Katia's Promise

Katia had always intended to be nothing short of a stellar employee for Jack.

That was another reason she didn’t understand her panic attack. She’d been in a gazillion situations with Jack that many women would construe as romantic, yet they’d all been for work. They’d sailed into the sunset on Lake Michigan with clients, sipped French champagne on the lawn of a Lake Forest estate and danced to harp music at Christmas high tea at the Drake Hotel. Yet every moment had been strictly professional, in conjunction with Katia’s efforts to sign new clients.

Jack stuck to his rules like superglue. He’d never once acted inappropriately; never held her hand or gazed at her a fraction of a second too long.

Over the years, Katia had come to understand that Jack wasn’t into her. Period. And that had been okay.

Until tonight.

Tonight, Katia’s psyche, if not her conscious mind, had suddenly realized that Tina was the last of her friends to pair off. Everyone was married. Except Katia.

She didn’t have weekend lunches or theater matinees with her girlfriends anymore. And when they did manage to get together, half of them had to rush home to kids. Or, like Ava, they had to break dates because of a sick child.

Katia’s iPad dinged with a new email. Katia smiled as she opened the note from Liz.

Hi, Katia,

I’m so happy your friends like our wine so much and that you are true to your word about being my Chicago advertising advocate. I will be happy to put a case aside for you as well as the extra bottles. You can pick them up on your next trip through town. When do you think that will be? I’ve come to look forward to your visits, and though I don’t email on a daily basis, I’m apparently falling into the habit.

We’ve been busy with the harvest, but for me, there’s been a big change. Since I saw you only two weeks ago, Gabe and I got engaged! Because you two knew each other in high school, sharing the news with you was fine with him.

Katia groaned. “Not you, too! Is this some conspiracy?” She exhaled deeply, hoping to rid her cells of her growing envy. She read further.

Honestly, I’ve never been into the white-dress thing, though nearly all my girlfriends are. Frankly, Gabe and I are talking about eloping. Or a seriously small wedding. Don’t say a word—not that you know that many people here anymore! We just don’t see any point in waiting another week, to be honest. Who knows, by the time you come through Indian Lake again, I may be married!

And thank you for asking about my grandfather’s health. He’s doing amazingly well. I can’t believe it, to be honest.

The reason we’re still up is because we just got back from driving an order into town. It was last minute and our customer can be rather demanding when he wants to be. Actually, it’s pretty exciting for us in Indian Lake. Austin McCreary—you probably wouldn’t have known him when you lived here since I think he’s quite a few years older than us. But anyway, we’re excited because he decided to build a car museum on the south side of town. He’s giving a big show-and-tell for the City Council, the Mayor and the Northwest Indiana Tourism Board members and officers. Should be around fifty people. Actually, I’m going to bartend for him, which is another chance to get our wines advertised and “out there.” But Grandpa is fine. He’ll be so pleased when I tell him that our wines were such a hit at your party.

Let me know when you’ll be coming through town. I don’t want to miss you!

Fondly,

Liz

Katia threw back the covers and shot out of bed as if she’d been set on fire. She raked her fingers through her long hair and pulled it tightly away from her face. Any thoughts of sleep were distant.

“This isn’t happening. Austin?”

Katia paced at the end of her bed and then left the bedroom. She went straight to the kitchen and poured a tall glass of milk, took out a full bowl of chocolate mousse and sat at her small table. Her mind raced as she shoved the mousse into her mouth.

She’d made four trips through Indian Lake and hadn’t once thought about Austin. Oh, no. Instead, tonight, when I practically felt as if I was having a heart attack... Now he comes back to haunt me.

She knocked back a big slug of milk. A car museum. Humph. What’s that all about, Austin? As if you need a museum.

Katia finished off the mousse and swallowed the last of the milk. The dishwasher was still running, so she put her dishes in the sink.

Padding quietly into the living room, she sank onto the sofa. The truth was that Indian Lake and Austin McCreary were part of her past. All these years that she’d been in Chicago, working toward her dream of becoming a partner at Carter and Associates, she’d barely thought about her childhood. It was her job and the need to go beyond Chicago to find clients—not nostalgia—that had led her back to Indian Lake this summer. She’d stumbled upon Crenshaw Vineyards, and her new friendship with Liz was the reason she’d returned on several occasions.

