Closer Than They Appear

by Sabrina Jeffries

  The Mossy Creek

  Hometown Novels

  Mossy Creek

  Reunion in Mossy Creek

  Summer in Mossy Creek

  Blessings of Mossy Creek

  A Day in Mossy Creek

  At Home in Mossy Creek

  Critters of Mossy Creek

  Homecoming in Mossy Creek

  Closer Than They Appear

  A Mossy Creek Short Story

  by

  Sabrina Jeffries

  Belle Rabbit Books

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Belle Rabbit Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-531-7

  Belle Rabbit Books is an imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2007 by Sabrina Jeffries

  Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This short story was previously published in a collective novel, At Home in Mossy Creek by BelleBooks in 2007

  We at Belle Rabbit Books enjoy hearing from readers.

  Visit our websites

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  Cover design: Debra Dixon

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo/Art credits:

  Girl at field © Vladimir Nikulin | Dreamstime.com

  :Etca:01:

  A Note to Readers

  This story is closely connected to the Mossy Creek small town world developed by BelleBooks. As such, it contains a few references to characters and stories from that world. The series is a wonderful compilation of ongoing tales about the town (some of them romances), and this particular piece is part of a volume in which a Cirque de Soleil type traveling group gets stranded in Mossy Creek on Valentine’s Day. So if you like my complete romance tale between Hannah the librarian and a photographer new in town, you should definitely check out the Mossy Creek books! They’re some of my very favorites.

  Closer Than They Appear

  “HE’S HEADED THIS way, Mrs. Longstreet,” my intern Linda Polk announced from the glass front door, which she was supposed to be cleaning. “He’s, like, three blocks away now.”

  I scowled at her from behind the circulation desk. “He who?”

  “You know who.” Linda faced me with a self-satisfied smile. “Mr. Crogan has a thing for you, you know. That’s why he comes here after he’s done for the day.”

  “He comes here because he likes to read,” I said firmly as I keyed in an interlibrary loan request and tried to ignore the silly skip in my pulse. “He comes here because there’s little else to do in Mossy Creek at night at the Hamilton House Inn. To my knowledge, it doesn’t have cable.”

  “He could go to the movies down in Bigelow. Or watch a basketball game on the big-screen TV at O’ Day’s Pub. Shoot, he could even read in his room, instead of hanging out here whenever you’re working. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

  Of course I had. Every night for the past three weeks, the New York photographer had entered the library precisely at sunset, like some reverse vampire who hid when the sun went down. He’d chosen a book, lounged on the couch to read it, and then checked it out right before closing. I could only assume he finished it back at the inn, since he always returned it the next night promptly at sunset. “Maybe he doesn’t find his room comfortable.”

  Linda snorted. “He’s got 101, the biggest suite in the whole hotel.”

  “You’ve been to his room?” I exclaimed, thoroughly shocked.

  “No!” She shot me a superior glance. “Katie Bell told me.”

  Katie Bell, columnist at the Mossy Creek Gazette, was definitely the person to go to for gossip. “I see.” I worked hard to sound nonchalant. “And I suppose she told you plenty of other information about Mr. Crogan.”

  Linda was no fool. With a little smirk, she sprayed cleaner on the door. “Maybe.”

  When she said nothing more, I gritted my teeth to keep from begging.

  After a moment, Linda cut her eyes at me. “Mr. Crogan is a hottie, don’t you think?”

  Absolutely. And I lusted after every lanky, dusky-skinned inch of him.

  It was mortifying. Mothers of middle-school children were supposed to limit their lusting to the latest Kenmore appliances and brand-new Beemers, not photographers with gymnast physiques. Which was why I wasn’t about to admit my weakness to Linda.

  Bad enough that my eleven-year-old, Rachel, had also been on my case lately about starting to date again. Just tonight, she’d ragged me so hard I’d had to banish her to the break room, where I knew she’d get engrossed in playing computer games on my laptop. Valentine’s Day was fast approaching, and it was infecting every female in sight, even my daughter.

  That was my only explanation for why she was so adamant about pairing me off. All right, so her dad had been dead for over eight years, and I was a bit too prone to bury myself in my work, but that didn’t mean I was itching to find another mate. Between my work at the library and my determination to maintain a safe and comfortable home for my clumsy daughter, who had time to date?

  Too bad I couldn’t say that to Rachel. Or Linda, for that matter. “Don’t you leave at five?” I told my intern irritably.

  Setting the cleaner aside, Linda planted her elbows on the circulation desk. “Katie Bell says she’s pretty sure Mr. Crogan isn’t married. He doesn’t wear a ring.”

  “It doesn’t matter. A man like that has to have a girlfriend somewhere.” Probably several, all of them young and buxom photographer’s models. Why should he even look at a modestly proportioned librarian, even one who kept in shape with biweekly workouts?

  “Katie Bell found out that he’s in town taking stock photos.”

