Worth the Drive (34 page)

She felt his chin against her as he shook his head. “No. It wasn’t the dark ages, but it was still a very conservative, small resort area
then
. My grandparents told my mother she could go away to have the child, give it up for adoption and then come home. My grandparents are strict
Catholics
.
Of course, abortion was out of the question.”

“Thank goodness,” Katie said. She couldn’t imagine a life without
Darío
in it. The magnitude of that thought hit her full force. She pushed it away. Later. She’d deal with those thoughts later.
Darío
was opening up to her and she didn’t want to miss a word of it.

“Yes, though there were times, very few, but times when I thought another choice would have been the better one. And I let my poor mother know it, too.”

Katie tried to ease his obvious guilt. “Hey, what kid doesn’t shout ‘I wish I’d never been born’ a couple of times
at
their parents.”

“Really? All children do that?”

“Of course. And ours will too. No matter how much love and security you give a child, they have to exert their independence at some point. They don’t know how, and that’s when they push you away. If you’ve done your job right, though, they always come back to you.”

Darío
didn’t say anything, deep in thought, deep in remembering. “You’re close with your mother now, right?” Katie asked.

“
Sí
, very close.”

She brought him back to his story. “So, when she wouldn’t give you up for adoption, what happened?”

Darío
placed his hand over his eyes, as if trying to hide from the memories of a time he was too young to possibly remember. “She was working as a cook at the country club. San Barria is a resort town.
Businessmen
come to the area for conferences and to golf on our courses. She continued on at the country club,
even
though she took much abuse from her co-workers. The wife of the greenskeeper kept me during the days until I was old enough to go to school.

“
Mamá
would come home every evening smelling of wonderful herbs and saffron. Sergio, the greenskeeper would come home at the same time. He smelled of grass and the outdoors.”
Darío
chuckled. “To me they both smelled like heaven.”

“So that’s how you learned to golf? You grew up at the course?”

“
Sí
. Both Sergio and his wife, and my mother and I had small cottages that were just a pathway away from the course. In the evenings, Sergio would take me with him while he walked the course one more time. When I was old enough, he brought me some old clubs that had been discarded by a member. Sergio cut them down for my size.”

Katie took
Darío
’s hand from his eyes, kissed the calloused knuckles, the skin smoother around the fingers where he’d worn tape during his round. “And the rest is history.”

She sensed, more than saw, his smile. “Not quite. But it became obvious when I was a teen that I had a natural ability for the game.”

“I’ll say,” Katie teased. “Three majors to prove it.”

He kissed the top of her head, and she burrowed in deeper to his warmth. “Sergio found ways to get me into tournaments. The amateur system in Europe is a very good building block. I had offers to attend college here in the States, and many of my peers were going. But I wanted to turn pro. Needed to turn pro.”

“For the money. For your mother,” Katie said quietly.

“
Sí
,” came the just as quiet answer.

She didn’t want to cause him any pain, and she thought that her next question might, but, in for a penny…she figured. She also had selfish motives. Whoever
Darío
’s father
was, he
was
also
the biological grandfather to her child. Though the man
had
certainly gave up every right he had to claim
Darío
as his son
, not to mention
his grandchild, the
re
were genetic health issues to
wonder about.

“In all this time, your mother never told you who your father was? You never asked?”

“I asked all the time when I was younger. When I was
very little she told me ‘Your
father is someone who loves you very much but cannot be with you’. When I was old enough to question her further on that, she said he lived very far away. When I would not be put off with that she would become very upset, asking if she wasn’t a good mother, why couldn’t I be happy with just her, things like that. After a while, I learned not to ask.”

“The poor woman, it must have been so hard for her.”

“As an adult I saw that, and tried to make up for the hardships she endured for me. I tried to make up
for
the child
who
brought her pain when pestering her about his father.”

“But that’s a natural reaction, for a child to ask those questions. Did you ever guess who your father might be? What about this Sergio?”

Darío
laughed. “Sergio was an old man then who only had eyes for his wife. He’s a very old man now, who still only has eyes for his wife.” He was quiet, thoughtful. “Of course I guessed. I measured my looks against every man
who
worked at the resort. Every man in church on Sundays. I never saw anyone look at me or my mother with any kind of deep emotion. That was when I vowed things would be different with me. No child of mine would ever spend their days looking at the men
around him, looking to see if he has someone’s nose or eyes. Even if it meant never having children at all.”

“You never wanted children?” She was surprised. Apart from the odd circumstances,
Darío
seemed to be embracing the idea of fatherhood fairly easily. And she’d noticed his naturalness with the children of friends on the Tour.

“
Sí
, I wanted them. I just thought I’d have a few more things…settled before I had them.”

“What kind
of things?” The man was a stand-
out in his career, had wealth for his
, his children’s,
and his children’s children’s lifetimes. What more needed to be…settled?

“I wanted to be invited to the capital by the president of Spain. I wanted to have my picture on the cover of Sports Illustrated again. I wanted to…” his voice trailed off.

Puzzled, Katie said, “I’m surprised. Granted we haven’t known each other long, but the time we’ve been together has been pretty…revealing.”

His hand stroked down her arm and across her breast as if to emphasize her point. “Why are you surprised? You yourself have commented on my drive.”

