“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. It’s just—” The thought faded into a sigh. After a beat of silence, he said, “You look so familiar. Have we met before?”
“No,” she said, risking a glance at him.
“Are you sure?”
The intensity of the question was more troubling than her annoyance at his doubting her certainty. “Yes, I’m sure,” she told him.
“The feeling that I know you is so strong—maybe we knew each other—” he shook his head as he searched for a way to express himself “—a long time ago.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m good with faces. I would remember if we’d met.”
He nodded, and the gesture seemed so laden with desolation that Holly found herself adding, “It’s an awful feeling, isn’t it, thinking that you know someone, yet not being able to place them?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Awful.”
Again, the intensity with which he spoke made Holly ill at ease. His gaze held hers captive, and as she looked into his eyes, watching with rapt fascination as midnight blue deepened to indigo, she sensed in him the same quiet desperation she’d harbored deep within herself since Craig’s death. She felt a peculiar kinship with him, irrational but no less real simply because it made no sense. Was it truly loneliness she saw in his eyes, that desperate, hopeless loneliness that comes from losing someone you loved?
He probably cheated on his wife and she kicked him out of the house, she thought, feeling foolish for letting her imagination run amok. She deliberately shifted her attention to the books in front of her. Frowning, she plucked a book with a badly torn spine from the shelf and examined the damage, stroking the torn cloth with her fingertips.
“Looks like someone got a little rough,” the shelving assistant commented.
Holly nodded. “I’ll have to patch it up until I can get a replacement copy.”
“Do you always replace the books that get torn up?”
“We try, especially when it’s a popular title. Those are the ones that get all the wear.” She put the book on the top of the stack she was accumulating for repair.
The shelving assistant picked it up and examined it curiously. “This one’s popular, huh?”
“Make Way for Ducklings?” Holly replied. “It has been for over thirty years. It’s a Caldecott winner.”
He gave a short, self-deprecating laugh. “I’m afraid I don’t know what that is.”
“You should...if you’re going to work in a library,” Holly said. “It’s an annual award for the best picture book. Make Way for Ducklings won it back in the forties or fifties. Didn’t you read it as a child?”
For an instant, she saw sadness in the depths of his eyes, too profound to hide. Then he shrugged, feigning a nonchalance that belied what she’d seen. “It’s been a long time since I was young enough for picture books.”
Holly grinned. “I forget that not everyone feels the same way about books that I do. I can’t imagine anyone forgetting Make Way for Ducklings.”
Abruptly, he slid the book back on the stack he’d taken it from and turned to the shelf he was working on. “If it’s that popular, I must have read it, right?”
“Probably,” she agreed, culling a misplaced book from the shelf.
“Maybe I’ll read it again once you get it repaired.”
She stopped her work to look at him. “Why?”
“To recapture my misspent youth, of course.” He grinned, but the bitter irony of his words defeated the mischievous tone he was attempting.
A few minutes later, he’d progressed to the section of shelving adjacent to the one she was sorting through. Holly’s senses prickled. She had not been this aware of a man since Craig’s death. His knee was scarcely an inch away from her thigh, threatening to nudge it at the slightest slip. Holly wasn’t sure whether she actually felt heat from his body, or was merely aware that he would be warm if he touched her, warm in the way men were warmer than women.
His elbow brushed her arm. For an instant, Holly froze. Then he spoke, and politeness dictated that she look at him.
“I, uh, guess we’ve met in the middle,” he said. His smile, genuine this time, did wondrous things to his handsome face. Things that could do wondrous things to a woman’s insides.
Reflexively, Holly smiled back at him. They had, indeed, met in the middle. Then, realizing how effortlessly he’d charmed her, she pushed the stack of books she’d pulled from the shelves in his direction. “Trade you my O to Z’s for your A to M’s.”
The sooner they were moving in different directions, the better.
2
OLD SAYINGS, Holly thought, were not always accurate. Out of sight, for example, was not necessarily out of mind—at least, not in the case of a certain shelving assistant. The library was closed on Sunday, and Monday was her day off, so she hadn’t actually seen him in two days, but he’d been very much on her mind the entire time. She had only to close her own eyes to see the midnight blue of his.
But what lingered hauntingly in her mind was neither the charming mischief that lit his eyes when he smiled, nor their frankly sensual gleam when he stared at her. It was the loneliness she’d glimpsed there. The confusion. The profound sadness.
She wished the opposite were true. Being attracted to a man was less complicated than being concerned about him. She was not ready for the emotional investment required in caring about someone. A little consensual, recreational sex—responsibly handled, of course—would be preferable.
Sighing, she sank into the plump cushions of her couch, where she’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to concentrate on a novel predicted to become the literary sensation of the year. Since when do you indulge in recreational sex, responsibly handled or otherwise? she chided herself.
The answer to that one was easy enough: Never. She’d never slept with a man she didn’t care about deeply. She hadn’t lost her virginity until her second year of college, and that relationship had lasted almost two years. Then there’d been only one other before she met Craig. Sex, for her, had always been an extension of deep affection; physical desire, a by-product of caring about someone.
