Love By The Book (3 page)

Chapter 5

My eyes were red-rimmed and puffy the next day because I’d stayed up until all hours reading
Noble Hearts
. I was really getting into the novel now and I’d decided Carlita was right. The hero did make the book.

But that morning I was paying dearly for my late night read. No matter how thickly I applied my concealer, the dark circles still loomed visibly under my eyes. Finally I gave up and slapped the concealer stick back into my makeup box. Never mind. Who was I trying to impress anyway? I thought of the stranger I would be visiting this morning.
He can take me or leave me as I am
.

Despite the brave words, I peered into the mirror for a final check of my short white skirt and blue blouse, cinched with a broad black belt. I’d added a white headband to set off the skirt and my favorite black pumps. The ones that looked like Christian Louboutins but had only cost half as much. A pair of hooped earrings was the finishing touch and then I was grabbing a bagel and slipping out the door.

The elevator was working today—a questionable stroke of luck—and as I stepped into its creepy, dimly lit interior I prayed as I often did this wouldn’t be the day I made the headlines.
Woman found chopped up in apartment house elevator
. It really did look like the ideal spot for a horror scene in a movie.

On the ride down, I peeped inside my purse. The gold pocket watch was still there, nestled between a coin-purse and an eye shadow kit. I had to give it back today. If that was real gold—and it sure looked like it—this was a pretty valuable antique.

Leaving the apartment building, I caught a cab to the other side of town. In the back seat, I finished the last of my bagel and checked my supershine lipstick in my compact mirror. I always spent a generous amount of time applying my makeup. As an Avon representative, I liked to think it was my duty to give potential customers a living sample of what we had to offer. But this morning I’d spent even more time than usual in front of the makeup mirror. Just for fun, of course.

It was a nice autumn day and I rolled down my window to let in the breeze. Skyscrapers towered over me, blotting out the sun. Watching the pedestrians hurrying by on the streets I was reminded of what had made me fall in love with this city. It had an energy—an excitement about it. Then too it had seemed like a place where even the most unreachable of dreams, like an artist’s career, could come true.

The fact Baltimore had recently been rated the third best place in the nation to shop had nothing to do with it of course. Nope, nothing at all.

We were pulling up outside the hospital. After I paid the cab driver, I passed through the entrance and was immediately engulfed in the antiseptic scent I remembered from yesterday. I’d come in at a different entrance from the one I used then. Right in front of me stood a check-in desk.

Obtaining directions from the check-in clerk wasn’t easy. Until the moment I opened my mouth to ask for the patient’s room number, I’d forgotten that I still had no idea under what name he would be registered. Luckily, I remembered what time he had been brought into the ER, and as it turned out, he was the only male collision victim to have been admitted at that hour.

Now I learned he was no longer in the ER but had been moved to a regular room. On the clerk’s instruction, I found the elevator and took it up to the third floor. I felt nervous, walking down the long corridor. What if he didn’t remember me? Would he think I was some kind of freak for hanging around in the ER and now showing up to visit him? But I had to know why I had this feeling of knowing him. Plus, returning the watch made a good excuse.

The door to room three-eighteen was open. Still, I stood back and knocked tentatively. When a deep voice answered with, “Come in,” I stepped hesitantly inside. And stopped short.

I hardly recognized the man I saw today as the injured stranger from yesterday.

He was tall with a fairly muscular yet narrow build. I definitely wouldn’t define him as athletic. His hands were slender—I could better imagine them grasping a pen than a football—and the pallor of his skin suggested he didn’t see much time outdoors. The bookish type then? Maybe a librarian or a teacher?

His face was finely boned, his jaw well defined and tapering down to a long—almost too long— chin. His nose was
aquiline
—not a word you’d normally pair with attractiveness, but on him it looked good. In fact, his whole face managed to merge good looks with an air of self-awareness—not arrogance exactly, but he looked like a man who knew his worth. He wouldn’t have passed for the lead in a romantic movie, but he had that undeniable appeal I remembered from yesterday.

As I entered, he was looking toward the door with an air of expectancy in his green eyes.

I examined his eyes.
I almost had them. Just a little more depth and some heavier shading would have done it
. But that faint air of superiority to the world, I hadn’t caught that. Then again, I figured it was hard to look superior while sprawled unconscious on the pavement of a city street.

