Free Family Ties by Danielle Steel Page A

was looking petulant when he kissed her goodbye and left. She said she’d give him his present when he came back on Christmas night. And there was an edge to her voice as she said it. He took a cab to Annie’s, and Kate was already at the apartment when he got there. When she saw him walk in, she looked intently at her brother.
    “Wow, what are you so pissed about? You don’t exactly look like the spirit of Christmas. What did you get Annie?”
    “A cashmere shawl, and a personalized hard hat. It’s really cute, I think she’ll like it.” He hadn’t answered his sister’s question about why he was angry. He had been upset about Pattie and what she had said when he left her, because he couldn’t spend Christmas Eve with her. She refused to understand that he just couldn’t, and he hated to leave her on a sour note, but she had still been pouting and gave him the cold shoulder when he left. It had seriously upset him, particularly when she’d told him to act like a man. “I’m not pissed, by the way. I just had an argument with one of my roommates before I came here. He’s an asshole.”
    Kate didn’t say anything to him, but she had the odd feeling something else was bothering him. “Annie will love the hard hat, and the shawl sounds cool too.” She smiled lovingly at her brother.
    “What did you get her?” For a minute it felt like being kids again, while they wrapped their gifts for her together.
    “I didn’t get her anything,” Kate said with a serious expression.
    “You didn’t?” Ted looked stunned. That wasn’t like her. Kate was always generous with them all, despite a limited allowance. But she was always very creative about how she spent it.
    “I made her something,” she said, and Ted smiled, thinking back to the old days, when he had made Annie a table in wood shop, and Lizzie had knit Annie a sweater with gigantically long arms. And Annie had worn it on Christmas Day. She had worn their macaroni necklaces too, and everything they gave her.
    Kate went to get her portfolio then and carefully took out three large panels with watercolor paintings on them. She turned them around one by one, and Ted caught his breath in amazement. Sometimes he actually forgot how talented his younger sister was, just like their mother. She had done exquisite portraits of each of them to give Annie, and the likenesses were absolutely perfect, even the self-portrait she had done.
    “They’re gorgeous, Kate,” Ted said, studying them at close range. They were flawless, but they also had all the softness of paintings, and didn’t look like they’d been done from photographs. She had done them from memory, and each one was a painting he knew their aunt would treasure. “They’re really fantastic!”
    “I hope she likes them,” Katie said modestly, and then put them carefully back in the portfolio. She was going to wrap them that night and offer to frame them afterward for Annie. “So what have you been up to?” Katie asked him casually after she put away the paintings and they both collapsed on the couch. Annie had put up a Christmas tree for them, with all the favorite decorations they loved. She had spent a whole day and night doing it the previous weekend.
    “Nothing much. Just papers and exams,” he said, and as Kate looked at him, she knew that he was lying. Something was up, and he wasn’t telling. Her woman’s intuition told her it was a woman. She couldn’t wait to tell Liz and Annie. And they had already all agreed that he had hardly called any of them since Thanksgiving.
    “What about you?” Ted asked, trying to get the attention off himself. “New pierces, new tattoos, new men?”
    “Maybe,” Katie said cryptically. She had her own secrets too.
    “Oh?” He looked intrigued. “Which one?”
    “Maybe all three,” she said, and then laughed as Ted flipped on the TV. They were watching Miracle on 34th Street when Annie got home, carrying her briefcase and two bags of groceries of