  I’d heard that already. I just didn’t believe it. Sure, he did spend from dawn to dusk snapping shots of people and fields and even our famous Sitting Tree, but he did it with a large format camera. I’d read enough to know that most photographers these days had gone digital. Hardly anybody used ten-thousand-dollar Hasselblads with massive tripods and actual film that had to be Fed-Exed to some lab for dark room printing.

  I’d even Googled his name, along with the words photographer and Hasselblad, but if there were any professional photographers named David Crogan, Google couldn’t find them. That alone made me suspicious. Not to mention even more obsessed.

  “How old do you think he is?” Linda asked.

  “I couldn’t begin to speculate.” I’d heard guesses anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five. I prayed it was the upper end, because the idea of my lusting after a guy more than ten years my junior was worrisome in light of the gossip-fest that erupted when our fiftyish mayor and thirty-fiveish police chief were caught kissing last month.

  “Well, I don’t think it matters.” Linda surveyed me up and down. “You’re really pretty, you know, even with the glasses and the khakis. And I bet that if you asked Jasmine Beleau, she’d be happy to give you a few tips on—”

  “Thank you, but I’
m not looking for a makeover just now.”

  The door swung open, and we both froze as the object of our speculation entered. Blessedly oblivious to Linda’s not-so-subtle wink in my direction, he approached the circulation desk and slid a copy of Poul Anderson’s Time Patrol into the Return Books slot.

  “Good evening, Mr. Crogan,” Linda chirped.

  “Evening, Miss Polk,” he answered in his deep, whiskey-rough Scottish brogue. Then he acknowledged me with a nod. “Mrs. Longstreet. I hope you’re well this evening.”

  “Fine, thank you,” I said in my professional librarian’s voice.

  Meanwhile, my knees were going weak. I admit it—I’m no different from any other American female. I’m a complete sucker for a British accent. Make it Scottish, and you might as well douse the guy in pheromones. It even trumped the red-brown dreadlocks he wore tied back with a strip of black leather.

  “Has that interlibrary loan copy of The Smoke Ring come in?” he paused to ask.

  “Not yet. I suppose you’ve read the rest of our Nivens?”

  Amusement made his unusual grey eyes gleam like freshly polished silver. “You ought to know the answer to that. You’re the one who introduced me to his works.”

  Linda’s winking was practically a twitch now, which I determinedly ignored. “I’m sorry we don’t have more of his. But you could always try something other than hard science fiction. Perhaps some Terry Brooks?”

  “Thanks, but fantasy isn’t my cup of tea.” He pronounced cup as “coop.” He leaned one leather-jacketed arm on the front desk in a move that curled my toes like raw potato chips hitting hot oil, then added, “Don’t worry about it, luv. There’s a Heinlein over there I haven’t read in a long while.”

  Luv. I turned to mush. Or moosh, as he would probably say it.

  “How’s the photography going?” Linda asked before he could leave the desk.

  He clammed up tighter than a book with new binding. “Pretty well,” he said tersely. “The light was good today.” Then shoving away from the desk, he headed off to his usual spot on the worn couch in the reading area.

  “That was rude,” Linda muttered under her breath.

  “He doesn’t like talking about his work.” And I should know, since I’d tried questioning him about it a few times. Invariably it got me the cold shoulder, though he was more than happy to discuss books and art and music.

  A mysterious man, our Mr. Crogan. Unfortunately, that did nothing to subdue my rampant interest.

  “I guess I’d better go,” Linda said, handing the window cleaner over the desk. “Sorry I can’t stay until closing tonight.”

  “No problem. The place is practically deserted anyway.”

  But that was fine by me. To tell the truth, I preferred the library to just about anywhere else in town, especially when I had Rachel with me. It was safe and bright and blessedly devoid of sharp objects, so I never had to worry about her getting hurt. Knocking stuff off shelves, yes, but not getting herself hurt.

  Minutes after Linda headed out, the front door opened again, and Mossy Creek police officer Sandy Crane hurried in, towing a thin blond woman whose wan cheeks showed the strain of late nights and long hours. “You haven’t changed your mind about taking in one of the Cirque d’Europa people, right?”

  I stifled my groan. I’d completely forgotten about our phone conversation earlier. “Of course not.” I managed a smile for the thin woman, who returned it tentatively. “Rachel said she’ll give up her room and sleep with me for as long as necessary.”

  “Good.” Sandy turned to the woman. “This is Mrs. Longstreet. You’ll be staying with her and Rachel.”

  “Rachel. Yes,” the woman said.

  Sandy frowned. “No, Rachel is her daughter. This is—”

  “Hannah,” I corrected her, wanting to put the woman at ease. “Call me Hannah.”

  “Hannah?” The woman looked confused.

  Sandy’s cell rang, and she answered it. “Yes, Chief. I’m headed over there now.”

  As she pocketed the phone, she glanced at me. “Gotta go. This lady’s name is Monique Laplante. That’s about all I can tell you.”

  “But what—” Too late. Sandy had already sprinted out the door, leaving me with a circus performer who was starting to look a little panicked.

