“Trust me, I am,” she said. Trevor was perfect. Rick had been perfect. She was the one who was flawed. She was still processing this when the dinner started in earnest. The impeccably trained waitstaff made the meal a seamless experience. One by one, nine tasting courses with wine pairings appeared in a parade of indulgence. There were wildly exotic mushrooms and herbs she’d never heard of as well as luxurious bits of creamy cheese and local produce, sips of wine, even an entire array of exotic salts of the world in a formal presentation box.

“This,” she said, “is the meal of a lifetime. Seriously.”

“Glad you like it. I wanted to impress you.”

“It’s been a two-hour extravaganza,” she said.

He leaned back and patted his stomach. “Thank God for grappa,” he said, taking a small sip of the clear liquid.

The sommelier had given them a lesson about the stomach-settling qualities of grappa, a humble liqueur made from something called pomace. “A fancy word for what’s left after the juice is squeezed out of the grapes,” Natalie explained. “It was never a bestseller at my former company, but it has its place.”

“Cin cin, as they say in Italy,” he said.

“Well, thank you a million times over,” she told him, relaxing into a comfortable state of tipsiness. “For the event today, for a glorious drive into the countryside—for just everything.”

He took her hand and brought the back of it to his lips. “I have good news, and I have bad news.”

“Oh?” She studied the back of her hand, where he’d kissed her.

“The bad news is, I just tasted nine kinds of wine and I’m not fit to drive. The good news is I have a room for the night.”

“Oh,” she said again. It wasn’t a question.

He smiled and reached forward to touch her shoulder, very gently. “Don’t go all Sabine on me. It’s a two-room suite.”

She flushed and laughed softly. “I’m impressed by the Sabine reference.”

“It’s something I remember from an art history book. When I was twelve years old, art history books were my Playboy magazine. The Rape of the Sabines was a two-page spread in The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Roman History. I couldn’t stop staring at all those boobs.”

“So what were you like as a twelve-year-old?”

“You mean besides obsessed with boobs?” He chuckled. “Like Huckleberry Finn, without the pipe smoking. No TV or video games. No internet. I probably didn’t appreciate it at the time, but I really did have a magical childhood, surrounded by books and nature.”

“Your folks ought to write a manual on parenting. How to unplug your kid. It’d be a bestseller.”

“Spoken like a true bookseller.” He polished off his grappa. “Shall we retire, madam?”

She felt a dart of panic.