Javi found his father in his library, which he also used as an office now that he was nominally retired. His father was frowning at something in the Wall Street Journal, but put it down when Javi walked in. One of his most vivid memories was waiting until his father read the entire paper in the chair across from him when he was in trouble growing up. The fact that his father set aside the paper was a positive sign that eased some of the tightness in his chest.
“Have you seen the video?” Javi asked.
His father nodded. “Your sisters showed it me.” His face didn’t betray anything. Always a hard fucker, his father was.
“She dropped the petition.” Javi dropped into the comfy leather chair.
His father nodded again and leaned across the desk. Javi lifted his chin despite the urge to sink back like he would have as a teenager. “Why did she do that to your car? What did you say to her? I thought you were good with women.”
“I thought so, too. But I made a mistake by marrying her, and I was honest about that.” Javi shrugged. “And it worked out. I’m free. According to her lawyer, she’s moving out of town.”
“Back to New York?”
Javi shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t much care.”
One side of his father’s mouth quirked up. “I’m not going to say that I’m not disappointed that you’re divorced. The first of our family on either side in generations. But I’m proud of you for being honest.”
Javi clenched his fists. He was frustrated that his father saw his divorce as a failure. If he was ever going to have a chance to get him to accept Maya as part of Javi’s life, he was going to have to get past that.
“What did you want me to do? Stay married and miserable forever? Besides you and Mom, I don’t think many of the marriages in our family have been happy. It’s so fucking Catholic of you.” Javi stood up and paced in front of his dad’s desk. “Karrie and I never had what you and Mom had. I got married to please you, but it was never going to work. And now that I’ve found someone that I can be happy with, you want to shit all over it. I’m not going to let you.”
“Are you done?” His father looked almost pleased at Javi’s harsh words, but he had more to say. And, this time, his father was going to listen.
“No. Mom’s parents hated you. I didn’t meet them until I was five years old. What good did that do?” Javi barely paused before answering his own question. “None.
He threw back his head because he was crawling out of his skin with things he needed to say. “Maya is everything. She’s gorgeous and smart, and so talented that I can’t even stand it. I’m lucky to have her. I could be a billionaire, and she would still be the catch out of the two of us.”
When he looked at his father, Hector was smiling. “You’re right. I misjudged her.” His father stopped to clear his throat. “I just didn’t want to see you as unhappy as you were after Karrie left you. I thought dating someone so different was a reaction—what you kids call a rebound.”
Javi shook his head. “It’s not that. It was never that.”
“And I like the changes I’ve seen in you since she came around.” His father wrapped on his desk twice. “You’re more engaged in the business, and you seem satisfied with your life.”
“I am. I love her, Dad.” Saying the words made him need to see her again.
“I understand that, but why are you telling me how much you care about this woman? Why are you telling a bored, meddling old man?”
The pain in Javi’s chest returned; he rubbed his sternum with his right hand. “She won’t talk to me. She’s holed up at her brother’s house because she thought I was going back to Karrie.”
“And you’re sitting here llorando a tu padre?” His father sighed and picked up his paper. Then he slapped his hands on the desk. “Do you know that your mother refused to talk to me for a whole month once?”
Javi had never heard this story. He sat back down. “What did you do?”
“She saw me talking to a classmate—a female classmate—and thought I was cheating on her. I was pretty good looking back then.” His father was still pretty good looking, but Javi wasn’t about to say that. The man had enough ego. “This was still early in our relationship. I hadn’t told her that I loved her or that I’d decided that she was pretty much the only woman for me the minute I saw her. She didn’t know that I would never cheat on her because I hadn’t made myself clear.”
“This is not the same. You hadn’t failed Mom. You’d never told her that she wasn’t the one for you.”
“But I did. In my actions. I might have been completely taken with your mother, but I was still flirting with my classmate.” His father trailed off for a second, then said, “And she was feeling pretty vulnerable when she saw me that day because she was pregnant with you.”
Fuck. Maya had been kind of right that time she’d called him a bastard. For all the traditional, Catholic shit his parents had pushed with them, they had played pretty fast and loose with the rules. He sat back hard in his chair. “Wow. Shit. What did you do to get her back?”
“Well, I proposed.” Javi wasn’t sure that would work with Maya. He wasn’t even sure she wanted to get married to anyone, much less him. “But I don’t think that will work with your Maya. If she still thinks that you’d go back to Karrie, you haven’t done a good job in showing her how you feel about her. Think monumental.”
“She’s my family, Dad. She’s always felt like she belonged to me. Even when we were just friends. I don’t know how to show her.” He rubbed his chest again. The hurt was still there, but his father’s story had given him a bit of hope. He’d always assumed that his parents had always had a perfect relationship; hearing that it hadn’t always been that way was sort of a relief.
Javi had thought that he didn’t have to work to earn Maya once he had her. Because he hadn’t shown her from the beginning, he would have to do something huge.
Monumental. That word formed the germ of an idea in his head. Throwing money at a problem wouldn’t fix things with Maya, but maybe throwing money at a wall would.
“I’m going to need help from you and Mom.”
His father was full-on smiling at him now. “Whatever you need. I think I have some making up to do with your woman myself.”