Should she tell him now? Was this a good moment?

Her heart started to pound, heavy beats thudding a warning against her ribs. She hadn’t thought he’d bring her somewhere this remote. She shouldn’t have climbed into his car. Another bad decision to add to the ones she’d already made. The longer she waited to tell him, the farther they were from civilization and people. People who could help her. But who would help? Who was there?

She had no one. Just herself, which was why she was here now, doing what needed to be done regardless of the consequences.

Thinking of consequences made her palms grow damp. She should do it right now, while half his attention was on the road.

She waited as he waltzed the car around another bend and hit another straight stretch of road. She could already see the next bend up ahead.

“Mr. Whitman? Cliff? There’s something I need to tell you.”

2

Joanna

Joanna Whitman learned of her ex-husband’s death while she was eating breakfast. She was on her second cup of strong espresso when his face popped up on her TV screen. She grabbed the remote, intending to do what she always did these days when he appeared in her life—turn him off—when she realized that behind that standard head and shoulders shot wasn’t a sea of adoring fans, or one of his exclusive restaurants, but the mangled wreckage of a car in a ravine.

She saw the words Breaking News appear on the screen and turned up the sound in time to hear the newsreader telling the world that celebrity chef Cliff Whitman had been killed in an accident and that they would be giving more information as they had it. Currently all they knew was that his car had gone off the road. He’d been pronounced dead at the scene. His passenger, a young woman as yet unnamed, had been flown to the hospital, her condition unknown.

A young woman.

Joanna tightened her fingers on the remote. Of course she’d be young. Cliff had a pattern, and that pattern hadn’t changed as he aged. He was the most competitive person she’d ever met, driven by an insecurity that went bone deep. He wanted the highest TV ratings, the biggest crowds for public appearances, the longest waiting lists for his restaurants. When it came to women he wanted them younger and thinner, choosing them as carefully as he chose the ingredients he used in his kitchens. Fresh and seasonal.

On most days Joanna felt like someone past her sell-by date. She was forty. Were you supposed to feel like this at forty? She’d wasted half her life on a man who had repeatedly let her down.

She stared at the TV, her gaze fixed on the smoking wreckage. Hadn’t she always said his libido would be the death of him?