Free The Moretti Heir by Katherine Garbera

sex to distract him and then disappear again in the morning.
    Except the last month had given her too much time to think, and retreating to her lonely life wasn’t what she wanted. She liked Marco. That was something she’d forgotten to factor into her calculations—the human emotions part of the curse-breaking. She’d always understood that her grandmother had been truly heartbroken when Lorenzo had refused to return to their village and marry her. But she hadn’t realized that emotions might be the one key component to spell-casting that she hadn’t accounted for. To be fair, she wasn’t a witch and didn’t regularly practice magic. Her entire training—if you could call it that—had simply been to study the practices to find a way to break the curse.
    It was a basic thing, using emotions, and something she shouldn’t have forgotten. But this spell, the only spell she’d ever tried…
    “Virginia?”
    “Hmm?”
    “I asked you a question.”
    She smiled up at him. In the dark, his obsidian eyes were fathomless and she realized that she was falling in love with him. Was it only because she’d selected him to father her child?
    “That’s right, you did,” she said.
    “Are you okay?” he asked, the Italian accent making his words seem more carefully spoken.
    “Yes, I am…Actually, no, I’m not. I guess because it’s the middle of the night, I thought that telling you about the past would somehow make everything okay, but now I’m not sure.”
    “I’m not following,” Marco said.
    “You asked me whether the mysterious way I’ve acted about my life has anything to do with everything between us…. well, it has nothing, and everything. I’m not sure how to say this,” she said, losing her nerve. The middle of the night was a stupid time to make decisions. She knew that, but here she was anyway, about to tell Marco…
    “ Mi’angela, don’t do anything you don’t want to. I simply asked because…hell, I asked because I want answers. I’m tired of searching for your face at races and realizing that you aren’t there—and that I don’t know enough about you to find you.”
    “I guess that my second thoughts aren’t fair to you.”
    “Second thoughts about what?”
    “Telling you the truth.”
    “Have you been lying to me?”
    “Not really lying, just omitting stuff. Actually, I wish you’d just figure it out so I wouldn’t have to tell you.”
    “Figure what out?”
    She took a deep breath as Marco shifted on the couch and moved away from her. She was on her own any way she sliced it, and she had to remember that only a child would change either of their lives.
    “I’m the granddaughter of the woman who cursed your grandfather. Cassia Festa, my grandmother, was heartbroken when your grandfather, Lorenzo, refused to marry her.”
    He stood up, cursing as he paced away from her before returning to stand in front of her, hands on his hips.
    “I know this story. So, out of spite she put a curse on my family—on the men—so that no Moretti man could have both happiness and fortune.”
    Virginia nodded. It was hard to explain Cassia’s actions to someone who’d never known her. “She wasn’t a happy woman.”
    “Yeah, like the Morettis have been happy…we lost our home, Virginia.”
    “I’m sorry. It wasn’t like she prospered after doing such a thing to your family.”
    “Why are you here?” Marco demanded. “Did the women of your family think of another curse to heap on us? I have to warn you, Virginia, it’s too late. My brothers and I have made up our minds that love isn’t something we aspire to.”
    She shook her head. He was angry, and she acknowledged that he had a right to be. But that didn’t mean she liked the way he was yelling at her. She took a few steps away from him then stopped. She knew Marco wasn’t going to reach out and hurt her, and she had lied to him.
    “I am not here to place another curse on you. The women of my family…well, there’s just