“To compete.
To win.
Yes.”

“To get on the cover of magazines, to be invited to the capital, to do these things you must win.”

“So, the winning is only a means to the fame?” She felt his chin as he nodded. “But you’re such a private man. And you’re so intelligent. Wanting something as fleeting and vapid as fame surprises me.”

“You think I’m shallow to want my accomplishments to be known?”

An image of Ron, skating across the ice after a goal, his helmet off to his adoring fans skittered through Katie’s mind. “No, I think you’re the least shallow man I know. That’s why I’m so surprised.”

The room was quiet. No outside noises. No inside ones either. Finally
Darío
spoke, his voice no more than a whisper. If Katie’s ear weren’t just below his mouth, she never would have heard him. “I want him to know. I want him to see.”

She felt the tension running through him, though where he touched her, he was gentle.
“Your father,” she said, seeing into his pain, seeing into his soul.

“
Si
, my father. I want him to see that I did not need him. That I am a success without him. That I was better raised by a woman alone and a greenskeeper than by him.”

Another moment passed, Katie smoothed her hand across his chest, his arms, his belly, trying to take some of the pain onto herself. An image of
Darío
on the course, focused, determined to win came to her.

“That’s who you’re looking for. In the galleries. You’re looking for him, aren’t you?”

He shuddered, his stomach hollowing beneath her hand. He rubbed his hand across his face, wiping away…what
?
Katie wondered. “
Sí
. I suppose I am. Of course if my father ever w
ere
in a gallery, I’d have no way of knowing. Sometimes I see someone with a likeness to me and I think ‘Is that him? Has he come to watch his son win?’ Pathetic, eh?”

“No, not pathetic. Sad, but not pathetic.”

“I suppose that is what I really want. To have it settled before I ha
ve
children. But I don’t know what settled would mean in this situation. And that is not to be, so I must settle it in here, eh?” His placed his hand on his chest, above his heart.

“We could still do it. Find your father
,
I mean. With the internet and my connections at news agencies, it probably wouldn’t be that
hard. We’d just have to get his
name from your mother.”

She felt his body tense and
then relax. “No. I could not hurt my mother that way. She has given up too much for me, I will not cause her any pain.”

Katie placed her hand on his. “I wish I could say I was sorry that things won’t be settled for you,
Darío
, but of course I’m not. I wouldn’t have waited another second to have this child.”

A small smile played across his mouth. “No,
I’m not sorry either
.”

Katie smiled back, her hand left his chest, moved down his belly and curled around his penis. “Let’s change the subject.”

A while later, she lay in his arms, sated, exhausted. Sleep soon to come.

“Marry me,
Gata
,” he whispered as he drifted off to sleep. His voice was so soft, so tender, Katie wasn’t sure if he’d really said it, or if it was part of a dream she was quickly losing herself to.

She wasn’t surprised to find him gone when she woke up. They had agreed that he’d go to the course early to warm up and she’d take a cab later to arrive in time for his ten-thirty tee off. Looking at the clock and seeing it was already nine thirty, she jumped from bed and made her way to the bathroom. He must have gotten dressed in the dark, she thought, so as not to wake her.

Just as she was thinking how thoughtful that was, she looked down at the sink and stopped. Setting on the edge of the sink was her toothbrush, wetted and with a dollop of toothpaste on it. He had remembered that she’d mentioned to Franny that the smell of fresh toothpaste made her queasy, so he had put it on her brush for her. She was touched by his ge
sture. As she brushed her teeth
for the first time in weeks without gagging, silent tears slid down her cheeks.

Must be the hormones. Something so small, so inconsequential wouldn’t normally have her crying. It was just a nice thing to do, that’s all. Nothing to get all worked up about. It was toothpaste on a toothbrush, for
Pete’s
sake, not some grand gesture.

Grand gestures were for the young. The young had the innocence to carry off such drama without seeming flamboyant.

Ron had once made a grand gesture.

He had swept into the newsroom of
The Lansing State Journal
where Katie was interning her senior year, wearing his only suit, and brandishing a dozen roses.

As he passed the sports desks, he winked at Chris, the reporter who covered MSU hockey, then made his way to Katie,
r
elegated to the back of the room with the features staff.

A hush fell over the newsroom - no small feat in the chaotic atmosphere - and all eyes followed Ron’s towering physique as he made his way to Katie’s desk. Instinctively, she knew why he’d come. Katie was both touched and horrified. Touched that Ron had gone to the effort of coming here for her. Horrified that he would take something so personal, so singular, like their future together, and put it on display.

She’
d only been an intern at
The Journa
l a few months and
hadn’t made any close friends. These were not the people she wanted to share the most special moment of her young life with. If he was going to propose in front of people – and that alone was a second choice to Katie behind being alone with Ron – she would want it to be Alison and
Lizzie
, or even Ron’s close friends, or even their parents. Certainly not this group of people that she barely knew, and who were none too friendly to her to begin with.

No fault of theirs, the world of daily newspapers was just too hectic to make friends with an intern who’d be gone in a few short months. You came in, got your assignments, wrote your stuff, and hoped to heck it’d make it into print. She knew the drill.