Katia had stuffed her past deep down inside her, refusing to bring those shadows into the light. She knew all too well that it could be dangerous to allow those memories to rise to the surface.

Katia had grown up in a mansion in Indian Lake filled with elegant antiques. Katia’s mother, Stephania, had been the housekeeper, but Katia had paid attention to every nuance of Hanna and Daniel McCreary’s lifestyle. Because Stephania had been responsible for overseeing the McCrearys’ everyday schedule, as well as holiday events and dinner parties, Katia had eased into whatever job needed doing, from sous chef to table decorator to bartender. Before Katia had hit her teens, she’d learned about wines from Mr. McCreary. Katia had developed a sharp palate, which she believed was even better than Austin’s at the time.

Austin was three years older than Katia. She hadn’t seen him since the summer she was sixteen, when she and her mother had left Indian Lake. That was the summer Katia had known for certain that Austin had finally fallen in love with her. She’d been in love with him since the day she and her mother had moved into the McCreary mansion when she was only seven years old.

Katia’s parents were immigrants from Russia. Her father had been a mason and tile layer until his death in a truck accident on the South Side of Chicago. Katia’s mother, Stephania, spoke very little English and had never worked in her life before her husband’s death. A friend from their church had told Stephania she knew of two people looking for a full-time housekeeper. Stephania had applied for both jobs, but Hanna McCreary had wanted a live-in housekeeper, and Stephania couldn’t turn down the offer of free room and board for her and Katia.

Daniel McCreary owned a large auto-parts manufacturing plant and a retail store in Indian Lake. That same year, he had signed a very large corporate contract, which required him to spend more hours at the plant and less time at home with his wife and son. Hanna was the president of three charities and overwhelmed with her duties.

Stephania and Katia lived in the rear rooms on the first floor with their own entrance at the back, next to the driveway that led to one of three large old carriage houses. These buildings had been converted into garages to house Daniel’s collection of antique cars.

When they were kids, Austin often treated Katia like a pest and did his best to pretend, especially around his school friends, that she wasn’t anyone special to him. But in the long summer evenings when the light refused to fade and children’s attentions were not easily occupied, Austin had sought Katia out for tennis matches on the family clay courts, a swim in the pool, games of chess or Monopoly when it rained. She was his partner when his mother had forced him to take dancing lessons, and she had held a foil and worn thick cotton armor when he’d learned to fence.

Even then, Katia had known that she was only a substitute playmate for Austin, someone to stand in when his father was too busy to see him, but she didn’t care. She thought Austin walked through the stars at night and skated on sunbeams in the day. In her eyes, he could do no wrong. When Austin was with her, he was happy, carefree and inquisitive. She didn’t care that he shunned her as a “servant” when he was trying to impress his school friends, though at times, their barbs pierced the edges of her feelings. Katia believed that Austin would be her hero and come to her rescue if she ever truly needed it. She believed they were closer than any two people alive and only she knew the “real” Austin.

When Austin was fifteen and she was twelve, Daniel McCreary died. Gone was the man Austin had revered and tried to emulate. She remembered eavesdropping on dinner conversations where Daniel would herald the accomplishments of his grandfather, Ambrose McCreary, who had been one of the pioneer automobile designers at the turn of the century in Indianapolis. He’d talked to his son about Duesenbergs, Auburn Cords and Studebakers. Names from the past, connoting elegance and innovation. Katia had been enthralled as Daniel had spun his dreams of manufacturing replacement parts for antique cars. Austin had continually nagged his father for more stories about Ambrose and the kind of mind that he’d had. More than once, Katia had heard Austin say, “I should have been born back then. I could have been great like him.”

Though she’d understood that Austin was expected to take over his father’s manufacturing plant once he finished business college, for Austin, life without his father in it was like sleepwalking.

