The Moretti Seduction Read Free Page B

automatically talked to Antonio about the wine selection, and even though he selected the exact vintage she would have chosen, she spoke up and picked something different.
    Meals and drinks ordered, she sat back at the table and took control of this evening. “Tell me more about the Moretti Motors plans for the Vallerio model.”
    “I can only share so much information with you before we hammer out an arrangement. As I am sure you can understand, it’s privileged.”
    “Of course. Tell me why we should even consider doing business with the Moretti family again. The last time we did my beloved great-aunt Anna was destroyed by her dealings with your grandfather and my own grandfather was swindled out of his share of the profits.”
    The feud between their families had at its heart the emotions of a young bride. Decades ago her tante Anna had married her brother’s best friend—Lorenzo Moretti—and then found herself ignored and very unhappy. Lorenzo was a womanizer and Anna spent three miserable years married to him before she left him, something that Lorenzo didn’t even realize for another six months. It was that treatment of Anna that had started the feud. When Anna divorced Lorenzo, something that left her ostracized from her devoutly Catholic community in Paris, Lorenzo had terminated production of the Vallerio Roadster, saying that he wouldn’t share profits with a family that had betrayed him.
    He felt Anna should have sucked up her hurt feelings and stayed with him.
    “You make us sound like the Machiavellis. I assure you we aren’t.”
    “Assurances are okay, Antonio, but I’d rather have some facts that I can take back to my board of directors.”
    “How about the fact that Vallerio Incorporated hasn’t had a new innovation in the car world in over twenty years?”
    “We know what our history is,” she said. “We aren’t in the automobile world anymore.”
    “Which is why you are here with me. The Vallerio-Moretti collaboration went all wrong last time. Our generation will be the ones to put both of our family names back into the limelight and give them the place in history they deserve.”

    Milan was vibrant and alive on this cool spring night and Antonio took a deep breath as he led Nathalie through the center of town to the Piazza del Duomo.
    He knew the key to getting the Vallerio team to sign the deal was to break down the monster that his nono had become to them. And this square was the very place to do that.
    “Why did you bring me here?” Nathalie asked. She seemed a little tired and a little leery.
    He hoped to use that to his advantage. “I wanted you to understand why history is so important to us at Moretti Motors.
    “I know that the Vallerio family harbors some bad feelings toward the Moretti family, but I believe that that stems simply from misunderstanding the man that my grandfather was.”
    Nathalie tipped her head to the side. Her red-gold hair swung against her shoulder and distracted him, made him want to touch the cool silky waves.
    “Your grandfather may have had another side, but I doubt he showed it to anyone outside of the Moretti clan.”
    “Then let me tell you about him now.”
    Nathalie sighed. “Do you really believe this will make a difference?”
    Antonio looked at her standing there in the moonlight and knew that even if it didn’t he wanted to tell her about his family. He wanted to change the image she had in her head of the Morettis as the big bad guys. “When I was a boy I’d come to Milan to visit my nono, he’d bring me here to church every morning. He never missed a day.”
    “My grandpere was the same way. He said it was because God had blessed him on the racetrack,” Nathalie said.
    Antonio smiled to himself. Nono had told him how Pierre-Henri had been a devout man. It was one of the few positive things that Nono had ever mentioned about Pierre-Henri. Lorenzo Moretti had known from an early age that the Lord watched over him each time he got