Page 7 of Preferential Treatment

Anna smiled brightly, coming over to wrap Kate in a tight hug. “You act tough, but you’re a big softie,” she said.

Kate squeezed Anna back in an aggressive bear hug, crushing the air out of her lungs. “No I’m not. Take it back.”

Anna jabbed Kate in the ribs—right in her most ticklish spot. With a shriek, Kate released her.

“Illegal move!” she gasped, clapping a protective hand over the tender spot.

“Softie.” Anna smirked and then dashed back into the dining room where she could use her mountainous fiancé as a shield.

“Chicken!” Kate called after her, grinning.

But then she was alone in the kitchen, just her and her thoughts, and the smile faded. She picked at the tab on the soda can as her mind returned immediately to Mikhail. She still didn’t know what she was going to do.

She was a little afraid to find out.

CHAPTER FOUR

Mikhail Volkov’s Chicago home was a beautiful old Romanesque-style mansion in Lincoln Park, with a facade of gray limestone accented with red brick. A curving stone portico framed the double front doors. A rounded turret clung to the opposite corner of the house. A high stone wall surrounded the property, enclosing a yard shaded with graceful old oaks, gray and leafless in late winter.

Kate sat in silence in the back of a sleek black Bentley, trying not to let her nerves show. The driver pulled onto the cobbled driveway, stopping in front of a wrought iron gate to wave an ID card over the security scanner. The gates slid open and the car rolled smoothly onto the property, passing beneath the elegant portico before circling around to the back of the house. Everything about the house proclaimed the resident’s wealth—from the architecture, to the age, to the size. The magnificent house seemed to loom over Kate, the windows like too many blank eyes, staring down at her, unimpressed.

Trying to project the illusion that she wasn’t totally out of her depth, she sat with patient dignity while the driver came around to open her door. When she stepped out onto the cobbles, a thin, gray-haired man in a crisp white button-down shirt and pleated navy slacks emerged from a side door. He stood beneath a copper-domed overhang, awaiting her. Was she being shown in through the servants’ entrance? What was this, Downton Abbey?

“Hello, Ms. Pasternak. I’m David Marx. I’m Mr. Volkov’s household manager.”

Oh, Jesus Christ. The man had a butler. This was Downton Abbey. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Marx,” Kate said, trying to sound unfazed.

“Call me David. Mr. Volkov is in a conference call right now, but if you’ll follow me this way?”

He led Kate inside, stepping into a small marble-floored entryway with dark mahogany wainscoting and an art nouveau chandelier overhead with sculpted brass arms that looked like leaves and vines, and frosted glass flowers as shades around the bulbs.

God, if this was the humble side-entry, what the hell did the main entryway look like?

David took Kate’s coat and scarf, hanging them up just around the corner before leading her in the opposite direction. She followed him down a long hallway lined with leaded-glass windows that overlooked the side yard. Now, the yard was covered in snow, but an arching trellis indicated that it was probably a beautiful garden in the warmer seasons. Beneath Kate’s clicking steps, the wooden floor gleamed like polished glass, with multiple tones of wood inlaid in an elaborate parquet that rivaled a Turkish rug for complexity.

They rounded the corner at the end of the hall, and at a pair of glass-paned french doors, David showed her into a plush sitting room. In a house like this, Kate supposed it would be called a “parlor” or “receiving room” or something like that. The far wall was all floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the backyard. Despite being covered in snow, the signs of a beautiful garden were strongly evident, with arbors and hedges and a multi-tiered stone fountain.

The room itself was comfortably—but expensively—furnished with plushly upholstered chairs and a tufted loveseat. The side tables and coffee table were all antiques of different eras, and were obviously valuable pieces. One wall was dominated by a large Victorian-era fireplace with a decorative tile surround and a large wooden mantle. Elegant, peaceful art hung on the walls—an oil painting of a forested landscape, a watercolor study of a vividly-colored bird’s wing, a huge wooden clock with hanging chains and a big brass pendulum, a circular brass-framed mirror with a floral border etched around the edges of the glass.

In anticipation of having to stand amidst Mikhail’s obvious wealth, Kate had worn her favorite dress—a vintage black sheath dress that fit like a glove. It was a seventies-era dress that she’d found in a heap of clothes at an estate sale. She’d snagged it for fifty dollars, which felt almost unethical after she’d looked the couturier up online and found other dresses selling on second-hand sites for hundreds of dollars.

But even dressed to kill, Kate felt like a grubby peasant standing in the King’s court. She took in all the details of the house—the furnishings, the surrounding neighborhood—and knew without a doubt that she did not belong here, and everyone who saw her would know it.

Compared to the trailers she grew up in, her current apartment would be considered obscenely lavish, with its high ceilings and crown molding and vintage maple floors. But this house? It was as inconceivable as a fairytale castle. She tried to picture her family standing in it and immediately cringed with embarrassment. Luckily, David didn’t see.

“Can I get you any refreshment?” he offered as he stepped to the side of the doorway, subtly gesturing for Kate to enter the room.

“No,” she said faintly. “Thank you.”

David nodded an acknowledgment. “Then, if you’ll make yourself comfortable, Mr. Volkov should be ready for you in a moment.”

“Thank you.”

Kate sank into the nearest chair, giving her a view out the window, while the doorway remained in her peripheral vision. The house was so big, so still. Despite being alone, she felt like there was a spotlight on her. She resisted the urge to reach for her phone. Instead, she kept her hands folded over her crossed legs and stared out the window. Little birds fluttered and hopped around the nicest bird feeders Kate had ever seen, leaving seed hulls and tiny little birdie footprints in the snow. Squirrels chased each other along the top of the stone perimeter wall. More birds mingled in the branches of the dormant trees, fluffed up against the cold.

A few minutes passed in that wary stillness, but she kept her thoughts off of what she was actually doing here, and just focused on the birds. Motion in the corner of her eye pulled her attention to the doorway. She expected to see David, coming to escort her to Mikhail perhaps, but the man in the doorway was too tall, too broad, too intimidating to be the circumspect, elder “household manager.”

It was Mikhail. He looked just as coldly indifferent as he had two weeks ago. His black gaze swept over her, betraying nothing of his thoughts.

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