Daniel’s funeral had been on Valentine’s Day. Afterward, nearly a hundred people had come to the McCreary mansion for an enormous buffet dinner reception. They’d eaten, drunk, cried, laughed and reminisced.

That night, a blizzard had barreled into Indian Lake, nearly shutting down the interstate. Many guests had been snowbound and talked about sleeping on the library floor until the weather cleared up.

For Austin, it had all been too much. He’d disappeared.

Katia had been frantic until she’d glanced out her bedroom window and seen a faint light glowing in one of the carriage houses. She pulled on her boots and coat, and, taking an envelope from under the sweaters in her dresser drawer, she’d clomped through the new-fallen snow to the carriage house.

She’d found Austin sitting in a blue 1926 Bugatti convertible—Daniel’s favorite. Austin had been sobbing his heart out.

Katia was careful not to make any noise as she approached the car. Daniel had never allowed her to look at the cars, much less touch them. Austin, however, had gleefully sneaked her into the carriage houses each time his father had acquired a new beauty. Austin had been all too happy to display his extensive knowledge of the features and history of each car. He’d taken pride in the fact that his father would go to great lengths to find authentic chrome bumpers for his Duesenberg or brass and glass headlamps for a 1920 Stutz Bearcat. Katia had loved the romance of the exquisite cars with their leather seats, velvet upholstered doors and sterling silver flower vases. It was her way of living in another era by literally touching objects from bygone times.

Sometimes Katia would double-dare Austin into sitting in the 1955 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. She liked to pretend she was a movie star or a princess in Monaco. Anyone but who she was—the maid’s daughter.

Most of the time, Austin obliged her. He’d told her that since she understood his love for antique cars, she had to be his “kindred soul.” She hadn’t known what that meant at the time, so she’d looked it up in one of the books in Daniel’s library. When she’d read the meaning, she’d wondered if this was Austin’s way of telling her that she was special to him.

She’d just begun to feel as if they were becoming real friends when Daniel had died.

Katia eased her hand over the side of the door and opened it from the inside so as not to smudge the polished exterior. Usually, touching the precious car would have been an invasion, but Katia felt that the world had somehow changed.

It was time for Austin to learn that she was more than just the housekeeper’s daughter and his stand-in playmate. Austin’s eyes were swollen. “Katia. I should have known you would find me.”

“I’m not leaving. Even if you ask me,” she said, climbing into the passenger seat.

“I won’t,” he said, wiping his tears on his tweed jacket sleeve. He folded his arms across the steering wheel and then laid his face on them. “I can’t believe he’s gone. What will I do?”

“What you’ve always done. You’ll grow. Learn and become a man,” she said with a tiny shrug.

“I miss him so much already,” Austin said. He gulped, sounding to Katia as if he’d swallowed something very large. She understood the feeling intensely.

“I know you do,” she said softly, looking at the round dials on the metal dashboard. “That part never goes away.”

His face twisted into a grimace of disdain and disbelief. “What do you—” He stopped abruptly. “I’m so sorry, Katia. So sorry. Of course you know how I feel. You know exactly how I feel. None of the people I go to school with have lost their dads. But you have.” Tears filled his eyes, yet he studied her as if he was seeing her for the first time. “It’s been a while since you talked about your father. Do you still miss him?”

“Every day,” she whispered, a flame igniting at the base of her esophagus and flaring up into her throat. “He—he used to call me Katia lyubov.”

“Louie bov?”

“Lyubov. That’s how you say it.” She nodded. “It means Katia love.”

“He was a sentimental man, then?” Austin asked.

“Yes. He worked hard all his life, but my mother said he had the heart of a poet. She always loved fine things, and he wanted to give them to her—that’s why he worked so hard to bring us to America. He told her he would give her the world, but—”

“He died,” Austin finished for her. “Just like my dad.”

“Yes. Now they’re together. Watching over us, my mother says.”

“Do you believe her?” Austin asked solemnly.

“I do.”

“But how can you know? For sure, I mean. Sometimes I think that whole heaven thing is just another fairy tale.”

