Baba boxed his ear, and he winced. “So, what, you’re going to give up? You’re going to let Varushka marry some thick-headed boy from the village who will never appreciate how clever she is? That girl is special, and she deserves better than what she can get here.”
He ate another bite. “I don’t know if I’m good enough for her either. There’s a light in her that I’m afraid I’ll ruin. There are things about me that make me every bit as bad for her as a man from the village, just in a different way. She’s a good girl, Baba. I’m not a good boy.”
She grimaced at him and rolled her eyes, the youthful expression always so incongruous with her wizened face. That’s what happened when little old ladies hung around with teenagers a lot. It was hard to say which one was the worse influence on the other. Baba tended to take teenage girls and turn them into tough, smart, Russian women with big opinions.
“Yes, yes. She’s very sweet. But I think you’re selling Varushka short. If I didn’t think she could handle your preferences and maybe enjoy them herself, I never would have suggested her. I’m old, but I’m not blind.”
Konstantin stared determinedly into his bowl, hoping like hell she wasn’t referring to what it sounded like. There were certain things a man didn’t want his grandmother knowing about him. He thought of Varushka kneeling at his feet, her arms tied behind her back, and trying to undo his zipper with her teeth. He actually blushed under the weight of his grandmother gaze.
“Sex is a very important part of marriage,” she continued. “If I didn’t think she could learn to like what you like it would have been cruel for me to press for the match.”
He choked on the food he was trying to swallow and washed it down with a sip of black coffee. “Baba,” he began reproachfully, realizing after he said her name that he had no idea what to say after that. “What do you . . . What are you talking about?”
“How many times have I stayed at your house? I clean for you when I’m there, and you’re not that careful about what you leave lying around. Probably thought I wouldn’t know what those things were for, didn’t you? I may be an old woman, but your . . . preferences are obvious to people who know about these things.” She waved it off dismissively, as though he was partial to something innocuous like women with curly hair. “You know, when I was a girl, I used to walk out with a young man who—”
“Stop!” He lurched to his feet and slapped his hands over his ears. “Don’t say anything else.”
She rolled her eyes again, laughing. “You young people. You think old people have never had sex? How do you think you got here?”
“Storks. Goddamn storks. Don’t rob me of my childhood delusions.” He sat back down and his grandmother reached over and slapped his face. It didn’t hurt as much as it had when he was a kid. Either his face was getting tougher, or she was getting frailer.
“Don’t you blaspheme, Konstantin. God is always listening.”
“You’re the one talking about having sex before you were married.”
She shrugged her hunched shoulders. “He made sex fun for a reason. I don’t think He minds if we enjoy the things He blessed us with. Just don’t get her pregnant before you marry, or her father will kill you.”
After the dishes were washed, dried, and put away, he wandered the house, wishing he had time to go for a walk. He was full of nervous, sleep-deprived energy. Dreams of Varushka in a million different kinds of trouble had plagued him, and he’d finally given up on sleep after only a couple of hours.
When the knock came he swore under his breath. It was the most important meeting of his life and he knew the other side already hated him. They’d hate him even more if they knew what his baba had figured out about him.
Anatoli Koslov was a stocky man who might have been handsome before time had worn lines into his weathered face. Today he looked like a man who had a hard time finding anything funny. His wife, Lyuda, on the other hand, was like Varushka’s older clone—a quiet woman with the type of creases around her eyes that suggested she smiled a lot. Varushka’s arm was linked through her mother’s when they entered Baba Nina’s kitchen.
Konstantin’s woman glanced up at him, and away again, but not before he saw the relief in her eyes. It stung that she didn’t greet him with a kiss.
The pretty floral sundress Varushka wore brought out the blue in her eyes. It was one he’d bought for her, which brought him more satisfaction than it should have. Even more satisfying was the fact that she still wore her engagement ring. She didn’t regret their relationship, even after they’d been separated for days and her father had told her he was bad news. Her opinion meant everything to him.
Braving her father’s disapproval, he kissed her cheek, both to show her parents that he loved her, and because not kissing her at least that much would have killed him.
After he greeted Varushka, Konstantin shook hands with Lyuda, but Anatoli only glared at him until he withdrew his proffered hand. Not a good start.
He nodded to the man grimly. As the others took their seats, Varushka hesitated, automatically waiting for Konstanin’s permission to sit. She seemed to realize what she’d done, then blushed furiously and dropped into a chair.
As Konstantin took his seat, Lyuda gave him a strained, apologetic smile that implied she didn’t share her husband’s objections to him. He smiled back, hopeful that she might be an ally in this, and that her husband cared what she thought. His gaze strayed back to Varushka. She was staring down at the table, her cheeks as red as her hair. What was his little bird thinking about to make her so embarrassed? He tried to guess, then realized that getting distracted by daydreams about what naughty things she might be thinking was a bad idea.
“So, you don’t think my boy is good enough for Varushka?” Baba asked, her eyes hard. They probably should have discussed tactics before the other side came into the room. It hadn’t been his intention to be confrontational. That approach was hardly going to win him favor.
