Natalie heard the front door open and close quietly, then turned back to Javier, snuggling her son closer. “I think it’s time for you to leave,” she repeated firmly.
Javier’s eyes glanced briefly in her direction, but then were drawn right back to his son. “Who is he?” Javier demanded.
Natalie’s arms tightened slightly, then relaxed. “You know who he is. Now go.”
Javier stared at the boy who looked shockingly like him. His son? Impossible! Natalie would have told him if she’d been pregnant.
“Is this why you left?” he demanded.
“Momma, is that my daddy?” Alejandro whispered in her ear, all of a sudden shy as he stared at the man.
Natalie couldn’t lie to her son. Not about something so important. “Yes, dear. This is your father. He’s come to say hello, but he can’t stay long.”
Javier glared at her. “Not stay…” he shook his head. “I think you have a bit of explaining to do!”
Natalie wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “Javier, don’t even try it,” she hissed. Bending down, she put Alejandro on his feet. “Honey, could you go put your stuff away? Mommy needs to talk to him for a few minutes in private.”
Alejandro kept his tiny arm around her neck for a moment, holding her in place as he stared up at the man. “Does he not want me? Does he not want to be my daddy?”
Natalie saw his tiny chin tremble and she hugged him close. “Oh, honey! He traveled all this way just to see you! It isn’t that he doesn’t to be your daddy,” she said, glaring at Javier over her shoulder, sending him a silent message. “He’s just overwhelmed because he’s finally found you and you’re so amazing!”
Alejandro continued to stare, but her explanation stopped the trembling. His brain was going through all the details that he knew and she understood what was happening. Her son might be book smart, but he was still only three years old. He didn’t fully grasp all the subtle nuances of adult interactions. Humans were complex creatures, unlike math or reading which had rules one could logically follow.
Looking back at Javier, she pleaded with him to do something, anything to help her little guy understand.
Immediately, Javier bent down and extended his hand. “It is a genuine thrill to finally meet you,” he said, awe in his voice.
Natalie smothered a sob as she watched Javier’s elegant hand take her son’s chubby fingers in his.
“I won’t be going anywhere,” he promised. “Now that we’ve found each other, I promise, we’ll be together.”
Reassured, Alejandro beamed, his chubby cheeks puffing out with pride. “I have a daddy!”
He turned around and, just as always, he moved with lightning speed. Her little boy was either moving or asleep. There was no in between with him. As soon as they heard him enter his room, Natalie stood up to face Javier, feeling sick as she remembered his father’s threat. “You can’t take him away from me. I followed the rules! I didn’t violate the terms!”
Javier was livid. “You hid my son from me!” he snapped. “Of course I’m going to take him away from you!”
“No!” she gasped, not sure she would survive without Alejandro!
“Is this what you used the money for?” he demanded, looming closer to her, so furious, he wanted to yell. The only thing stopping him was the tiny little fellow who wouldn’t understand why someone was yelling at his mother.
“Yes! I needed the money to fly back home. If you’ll remember correctly, you didn’t want me to work, so I didn’t have any money of my own.”
He moved away, running a hand over his neck. “So you left me, gave birth to my son, and started a new life without me, never thinking I would want to know that I was a father? That I had a son?”
“You didn’t want him! You didn’t want me!”
“There’s a difference between the two! That’s my son!”
“You didn’t want him! I did! I wasn’t going to have an abortion and I wasn’t going to let you hurt him!”
“Why in the world would I hurt my own son? That makes no sense!”
She took a deep breath, trying to calm down. Alejandro would be back any moment. They couldn’t be fighting in front of him. “You didn’t want a son. I understood that. You weren’t ready for children. I got that. So yes, I took the money your father offered and walked away. He told me…”
“You mean the money you demanded!”
She stared up at him and, yes, to be honest, she’d asked for money. “Okay, if that’s the way you want to look at it. I demanded money so I could get out of your life. Whatever. You didn’t want children although I don’t understand that. So I left.”
