Worth the Drive

by Mara Jacobs

The marshal came back to the tee box. “Sir? Is every thing alright?”

  Embarrassed at his unprofessional behavior, Darío nodded to the marshal, picked up his driver and stepped to the ball.

  He heard the club make contact but had no idea where it had gone. It could have been skidding four feet in front of him for all he knew. But, by the way the other player, his caddy, and Binky all set off down the fairway, Darío knew he’d at least hit it in the right direction.

  By the time Darío came to his ball, Katie had moved up to the green. To be at his approach shot as it landed. Just as she had done when they’d been together.

  It was then that Darío realized she wasn’t alone. A man stood next to her, talking with her. She pointed things out to the man. It didn’t appear to be just a stranger talking golf with her. They appeared to be together.

  Darío couldn’t clearly see the man from this far away, but a sigh of relief rushed through him as he realized that man couldn’t possibly be Ron. He was dark, for one thing, and only about Katie’s height. And older.

  A lawyer? Would she bring a lawyer to him? She’d shown up in Memphis with papers for him to sign, was she doing the same thing now, but with more legal weight behind her?

  He didn’t remember hitting the approach shot, just Binky handing him the club. But there was a smattering of applause from the sparse crowd so he figured he’d hit the green.

  It was a large green and the pin was placed at the farthest corner from where Katie and the man stood. His shot had landed only about three feet from the pin and Darío made an easy birdie.

  He teed off on the next hole in the same fog, staring down the fairway at Katie and the man she was with. As they walked together down the fairway, Darío pulled on Binky’s sleeve.

  “Go over and talk to her. Ask her why she’s here. I can’t concentrate, can’t focus.”

  Binky snorted. “You just played the best hole of the tournament, maybe you should stay unfocused.”

  Darío shot him a glare and Binky said no more. When they got to the green, Binky cleaned Darío’s ball, gave him his putter, then dropped the bag next to the walkway to the next hole and made his way over to Katie at the ropes.

  Darío’s playing partner was in trouble in the bunker and Darío stood on the green staring at Binky as he gave Katie a big hug, patted her tummy, then shook hands with the other man as Katie, presumably, introduced them.

  When it was Darío’s turn to putt, he did so quickly, taking no more than a cursory glance at the line. He made the putt and turned toward Katie but she and the man were moving away, back toward the clubhouse.

  Binky had taken his bag and was walking to the next hole’s tee.

  Darío nearly sprinted to him. “Well? Why is she here? Where is she going? Who is that man?”

  Binky checked his yardage book, then got out Darío’s driver and handed it to him. “She’ll meet you at the clubhouse after the round and explain that all to you.”

  Darío looked at the man, dumbfounded. “That’s it?”

  Binky nodded. “Oh yeah, she asked me to give you this.” Binky held out his hand, his fist wrapped around something.

  Darío looked at Binky’s hand as if it might strike him. He’d not given Katie a ring, so it was not that. No legal papers would fit in Binky’s closed fist. Cautiously, Darío put his hand out, palm out.

  Binky placed the item in Darío’s hand and stepped back beside Darío’s bag.

  For the first time in two months, he felt a glimmer of hope, as he stared at the Chapstick in his hand.

  Katie sat with her companion in the shade at the eighteenth hole drinking a lemonade and hoping she hadn’t made a huge mistake.

  She would have loved to watch Darío complete his round, but Binky suggested waiting at the clubhouse, and honestly, she was probably getting too big to be walking so far in the Texas heat. Though the heat in early November was definitely not as bad as her first visit.

  She stretched her legs out on the bleachers – nearly empty now because the first groups were still a few holes from finishing – and thought about her first time in Texas.

  It seemed an eternity ago, but her little bundle was the accurate timekeeper. Seven months. She rubbed her hand across her stomach and saw the man with her watch her movements, seemingly mesmerized by the life growing inside of her.

  “Are you okay? Can I get you something?” he asked.

  Katie shook her head. “No, thank you. This lemonade is just what I needed. Please don’t feel you have to sit here with me. I know you’d like to watch him play. I’ll be fine here.”

  She could see the man struggle with the decision. He wanted to watch Darío play, but didn’t want to leave a pregnant Katie alone.

  “Really, it’s fine. We’re close to the clubhouse, if there’s any problem.”

  The man stood to leave, his decision made. He took a step away, then turned and took Katie’s hand. Katie thought for a moment that he might kiss it, but he just held it in his for a moment, giving it a gentle squeeze. He then set it upon Katie’s stomach. “Thank you for bringing me here today. It means more to me than I can say.” The emotion in the man’s voice conveyed his feelings. Katie only nodded, and the man walked away.

  She rubbed her back and sat alone in the bleachers, her thoughts going back to the steps she’d taken to get here.

  After Ron had left her house that day she’d sat down and done some thinking. How could she not when the man she loved didn’t want her and the man she had loved did. Taking Ron back would be so easy. So safe. The strain of not having a baby gone, they could return to the marriage they’d once had.

  But Katie knew that once she saw her child, Darío’s child, she would be haunted by her love for him. If their child had his chocolate eyes, how would Katie ever be able to look at them and not feel the ache of emptiness she’d felt since losing Darío?

