Chapter 1
After falling off the cliff, Katherine Calhoun seemed like a completely different person.
In the mornings, she no longer rose before dawn to simmer the mushroom soup her husband, Nicholas Padilla, loved.
She no longer endured the midday heat just to pick him up. The desperate need to steal a few minutes of his time had vanished.
At night, she no longer insisted on leaving a lamp on for him. The lights went out early now, and she no longer waited.
Even when she happened to see Nicholas kissing Samantha Lester, she didn’t explode with accusations. She didn’t fall apart or sob until she couldn’t breathe. She simply looked away and turned to leave.
“Katherine…”
Nicholas’s voice came from behind her, urgent in a way it rarely ever was when it came to her.
She stopped, but she did not turn around.
His footsteps came quickly through the thin winter air. He moved in front of her and blocked her path. There was an unusual trace of panic on his face, a faint flush at the tips of his ears, his eyes fixed tightly on hers.
“You saw that, but it isn’t what you think,” he said too quickly. “Samantha slipped. I was helping her, and we both lost our balance. We only bumped into each other by accident. That’s all.”
He explained it in a rush, as if he were terrified she might misunderstand.
Katherine lifted her eyes to look at him.
He really was handsome. Sharp brows, deep-set eyes, a clean straight nose, the kind of face that only became more vivid when emotion stirred across it. There had been a time when she loved this face more than her own life, when every tiny change in his expression could set her heart racing.
Now his voice only felt loud.
She gently pulled her wrist from his grasp. Her tone was calm, flat, almost distant.
“You’re overthinking it,” she said. “I didn’t assume anything. You don’t need to explain yourself to me. Even if it had really been a kiss, it wouldn’t matter.”