MICHELLE REID grew up on the southern edges of Manchester, the youngest in a family of five lively children. Now she lives in the beautiful county of Cheshire, with her busy executive husband and two grown-up daughters. She loves reading, the ballet, and playing tennis when she gets the chance. She hates cooking, cleaning, and despises ironing! Sleep she can do without and produces some of her best written work during the early hours of the morning.

PROLOGUE

A FEVER of hopeful expectancy had spread through the crowds waiting to see if the race would begin. Suited up and ready to go, Franco Tolle stood inside the White Streak team marquee with his safety helmet held in the crook of his arm and his eyes fixed on the monitor, watching for the race organisers’ decision to show up on the screen. The wind had picked up, whipping the glass-smooth surface of the Mediterranean into a turbulent boil—not ideal conditions in which to race notoriously temperamental powerboats at sixty metres per second.

‘What do you think?’ Marco Clemente, his co-driver, came up beside him.

Franco offered a shrug in response. The truth was he wasn’t worried so much by the racing conditions as he was by Marco’s determination to race with him today.

‘Are you sure you are up for this?’ he questioned, keeping his voice level and his eyes fixed on the monitor screen.

Marco hissed out an impatient breath. ‘If you don’t want me in the boat with you, Franco, then just damn well say so.’

And there was the reason why Franco had asked the question in the first place. Marco was on edge, uptight, volatile. He’d spent the last hour pacing the marquee, snapping at anyone who spoke to him, and now he was snapping at Franco. It was not the best frame of mind for him to be in control of the boat’s powerful throttle.

‘In case you have forgotten, Franco, half of White Streak belongs to me—even if you are the one with the design and build genius.’

The petulance in his tone made Franco set his teeth together to stop him saying something he might regret. So they co-owned White Streak. So they’d raced both her and her sister boat across Europe under the co-owned White Streak company name for the last five years. But this would be the first time in three of those years that they would be climbing into the same boat together. This was the first time that Franco had given into the pressure and agreed to let Marco take the seat next to him.

And why had he done that? Because the championship hung in the balance with this one last race of the season and his usual co-driver had gone down with the flu yesterday. Marco was, without question, the best man to have sitting in Angelo’s place when the stakes were this high, so he’d convinced himself that despite the rift in their friendship the two of them could be professional about this. What he had not known until he’d turned up here today was that Marco was not behaving like the laid-back guy everyone was used to seeing around the place.

‘We used to be good friends,’ Marco husked with low-voiced intensity. ‘For almost all our lives we were the closest of friends. Then I made one small mistake and you—’

‘Sleeping with my wife was not a small mistake.’

As if the wind outside had found its way into the tent, the chill of Franco’s voice struck through his own protective clothing to his skin.

Marco seemed to breathe that chill in deep. ‘Lexi was not your wife back then.’

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Michelle Reid – The Italians: Franco, Dominic and Valentino: The Man Who Risked It All / The Moretti Arrangement / Valentino&apos;s Pregnancy Bombshell (страница 1)

The Man Who Risked It All Michelle Reid The Moretti Arrangement Katherine Garbera Valentino’s Pregnancy Bombshell Amy Andrews

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

Michelle Reid – The Italians: Franco, Dominic and Valentino: The Man Who Risked It All / The Moretti Arrangement / Valentino's Pregnancy Bombshell (страница 1)

The Man Who Risked It All

Michelle Reid

The Moretti Arrangement

Katherine Garbera

Valentino’s Pregnancy Bombshell

Amy Andrews