  Ron was not the answer. Safe was not the answer.

  She’d made the first move with Darío before and it hadn’t killed her. In fact, she was getting a baby – what she’d always wanted – because of it.

  If she made the first move again, would she get what she now wanted most – a life with Darío?

  The next day, she’d put the legal envelope in the mail, started doing some internet research, and called Sofia, hoping that Darío wouldn’t answer.

  She was shaken from her thoughts by the sound of golf balls being hit. The tee on eighteen was not visible from the bleachers, but she saw first one, then another ball land in the middle of the fairway. She took the last sip of her lemonade and rose to meet the group – Darío’s group – and her future.

  The golfers finished out at eighteen and made their way to the scorer’s tent. Katie made her way to the ropes on the other side, where the men would come out when they were done. Binky made his way over to her, as did the man she’d come with.

  “Did you enjoy the golf,” Binky asked the man.

  The man nodded, cleared his throat. “It was…it was…”

  Katie couldn’t imagine what types of emotions the man was feeling. He couldn’t finish his sentence, but neither Katie nor Binky pressed him.

  “Do you think I should stick around for the introduction?” Binky asked Katie.

  “It probably wouldn’t hurt,” Katie said, feeling like a coward, but wanting as much moral support as possible when she talked to Darío for the first time in two months.

  And for what would come next.

  Darío was the first player out of the trailer used as a scorer’s tent. His eyes swept the area and rested on her. Katie felt the familiar tingle go through her body as his warm eyes raked over her and his crooked smile showed up.

  He came over to them, ignoring – for the first time that Katie had ever noticed – the autograph seekers along the ropes.

  When he reached her, his hands reached out to her tummy then stopped, midair. He dropped his hands. “Katie,” was all he said.

  “Darío, I have someone I’d like you to
meet.”

  He took a deep breath, as if bracing himself, and nodded for her to go on.

  “Darío Luna, meet Miguél de la Sol.”

  Darío instinctively reached out his hand to shake the other man’s, but Katie saw it freeze as she added, “Your father.”

  Three hours later Darío’s head was still spinning.

  His father.

  Katie had bowed out of dinner, saying he and his father needed time alone. He’d balked at that, wanting some kind of support when talking for the first time with the man who fathered him. But Katie had been insistent. Darío had wound up in a restaurant with a man he’d never met before. One who he’d thought he’d never meet.

  His father had never known he’d existed.

  Darío had sat and listened as Miguel de la Sol poured out his story. He’d been young and scared when Sofia had told him she was pregnant. When she’d said she was going to keep the baby and stay in San Barria instead of traveling the world with Miguel, he left town, hurt and confused.

  But several months later he’d returned. He’d come to realize he wanted Sofia to be his wife, wanted to raise their child together. When he went to her home, her parents had told him she and the baby had died in childbirth. There was such a pallor over the house, a sense of death, that Miguel had never thought to question what he was told.

  Darío knew that the last was true. There probably was a sense of death in the Luna household because by that time they had thrown Sofia and her large belly out. They’d never spoken to her again, certainly had never acknowledged Darío.

  The greenskeeper at the resort, Sergio, and his wife had taken pity on Sofia. They took her in and sheltered her – and then Darío – until Sofia was able to work at the country club and support herself and her baby.

  When Darío had told Miguel of these events he had seen the pain in the man’s eyes and knew that Miguel spoke the truth.

  If he had known Sofia was alive, that she’d had his child, he would have been there. Been a part of their lives. Given Darío his name.

  They’d sat in the restaurant, years of unshared lives between them. At one point Miguel had broken down in tears. At another, Darío had.

  All those years of searching galleries or wanting his face on the covers of magazines so that his father would know he’d done well and hadn’t needed him. All for a man who didn’t know he was alive. Who’d mourned the loss of an unborn child years ago.

  Now, driving to Katie’s hotel, Darío was emotionally wrung out. He must somehow summon the strength to see Katie, to fight for her as he hadn’t in Spain.

  His evening with Miguel had shown him that he had to seize what he wanted while he could. It could be taken away at any moment.

  He’d thought he was doing the right thing letting Katie return to Ron, the man she loved. But now his yearning for the family he’d never had, the family Miguel and Sofia had had ripped away from them, and his love for Katie, meant more to him than his honor.

  He must win her back from Ron.

  He just prayed it wasn’t too late.

  Katie opened the door of her hotel room to Darío. God, he looked so good. But tired, and he looked like he may have lost some weight since the last time they’d seen each other. She quickly shook the memory of that bleak day in the Spanish airport out of her head.

  They were starting over.

  She hoped.

  She waved him into the room, careful to step back as he passed, not wanting to get too close in case she felt the overwhelming urge to launch herself into his arms.

  He seated himself on the bed of the small room and she took the chair opposite him.

  She couldn’t read the emotion on his face. She waited. Soon, his eyes, his beautiful chocolate eyes, filled with tears.

  “Thank you,” was all he said.

  She could sense him trying to gain control and waited. It took several minutes, but she sat quietly, watching him. Memorizing him in case her plan backfired and this would be the last time they’d see each other.