Perhaps that’s why the yearning had caught her so by surprise. At first, she’d just missed Craig, and all the things about him that made him who he was. His voice. The sound of his laughter. The texture of his skin. His expressions. The way he touched her.
Eventually, she’d begun to miss their lovemaking in a totally different way. Emotional pain and loneliness had gradually given way to a physical need that had her aching. For tenderness. For appeasement. For fulfillment.
She wasn’t ready yet to care about someone or to make love. But the yearning was relentless. Perhaps it was time she tried recreational sex. With a suitable partner. Someone to whom she was attracted. Someone—
Someone whose name wasn’t Craig.
Someone whose eyes weren’t filled with a sadness that nagged at her like an unsolved riddle.
Holly shifted restlessly and reopened the book in her lap, determined to drive the image of the new shelving assistant from her mind, but the story, a dark tale revolving around family secrets and revenge, held no appeal for her. After a few minutes, she gave up on reading and, inevitably, her thoughts drifted to the one subject she was trying not to think about: the shelving assistant. Also known as the Mystery Man. It was an apt name for him, although not for the reasons the other librarians had assigned it to him. They were intrigued by the fact that he didn’t drive and that he lived in a subdivided Victorian rooming house. Holly was haunted by the shadows of pain in his eyes.
Suave and handsome, he seemed the last person in the world who would be nurturing a deep, silent pain, yet with a single, lingering glance into his eyes, Holly had recognized the loneliness. The sadness. The sense of disorientation and alienation from everything that had once been familiar and comforting. What had put that sadness in those midnight blue depths? What demons taunted him?
Mentally, she squared
her shoulders in resolve. Whatever demons he was wrestling were none of her business—and she wasn’t about to let them become her business. She was too busy fighting her own nightmares—she couldn’t take on anyone else’s.
* * *
THOUGH IT WAS impossible to avoid the shelving assistant in the small library, Holly tried to establish an emotional aloofness that discouraged anything beyond a superficial, co-worker to co-worker relationship.
Midway through the week, she decided that her plan would have been easier to execute if the shelving assistant shared her agenda. He unfailingly followed up hello with an affable comment about the weather, or how crowded the library was, or how busy she looked. She responded with nods or one-word replies, determined not to let casual greetings grow into a lengthy conversation.
His watching her posed a greater challenge. She would be in the middle of something—filling out a book requisition form, or explaining to a child how to locate a particular book on the shelves—and look up to discover him staring at her from the stacks. The situation was disconcerting at best. Had he been a stranger, instead of an otherwise affable fellow employee, she would have been uncomfortable to the point of fear. But this was no stranger lurking in dark alleyways—it was Craig Ford watching her from the stacks.
It was probably his way of flirting, she told herself. When caught, he would lift his shoulders in a gentle shrug and smile sheepishly or, even more devastating to her resolve, make a silly face. Holly would shake her head and grin, only to realize afterward that she’d allowed his self-deprecating charm to niggle its way past her defenses when, by all rights, she should feel violated by his constant scrutiny.
During Thursday afternoon Story Hour, he was back in the fiction section, grinning as guilelessly as the youngsters gathered around her as she read about Peter Rabbit’s close call in Mr. McGregor’s garden. Holly pointedly ignored him. Knowing he was there, however, made her self-conscious as she read, and by the time Peter was back safe with his mother and siblings, she had made up her mind to put a stop to his skulking and staring, once and for all. The next time he tried to strike up a conversation, he was going to get one.
She didn’t have to stew over her decision long. Half an hour before closing, he strolled into the reading corral and shook his head at the chaos. “Weren’t these books in perfect order this morning?”
“There’s been a lot of reading going on in here the last few hours,” Holly said.
“A or X-Y-Z?”
Holly deliberated over the question before replying, “Go ahead and start at the beginning and work straight through. I want to check out some shelf-top display materials that came in today’s mail.”
Acknowledging the directive with a nod, he walked to the end shelf. Within seconds, he was straightening and sorting, his shoulder muscles straining against his shirt as he moved his arms. He appeared larger than life, out of proportion, as he sat on the floor next to the low shelf and shuffled through the slender picture books.
Holly sucked in a deep breath. “Craig—”
Why was it still so difficult for her to say the name?
He stopped his work to regard her with an expectant lift of eyebrow.
“There’s something—” Holly suddenly reconsidered bringing up the subject of his staring at her. Although it was reasonably quiet and their conversation would be private, there was something ludicrous about the idea of confronting him in this lilliputian atmosphere of waist-high shelves and kid-size beanbag chairs. “Just pull the misplaced books and leave them on the floor. I’ll come along behind you and shelve them when I finish with the displays.”
She didn’t wait for a reply before turning abruptly and leaving the reading corral to go to her desk. The display she’d received in the mail, a freestanding cardboard space station, was clever and appealing, but complicated to assemble. Holly became so involved with inserting tab A in slot A and tab B in slot B that she lost track of time. Before she knew it, the lights blinked and Meryl’s voice came over the speaker system announcing that the library would be closing in five minutes.
