Love By The Book (2 page)

Chapter 2

The car collided into a pedestrian standing in the center of the road and the man went down. For the space of a heartbeat, I sat paralyzed, eyes riveted to the spot. I mean it wasn’t every day you see some guy get mowed down right before your eyes. Outside of TV, I meant.

Before I knew what I was doing I was up and dashing across the street.

A crowd was gathering around the scene of the accident, and over their shoulders and heads I could just get a glimpse of the injured man lying in front of the car.

The shouting of the car’s driver rose over the buzz of the onlookers. “I’m telling you it wasn’t my fault! The guy just appeared right in front of me. One minute there was nothing and the next, there he was. I think I only bumped him anyway.”

Right. Because every time you bump someone with a little old car they collapse unconscious to the pavement
.

Everyone was staring but nobody made a move to help. I shoved my way through the crowd to reach the still figure sprawled in the street. Kneeling at his side, I noted in a glance that he was still breathing. There was very little blood except for a thin stream trickling from his face, which was turned down toward the pavement.

That was probably a good thing because I wasn’t sure my abrupt urge to play the good Samaritan could stand up to a lot of gore.

“Someone call an ambulance,” I ordered. “This man needs to get to a hospital.”

“I tell you it was like he just
appeared
,” repeated the driver, coming to stand over me. I ignored him.

In the background, someone was speaking into a cellphone, presumably to an emergency operator. “…the intersection of Fairmont and Main,” the woman was saying. “A man’s been hit by a car. I think he’s dead.”

He wasn’t dead. Already he was stirring and making slight moaning sounds. I didn’t dare move him for fear of injuring him worse. Instead, I twisted around and lay so that my face rested on the road, level with his. “It’s all right,” I soothed. “Don’t try to move. Help is on the—”

Catching my first glimpse into the face of the injured man I cut off mid-sentence. There was something incredibly familiar about him. Those impossibly gorgeous eyes, the sharp cleft in his chin. Then there was his hair. I’d once read someplace where someone’s hair was described as the shade of sun-ripened wheat. That seemed to suit this guy.

His emerald colored eyes were wide open but even in his apparent pain I could read no fear in them. Instead, his gaze was fixed steadily, confidently, on me. The expectancy in that look sent an odd chill through me. For a moment, I had the weird sense that he somehow knew and trusted me better than I knew or trusted myself.

I cleared my throat. “Do you know what’s happening? You’ve been hit by a car but help is on the way. Don’t be scared. Just stay with me here and you’re going be okay.”

He mumbled something back, but it was hard to make out. It might have been, “I know.”

Then his eyes closed and he went limp. For a second I thought he was dead, before realizing he hadn’t stopped breathing, he’d only passed out.

At that moment the wail of a siren reached my ears. Relief flooded through me as I watched the ambulance pull up.

The paramedics shouldered their way through the crowd and in moments they were lifting the injured man onto a stretcher.

Backing out of the way of the medical personnel, I stepped on something lying in the road beside the wounded man. Bending down to scoop up the object, I found it was an old-fashioned gold pocket watch, the kind you usually saw in museums or antique shops. I glanced toward the injured stranger. Was it his?

As I stood back, watching him being loaded into the ambulance, I felt dazed. This was the closest I’d ever come to seeing someone killed in real life.

“Are you family, ma’am?” someone was asking me.

“What?” I tried to focus on the question. Everything was happening so fast.

“Are you with him?” the paramedic, a middle-aged man with a crew cut, asked. “If you are, you can ride along to the hospital.”

I remembered the trusting way the injured stranger had looked into my eyes.

“Yes,” I found myself saying and I looked the paramedic in the eye. “I’m…a friend.”

He accepted that without question and allowed me to climb into the back of the ambulance. Crouching beside the stretcher and trying to keep out of the way of the paramedics working over their patient, I asked myself what on earth I was doing. Ten minutes ago I’d been sitting in a sidewalk café reading a book. Now I had stepped into a scene from one of those TV medical dramas and was rushing off to the hospital at the side of a man who, until a few moments ago, I’d had no idea existed. I wondered if I was crazy.

Scratch that, I
knew
I was crazy.

I realized I was still holding the stranger’s pocket watch. I hesitated and then slipped it into my pocket, telling myself I’d turn it in to someone when we arrived at the hospital.