“You’re just angry right now. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I am angry. My dad wasn’t supposed to die. He was too young. We had great plans for after graduation. He told me we were going to go to Germany together and drive the autobahn. I wanted to see how they made German cars. I wanted to take classes over there and learn to fix all kinds of foreign cars.”

Katia looked away from him. “Your mother was never going to allow that to happen and you know it.”

“My dad could have talked her into it.”

“She would never let you be a mechanic. Even I know that! She wants you to be a businessman and get a degree from Harvard.”

“Well, it’s not what I want. Besides, I don’t see any other man of the house around here now, do you?” he asked.

“No.”

“See? That’s how things have changed. I’ll be making the rules now.”

Katia chuckled at the lofty tilt to his chin and the smirk on his lips.

She pushed her face up against his. “Don’t you ever look at me like that again, Austin McCreary, or I will never speak to you again. You are not the boss of me and never will be. You got that?”

Austin moved back a few inches. “I just meant that things will be different.”

“Yes. They will. But our parents still make the rules. We don’t have any power yet.”

“Power?”

“That’s what my mom says all the time. She must remind me twice a day that I’m only a servant’s kid. I have no power. That’s why I have to graduate high school and go to college. I think your mother is right about that, too.”

“But I don’t want to run the family business. I want to work on antique cars.”

“Well, I want to be a movie star.”

“You’re pretty enough,” Austin said with a smile that Katia knew she’d remember the rest of her life.

“Austin, I’m not sure what I actually want to be. That’s just what I want right now. I’ll probably change my mind a bunch before I’m even your age. I only know one thing.”

“What’s that?”

She reached into the pocket of her winter coat and pulled out the envelope that she’d hidden in her drawer for a week. “I want to give you this.” She handed it to him.

Austin took the envelope. “What is it?”

“Open it and see.”

Carefully, he pulled out a folded piece of red construction paper. It opened into a heart. On it, Katia had glued bits of white lace she’d found in the attic, and she’d written snippets of Russian poems. She’d folded over pale blue pieces of construction paper and glued them to the heart, as well. Each of the folded notes contained dates.

“What is this? July 17? And September 26? I don’t understand.”

“Those are special days to me. On July 17, the summer I first came to live here, you taught me to ride a bike. On September 26, you finally let me play tennis with two of your friends. You said you needed another person for doubles.”

“Yes. Last year. And we beat them,” he said.

“Christmas is always a special day here. And so is Halloween. That’s why I put those dates down.”

Austin looked at her then, and for the first time, Katia was aware of a boy looking at her with love in his eyes. She felt her heart thrum and warmth surged through her. She didn’t know if what she was feeling was normal or not, but it was incredibly exciting.

“And today is February 14. Valentine’s Day,” Austin said, reaching over to touch her hand. “I don’t have a card for you. I don’t have one for anyone. I guess I didn’t think much about it.”

“I made the card a while ago.”

“Before my father’s heart attack.”

“Yeah.”

“So you didn’t give me this just to make me feel better today?”

“No.”

“Then, why?”

“I want to be your friend, Austin. Your real friend. Always.”

“I’d like that, Katia,” he’d said as he gently folded the Valentine, put it in the envelope and slipped it into the breast pocket of his tweed jacket.

“Always...” Katia said out loud, jolting out of her reverie. Of all her memories of Austin, that Valentine’s Day was the sweetest. But what happened afterward made it painful to remember, too.

Austin hadn’t had a single opportunity to make any rules for himself. That autumn, his mother had shipped him off to New York to attend York Prep School, where he’d remained until his graduation.

With Austin away at school, Katia felt as if she’d been set adrift on an iceberg in the middle of the Black Sea. Katia didn’t know whom to blame. At times she felt as if she’d done something wrong, but her love for Austin wouldn’t allow her to hide in shame. Other times, she was angry that Hanna would think so ill of her that she couldn’t trust Katia and Austin to be alone. Through it all, she was lonely without Austin and she missed him more than she’d thought possible. By the time she was sixteen, they’d truly fallen in love, and the days without him were torturously long and empty. Nothing she did could fill the void. She counted the days until he came home for holidays. She wrote long letters to him and mailed them without Stephania’s or Hanna’s knowledge.

