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handful of beautiful women beside him but they wouldn’t want to sleep. And besides, Dalton didn’t even want them. He wanted Lucie. But with her, he couldn’t kick her out come morning and make empty promises to see her again. Perhaps Steve was right. How could he find the time to treat Lucie the way she deserved? It’d be better for her if she just forgot all about him.
     

***
     
    It was midnight and Lucie’s eyes stung from trying to stay awake. She was in bed now, her phone on the pillow beside her just in case Dalton called. She started to consider that perhaps neither of her messages had gone through but she knew how ridiculous that logic was. He was blatantly just ignoring her.
     
    Feeling hurt, Lucie rolled onto her side and pulled her legs up to her chest. She wasn’t the kind of girl to get hung up on a guy. She’d always been a career girl, in a relationship with her job, yet here she was struggling to sleep because she couldn’t stop thinking about some guy she’d hooked up with once. Lucie felt pathetic. A stray tear fell down her cheek and soaked into the pillow as she eventually closed her eyes and drifted off into dreams filled with Dalton.
     

***
     
    The shrill sound of her alarm clock woke Lucie up with a start. Sitting upright in bed she glanced around, waiting for the fog of sleep to lift. Her startled heart beat wildly in her chest as she groaned and ran a hand through her mussed-up hair. After a few moments she reached for her cell phone and briefly held on to the vain hope that maybe Dalton had been in touch during the night. He hadn’t. There were no new messages waiting for her, no missed calls or voicemails. Dejected, Lucie hauled herself out of bed and headed over to the bathroom, intending to take an extra-long shower to try and wash away all lingering thoughts of Dalton.
     
    She continued to think about him in spite of her desperate attempts not to as she drove to work. Even the bright morning sunshine couldn’t lift her spirits.
     

***
     
    Dalton grunted as he lifted the heavy set of weights above his head. Every muscle in his arms strained to keep it up. But he liked the pain. When he lowered the weights with a gasp he gestured for Steve to add more to the dumbbell.
     
    “You sure?” Steve wondered warily. Dalton rarely lifted this much.
     
    Dalton could only nod, too exhausted to speak. He was training harder than usual but he felt like he had to. He felt a burning desire to keep pushing himself, no matter how much he ached. Lucie had not contacted him again, he assumed that she was already moving on and forgetting about him. But he hated himself for not being the guy she needed him to be.
     
    He lifted the weights again, sweat pouring down his back. He didn’t smile once during the training session.
     

Chapter 7
     
    The work day ended and still Lucie hadn’t heard from Dalton. She tossed and turned all that night thinking about him, running over the last time they had been together. The sex had been great. The chemistry between them sizzled so why had he now gone cold on her?
     
    The following morning Lucie was still a bundle of unanswered questions and so she went into the city early to meet Deena for a coffee before work.
     
    “It’s not working out?” Deena drew her neatly shaped eyebrows together and pouted in dismay.
     
    “It’s not even been given a chance to work out,” Lucie sighed as she nursed her fresh mug of steaming coffee. “He’s just gone cold on me.”
     
    “Hmm,” Deena clicked her fingers and shook her head fiercely. “Men!”
     
    “Tell me about it,” Lucie grumbled sadly.
     
    “Do you think he’s got someone else?”
     
    “I honestly don’t know.” Lucie didn’t want to admit that she’d spent hours searching the internet to see if Dalton Hughes did have a secret girlfriend squirreled away somewhere but all the websites seemed to agree that he was very much an eligible bachelor. He had been linked to numerous