Isn't It Bromantic (Bromance Book Club #4) - Lyssa Kay Adams Page 0,32
a moment, he looked up again. “Elena and I . . . we are in a marriage of convenience.”
They reacted like he knew they would. A moment of stunned silence followed by a slow exchange of glances and then . . .
“Holy fucking shit.” Mack dragged his hand over his perfect hair.
“Are you serious, dude?” That was from Colton.
Del and Gavin adopted matching poses—mouths agape, hands hanging loosely at their sides, and eyes full of what the fuck. Malcolm tugged at his long beard, and Noah made a noise like someone had just insulted his LEGO collection.
Yan shook his head. “I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
“What do you think it means? You have read the manuals. We’ve read a hundred marriage-of-convenience books.”
“Yeah, in historicals,” Mack said. “Are you saying she married you for your money?”
Vlad swore under his breath. “No.” He clunked his head against the headboard, suddenly weary and wishing he could just close his eyes and sleep for a week. Maybe fatigue was a defense mechanism. The body’s way of protecting you against the emotional onslaught of finally telling the truth. “It wasn’t about money,” he said, rolling his head to look at them. “She needed a way out of Russia. I offered to marry her so she could come to America.”
The guys processed the information in exhales and long glances between them.
Malcolm sat down on the edge of the mattress. “But . . . isn’t that illegal? I thought green card marriages were against the law.”
“It’s not a green card marriage,” Vlad snapped, defensiveness rising along with the hair on the back of his neck. “That’s when someone marries a stranger to avoid being deported. Elena was my best friend. We’ve known each other since we were children. Marriages have been built on far less before, so it was a real marriage. It just . . . it was not real in every way. Not in the way I always hoped.” His face flamed in humiliation.
“Just so we’re clear,” Colton said.
Vlad groaned. He knew what was coming, and so he answered before Colton could even finish the question. “No. We’ve never had sex.”
“You’ve been married for six years!” Colton choked.
“And she has lived in Chicago for most of that time,” Vlad ground out.
“Okay, but even from afar, the topic never came up?”
Mack coughed. “Bad choice of words, dude.”
Vlad glared. Mack had the decency to look chagrined. “Sorry.”
Malcolm stroked his beard. “Maybe you should start at the beginning.”
The beginning? Vlad wasn’t even sure what that was. Did he go all the way back and explain how their fathers had been friends at university? That after Elena’s mother died, she and her father moved from Moscow to Omsk and lived just a few blocks away from his family? Or did their story start when he was sixteen and he realized that his feelings for her had changed from friendship to something else? And that when she accepted his proposal, he felt like he’d just won the lottery. He was marrying the most beautiful woman in all of Russia.
And it was all a lie.
“Her father was a journalist,” Vlad finally said. “He wasn’t home very much, and since her mother died when she was nine, Elena spent as much time at my house as she did at her own. Maybe more. She became very close to my family.” He took a breath to continue. “Her father made many enemies uncovering corruption in industry and government. A couple of months before we were married, he was working on a story, and he went missing.”
The gravity of the statement sucked all the air from the room. “Jesus,” Malcolm breathed. “What happened to him?”
“We still do not know. But after her father disappeared, Elena was all alone and frightened. She had my family, of course. She is like a daughter to my parents. But she has no other family. No siblings or grandparents. She needed a fresh start.”
The guys exchanged silent looks, starting to fill in the plot holes on their own.
“I had just finished my first season here in America. I went home to Omsk to see if I could help or just to see how she was doing. My mother . . . she knew I always had feelings for Elena. She suggested that I—that I propose to her. If we were married, she could get a visa to come live in America with me as my spouse. So she could start over in America.”