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“My mistakes are my own. At least I don’t try to hide them. And my daughter deserves better.”
“Varushka is my favorite girl in the whole village. I wouldn’t have suggested she meet my grandson if he was who you seem to think he is. Maybe Konstantin made some bad decisions when he was very young and alone in America, but it was never his nature. He was a young, troubled boy who’d lost his parents and had no one to keep him in line.” She shook her head at Anatoli in disgust. “He’s done so much good since then, how can you judge him for something so far in the past?”
The table went silent, but Anatoli’s face was a hostile shade of purple. Shit. Apparently Konstantin had not inherited his negotiation skills from his Baba. Then again, she’d gotten less concerned with pleasantries over the past few years, saying she was too old to waste her time being polite.
“If he was a man I was selling livestock to, I would care little about his past. But this is the man who wants to marry my daughter. My only daughter, and my favorite child.” His lips pressed into a thin line. “He wants to move her to America where she has nothing and no one but him. If he’s done things like that in his past, what am I supposed to think of his character? You assured us he was a good boy, but now I wonder if even her virtue was safe with him. What’s to say he didn’t do what wicked men do to young girls when they have them alone?”
He turned to Konstantin then, furious. “Did you steal my daughter’s virginity?”
Fuck.
“Anatoli!” Lyuda cried, grabbing Varushka’s hand. “She’s a grown woman, and she’s in love with him. They were alone in America. And when she went, you were making jokes about how she should get pregnant to trap him into marrying her. Did you really expect them to wait?”
Her husband glo
wered at the table top.
Varushka, her face pale, shook her head and raised her gaze to his. “No one told me to do that, Konstantin. I would never.”
He nodded. “I know, little bird. You’re a good girl.”
A secret smile flashed across her face, as though she was thinking of other times he’d called her a good girl, but her parents were too busy frowning at each other to notice.
“It was a joke,” Anatoli said finally, slapping his hand on the table. “That was when we thought he was a nice young man with too much money. Those are hard to come by. If we wanted her to marry a corrupt man with too much money, there are plenty of those here. We didn’t have to send her to America for an opportunity like that.”
It was true that Varushka was an adult, and didn’t technically need her parents’ permission to marry him, but for some reason it felt wrong to steal her away. It was worse than stealing cars had been.
Banner and Ambrose had been his best friends since they were kids, and when they found out what he was doing to make money, they’d helped him get back on the straight and narrow. Since then, he’d done his best to be a respectable man where it truly mattered. He hadn’t worked his ass off at dead-end jobs and at school and gotten a scholarship to do his undergrad and MBA, just so he could turn out to be a rich, entitled asshat. Doing the right thing, especially where Varushka was concerned, wasn’t just about his own honor, it was everything he and his friends stood for.
Yes, they were perverts. But they were honorable perverts.
But how could he prove to these strangers that he was trustworthy enough to deserve their daughter? The short answer was that he didn’t deserve her, but he couldn’t live with that. Besides, it was her decision too. And he was pretty sure she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
He thought through multiple ways to try to convince them, but most of them took time he didn’t have. He could keep coming back to Russia to court Varushka, but the truth was he was so busy with work there was no way he could ever spend enough time with her family for them to change their minds about him and still marry Varushka before they were eighty. Add to that the fact that the more they were apart, the more there was a danger she’d find someone else. He had to think of a better solution fast.
“Mr. Koslov, I worked my way up from nothing. I can assure you that nothing I own now was bought with money I made from illegal means.” He held the man’s gaze, willing him to believe. “I may not go to church as often as I should, but I’m no criminal.”
His baba gestured at him like she was presenting him to the queen. “You see? There. He’s a good boy and has been for years.”
Anatoli’s brows went up. “What else is he to say? Would he tell me if he was crooked? No. He wants my daughter.”
“Well, how is he to prove to you that he deserves her?” Baba Nina got up and bustled around, making coffee and serving it to people who’d already refused it in the first place. She put out a plate of homemade cookies, too, like that would fix everything.
Varushka guiltily snuck a hand out and snatched one, and Konstantin had to stifle a laugh. She gave him a look that said, “Sure, this is serious business, but am I honestly expected to refuse Baba’s cookies?’
“Varushka!” her mother hissed. “You’re going to get fat.”
Konstantin snorted. Seriously? It was a cookie. What was life without cookies?
She looked worried about the conversation and the snack was probably a welcome distraction.
“I don’t care if he never proves it to me,” her papa said. “I’m going to find her another husband. He can take his money back to America and hire out some loose women. He doesn’t need my Varushka.” He pushed his chair back and got to his feet, then strode from the room.
Lyuda blinked at them in surprise and got to her feet, looking sheepish.
“When he gets like this he won’t listen,” she said. “When he calms down I’ll try to talk to him again. He’s a proud man and he feels like he’s been tricked for some reason. It might take a lot to get him to come to his senses.” She hugged Baba Nina and shook Konstantin’s hand again, then pushed Varushka at him.
Delighted, he pulled his little slave into his arms, kissing her with more passion than he probably should have in front of her mother. When they pulled away from each other, her shy smile matched the lovely glow in her cheeks. She stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear, “Meet me in the woods by the Gribkov’s swimming hole at seven.”