“You know what my objection is.” Anatoli frowned at her. “When you suggested the match, you omitted the fact that your grandson is a criminal.”
“Anatoli Koslov, if anyone should know that teenage boys get up to mischief sometimes, it should be you.”
“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.”
He kissed her forehead then she was gone, trailing after her mother like a dutiful girl.
* * *
Konstantin always forgot how quiet it could be away from the fast pace of the city, and even the bustle of the village’s main streets. The only place he got solitude was at home. Even though he’d been alone in the house for a year, it hadn’t taken long for him to get used to sharing his space with Varushka. She was so much fun—for lack of a better word. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought of life as fun. The term implied lightheartedness and childish pursuits, neither of which had featured in his life since his parents’ car accident.
When he lost them, he’d assumed his adult role and never looked back. There had been no one but Banner and Ambrose to pick him up and dust him off if he fell in life, but they were his age.
He walked around the Gribkov’s swimming hole, amazed he’d ever set foot in it as a child. It was still idyllic, in a rural way, but after all the beaches and pools he’d been to in his life, the tea-colored water wasn’t as much of a draw.
There was an otherworldliness to the place though. The way the dappled light slanted through the trees, the flit and song of birds, and the zing of insects, all worked together to bring his memory back to summers in Nasva as a child. His parents hadn’t been wealthy, but they’d scrimped to send him to Baba’s for a month every summer so that he didn’t forget his roots. He’d hated coming, but he’d hated leaving even more.
The boys he used to play with had all moved away to bigger places like Moscow and Saint Petersburg, not interested in staying on their families’ small farms. Little girls like Varushka would have been at the time, hadn’t been on their radar. By the time she would have been interesting to him, he’d stopped coming.
What would it have been like to meet her back then? It wasn’t hard to imagine her younger, tagging after him and his friends as they climbed trees and built forts, her hair in braids, her freckles dark the summer sun. Maybe she would have been the first girl he kissed—although there was enough of an age difference that it wasn’t a practical fantasy.
Even now she made him feel like a dirty old man sometimes. She was so fresh and carefree that the darkness within him was automatically drawn to her, as though she had the potential to save him from himself.
Konstantin sprawled out in the grass under a tree near the edge of the pond, listening to the grass rustle in the wind. It was one of those days that wasn’t particularly warm or cold, where he could just be and not worry about whether he was comfortable.
As he started to doze, he wondered if she’d be able to get away from her parents’ house tonight.
It was ridiculous, really. After everything they’d done together, it wasn’t being cut off from sex that bothered him. He just wanted to hold her and kiss her pretty face—to hear her talk and laugh. They weren’t children anymore, but the attempted rendezvous felt clandestine. He’d never had to do this as a teenager. By the time he’d gotten girl crazy he hadn’t had parents to hold him back.
If she didn’t show by nightfall he’d go back to Baba’s. In a fit of nostalgia, he’d thrown his phone in his carry-on bag and left it behind. It would be nice to just sit with Varushka and talk without work distractions every five minutes. His people were clever, but they often didn’t trust themselves to think like he did. He tended to approach problems sideways rather than head-on. Doing things head-on was an American trait he’d never mastered, but his own style seemed to work with most people.
Eventuall
y, hypnotized by the sound of the wind-stirred grasses, he was lulled to sleep.
He woke to a pretty laugh that made him think he was having a dream.
“A vodyanoy washed up on the beach?” Varushka was biting her lips together, her eyes twinkling.
“Do I look like an ugly green merman?”
She fell to her knees and clasped her hands together in supplication. “Please vodyanoy, don’t drag me to the bottom of the pond and keep me as your slave!”
Konstantin took stock of her expression. Her tone was teasing, but there was more there, hiding underneath her glib words. There was desire and desperation.
“You shouldn’t tease me,” he warned. “I thought you didn’t want to fool around while we were in Russia.”
“I changed my mind.” Her impish smile made him grin back at her like a fool. “A lack of orgasms disagrees with me.”
“You saved all the work for me?”
“You didn’t tell me I was allowed to . . . uh . . .”
If she hadn’t gotten off in days, either, this was going to be fast. He didn’t even bring a damn condom, so they’d have to do oral or something.
“Your last sacrifice to me wasn’t very pleasing, girl. Maybe I will drag you to the bottom of the pond and make you my slave.” He looked at her with appraisal. “Perhaps your body will serve me better than your generosity has.”
Her neck mottled pink and she licked her bottom lip nervously. “No, please,” she begged. Shifting nearer on her knees, her eyes shining, she looked ready for anything he suggested. He would have liked to lie around with her and talk, but it seemed like she wanted to play a game instead. Far be it from him to turn down an opportunity like that.
“You knew what the penalty could be if you didn’t pay me enough respect. I have no sympathy for you now. Strip off your clothes. You won’t need them where we’re going.”
“My clothes?” she whispered, putting a hand against the neckline of her dress.
To Have and to Master Page 19
