hurried a woman out of my bed.”
“It wasn’t you.”
She lowered her gaze to the side and walked around the living-room area of the luxury motor home. She paused to look at the picture of his family on the wall. From over her shoulder, he saw his family all posed in front of the main Moretti Motors plant in Milan.
“Then what made you leave?”
“It was me,” she said, turning to face him. “I wasn’t sure I’d be able to leave gracefully if you were awake and I had to walk away from you. So I skulked out while you were sleeping.”
“Why are you back?”
She took a deep breath and walked over to him. She brushed her fingers over her bottom lip, which was swollen from his earlier kiss.
“I’m back because I missed you, Marco. And I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
He didn’t admit that he’d missed her, as well. “Good.”
“Good?”
“Yes. I have to shower and change, then we will go for an early dinner.”
He walked away from her before she could answer. She was here, and he was suddenly determined that she would never leave him again.
Five
Marco’s attitude made it difficult for Virginia to do anything but follow him. He’d showered and changed in the motor home and then come out smelling wonderfully masculine, and she felt very much like a school girl enamored with a boy. Though there was nothing boyish about Marco. He was all man.
A man who was determined to set the rules of their…“relationship” didn’t seem the right word to describe what was between them. But he was definitely letting her know that he was in charge.
Whereas in Melbourne he’d wooed her, this time he simply took charge. And as they drove through Barcelona, she admitted to herself that she secretly liked the forcefulness of Marco.
To lessen some of his impact on her, she gazed out the window. Barcelona was a beautiful city. Very Mediterranean in feel. Whenever she traveled outside of the United States…as if she was a world traveler, she thought. But both times, she had left her home country, she noticed how different the world was. She loved the architecture of the old buildings. She loved the streets lined with people walking from place to place. And she loved the way that Marco fit into this world. This was his place, and she felt very much the intruder tonight.
But then she’d always felt like an intruder, and being in beautiful Barcelona wasn’t helping.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
She didn’t want to tell him what she was really thinking. She cast around her mind for something to say and remembered that Picasso painting in the museum where Elena had cornered her.
“About a painting I saw earlier at the Picasso museum.”
“Which one?”
“The Embrace. Are you familiar with it?”
“I am. My mother is an art history teacher.”
“Really? Did you grow up surrounded by art?”
He shrugged. “Not really. She tried to expose us, but we were more interested in cars and engines.”
“All of your brothers?”
“Yes. 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.