The sudden scream of the siren coming on and the jolt of the vehicle moving forward brought me back to the moment. Odd-looking hoses and medical instruments rattled around me. I wanted to ask the paramedics, laboring with urgent efficiency over their patient, how seriously he was hurt but was afraid to bother them.

“Hey, can you hear me, buddy?” one paramedic kept asking. “You’re gonna be fine. Just hang in there.”

The unconscious man didn’t respond.

I was grateful no one asked me for his name because I would’ve had to admit I had no idea what it was.

As we careened toward the emergency room, I belatedly remembered my purse, still lying back at the café. I could only hope some honest person would turn it in. When I got to the hospital I would call Carlita and ask her to run down and grab it on her lunch break.

Then I had no more time to worry about anything but the here and now. We had pulled into the entrance of the ER and the ambulance’s back doors were being thrown open.

Chapter 3

The paramedics quickly wheeled their patient in through the wide doors, and I hurried after them. On entering, other medical personnel swarmed us. I hung back, following at a distance. We passed a check-in desk and turned down a long hall. At the end of this corridor the stretcher was shoved through a pair of double-doors.

“Sorry, ma’am. You can’t come through here,” a nurse told me.

I hesitated, watching the heavy doors swing shut behind the staff. Through a high window I could see the stretcher being swiftly wheeled out of sight.

I was left behind, wondering what to do. Why had I even come here?

“Are you a friend or a family member of the patient?” another member of the hospital staff was asking me. “We’ll need you to fill out some forms.”

I stared stupidly at her. Time to confess. “Um, I don’t actually know the patient. I witnessed the accident, and I guess I was just hoping I could hang around and make sure everything turns out all right.”

Yeah. That didn’t sound weird or anything
.

The nurse gave a sympathetic smile. “No problem, honey. You can have a seat in the waiting room.”

I accepted the suggestion gratefully and left the cold, white corridors for the ER waiting room. It was a depressing place with rows of uncomfortable plastic chairs lined up along the walls and a noisy television blasting in the background. I took a seat between a harried looking couple with a screaming infant and an old man with a long, bloodied bandage across his forehead.

Over the next two hours, I used the waiting room phone to make my call to Carlita, used the coins I found in the pockets of my slacks, or rather in the pockets of
Carlita’s
slacks, to raid the snack machine, and went to the bathroom twice. Anything to get out of my seat for a while.

The crying of the couple’s sick infant was wearing on my nerves. The old man with the bandage smelled strongly of sweat and urine and he kept leaning over to share with me the charming story of how he’d cut his forehead by slipping and smacking it on the edge of a toilet.

I nodded politely and tried to bury my face in a magazine. It was just a health journal, but what the heck. Anything to buy myself a little solitude.

I was devouring a fascinating article about enlarged prostates when Carlita arrived. I was relieved to see my friend toting my lost purse with her.

“You found it!” I cried, forgetting for a moment where I was. Then remembering to lower my voice I added, “Everything was so crazy I totally forgot about it until it was too late to go back. Thanks so much.”

“No problem. I had nothing better to do on my lunch break anyway. I sure wouldn’t want to spend it, you know, eating or anything.”

“I’ve got half a bag of chips from the snack machine,” I offered.

“Forget it. How bad is your friend hurt?”

I felt a bit stupid as I offered the explanation I hadn’t had time to give over the phone. I’d been afraid Carlita would think I was nuts, running to the hospital like this over a total stranger. But she just looked at me like I’d done the greatest thing she’d ever heard of.

“You’re a good person, Meggs,” she said. “Not too many people would do this for someone they never even met before.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know if I’m actually doing it for him. I think it’s more for me. I got this funny feeling when I first looked at him, like I knew him from someplace, but I don’t know where. I guess when I came here I was just kind of hoping to figure that out.”

Then too there had been that look in his eyes when he’d gazed up at me.

Shut up, Megan, you’ve read too many of Carlita’s cheesy novels
.

My friend looked at her watch. “Uh oh, I’ve got go. I’m already over my break time, and I’m gonna have to fight traffic if I want to make it back to work before the boss notices.” We exchanged quick hugs and then she was gone.

I was alone again. Well, alone except for the company toilet-head. At least the couple with the noisy baby had finally left. I sank back into my hard plastic chair and took up the health journal again. Then I put it down and reached for my purse.

