Bulletproof Hearts. Brenda Harlen

of sleep. And he usually didn’t have a woman lurking in the back of his mind.

      No matter how hard he tried to banish Natalie from his thoughts, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He couldn’t stop wondering why her apparent uninterest bothered him so much.

      He dropped the dumbbells back into the rack and moved to the leg press.

      Because she wasn’t uninterested, dammit. He’d felt the crackle of awareness between them in that hotel room. He’d seen the flare of desire in the stormy depths of her blue-green eyes as he’d lowered his head to kiss her. And he’d seen, just as visibly, how she’d shut her emotions away and distanced herself from him.

      He should be grateful she’d had the sense to back away from a potentially volatile situation. A situation that he’d created despite the knowledge that any kind of personal relationship between them was a bad idea. But he wasn’t feeling grateful, only annoyed and incredibly frustrated.

      He adjusted the weight on the machine and began his repetitions with a vengeance.

      “Someone’s in a mood this morning.”

      Dylan glanced up at Joel Logan, a local private investigator and longtime friend. “I haven’t seen you around here in a while,” he said, opting to ignore Joel’s comment.

      “I’m a newlywed,” his friend reminded him. “I’ve found more enjoyable forms of exercise to start my day.”

      He deliberately let the weights slam together again.

      “Tough case you’re working on?”

      “Not really.”

      “Then what’s put you in such a mood?”

      “There’s nothing wrong with my mood,” Dylan denied.

      Joel shrugged and sat down at the rowing machine. “If you don’t want to talk about it, just say you don’t want to talk about it.”