Julieta had been right. A restaurant was more than numbers and bottom lines; it was about emotions and feelings.
Ramón tried to ignore his own feelings about Julieta.
But he couldn’t.
Chapter Sixteen
After leaving Las Pescas, Ramón was going to head straight home, but instead, he found his car veering toward his father’s place.
He couldn’t stop thinking about what Julieta had said. About how Papá had stolen the recipe from her mother.
It couldn’t be true, could it?
He needed to find out.
Papá also lived in La Jolla, though unlike Ramón’s beachfront bachelor pad, Arturo’s home was a compound in Olde Muirlands. The place was like a castle, filled with haunted memories and a lonely childhood. His mom could’ve kept it in the divorce, but she decided she’d be happier in a modern mansion in the shores. Ramón hated returning home. Years of being alone in that house, waiting for Papá to come home from work, praying that Mamá would stop ignoring him, had taken a toll on him and his brothers.
And now, he worked as much as Papá did. Would Ramón end up like him?
He vowed not to, but sometimes he found himself with tunnel vision. It scared him.
Ramón pulled into the perfectly landscaped driveway, entered the code on the gate, and parked in front of his childhood casa. He let himself in and found Papá watching football on the sofa in the den, the screen dominating the wall space and casting the room in hues of green and blue.
“Ramón!” He got up to hug him. “What are you doing here? You usually call first.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I just wanted to see you.”
“Anytime. Have a beer.” Papá paged the maid. Maria appeared in the doorway. “Maria, get Ramón a beer.”
“Sí, señor.” She waved at Ramón.
Maria.He had been around her almost his entire life, but he didn’t actually know anything about her, except that she had a daughter. That was about all.
Time to change that.
“Hola, Maria. ¿Cómo estás?”
“Bien, Ramón.”
Before he asked her another question, she ran off and quickly returned with his beer, and then left again.
Ramón and Papá both reclined on the sofa.
“Apá, how long has Maria worked for you?”
“I don’t know. Thirty years? Why?”
“Do you ever do anything nice for her? I mean, give her a big bonus or send her on vacation?”
Ramón’s father rubbed his chin. “She gets a Christmas bonus. Why?”
“Because she works for you. She helped raise me and my brothers. Don’t you think we owe her a bit more than an hourly wage?”
Papá stared at him. “What has gotten into you? What is this about? Now I don’t treat my staff well?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not that at all. That’s not what I’m saying.” He took a swig of the beer to take the edge off his mood. “Hey, tell me again how you came up with the recipe for our fish tacos?”
Subtle, Ramón was not.
