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discomfiture. From what she could gather things had not been going so well for Daniel as previously, which also lay behind some of his problems with Felix. Not that he talked about it as much as she would have liked: indeed, more of her information came from carefully searching for reports and information on Stone Enterprises.
    The sun was bright and it was still early enough for the city air not to have become too humid yet. She enjoyed the breeze that blew among the trees in the park, various people around her walking, sitting or jogging, some alone, some in couples or groups.
    From the park she had intended to follow the streets into Manhattan, browse through the expensive boutiques and buy a new outfit—or two, or three—for her wedding. She still couldn’t quite get over the fact that the event was so close... and she had so little to do. Initially, she had big plans for the event, fantasies that, the more she thought about them, appeared too silly. In reaction to this, particularly when they realised that there really was no-one in the way of family that either of them would need, they had almost married on the spur of the moment, a registry affair in London. That had seemed too casual to Daniel, too negligent, and he had suggested that they jet off to some exotic location and tie the knot there. Jokingly, Kris had offered Las Vegas as a location when Daniel had fixed upon a suitable compromise in San Francisco.
    She was glad that inviting Anne and Andrew had been his suggestion, and that he had apparently already contacted his office to arrange the details of their travel. But the realisation of how few people would be present to see the two of them commit to each other suddenly made Kris feel a little melancholy.
    Were there really so few people in her life? She struggled to discover more names that meant anything to her. Each one was struck off the list in turn. What few members of her family remained were far too distant now, and Kris would have worried more that they would have tried more to extract some material advantage from her relationship with Daniel. Ditto most of her university friends, while peers from school had long since dropped off the radar. Her brief flirtation with sites such as Facebook had revealed just how uninterested she really was in all these people, and Daniel of course had no time or inclination for such fripperies. Beyond Anne and Andrew, she really couldn’t think of anyone she would be prepared to spend any amount of time with.
    Which left the two of them. In part, Kris was perfectly content with this. She had always thought of herself as a typically gregarious, outgoing young woman in her late twenties, but in truth as soon as the opportunity to disassociate from everyone else presented itself she had grasped it with both hands. She didn’t really need anyone else but Daniel, and in so many ways she felt that he wanted only her.
    So why this melancholy?
    She knew the answer. It was clear to her—it always had been, it was just that she was scared to think about it too much.
    Daniel was devoted to her; she had no doubts about that whatsoever. Yet while he exposed his vulnerable self to her only, yet the world of Stone Enterprises demanded his attention too much. She had noticed it even more recently; the look of tiredness, exhaustion even, when he came to her, a slight sullenness even that she knew had nothing to do with her.
    If Kris was jealous now, it was not of any other woman. For all that Daniel could be witty, charming, urbane, attractive, and desirable, his heart was as much a stone as his name to most people. No, her jealousy had a different source: she was jealous of his work.
    Yet even jealousy was not quite the right word. It was eating him, devouring him from within. It was not just jealousy, but also over-protectiveness towards her lover, the man who would be her husband. While he worked and worked and worked, she filled her life with stuff and more stuff.
    It had