Had Carlita found…Yes,
Noble Hearts
was tucked safe away inside the bag.

I dug the novel out and lost myself in the world of the fascinating hero and his heroine. I was really beginning to see what the heroine—and Carlita—saw in the man. He had a certain sort of nineteenth century charm, a chivalrous suavity you didn’t see anywhere today but in the movies.

I was just wrapping up the part where the heroine was nursing the hero back to health after a life-threatening illness when I realized someone was speaking to me.

“Ma’am,” one of the hospital staff called from the doorway. It took me a moment to remember her as the same nurse I had spoken with earlier.

“Yes?” I stuffed the book inside my bag and rose.

“I thought you’d like to know the patient you came in with is going to be just fine. He’s got a lot of bruising, especially in the shoulder area, but there’s no permanent damage. His recovery time should be short.”

“Oh,” I said, suddenly at a loss. “Thanks. Can I—I mean would it be possible—”

The nurse nodded. “He’s been asking for you. That is, if you’re the
beautiful woman
who saved his life. I’m afraid visitors aren’t permitted just yet. But if you’d like to come back tomorrow during visiting hours you should be able to see him then.”

I thanked her but couldn’t help feeling this was all kind of strange. First I was riding to the hospital with the man and now I was coming back to see him tomorrow. But I had to come. He’d asked for me. Besides, I still wanted to know if and where I had met him before. Then, too, what he had called me didn’t hurt much either, I admitted to myself, almost smiling.
Beautiful woman
. I could count the number of times I’d been called that without any fingers at all. As I called a cab and left the hospital I felt a little like the heroine of my book. Not only was I beautiful but I had just, according to him, saved the man’s life.

My day was certainly looking up.

Chapter 4

When I arrived back at the apartment it was still only late afternoon. Feeling younger and more energized than I had in a long time, I bounded up the front steps two at a time and slipped through the narrow double-doors leading into the foyer.

Inside, the elevator was down again. Just as well. It always reeked of B.O. I took the back stairs up to the apartment I shared with Carlita. It was a good climb, five floors to the top level, and I was out of breath by the time I got there. Digging around in my purse, I found my keys and unlocked the front door.

I didn’t go in right away, though. Instead, I stood back and surveyed the wreckage inside. It had only taken Carlita one morning to undo all the cleaning I had done the day before. Clothes were flung over the furniture and floor. Magazines and tubes of cosmetics were scattered across the low counter that was the only thing separating the kitchen from the living room. A half-eaten bowl of soggy cereal rested on the battered coffee table. One lamp had been left on and the TV was playing on mute, although there was no one home to watch it.

Good grief, my roommate was a slob
.

I heaved a sigh and stepped inside, using one hip to nudge the door shut behind me. I hung my purse on a coat-hook and kicked off my shoes beside the door. It was going to be a long afternoon.

After changing out of my good clothes and into a pink fitted T-shirt and jeans, I set to work tidying up the apartment. I’d never considered myself a neatnik before moving in with Carlita, but I didn’t like to wallow in a pigpen either. Even I needed a little organization.

I moved my friend’s scattered clothing to her room, turned off the TV, and washed the dishes in the sink. Then, after returning Carlita’s makeup to the bathroom where it belonged, I started a load of laundry.

Once the initial tidying was over and I’d told myself I had made at least a dent in the mess, I went to my room. Sitting on the foot of my bed I found my mind wandering, for no particular reason, to the strange man I’d rescued on the street today.

How was he doing in the hospital? Would he even remember me tomorrow?

Then I asked myself if I should really visit him at all. But he had asked for me. Which was a little weird, really, since it wasn’t like we knew each other or anything…Did we?

I shook my head. I’d stop by for just a few minutes tomorrow on my way out to pick up some more job applications. We’d have a brief, polite visit, which I suspected would be awkward. Then I’d make some hasty excuse and leave, having done my charitable duty. I’d never see him again.

The thought suddenly reminded me I still carried his pocket watch. After finding my discarded slacks and digging the watch out, I turned it over in my palm, examining it. It looked just like one of those shiny watches that wealthy gentlemen wore dangling from their vests in the olden days. I flipped it open and studied the simple inscription engraved inside:
D.C
. His initials maybe?

Whatever the letters stood for, the watch looked expensive. I’d be sure and return it tomorrow, I told myself, going to the living room and dropping it into my purse.