Though he never wrote back, he called her every Sunday night just after his weekly call to his mother. Katia waited in her bedroom and told her mother that one of her girlfriends was on the phone. Austin had to stand in line for a pay phone in his dorm, with other boys hanging over his shoulder, and the calls were often strained and awkward. Too often, Katia hung up in tears.

When Austin did come home for vacations, Katia made a fool of herself by hanging on to him, begging for kisses and promising to do everything and anything he asked. Then he would leave again for school and the torture would start all over.

Katia was so caught up in her obsession with Austin that she didn’t realize her wise and sharp-eyed mother had seen and heard everything.

Stephania was convinced Katia would get pregnant on Austin’s next school break. There was barely enough income to contribute to Katia’s upcoming schooling as it was. The cost of a third mouth to feed—not to mention the time and energy required to care for a baby—would diminish any hopes Katia had of attending college, and her future opportunities would dwindle. Stephania told her daughter that her own job in the McCreary household would be on the line if things went too far with Austin. He would come out of the scandal unscathed, while Katia and Stephania would pay the price—financially and emotionally.

Katia tried to convince her mother that she was wrong about her and Austin, but Stephania couldn’t be swayed. Before Austin returned home, Stephania announced to Hanna that she wanted to quit. In a matter of days they’d moved to Stephania’s cousin’s house on the South Side of Chicago.

Katia was devastated. She was impossibly in love with Austin, and she believed in her heart that he loved her back. But the shame she felt when she overheard her mother explain their sudden appearance in Chicago to her cousins was unbearable. Katia would always know that because of her love for Austin, her mother had lost a good income. They’d been forced to take charity from their family.

Yet being without Austin was agonizing, and Katia cried every night for months after the move. Still, she was embarrassed by the way she’d acted around him; when they were together, she couldn’t think straight, much less make intelligent decisions. Though Katia knew that she would never have gotten pregnant, she had to admit her mother was right that her relationship with Austin could have compromised her future and well-being.

The only way to cure her addiction to Austin was to never write or call him again. She despised herself for not contacting him, but at the time, she’d felt she had no choice. She had to make a new life and put Austin in the past—forever.

Fortunately, Stephania landed a good-paying job at a luxury hotel in downtown Chicago. She loved her work and often brought Katia to the city to shop and eat in the hotel dining room. Stephania adored Chicago city life, and this was her way of trying to make amends with Katia after taking her away from Indian Lake. Those had been good years, despite Katia’s broken heart. Stephania had remained at the hotel until she’d died of cancer nearly ten years ago.

Katia had come a long way since she’d lived in Indian Lake. But thinking of Austin now, she rediscovered a lead coat of guilt she thought she’d long ago discarded.

Katia had broken Austin McCreary’s heart, and she’d never apologized, never tried to contact him. Never once had she lifted a finger to do the right thing.

She was the bad guy.

CHAPTER THREE

KATIA WAS WEARING a gray wool pencil skirt, a black turtleneck cashmere sweater and black pumps when she walked into Jack’s office on Monday morning. Jack had called her in for a brainstorming meeting with him and Barry. She carried a legal pad, pen and the chocolate mousse for Barry.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said cheerily, placing the foil-wrapped cake on the credenza behind Barry’s chair. “That’s for you and Ava.”

Barry glared at the wrapped silver lump. “Thanks. What is it?”

Katia’s smile dropped from her face. She noticed Jack’s head was down as he peered at a report of some kind in front of him. The tension in the room was as thick as February fog and nearly as visible. “Cake. Okay, guys. What’s up?”

Barry glanced out the window.

Coward.

Slowly, Jack raised his head, and his dark eyes settled on her. “Have a seat. Want some coffee?”

“I’m fine,” she replied. “Let’s get to it. You look like you could use something.”

“Something,” Jack mumbled.

Katia stared at the partners. She didn’t like the way they were avoiding her gaze, and Jack’s face almost wore pity. She felt her blood turn to ice. “You’re firing me.”