“You came,” he said, interrupting my perusal. He sounded like he’d never doubted that I would.

“I, ah, heard you’d asked for me.” I could’ve bit my tongue off for sounding so self-conscious but something about him left me feeling about as small as an ant.

I couldn’t help noticing how the sunlight slanting through the window lit his hair with a golden glow, revealing faint tints of red woven throughout. Bad chin or not, he was gorgeous in his own way—even more so than I remembered. Of course no one was at their hottest after being smacked by a car.

Today he sat upright in his hospital bed, looking perfectly healthy. I didn’t know what I’d expected. Possibly to see him lying miserably in a bed of pain. Certainly I hadn’t thought he’d look this good. The narrow bandage across his forehead and the sling around his arm were the only indications of his recent brush with death.

I realized I was staring. Gawking even. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice. Most likely he got this sort of reaction from women all the time.

I blinked and forced myself to say something to kill the awkward lull. “My name’s Megan. Megan Hurst. We didn’t exactly get a chance to introduce ourselves yesterday.”

He offered a polite smile, one that served to melt away a little of the stiffness his face had held before, but I noted he didn’t answer with his own name.

Summoning my courage, I crossed the room and offered him a handshake—a sure icebreaker if there ever was one. I didn’t realize until it was too late that his only good hand was all but tied down by a string of IVs. The needles in his wrist didn’t hold him back much though. He accepted my clumsy hand in his elegant, long-fingered one and startled me by raising it to his lips.

His mouth brushed my skin so lightly I hardly felt it, and then my hand was released as quickly as it had been taken. He seemed to find nothing awkward or inappropriate in the action. His expression was as casual as if he kissed strange women’s hands every day. Maybe he did.

To keep him from seeing how weirded out I was by that, I cleared my throat and jumped to the first safe subject that crossed my mind. “I brought your watch back.”

His brows drew together. “My watch?”

“Yes.” Digging around in my purse, I produced the gold pocket watch. “I found this lying in the street beside you. I figured it had to be yours, so I held onto it for you. I really did mean to give it back before, but somehow I forgot.”

I dropped the watch on the bedside table, and he picked it up. There was no recognition in his eyes as he turned the object over.

“I can’t say I recall owning anything like this, but then I’m afraid the accident has clouded my memory. It was good of you to return it, Miss Hurst.”

Okay. When he talked he was even weirder. There was something very odd about his voice—or more specifically his choice of words. He spoke in a stiff, formal style, like he was reading lines from a script. And his accent didn’t sound like anything I’d ever heard.

But I shook my questions away. Maybe he was just feeling self-conscious. Even if he didn’t look it. Besides, despite his weird speech the smile he offered seemed genuine. I found myself thinking what a gorgeous smile he had with his shallow dimple and dazzling row of perfectly white teeth. They could’ve come from an ad for porcelain veneers, except I was pretty sure all of them were real.

I realized I was staring again, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“Please, sit down,” he invited. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you for what you did yesterday.”

I took a seat on the edge of the straight-backed chair beside his bed. “Don’t thank me. I wasn’t much help really and I just did what everyone there should have.”

“Yes, but none of them did,” he pointed out smoothly. “Only you.”

I felt my cheeks redden. I’ve always been an easy blusher, especially when being heaped with praise from handsome strangers. It was my curse. I searched for something relevant to say that would remove the uncomfortably warm spotlight from me before I started sweating, something I did
not
want to do while wearing my favorite silk blouse.

“It must have been a terrifying experience, looking up and seeing that car coming at you. I can’t even imagine.” As soon as the words were out I felt like an idiot.
Naturally it was terrifying, you moron! Who wouldn’t be freaking if they saw a huge hunk of speeding metal flying at them?

Luckily, my companion either didn’t notice how inane the question was or was too polite to let on if he did. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “I don’t remember much about it. Everything happened so suddenly. There is one thing I remember very clearly, though—lying on the pavement, waiting to die, and then…And then looking up to see you and thinking maybe I wouldn’t after all.” His tone and expression were matter-of-fact, his bluntness saving the statement from sounding romantic.

He shrugged and went on. “Perhaps it sounds foolish, but I felt less alone to have you there. Something about you seemed so safe. I felt like I’d known you all my life.”

