The Moretti Heir / Billionaire Extraordinaire: The Moretti Heir / Billionaire Extraordinaire. Katherine Garbera
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And my father.”
“How did your parents meet?” she asked. She’d heard via the grapevine that Giovanni and Philomena had a love match. That their love had meant the destruction of Moretti Motors.
“My mom was hired to buy art for the lobby of our building. My father took one look at her and forgot all about cars and racing.”
“Was he a driver like you?”
“No. He did one twenty-four-hour race with his cousins when he was in his twenties, but didn’t care for it.”
“What’s a twenty-four-hour race?”
“An endurance race that involves a team of at least three drivers.”
“And you drive for twenty-four hours?”
“In shifts…usually each guy drives for three hours.”
She couldn’t imagine what would make someone want to do that. But then again, she was a little unsure of why Marco raced. Wanting to go fast, she understood. She even got that he wanted to beat other people on the track—but racing as a calling she didn’t really get.
“Is it fun?”
He laughed a little. “No. It’s more. It’s exhilarating and a bit of a headache. There’s nothing else like it.”
“Do you drive through towns or around tracks?”
“Tracks, usually,” he said. He drove through the streets of Barcelona with skill and competency, which really didn’t surprise her.
“Have you done one?”
“Every year my brothers and I participate in at least one.”
This was his world, she realized. She wondered if the child they had would be like Marco. Would he have the need for speed? And what would being raised so far away from the racing world do to the child?
For the first time, she realized that, while her plan was to fix this generation, she had no way of knowing what the fallout of her solution was going to be.
“I like the track at Le Mans. We’ve done charity events, too, where we compete against other car companies.”
“How is that different from what you do each week? Is it friendlier?”
“Not really. But we do raise money for charity. One charity rule requires you to have a woman driver for one leg.”
“Who do you guys use?”
“No one. We haven’t participated in that one…my family is cursed.”
“Cursed?” She wondered how much he’d tell her about the curse and whether she should pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about.
“It’s an Italian thing,” he said. “Our curse involves women.”
“Being around women?” she asked, wondering how much he knew of the actual curse.
“No. But being involved with a woman. Okay, here’s the truth, Dom has always been afraid that either Tony or I will weaken and fall in love with a woman, and then our family curse will kick in. So that’s why we’ve never participated in that particular race. I think he fears that if I met a woman who loved racing as much as I do, I’d fall for her.”
Virginia didn’t like the sound of that. That Marco wasn’t going to fall in love. But that shouldn’t matter to her, she wasn’t after his heart, only his child. “You seem very successful, to be cursed.”
He turned into a parking lot and pulled into a space, but made no move to turn off the car or get out. “It’s not a curse like that.”
“What kind is it?”
“As I said, it’s one that involves women.”
“From where I’m sitting, you seem to do okay with women.”
“I do. But I never fall for a woman.”
“So, do you want to fall in love?” she asked. She wondered if he was lonely like she was at times. It didn’t matter how full his life was. Because of her grandmother, he could only be lucky in business or in love. Never both. And since he’d chosen business, that meant a lonely life.
“No,” he said with a smile. “I’m still young and have my life ahead of me.”
“Indeed. What about racing? Are you going to retire?”
“Not for another few years,” he said, turning off the ignition and looking at her.
The smell of his aftershave and the leather of the seats overwhelmed her, and she was very aware of the fact that she’d made small talk to cover her nervousness about being alone with Marco again.
This was something she hadn’t planned for. Being with Marco again wasn’t going to be easy, because each time she was with him she didn’t want to leave. But more than that, she realized that he wanted answers from her, and she was going to have to keep on her toes to stay one step ahead of him.
Marco led the way upstairs to his apartment. He hated staying in hotels, and since Moretti Motors always had a driver in F1, over the years the company had bought residences in all of the major cities where the races were held.
He was trying to be genial and laid-back, though he really wanted answers. But after that one passionate outburst he’d had back at the track, he knew he needed to rein himself in.
He didn’t want Virginia to realize how much she’d gotten to him. And she had. Until he’d seen her again, he hadn’t realized that he’d been searching for her in every crowd—that he’d been waiting for her at each race. And that each win and each loss was marked by the fact that she wasn’t there.
He’d never let anyone have that kind of power over him. He didn’t think he’d “let” Virginia. For some reason, she was the one woman who could make him react this way. Only finding out every detail of who she was would give him the peace he needed.
Dinner had yielded few answers. She was very clever at keeping the conversation off herself and on him. But he was determined to learn more about Virginia, and he wanted to do it without asking her flat out for the answers. She’d set the rules of their game by disappearing and by the very mystery of who she was.
“You’re staring at me,” she said.
“You’re a beautiful woman. Surely I’m not the first man to stare at you.”
She shook her head. “I’m not really beautiful.”
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I find you captivating.”
“Marco.”
“Yes?”
“Please don’t say things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll be tempted to believe you, and you just said that you weren’t interested in any woman for the long term.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not really interested in the long term, either, are you, Virginia?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
He had no idea what she meant by that comment. Maybe she was just as confused about what was happening between them as he was. But she’d left after one night. Most women didn’t do that.
He wasn’t being a chauvinist or anything like that. His experience had shown him that women stuck around for a while. That only when they were convinced a man wasn’t going to be the right one for them to spend their lives with did they move on.
“A woman who leaves while a man is sleeping surely isn’t looking for ‘happily ever after’…though