that he had to “deliver” her to him on Christmas Eve.
    Deliver. As if she were a package, not a woman.
    Kaz deleted the message. He deleted all of them. He cleared the phone of everything from Sardovia, turned the damn thing off and dumped it on his night table.
    Then he walked out of his bedroom, took Katie in his arms, and spun her in circles until she squealed.
    “How do you feel about snow?”
    She gave him a solemn look. “I love snow when it’s deep and new, and if it’s right for making snowballs…” The solemn look became a wicked grin. “Then it’s perfect.”
    He laughed, and took her across the street, to Gramercy Park.
    The bluestone pathways had been cleared, but the snow on either side of them was deep, a pristine white blanket that covered the grass, shrubs and trees. The big Christmas tree that had gone up weeks ago looked like part of the stage set for “The Nutcracker.”
    Kaz slipped his arm around Katie’s waist as they strolled along.
    “When I was a kid in the Bronx, I used to live for snow days.”
    “The Bronx?”
    “Uh huh. Not your usual stomping ground, right?”
    She smiled up at him. “I went to the Bronx Zoo in fourth grade. Does that count?”
    “A school trip?”
    She nodded. “Miss Chapman’s School for Young Ladies,” she said, and giggled. “Can you even imagine a place with a name like that?”
    “Well, I bet it didn’t hold a candle to P.S. 40.” Kaz grinned. “But yeah, I can. It was probably a lot like The Academy for Stuck-Up Future Tycoons that I got shoved into when I was ten.”
    Katie poked him with her elbow.
    “It wasn’t called that!”
    “It should have been.”
    “How did you end up there?”
    Kaz hesitated. He never talked about his past, certainly not about his childhood. But this was Katie. His Katie.
    “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she said softly.
    “No. I do want to talk about it. With you, anyway.” He took a deep breath. “See, my mother