My heart beat faster. Here it was. I was going to find out why he felt so familiar to me. I forgot my awkwardness and asked abruptly, “Can you tell me— that is, have we met somewhere before, D.C.?”

I couldn’t say what made me add those initials. I had been thinking of the engraving on the watch and it just popped out.

“D.C.?” He looked puzzled. “Who is D.C.?”

“It’s you. I mean I had thought it was you, but I guess maybe it’s not.” I felt my face color further and scrambled to explain. “It’s the initials I found engraved on the watch. Not that I was looking! That is, I didn’t mean to snoop—” I realized I was babbling and forced myself to slow down. “Aren’t the initials yours?”

He looked uncomfortable. “I wish I could say.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…You’re going to think me out of my mind but…I don’t know what my name is. Ever since I awoke here my caregivers have been trying to pry that information out of me, but it’s no good. I told you the accident fogged my memory. It would be more accurate to say that it completely wiped it out. It’s as if my life was a blank sheet all the way up to the point where I found myself lying in the street.”

I tried not to show my skepticism. “So you don’t remember a thing before the accident?”

“I don’t even know how the accident happened. The first thing I remember is, well, you.” He gave the faintest of smiles as he added, “But that’s not such a bad memory to start off with, is it?”

Why did such a direct statement, offered totally without nuance, set my stomach to doing flip-flops? The guy was feeding me a ridiculous story straight off an afternoon soap opera, and I was eating it up like candy just because he happened to have a gorgeous smile.
Riiight. Time to get outta’ here
. If I stayed another minute I might find myself actually believing in his supposed amnesia.

“Um, you know what? I think I have to go. I just remembered something I have to do.” I made a pretense of checking my watch before scrambling a little too quickly out of my chair.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “I understand. I’ve taken up too much of your time already.”

He knows darn well I’m not swallowing his crappy story
. Then how did he manage to look so sincere? For a second, he reminded me of a little boy who for all the world believed in the monsters in his closet.

“Listen,” I said on my way to the door, “I hope everything works out all right for you and you get to feeling better soon.”

“Oh, I feel very fit now. The doctor says I’ll be ready to go home in a day or two. Just as soon as I figure out where home is.”

The uncertainty in his tone tugged at me and I paused in the doorway.
Don’t be an idiot, Megan
. Still, I found myself turning around and sighed. “You
really
don’t know who you are?” I asked, not bothering this time to hide my doubt.

He shook his head.

“And I guess that means you don’t know who your family is or how to get in touch with them?”

Another negative. He looked genuinely unhappy with the answer, although whether it was for his own sake or because he could see I didn’t believe him, it was hard to say.

Why was he putting on this act? He didn’t even know me. Why construct this insane lie? The guy was a jerk. I nodded, my mind made up. “All right then. Good luck to you.” If I sounded sarcastic he deserved it.

I turned and ducked out the door before he could respond.

On my way back to the elevator, I caught a nurse who was hurrying past. “Excuse me,” I said. “That patient in room three-eighteen, do you know what his name is?”

“Three-eighteen?” The nurse laughed. “Oh, he’s our mystery man. Nobody knows who he is—except he seems convinced he’s somebody pretty important.”

“Thanks.” I bit my lip. Maybe I’d been too hasty in disbelieving his story.

As the nurse hurried off down the corridor, I was left alone with my nagging conscience.

Chapter 6

I tried to dismiss the idea I’d been unfair to the guy I was beginning to think of as “Mystery Man.” But a vague sense of guilt hung over me for the rest of the morning and late into the afternoon. Finally, after a few hours of pounding the pavement and picking up job applications, I realized there was only one thing on my mind that took up equal space with the stranger. It was the dull ache of my empty stomach. I hadn’t had a bite since breakfast.

Stopping by the same hotdog vender I visited every time I passed the park, I ordered my usual—two chili-cheese dogs, extra cheese, extra relish. Carlita would have given me The Look but I didn’t care. I’d never been into dieting.

I passed on my ten-dollar bill and tried not to actually drool over the plate Bill the Hotdog Man shoved at me. I was glad my suave mystery man wasn’t here now to see my eyes bugging out over a couple buns stuffed with chili.

