Read Hobb's Cottage: A Short Story for Free Online Page A

night has to be my favourite time at the museum.  No visitors and no noise.  Just my lab, my research and me.  Perfect.
    “What on earth would you be worried about?”
    “Seeing a ghost, of course!  The MOL must be crawling with them.”
    Susie loves all things paranormal.  Our flat’s crammed with crystals and psychic magazines.  Her idea of heaven is to curl up in front of paranormalTV show Totally Spooked and watch celebrity medium Lilac Delaney trying to commune with the dead, although why any dead people would want to talk to a woman who wears more makeup than a drag queen and rolls her eyes like a dying horse is beyond me.
    “Suze,” I say patiently, “there’s no such thing as ghosts.  When you’re dead you’re dead.”
    “So you say, but nobody’s actually proven that ghosts don’t exist, have they?”
    “That’s a fair point,” I concede, “but since I spend most of my time in Museum of London which, according to you, is crawling with ghosts surely I’d have seen something by now?  Maybe a mummy stumbling down the corridor like something out of Scooby Doo?”
    “OK, I agree that sounds a bit daft.” Looking abashed Susie returns her attention to her lunch. “So, if you’re not coming shopping I suppose you’re going to blow me out tonight as well?  No clubbing in Ealing?”
    “I’ll be there,” I promise, rashly. “It just might be a bit later that’s all. I promised Simon I’d go through some notes with him.”
    Susie’s eyebrows shoot into her fringe. “Sexy Dr. Simon?  Is there something I should know?”
    “Simon’s just a colleague.” I say as I do an impression of an Edam Cheese.  Drat.  Why do red heads blush so easily? It’s so unfair.  As if corpse white skin and freckles aren’t enough to contend with.
    Susie stretches out her hands and pretends to warm them on my scarlet face.
    “Wow!  Look at the colour of you! You really fancy him, don’t you?”
    “What are we? Fifteen?”
    “Don’t change the subject, Cleo Rose Carpenter.  This is me you’re talking to remember?  You looked just like that when you fancied Duncan from Blue !”
    That’s the problem with having a best friend who’s known you since you were eleven - you can’t get away with anything.  I’ve spent years trying to live down my embarrassing teenage crushes and fashion errors, or at least live them down as much as I can when I have Susie on hand to remind me.  Thanks goodness I never told her about my Christmas stranger.  She’d still be on about him now.
    Unable to meet her gaze I look down at the table, suddenly fascinated by the crumbs scattered across the sticky surface. If Susie takes one look at me now she’ll know the truth, the painful, awkward, unprofessional truth, which is that I totally and utterly fancy my newest colleague.  Since he arrived I’ve struggled to focus on anything else.  This so is not like me!  Normally I am totally career focused and, give or take a few dates now and then, pretty happy with being single.  Life might be a little lonely sometimes but at least it’s under control.  My pulse never races and I certainly don’t find myself checking my hair and makeup in the display cases every five minutes just in case I accidentally bump into somebody.  I’ve never regarded any of my colleagues as anything other than respected academics, probably because they’re only slightly younger than some of our exhibits, so to suddenly be working with an Egyptologist who’s not only brainy but also sex on a stick has totally thrown me. 
    “You do fancy him!”
    I admit defeat.   Of course I fancy our new Egyptologist, not that there’s much mileage in it because every female with a pulse in the MOL fancies Simon Welsh. 
    “Come on, babes, ask him out!” Susie urges, “He sounds perfect.  After all, what are the chances of you ever meeting a fit guy who’s as obsessed with dead Egyptians as you?”
    She has a point.  The odds of my winning