Back in my room my attention fell on the stack of blank canvases leaning against the wall beside my dresser. I went to my beat-up little desk—it was a child’s school-desk really—and dug out my set of paints. But I only looked at the multicolored bottles in their tray before putting them back again. I hadn’t touched a paintbrush in months. Once it had been easy to dream big but these days it was hard to stay enthusiastic about old aspirations. My plans to make a living off my paintings seemed far away now.

Shattered hopes and half-realized dreams
.

Where had I heard that? Oh, right. Carlita’s silly romance novel.

My hands wandered back into the desk again and came up this time with a sketchpad. If I didn’t have the urge to paint anymore maybe I could ease myself past this painter’s funk—the equivalent of an artistic writer’s block—by playing around with some sketches. At least it would keep me in practice. I dug out my pencils and prepared to work.

Next door, Ms. Mouth, as Carlita and I had dubbed our neighbor, was having another screaming match with her boyfriend. Their raised voices leaked easily through the thin walls separating the two apartments. The deaf could’ve heard them. I pounded on the wall, knowing it was a useless gesture. When the yelling continued I hopped off my bed and turned on the radio to drown out their fight. Then I settled down, back against the wall, to sketch.

The blank sheet of paper stared up at me. I hadn’t had the artistic urge in so long I hardly knew where to start anymore. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back. Out of nowhere an image rose before my mind—startling green eyes, unreal in their intensity, looking up at me from under waves of wheat colored hair. I put pencil to paper and began to draw.

I couldn’t make a very clear sketch of the handsome stranger I’d met today. Everything below his throat had been covered in a full-length dark coat, and I had seen his face only at weird angles. Besides, it had been a stressful occasion, and I hadn’t devoted too much time to studying his features. His eyes, though—I remembered those just fine, and that was enough to get me started.

I worked steadily, unaware of the passing time. I kept erasing, re-sketching, and erasing again, determined to get those eyes down right on paper but always unsatisfied with the results.

By the time Carlita returned from work she found me surrounded by a sea of crumpled, discarded drawings.

“What’s this?” she asked, dropping her purse onto my bed. She picked up a sheet of paper from the floor and smoothed it out.

“Who’s the hunk?”

“Nobody.” I didn’t look up from my current effort.

She stepped over to turn off the radio, and then studied the pictures strewn across my bed.

“Interesting. You must have done a dozen sketches here, all of the same nobody.”

“Huh?”

Not until I looked up did I realize she was right. I had done a million sketches of the guy’s eyes, all alike and yet each different. I suddenly realized my hand was cramping from so many hours spent clutching a pencil. I felt exhausted. More than that, I was frustrated.

“Oh, this is useless!” I threw my pencil at the wall. “I can’t paint. I can’t draw. I never could! I’ve spent hours on these and not one of them captures him even remotely.”

“You mean the nobody who doesn’t exist?”

“He exists, I guess,” I admitted. “He’s the guy I sat with at the hospital today.”

My friend glanced at the most complete sketch. “Now I see why you spent all afternoon down there. Looks like a hottie.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, she pulled off her high heels.

I shrugged. “He’s pretty cute I guess. But nobody is at their best while bleeding all over the pavement.”

I ran a hand through my hair. “How was work?”

“Sucked. Every Monday sucks for me. But I don’t want to think about it. I’m gonna heat up a frozen dinner. Want one?”

“Why not.” I cast a last lingering glance at my sketches and then followed her to the kitchen.

“Hey, did you read any of that book I gave you?” Carlita asked. “You know,
Noble Hearts?
”

“Uh-huh. I read a little at the hospital.”

I watched Frigga patter into the kitchen to twine herself around my roommate’s ankles, all the while giving me the evil eye. Like I needed any warning to keep my distance.

Carlita absently rubbed the cat’s back with one bare foot while opening the freezer and nearly causing an avalanche of frozen dinners. Neither of us were exactly the world’s greatest cooks.

“Isn’t the hero amazing?” she asked, ducking her head into the freezer. “He’s so dreamy. You want mini pizzas or enchilada dinners?”

“Enchiladas. And he’s pretty cool, I guess. So far he hasn’t done much but get rescued by the heroine.”

“It gets better,” Carlita promised. “You’ve got to read the next chapter.”

I shrugged. “Maybe I’ll get to it tonight.”