Struck by a sudden thought, I said, “Hey Bill, what do you do when you don’t know who you are?”

Bill paused in slapping relish over a hotdog and squinted at me. It wasn’t particularly sunny out, but Bill always squinted.

“What d’ya mean?” he asked. “You feelin’ sick or something?”

“No, not me. But let’s say I have a friend who’s been in an accident and claims he doesn’t remember his name anymore or where he comes from.”

Bill snorted. “Sounds like somebody’s been watchin’ too much daytime TV. Is this guy on the level?”

“That’s what I want to find out.”

“So I’m guessing you don’t know who he is either?”

“Not exactly, no. And,” I hastened to add, “I’m not in any hurry to drag too many people in on this in case…”
In case what? In case he’s making up this whole thing and I wind up looking like a major idiot?

The hotdog man shrugged. “Guess the easiest way would be to check out a missing persons list. See if anyone meeting your guy’s description has turned up missing around here.”

There was an idea. At least it’d be one way to satisfy my nagging curiosity without becoming too involved.

I nodded. “Thanks a lot, Bill. I’ll give it a try.”

I took my lunch into the park and found a lonely bench under the trees. Of course, in the city it was impossible to be
really
alone with the noisy streets and towering buildings only a short distance away. But at least none of the strangers walking, rollerblading, or riding their bikes past paid me much attention. Laughing children played on the grass nearby and old people walked past, leading their dogs on leashes. Couples strolled by hand in hand.

People-watching as I wolfed down my lunch, I indulged in a brief moment of self-pity because I seemed to be the only one alone today. I distracted myself by thinking of my mystery man.
Was
he for real? What reason could he possibly have for inventing a ridiculous story about losing his memory for me, a total stranger? Had it all been some sort of joke?

But no matter how I argued it, I just couldn’t convince myself he was intentionally lying. There had been something so sincere about him. He might have some pretty inflated ideas about himself but there was still a sort of old-fashioned honesty to him. Like he came from someplace where you could take people at their word and they didn’t pull crap on you.

I shook my head at my thoughts. I was over-romanticizing this guy. There was only one thing for it. I was going to have to find out the truth. I thought about Bill’s advice. Where could I obtain a missing persons list?

***

A half hour later, I plopped down into a creaky seat behind a computer at the public library. If I had learned anything it was that when stumped with the ultimate puzzle there was always one force to turn to—the awesome power of the internet. And since my laptop was fried and Carlita didn’t own one, I had to rely on the charity of the good folks at Pratt’s Central Library.

I tried not to hold my breath as I waited to see what information the search engine came up with. When the results did show, they were disappointing. My search was too broad, I decided. I needed to narrow it down.

***

When I returned to the apartment that evening my heart felt so heavy it might as well have been a brick thumping away in my chest. A whole afternoon spent on my fruitless research and pretty much all I had discovered was that if my mystery man really was a missing person, no one seemed interested in finding him.

I was tired and frustrated and my feet were killing me after an entire day in heels. I kicked the shoes off inside the door of the apartment and sank down onto the couch. What a wasted day. I was sitting there dejectedly rubbing at my sore feet, when Carlita came out of her bedroom.

“Where’ve you been, Meggs? I’ve been home for an hour.”

“Out,” I replied vaguely. I sniffed the air. “Something smells good.”

“Frozen lasagna.” She looked apologetic. “I finished off the last of it. Sorry.”

“Never mind. I’m too tired to eat anyway.” I yawned. “Spending an afternoon not working wears me out.”

“Aw, no success in the job market today?” Carlita asked. She eyed the multiple application papers sticking out of the top of my purse.

“Not really, but I didn’t spend a lot of time looking,” I admitted sheepishly. “I visited that guy in the hospital today—”

Carlita interrupted, “Oh, right. The cutie whose life you saved.”

“I didn’t exactly ‘save’ him—”

“Whatever. Come on. Tell me all about him while we look for something for you to eat. Tired or not, you’ve gotta’ have dinner. Then you can take a nice hot shower and go to bed.”

“Sure,” I said, following my roommate into the kitchen. “Might as well get an early start to bed so I can be up at the crack of dawn for a full day of…nothing.”