Holly leaned back in her chair, rotated her head a couple of times to ease the tension in her neck muscles, then resumed work on the display. She was over halfway through with the model, so she might as well finish it before leaving for the day. She was still engrossed in the assembly, when Meryl approached her desk. “Are you going to stay much longer?”
“Ten minutes,” Holly replied. “I’ve just got a few more of these tabs, then I’m going to dot the joints with glue so it’ll be dry in the morning.”
“Heather has a math test tomorrow,” Meryl said hesitantly, referring to her daughter, who was a sophomore in high school. “She may need some help.”
“You go on. I can close up.”
“If you’re sure—” Meryl’s relief was evident.
“I’m sure,” Holly said. Craig had never liked her to be the last one out of the library at night. He’d always insisted that he meet her there when she had to close, even if he was on duty. Ironically, his death had given her a fatalistic philosophy: if something awful was destined to happen, it would, regardless of anyone’s actions. Instead of making her cautious, his death had made her reckless.
“Then I’m out of here!” Meryl said.
“See you tomorrow,” Holly said distractedly as she began to work on the display once more.
Closer to twenty than ten minutes ticked by before the spaceship was fully assembled. Pleased, Holly leaned back in her chair to admire her handiwork.
“Need some help with that?”
Shrieking in surprise, she bolted straight up in the chair. “What are you doing here?” she asked, her heart in her throat.
“I work here,” the shelving assistant said with an undertone of amusement.
“Until nine o’clock!” Holly snapped.
He shrugged indignantly. “I decided to finish the picture-book section before I left.”
“Oh.” Holly’s heart was slowly sinking back into place.
“I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
“I didn’t realize you were still here.”
“You were pretty involved in that spaceship.”
“Umph!” Holly said, rolling her shoulder stiffly. “And I have the cricks to prove it.”
“I could try to work them out for you,” he offered.
Holly’s scalp prickled with the realization that they were the only two people in the building. She gave him a quelling look. “I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”
“Just trying to help,” he said, with a poignant sincerity that made her wonder, briefly, if she’d overreacted. He was so nice. Likable.
Serial killers seem likable, she thought. Sociopaths sometimes seem likeable, too. How many times had Craig lectured her with those admonitions? She was too trusting, he’d said. Too willing to believe in people.
Poor Craig. He had been an honest, dedicated cop. He should have gone to a big city and worked to retirement age solving complex homicides; he didn’t deserve to be gunned down in a petty liquor store robbery in Cocoa, Florida. He’d talked about moving on to a bigger, urban department.
He might have made the move if he hadn’t met her. Forcing back the thought, Holly drew in a deep breath and forced her attention to the present. The time had come to handle the situation posed by the shelving assistant. But not here. It was too silent in this cavernous building, too isolated, too intimate. And she was aware enough of him as a man to need a little more noise and the assurance of other people around when she confronted him. “I, uh, appreciate your staying late to finish the section,” she said.
“You looked pretty busy with the display.”
Holly rose. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of this place for one day.” She looked directly into his eyes. “Sometimes I stop at the café across the street for a snack before heading home. Would you care to join me?”
He didn’t bother to hide his surprise. “Sure,” he
said.
* * *
THE CAFÉ, too far from the beach to draw in the tourist crowd, catered mostly to downtown merchants and office workers. The only customers in the place when Holly and Craig entered were two men in business suits with their ties loosened and their coats hanging over the backs of their chairs.
Lawyers, Holly thought. The yellow legal pads on the table in front of them confirmed her assumption. The waitress, Gin, was sitting on one of the round stools at the counter, reading a folded newspaper and nursing a cup of coffee, when they came in. “How you folks doing this evening?” she greeted warmly. “You just sit anywhere you like. I’ll be right over with a menu.”
Holly surveyed the room tentatively. The counter would be uncomfortable, the tables too exposed. “A booth?” she suggested.
He agreed, and a few minutes later, they were drinking milk and anticipating the imminent arrival of the grilled cheese sandwiches they’d ordered.
“Grilled cheese sandwiches are a comfort food for me,” Holly said, avoiding the subject she’d deliberately brought him here to discuss.
“Comfort food?”
“Comfort food,” she repeated. “Food that has soothing psychological associations. My mother always made grilled cheese sandwiches for my sister and me when we were tired or feeling bad, so we both associate them with being loved and cared for.”
She’d never seen eyes quite like his before, so blue. So intense. She ventured a smile, which she hoped would put him at ease and asked, “What are your comfort foods?”
The loneliness she dreaded seeing flared for an instant before he tore his gaze from hers and stared blankly at the colorful dessert menu clipped to the chrome napkin holder. “I’m not sure I have any.”
“It’s intriguing, isn’t it, the associations people make in their minds?”
His gaze came back to hers. “The human mind is a mysterious thing.”
A tingle shivered up Holly’s spine. Mysterious. She’d said “intriguing.” Such a subtle difference—why did his choice of words make her feel so ill at ease?
Look into My Eyes Page 2
