“I’m here.” She stepped closer. “We’re alone.”

The need twisted inside him. “I want to make love with you, but not until I know what it is you want from me. Do you want only a few nights, a few memories, like our parents had together?”

She turned away then. “I don’t know how to explain.”

“Tell me how you feel.”

She took a moment to steady herself. “All right. When I cook, I take this ingredient and that. I have my own hands, my own skill, and putting these together, I make something perfect. If I don’t find it perfect, I toss it out. There’s little patience in me.” She paused a moment, wondering if he could possibly understand this kind of analogy. “I’ve thought that if I ever decided to become involved in a relationship, there would be this ingredient and that, and again I’d put them together. But I knew it would never be perfect. So…” She let out a long breath. “I wondered if that too would be something to toss out.”

“A relationship isn’t something that has to be created in a day, or perfected in a day. Part of the game is to keep working on it. Fifty years still isn’t long enough.”

“A long time to work on something that’ll always be just a little flawed.”

“Too much of a challenge?”

She whirled, then stopped. “You know me too well,” she murmured. “Too well for my own good. Maybe too well for your own.”

“You’re wrong,” he said quietly. “You are my own good.”

Her mouth trembled open, then closed. “Please,” she managed, “I want to finish this. When I was in Rome, I tried to tell myself that this was what I wanted—to go back to flying here, there, without anyone to worry about but myself and the next dish I would create. When I was in Rome,” she added with a sigh, “I was more miserable than I’ve ever been in my life.”

He couldn’t prevent the grin. “Sorry to hear it.”

“No, I think you’re not.” Turning away, she ran her fingertip around and around the rim of a champagne glass. Since she would only explain once, she wanted to be certain she explained well. “On the plane, I told myself that when I came back, we would talk, reasonably, logically. We’d work the situation out in the best manner. In my head, I thought that would be a continuation of our relationship as it was. Intimacy without strings, which is perhaps not intimacy at all.” She lifted the glass and sipped some of the cold, frothy wine. “When I walked in here tonight and saw you, I knew that would be impossible. We can’t see each other as we have been. In the end, that would damage us both.”

“You’re not walking out of my life.”

Turning back, she stood toe-to-toe with him. “I would, if I could. And damn it, you’re not the one who’s stopping me. It’s me! None of your planning, none of your logic could’ve changed what was inside me. Only I could change it, only what I feel could change it.”