“You didn’t give me a choice!” he growled. “You left me without a word. Without any knowledge of your impending pregnancy. I had no idea, Natalie. If I’d known…”
She stared at him, waiting. “If you’d known...what would you have done?”
He gritted his teeth, furious with her for not giving him a choice. “We’ll never know, will we?” he snapped.
Alejandro sprinted back into the kitchen, practically skidding to a halt in front of them. “You’re still here!” he said, clapping his hands. “Can I show you my swing set?” he asked, his little body practically vibrating with excitement.
Javier bent down lower, getting to his son’s level. “I would love to see your swing set. Will you show me?”
“Alejandro?” Natalie called out and Javier jerked.
There was a long silence as her son stared up at her and Javier fully grasped the meaning of their son’s name. “You named him after my grandfather?” he asked.
Natalie licked her lips, not sure why he would be surprised by that. Javier had told her stories about his grandfather, about how he’d learned to ride horses and work the land at his grandfather’s side. “Of course I named him after the man you revered,” she whispered, touched by the surprise in his eyes.
Another long silence, this time broken only by the sound of time. “Thank you,” Javier murmured, his grip on his son’s fingers tightening slightly.
“Momma said that your grandfather taught you to ride a horse. Will you teach me?” Alejandro asked. “Momma says I can’t ride alone until she can afford a smaller pony. But I think I’m big enough to ride Charlie alone, don’t you?”
Javier stood up, and lifted his son into his arms. “I think that a pony would be a wonderful idea, but no, I don’t think you’re quite ready for Charlie yet.”
Alejandro’s features fell for only a moment, but they brightened when he was told he would get a pony. “Momma says I can’t get a pony until she can afford one. And I have to learn to take care of him myself. She says I have to learn to take care of our cats, Tanya and Toby, first, because they are less of a response…” he stumbled on that word, his tongue not able to form all of the vowels. When Javier turned to Natalie for interpretation, Alejandro’s hands braced on either side of his newly discovered father’s face, pulling his attention back to himself. He continued, telling his father about the cats, the mice that snuck into the barn for warmth only to be caught by the cats, the food he was supposed to feed the cats each morning but sometimes forgot because he was talking with the horses. And on and on.
The whole time, Javier listened intently as he carried his son outside into the yard. “Is this your swing set?” he asked.
Alejandro nodded, but he didn’t want to be released from his father’s arms quite yet. He went into detail about the set and Natalie pulled back, letting the two of them bond.
As the sun dipped down over the horizon, the temperature also dropped. “Time to come inside,” she called as she walked back up from the barn after taking care of the horses. They were all settled down for the night and back out in the pasture until morning.
“But Mommy!”
“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “Come on inside. You and I were both sick yesterday, we need to stay warm and healthy so that you can play more with your dad tomorrow.”
With
that promise, Alejandro whooped with excitement, then ran over to grab his father’s hand, dragging him inside. “Do you want soup? Momma always makes me eat soup after I’ve been sick, but I don’t really like soup.”
For the next hour, the pair talked and shared, asked questions and conversed. To be evil, Natalie promised Alejandro that his father would help him with his bath that night. And smart man that he was, Javier’s eyes immediately narrowed in suspicion, correctly assuming that something was up with that suggestion. Natalie only smiled back, feigning innocence. He wasn’t fooled, but since he had no idea what a bath with a three year old entailed, he acquiesced to his son’s excitement.
Natalie stayed behind, trying to find storage room for all of the bananas and applesauce, stacking the bread on a shelf in her tiny pantry as she listened, and chuckled, at the two of them in the bathroom.
When her kitchen was somewhat back in order, she moved into her small den area and picked up her school papers, but her mind was more focused on the splashing and conversation happening in the bathroom.
Twenty minutes later, Javier walked out, his eyes vowing retribution as he rubbed a towel over his face. His shirt was almost completely soaked and he looked down with a shake of his head. Looking at her, he glared. “You knew what was going to happen, didn’t you?”