“Will you stop complaining? I
wish
I could have a day to just hang around the apartment. I could catch up on my soap operas, reread one of my novels…By the way, how are you liking
Noble Hearts?
”

I opened the freezer and poked around inside. “Actually I’m sort of getting into it,” I admitted, checking the expiration date on the back of a box of fish sticks. “At first it started pretty cheesy but once I got to the duke guy—”

Carlita sucked in a hissing breath between her teeth. “Tell me about it. Isn’t he amazing?”

I dropped the fish sticks into the garbage. “I don’t know if I’d use
that
word. But he does grow on you. When the heroine meets him she thinks he’s this old-fashioned, too-gallant-to-be-true guy, and she’s suspicious of his motives. At first he does seem like he’s just a stiff, pompous nobleman who expects everything he wants to be handed to him. But then she starts to feel like there’s something sorta’ real about him.” I ripped a frozen burrito out of its packet and put it in the microwave. “I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but I can see how she winds up falling in love with him.”

Carlita laughed. “It’s not like you to have romantic sentiments. The duke has converted you, I think. Or maybe…” She looked sly. “Or maybe it’s not the duke at all. Tell me more about this handsome stranger who had you playing Florence Nightingale today.” She hopped up on top of the counter to listen.

And so I filled her in on my hospital visit that morning. I was a little embarrassed when I came to the part where my mystery man revealed his memory loss. It didn’t fit in with my no-nonsense reputation to go around swallowing whale-sized tales from handsome strangers.

I couldn’t blame Carlita for looking skeptical as she asked, “And you didn’t fall for that, did you?”

“Of course not,” I said defensively.

“Good. The guy sounds like a nut job, dreamy eyes or not. I’m glad you left when you did. The last thing you need is to get tangled up with some kind of psycho.”

“Actually…” I busied myself with removing my dinner from the microwave. “I’m thinking about going to see him again.”

“What!”

“I’m not saying I believe him,” I pointed out. “I just have some questions, that’s all. I mean, suppose he was telling the truth. How lousy would that make me for not helping him out?”

Carlita narrowed her eyes. “And just how do you plan on ‘helping him out?’ Has this creep asked you for money?”

“No! I just ... I feel something. I can’t explain it. I just know there’s something about this man. I need to find out why he seems so familiar to me. I want to know who he is and why he appeared when he did.”

“Appeared?”

“Yeah. After the accident the driver of the car said it was like the guy came right out of thin air or something.”

“The driver,” Carlita replied, “didn’t want to admit he’d been too busy stuffing his face with coffee and doughnuts to watch the road.” She heaved a sigh. “But whatever. This isn’t my business. I’m just warning you, this guy sounds like trouble. I don’t want you to get taken into some crazy scam or something, that’s all.”

“Thanks, but I’ll be fine. All I want to do right now is figure out who this guy is and where he comes from.” I explained about my online search of all the missing persons databases I had been able to get into. “There’s no record of anyone who sounds remotely like him disappearing from the Baltimore area yesterday,” I finished.

Carlita shook her head. “Why should there be? Think about it. If this guy is serious—and I’m not saying he is—and he honestly hasn’t contacted any of his family from the hospital, that doesn’t mean they’re out there searching desperately for him yet. I mean, it’s only been a day, right? Besides, maybe he lives alone. Suppose his people are all out-of-towners like yours? They could go without hearing from him for a month and not suspect anything’s wrong, you know?”

“Makes sense,” I admitted. “But if nobody’s reported him as missing, what other options do I have for finding out who he is?”

Carlita shrugged. “I dunno. Guess you’re right back where you started.” She glanced at the microwave clock. “It’s getting late. I’ve gotta’ get some sleep. Some of us still have a long work week ahead of us.” She hopped down off the counter. “And look at you,” she added. “You need to crash. You look half dead.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly.

“Welcome. Night-night, Meggs.” She gave me a brief hug and was gone.

I forced down my burrito—it was cold by this time—and turned a weary eye to the stack of job applications peeping out of my purse. I shook my head and went to the bathroom for a long, hot soak instead. On the way past my room, I caught a glimpse of
Noble Hearts
resting on my nightstand. Snatching it up, I took it with me. Maybe I’d do a little reading in the tub. Even tired as I was I couldn’t leave the duke and his lady stranded where I had left them last.