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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