She laughed gleefully, not holding anything back. “I’ve been bathing that little guy for three years. Of course I knew what was going to happen!”
With those words, all of their animosity returned. To avoid it, Natalie stood up. “I’ll finish getting him ready for bed,” and she disappeared into Alejandro’s room.
Once he was changed into his superman pajamas and tucked into his bed, stories read, kisses and hugs given, she stood up and flipped off the lights. “Momma, he’s not leaving, is he?”
The deep voice answered. “I’m not going anywhere,” Javier assured his son.
Natalie had to smother a sob when she saw Javier bend down to hug her son. The little boy’s arms went around his father’s neck without hesitation. It was as if they’d never been apart, except that her tiny, precious son still wasn’t certain of his father’s presence in his life.
Walking out, she pulled the door closed almost all the way, knowing that she and Javier needed to talk.
Standing in the middle of her family room, she waited tensely for him to come out. It took another five minutes, but Natalie knew exactly what was going on. He was watching his son sleep, just as she’d done many nights after she’d given birth. Natalie remembered being exhausted, scared, terrified of how she was going to protect this little baby, but loved to simply sit and watch him.
When Javier finally came out, she knew that he wanted answers.
So did she.
“Why now?” she demanded. “Why are you here and why are you promising him things that you won’t deliver?”
His jaw tightened as he moved closer. “I would have been here from the beginning if I’d known about his existence. Why didn’t you tell me about him?”
Her mouth fell open at his accusation and she shook her head. “You didn’t want to know!”
“Don’t you dare tell me that! That’s my son! I’m a father and you didn’t tell me!”
She gasped and pulled back. “I tried!”
His hand sliced through the air as if it were a sword, slicing through her explanation and deeming it wrong. “Not hard enough!”
Spinning around, she walked over to a closet and pulled out a heavy box. Dumping it onto the floor, she knelt down, digging through the contents. It was one of those boxes that she’d dumped all of the stuff that was too painful to deal with, so it wasn’t very organized. But down at the bottom, she found the letters, an old rubber band holding them together.
With them in her hands, she walked over to Javier and slapped them against his chest. “I tried!”
Looking down, Javier stared at the stack of letters. There were perhaps twenty of them, all addressed to him and all of them with “Return to Sender” stamped on the front. None of them opened. He tore off the band, then ripped into the first one. His eyes glanced at Natalie, then at the letter. It was in her own handwriting and, in it, she wrote that she was pregnant, didn’t understand what she’d done wrong, and that she needed him. She begged him to help her, to come to her.
The next one and the next were pretty much the same, but the tone changed. At first, she was pleading, asking him for help, telling him details of her pregnancy and her life, her classes, the job she’d gotten despite her pregnancy and all of the new people she was meeting. By the last letter, there was a bitterness, a resignation as she told him she wouldn’t be contacting him any longer, that she’d understood the threat. She’d been nine months pregnant at that point as she said goodbye to him in poignant, heartfelt, and angry words.
He was sitting down now, surrounded by the letters while Natalie paced back and forth. When he looked up at her, he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I never got any of these letters.”
She stopped pacing and looked at him, all the anger and pain, the fear of giving birth alone and being practically impoverished shining through in her beautiful eyes. “You should have followed me, Javier. I know you didn’t want to be a father, but...”
He stood up, the letters falling around him. “I never knew, Natalie. All I knew was that you were there one day, and the next…you’d vanished. No explanation except my father…” he stopped, thinking back to those dark days of anger and fury.
“My father,” he repeated, realization hitting him like a ton of bricks. “My father told me that you’d demanded money.”
Natalie’s arms curled around her. “I did. Well,” she shrugged, “I asked for money. I had none. I couldn’t get back home and I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t stay in Spain. I’d only arrived as a tourist. I didn’t have a job, and you’d …your father, had kicked me out of the house. I couldn’t legally stay in Spain, but I had no money to get home.”