  When his voice was under control, he looked at her and asked, “How?”

  She shrugged. “It wasn’t that hard. I told you that with the internet and my connections with news agencies that I could probably find him fairly easily.”

  “But you needed a name to do that.”

  She nodded. “I got the name.”

  He raised an eyebrow over a chocolate eye.

  “I got the name from Sofia.”

  That sent the other eyebrow up. “You spoke to my mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “She didn’t tell me.”

  “I asked her not to.”

  “But why, Gata?”

  Gata. He still called her Gata. Katie’s confidence rose.

  She could do this. She’d set out to seduce him in Irving. She’d made the first move in Akron. She could go after a man.

  Her man.

  “I thought it was important for you to find out about your family before you started a family of your own. You told me once you’d wanted to have that behind you before you became a father.”

  He nodded, but said nothing, waiting.

  “And you’re about to become a father,” she needlessly added.

  His warm eyes settled on her belly, a look of peace crossed his face. “Sî,” he said.

  She took a deep breath. “And I hope you are about to become part of a family.” That wasn’t how she’d meant to say it, and she could tell by the confused look on his face that he hadn’t understood her meaning.

  “Sî, Miguel and I made plans. We’ll stay in touch. He is even going to see my mother in San Barria, to explain to her.”

  “That’s good. That’s great in fact. But that’s not what I meant.”

  Again his brow shot up in question.

  “I meant our family. You. Me. And the baby.”

  He said nothing. The room was silent. The sudden whir of the hotel room’s air conditioner made her jump. It seemed a thousand years to Katie, but finally Darío cleared his throat and said, “And what role do you see me playing in our family, Gata?”

  Katie stood up and walked to the bureau, to her laptop case and got out the envelope she’d brought with her. She turned to Darío and saw his suspicious glance at the legal-looking papers.

  “It’s not what you think. It’s not like Memphis and these aren’t papers asking you to give up rights to your child.”

  “Some sort of custody settlement, then?” His voice was resigned.

  He was getting the wrong idea. She’d botched this up. She quickly took the papers and put them down, away from them.

  “They have nothing to do with the baby. It’s my final divorce decree. I am officially divorced from Ron.”

  His head shot up, his eyes narrowed at her. “Surely he is not staying with Amber after what he has found out?”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “Katie, he wants to be your husband. I know this. Maybe he just hasn’t found the way to – ”

  She cut him off. “He told me. He came to see me. To talk about a reconciliation.”

  “And yet you can’t forgive him?”

  “I forgive Ron. He wasn’t the only one to blame for our marriage falling apart. I forgive him, but I don’t love him. And a marriage without love is not one I want.”

  She heard the whoosh of breath leave his body and it gave her the will to forge on. She walked to him and knelt on one knee in front of him. His hands instinctively sprang out to help her, but she waved them away. “I love you, Darío Luna. With all my heart. You and no other.”

  She took his hand in hers and met his warm gaze. “Will you marry me?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  Defeated, humiliated, she started to get up, but she caught her foot in the leg of her shorts and tumbled headfirst into Darío, causing him to sprawl backward on the bed, Katie draped on top of him.

  “Are you okay?” His hands instinctively went out to protect the baby, but the fall was a short one a
nd with a very soft landing – Darío.

  “I’m fine. Fine. I’m so sorry.” She tried to get up, get away from him, but he gently clasped her arms and held her to him.

  “I said many months ago that making love with you would be muy dangerous, Gata. I now amend that to a life with you will be muy dangerous.”

  Her head sprung up. Did he mean it? “Do you mean it?”

  He rolled them so that Katie was on her back. He propped himself up on an elbow looking down on her. “Sî,” he said.

  “Sî to what?” she asked.

  He smiled, that warm, crooked, she’d never get tired of looking at, smile.

  “Sî to all of it. Meaning what I said. And sî to your proposal. Most definitely sî to that.”

  He kissed her. He tasted just as she remembered. Exotic. Warm. Hungry. She kissed him back, their tongues tangling. He moved over her just as she put her arms out to reach for him and she punched him in the chin. “Oh, I’m so sor – ”

  “Shhh,” he whispered in her ear, sending a chill through her. His hands were on her belly now, measuring, soothing, feeling. He looked up at Katie. “She is such a miracle,” he said, mirroring her thoughts.

  “She?” she teased.

  “Si. Peaches,” he said, gently kissing her belly. Then he returned to her mouth with less gentleness and Katie’s urgency matched his.

  He began whispering Spanish in her ear and her body went taut.

  “Te amo, Gata,” he said. “Te amo.”

  Katie’s body relaxed, and she held him close. She thought back to the Spanish woman in the airport telling her about the difference of words. The woman was right. Te amo was the phrase Katie longed to hear.

  She cradled Darío’s face in her hands, meeting the gaze of the man she’d raise her child with. The man who’d given her this miracle that was growing inside her. The man she’d spend the rest of her life with.

  The man she loved.

  “Te amo,” she whispered, raising her lips to his.

  The End

  Read a sneak peek from a new romantic mystery series from Mara Jacobs

  Chapter One