The Moretti Heir by Katherine Garbera Page A

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 I thought most American women were.”
    “Why would you ever think such a thing? American women are