“So you asked for money. Why did you need so much?”
She pulled back, looking at him with indignation. “Javier, I didn’t think that a few thousand euros for a plane ticket was a lot of money. Not for you.”
His hands tightened on her upper arms. “Fifty thousand euros is a bit more than a few,” he argued.
Natalie’s mouth fell open with that number. “Fifty thousand?” She shook her head. “Javier, your father gave me a check for five thousand. And he only gave me that much because he ordered me to get on the first flight out of Spain.”
His eyes narrowed as he looked down at her. “Natalie, please…”
She knew exactly where this was going and lifted her hand, palm up. “Don’t!” she snapped. “Don’t go there!”
He was silent as she spun around and opened the small closet by the front door, stuffing everything back inside with haphazard inefficiency. “Your father told me to get out. He said I was unworthy of the aristocratic lineage your family has. He said I was…” she stopped, frantically blinked back the tears. “I didn’t leave you, Javier. I was kicked out of your life. I was pushed away and you didn’t care!”
She felt his eyes on her, knew that he was confused and that only angered her further.
“I don’t know what…” he started to say.
“Save it, Javier,” she sighed, her voice firm, but no longer angry. “I don’t want to hear anything more. I don’t know what happened, why your father did this, or if you were an active participant…”
“I was not!” he stated firmly. “You know me better than that, Natalie. You know that I would have…”
She faced him now, glaring up into eyes that were darker than ever now that the sun had set. “No, Javier. I don’t know anything.” She shook her head and pulled her eyes away from his. “All I know is that I was kicked out of your life as if I were yesterday’s trash. You never tried to find me, you never called or asked where I was.”
“I did!”
Once again, she didn’t believe hi
m. “Javier, if you’d truly wanted to find me, your vast resources could have easily found me. I never tried to hide from you.” She stifled the hurt she still felt, the hurt she’d thought she’d reconciled. Obviously, it was still there, lurking in the dark shadows of her heart. “It doesn’t matter now,” she took a deep breath. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”
With that, she walked over to the front door and waited, glaring pointedly at him.
Javier stared back at her, considering his options. But in the end, the dark circles under her eyes and her pale skin reminded him that she’d been violently sick. She needed sleep and food.
There was always tomorrow, he thought.
“Good night, Natalie. I’ll resolve this and…”
“Don’t make me any promises, Javier. I won’t believe them. Not anymore.”
Instead of arguing, he snapped his jaw closed at the look in her eyes. With a curt nod, he walked out of her house.
Once in his limousine, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, dialing his father. It was nine o’clock at night here in Virginia. That meant it would be only three in the morning in Spain. He thought about waking up his father, but then thought better of it. Ending the call before it even went through, he decided to wait another few hours, giving his father the benefit of doubt. His father was very protective of the Vasquez legacy and the Astrano title, but Javier simply couldn’t believe that his father would deliberately lie about something as important as a child. If his father had known about Natalie’s pregnancy then…
Javier rubbed his forehead. Thinking back, there had obviously been tension between his father and Natalie, but who had instigated the confrontations? He’d always thought it was only because Natalie had been new to the ways of the aristocracy, all the social events, the image she felt she needed to present to the world.
Back then, he hadn’t given a damn about her image. He’d told her that repeatedly, but perhaps, his father had conveyed a different message.
Hell, Javier had no idea what happened during the hours when he’d been at work. Selfishly, he’d proposed to Natalie after knowing her for less than a week. He’d then brought her back to his home, an ancient castle that had been in his family for centuries, given her no time to adjust, and simply thrown her into the thick of everything. Then he’d gone off to work, spending more than twelve hours away from the poor woman who knew the language, but not the culture or his friends. He’d demanded so much of her and had given her nothing in return other than clothes and jewels, material baubles. Things she obviously didn’t care about.
Spanish Passions (Friends Forever Book 2) Page 5
