"So you had to choose between your fiancée and your company?"
Daniel shrugged it away. "I suppose you could put it like that. But Ben and I were committed to a business we couldn't just box up and pack away. And Ben had embarked on a marriage and a family, so his hands were tied. Nor were we in a position to take anyone else on."
"So you gave her up?"
Daniel felt a little nauseous, and took another bite of food to try to settle his stomach. What she thought of him suddenly mattered a great deal.
"Don't judge me harshly, Laura. I thought I was doing the right thing by everyone. By Fliss. By my brother."
Laura shook her head. "I'm not judging you. I'm only sorry for you—that you had to put your brother first, just because he happened to get married before you."
Daniel shrugged. "You can't have everything you want in life. The simple fact is, I wasn't in a position to settle down at the time. And Fliss is with someone else now. She's happy."
"Are you?" Her gaze was intent on him.
"I'd be happier if Natalie would leave me alone!" He was suddenly anxious to change the subject back to something he could actually make sense of. The subject of his happiness was . . . well, it was like chasing smoke. "I can't believe it's a coincidence she's up here the same day as us. She turned up a few nights ago in a restaurant, too, but it was only around the corner from her hotel, so it was certainly plausible. This isn't—but she can't have just piled Tony into her car and followed us here, surely?"
Laura frowned. "Well . . ." She toyed with her food a moment. "Actually, I bumped into her earlier in the week, too—or should I say, she bumped into me. It was after the boat trip. I was sitting at a café and she made it seem like a coincidence, but then she told me she'd seen us as the boat came in, that she'd noticed how close we were."
Daniel watched her intently, his salad forgotten. "Okay, so walking past you in the middle of Viana when she's staying nearby is one thing. But happening to watch the boat when we were on it? Highly unlikely. She may be a little obsessive, but she's not unhinged or in stalker territory. Besides, I don't see how she would have known we were on the boat unless she'd waited outside the Quinta, followed us all the way into town, seen us get on the boat, and then waited two hours for us to get back." He shook his head. "No way. Natalie loves herself too much to sink that low."
Laura was quiet a moment. "Does she have access to your schedule?"
"Back at the office, I suppose, but it was only roughly sketched out. Since I've been out here, I've just been entering stuff on my . . ." He slapped his forehead. "My electronic diary! I am such an idiot! Any one of us can log in to that thing at any time. I can't believe I didn't think of that!" He raked his hands through his hair in frustration.
Laura answered with concern. "First, you're not an idiot. You're tired and busy, and if you juggle as many things in your brain as you do, you're bound to drop something occasionally. Second, if she's daft enough to go nosing into your daily schedule to engineer a chance to run into you, she must be mad. The boat was a given, if she knew which trip we were on. But coming up here for the day . . . there are thousands of people here. How could she guarantee meeting up with you?"
"We're having lunch in a main square, aren't we? Maybe she just fancied a drive out with that poor toy boy of hers, with the possible added bonus of seeing me here." He glanced back to her table. "This is getting beyond a joke."
"Eat." Laura reached across, took his fork, stabbed food onto it, and handed it back to him.
Daniel chewed, shaking his head at the ridiculous mess he was in. "When I started going out with her, I thought it would be a good match. She worked for the company, she knew what my job was like. I thought she would understand the limitations of any relationship we had. But she's unrealistic, possessive. The whole point of employing her was to help Ben at headquarters, but she kept wanting to travel with me, turn business trips into romantic holidays." He rolled his eyes. "I tried to make it work, to get her to see there was a limit to how much I could give, but after almost a year it was getting worse, not better, so I had to end it." He ate another mouthful. "And of course the irony is that for the past six months, I've done even more travelling just to stay out of her way."
He was rewarded with a genuine smile from Laura that soothed his senses.
"And here I was thinking you had a woman in every port, when in reality you had one who couldn't stick by you and one who wanted to do nothing but!"
Glad he'd finally dispelled this bizarre notion she had fixed in her head that he had a bevy of women waiting in the wings, he gave her a rueful look. "That's