  “I can’t leave until closing,” I explained to Monique, “but until then you’re free to read or use one of the terminals to check your e-mail.” I noticed Mr. Crogan listening in on the conversation as the woman just stared at me. “Are you hungry? Have you had anything to eat?”

  Her lips quivered. “Parlez-vous Francais?”

  My heart sank. Sandy had conveniently neglected to mention that the woman didn’t speak English.

  “Je parle Francais,” said Mr. Crogan, unfolding his angular body from where it was sprawled on the couch.

  “You speak French?” I said as he headed for us. “You told me you were born and raised in Scotland.”

  “Yes, but my mother was originally from Burundi, where French is the state language. I grew up bilingual.”

  “I grew up uni-lingual, I’m afraid. Would you mind telling Ms. Laplante that she’s staying with me and my daughter?”

  “You and your daughter and . . . er . . . your husband?”

  Oh, Lord. It had never occurred to me that Mr. Crogan might not know I was a widow. “My husband passed away some years ago.”

  “Ah,” he said with what I would have sworn was relief. “I wasn’t sure.”

  I liked that he didn’t say he was sorry, as if it could possibly be his fault. I never knew how to answer people who did. Luke’s aneurysm wasn’t anybody’s fault . . . not even Luke’s.

  I lifted my left hand and wiggled my fingers. “No ring. I guess you didn’t notice.”

  “Oh, I noticed. But divorced women don’t usually go by Mrs. these days and you’re so young to be a widow that—” He halted, as if realizing he’d just revealed how thoroughly he’d considered the matter. “Anyway . . .” he mumbled, and abruptly turned to Monique.

  He said something in French, and she nodded vigorously, casting me a shy smile as she replied.

  “She says to call her Monique,” Mr. Crogan explained.

  “Would you ask if she’s eaten?”

  A short conversation ensued between him and the Frenchwoman, in which the only words I picked out were “McDonald’s” and “café.”

  Mr. Crogan turned to me. “It seems she and her companions stopped for a bit of lunch, but the poor lass has had no more than coffee since then.”

  “That won’t do.” I gestured toward the back of the library. “There’s yogurt in the refrigerator in the break room. That might hold her until the library closes. Rachel’s back there—she can show you where I keep the potato chips.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Potato chips and yogurt? Quite the interesting diet you have there, Mrs. Longstreet.”

  “The potato chips are for Rachel.”

  “A likely story.” His eyes glinted with mischief. “Are you sure you don’t dip them in yogurt whenever no one’s looking?”

  Oh my God, he was flirting with me. Wasn’t he?

  I struggled to keep my tone light. “Hey, the only weird food I will admit to is my dad’s toasted peanut butter and ketchup sandwiches.”

  “That’s a vile-sounding combination.”

  I shrugged. “They’re not as bad as you’d think. Besides, don’t you Scots eat haggis and kippers?”

  “Ah, but haggis and kippers are delicious, something you’d realize if you ever tried them. In fact—” He cast me a challenging glance. “We should do more than speculate about our respective cuisines. If you’ll agree to try kippers, I’ll agree to try your horrible sandwiches.”

  “You’re on,” I said blithely
.

  “Really? I expected to have to do a bit more convincing.”

  I laughed. “You’ll never find kippers in Mossy Creek.”

  The sudden devilish grin transforming his dusky features gave me pause. “I wouldn’t lay odds on that if I were you.” He lifted one eyebrow. “So it’s a date, is it?”

  My heart began to pound. “Sure. A food-tasting date.”

  “I won’t forget,” he said, then winked as he led Monique to the back of the library.

  Mr. Crogan had winked at me. And flirted. And asked me out on a date. Well, a sort of date.

  I wiped my clammy hands on my slacks. I must be out of my mind. He was in town temporarily. Nothing could come of this.

  Freelance photographers can live anywhere.

  I groaned. That line of thinking was dangerous. And here I’d thought that the library was safe—apparently sharp objects came in more than one guise.

  For the next hour or so, I tried not to feel left out as sounds of a party going on in the break room wafted out to me. My daughter’s high-pitched Southern accent mingled with the low rumble of Mr. Crogan’s Scots English, which was interrupted by bursts of melodious French in both his and Monique’s voices. It was like listening to a multi-national orchestra from outside the auditorium.

  But I didn’t dare leave my post. Someone had to man the desk. Besides, I had work to do.

  For one thing, I had to Google “David Crogan” and the word kippers. Unfortunately, that led me in every direction except the one that told me more about my mysterious photographer.

  With a sigh, I glanced at the clock. Almost closing time, thank God. Remembering what Linda had said about a makeover, I whipped out my compact and put on the lipstick I rarely used, then finger-combed my spiky blond hair.

  My daughter suddenly dashed from the break room. As I whisked my makeup away, Rachel stumbled over a chair, reeled toward a bookshelf, then caught herself before she sent books flying. She finished off by rushing breathlessly up to the desk. “Mom, did you know Mr. Crogan’s dad is Scottish?”