Mama Pearl shook her head as she slid two plates onto the table and looked after Delaney. She shot a fulminating look at the gossipers and announced in a voice they couldn’t fail to hear, “Anybody can change.”
Clarice didn’t pay any attention to Mama Pearl. “I can’t imagine what she’s doing for work. I mean, who on earth would hire her after everything she did?”
Temper bubbling, Miranda shoved out of the booth and marched across the diner. “That would be me, and I’ll thank you to stop spreading malicious gossip about my employee.”
Clarice and her companion, Karen Alberson, looked up in shock.
“Why Miranda Campbell. I didn’t realize your charity work ran to your employees, too. How…magnanimous of you.”
Steam was most certainly coming out of her ears. Miranda itched to plow her bunched fist into Clarice’s face. “I suppose you would think it magnanimous to recognize that sometimes people make mistakes and deserve a second chance. The fact of the matter is, she’s a smart girl and a hard worker, and she deserves better than to be maligned by the likes of you.”
“It’s a free country. There’s no law against talking.”
“Sadly, no, there’s no law against being hateful. If there were, you and your sister would both have rap sheets taller than either of you.” Disgusted, Miranda shook her head. “Are your lives so bad, you feel the need to talk down about everybody around? Tearing down good people and perpetuating rumors and half-truths about the mistakes they may have made to make yourselves feel better?”
“I hardly think our topics of conversation are any of your business.”
“I think you know you’re making it everyone’s business by talking loud enough for the whole diner to hear you, just to get attention. Grow up, Clarice. And maybe you could find a scrap of humanity while you’re at it.” Miranda swung around to go back to the booth for the lunch she no longer wanted and plowed straight into a brick wall.
The wall gripped her elbows and drawled, “Steady there.”
Startled, she looked up…and up, into the clearest gray eyes she’d ever seen.
Chief of Police Ethan Greer had dealt with a lot of angry people in his lifetime. It wasn’t generally an attractive state, often involving red faces and flying spittle—or fists. But Miranda Campbell, in full temper, facing off with a couple of women he’d already learned were bitchy gossips even in his short three months on the job, was one of the most unaccountably sexy things he’d ever beheld. Ethan had no idea who she was defending, but those changeable hazel eyes still flashed with a righteous indignation as she looked up at him. Stunning.
As they stood there, the indignation faded and something else pulsed between them. It had been so damned long, Ethan barely recognized it for what it was. Mutual attraction. And wasn’t that interesting?
“Excuse me, Chief.”
“Doc.”
Her eyes widened slightly at that. Yeah, he knew who she was, even if they’d barely spoken before. At 5’10”, with a fall of thick, honey blonde hair a man could lose his hands in, she was a hard woman not to notice. And he’d done plenty of noticing in the ambulance bay of the hospital the first time he’d seen her. She’d been in a fine temper then, too.
Ethan released her, edging back so she could get by him. He shifted his attention to the gossips, leveling them with the flat cop stare that tended to make hardened criminals break. The sidekick’s cheeks reddened, and she looked down at the table. The ash blonde with the pinched face, who’d been doing most of the talking, just lifted a brow. Supercilious bitch. He knew the type. For the sake of whoever she’d been maligning, he wished he did have something he could arrest her for. She needed to be knocked down a few pegs.
“Hey Chief. Are you meeting somebody or sitting at the counter today?”
He found a smile for the fresh-faced waitress, who’d arrived in Wishful not long after he had. “Mornin’, Hannah. I’m meetin’ Clay.”
“There’s a booth right over here.” She led him to the opposite side of the diner from Miranda. “I’ll just get your tea.”
As he sat, studying the menu, conversation started up again. That whole confrontation was gonna be all over town by dinner. Probably faster. He’d learned that viral social media had nothing on the gossip network in Wishful. Especially when it started here, at Mama Pearl’s place. If you wanted to know anything, Dinner Belles was the first place you started.
Clay wandered in and worked his way toward the table, pausing in time-honored, small-town tradition to greet everyone he knew. Given Wishful was his hometown, that was most of them. The delay was fine with Ethan. It gave him a chance to surreptitiously watch the good doctor as she conversed with City Planner Norah Crawford.
Clay slid into the other side of the booth. “See somethin’ you like?”
Or maybe not so surreptitiously. “Hello to you, too.”
Hannah came back with his tea. “Hey Clay.”
“Miss Hannah Wheeler. And how are you this fine day?”
Ethan wondered if there was a woman between twelve and eighty in this town that his best friend didn’t know by name.
“Doing fine. Caught your show last weekend. Nice to know the rumors are true. You’re good.”
He grinned. “Glad you enjoyed it. You know, I used to be a part of a duo.”
Her brown eyes brightened with interest. “Yeah? What happened?”
Clay turned a bland stare on Ethan. “My partner went off and joined law enforcement.”
“And you became a high school math teacher,” Ethan shot back.
Hannah stared. “You, Chief? Really?”
Shifting in the booth, Ethan shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”
“Well, that is a thing I’d like to see.” She lifted her order pad. “What can I get you?”
“What can you do about a bacon cheeseburger?” Clay shot her the twenty-four carat smile that girls had been fawning over since he was a cocky nineteen-year-old. It hadn’t lost its potency.
Hannah blushed and batted her eyes in his direction. “I’ll get Omar right on that. You want onion straws on it like your usual?”
“That’d be great. And a Coke.”
She made a note on her order pad. “How ’bout you, Chief?”
Mentally adding an extra mile to tomorrow’s morning run, Ethan stuck the menu back between the napkin dispenser and the ketchup. “I’ll have the same.”
“You got it.”
As soon as she’d wandered away, Clay started in. “So when am I gonna get you back up on stage?”
Here we go again.
“I’ve been trying to get settled into this new job, establishing myself in the community. I need people to see me as Chief of Police before they see me on stage.”
“It’s been three months, man. You’re in it, you’re settled, and I promise you everybody knows exactly who you are.”
“Yeah, the new guy.” The new guy who was still in a probationary period for another nine months. Despite the fact that his transition had gone pretty smoothly, Ethan was sure the jury was still out for a lot of people. He was an outsider here.