“So why do you think it was her this time?”
Miranda frowned at him. “Because I literally just dressed her down in public. She left first, and I come out to find this. Two and two equals four.”
He glanced back at the door. “She only had a couple minutes’ lead on you. A message like this would take a little while to carve in. I’m not sure she had enough time to do it. Is there anybody else who might have a grudge against you?”
“Contrary to the evidence of the moment, I don’t make it a habit to fight with people. I don’t have enemies.”
That focus came back to her, feeling almost like a physical touch. When Ethan Greer looked at her, he really looked at her. No glancing at her shoulder or the bridge of her nose. He made full, unabashed eye contact. It was both disconcerting and strangely intimate.
“Everybody has enemies, even if they don’t know it.”
“That’s a pretty cynical point of view.”
“What you call cynicism, I consider realism. Realistically, unless somebody happened to be driving by, or walking on the green and glanced over at the right moment, nobody actually saw this happen. There are no businesses with security cameras along this stretch. There’s not really any way to prove who did this. You can believe down deep in your gut that this woman was behind it, but without any corroborating evidence, I can’t charge her with anything.”
“You’re not even going to talk to her?”
“Oh, I’ll talk to her. But unless she spontaneously confesses, I don’t really have anything else to go on.”
“So basically I dragged you away and let your lunch go cold for nothing.” Scooping a hand through her hair, Miranda felt stupid. Of course there was nothing he could do about this. It was minor vandalism. He probably had more important things to be worrying about.
“Not nothing. I’ll write up a report to document it. If you plan to file a claim on your insurance, you’ll need that.”
She blew out a breath and looked at her Jeep. Having the door repainted wouldn’t eat up her deductible for the year, and reporting it would probably just make her rates go up. With the burden of her mortgage, student loans from med school, and the business loan on her practice, that was the last thing she needed.
It’s an inconvenience. An irritant. Clarice just wanted to get to you, and you’re giving her exactly what she wants.
With effort, Miranda tamped her temper down. She had patients to get back to, and she needed to be calm when she saw them. “Thank you.”
“I’ll need your number.”
She blinked at him. Had he just asked her out?
“To let you know when the report is finished. The forms are all in my patrol car.”
“Right.” Idiot. He’s just doing his job.
He punched the number into his phone. “It should be ready for pick up in a day or two, after I’ve had a chance to talk to Ms. Morris.”
Not, I’ll call you.
“I appreciate it, Chief Greer. And I apologize again for dragging you away from your lunch.”
He angled his head and started to lift his hand before stopping himself, as if he was accustomed to having a hat to tip at a lady. “No problem. You have a good day now, Doc.”
Miranda climbed into the driver’s seat and watched him go.
Maybe she’d completely misread that frisson of attraction when they’d bumped into each other in the diner earlier. She’d been out of the dating game entirely since she came home to Wishful, and her last relationship had left her singed enough to be okay with that state of affairs. But Ethan Greer made her wonder. Worse, he made her want things she hadn’t wanted in a very long time.
Doesn’t matter. He’s not interested, and you don’t have time for a guy anyway.
But as she drove past the diner on her way back to the clinic, she couldn’t stop herself from taking one more glance at the way those broad shoulders filled out his uniform shirt.
Chapter 2
“It was just an accident. I tripped and ran straight into the door frame.” Rene Forbes gave a nervous laugh. “I’m such a klutz.”
Miranda looked down at the hand-shaped bruise darkening Rene’s wrist. “And when did the door grow fingers?”
Had she not been holding the hand and wrist to examine it, Miranda had no doubt that Rene would’ve tugged her sleeve down to cover the injury. As it was, she dropped her gaze to somewhere around Miranda’s left shoulder.
“Rene.” She kept her voice gentle. “You didn’t fall into a door. You didn’t step in a hole last time or have a box fall off the top shelf onto your head the time before that. Let me help you.”
“I just need to know if my wrist is sprained or broken.”
Miranda resisted the urge to grind her teeth. “All right. I’ll get Keisha to take you back for an x-ray.”
While her nurse ushered Rene down the hall, Miranda slipped into the break room and called the police station. Inez Barlow, the dispatcher and admin who’d been running the place for thirty years, answered the phone.
“Hey Inez, it’s Miranda Campbell. I wondered if you could send an officer down here to take a statement about a domestic abuse case.” She didn’t know if she could convince Rene to cave and report Harley, but there needed to be some kind of documentation of his escalation on file.
“Is there any danger presently at the clinic?”
“No. The victim is alone. Could you ask whoever shows up to be circumspect? I want to protect her privacy as much as possible. Have them come to the back door.”
“Can do, Doc.”
As soon as she ended the call, she sent a text to Shelby Abbott, her office manager. Called Theresa’s Mom. Theresa Hammond had been the first domestic abuse patient Miranda had treated when she moved back to Wishful. She and Shelby had established a shorthand around that to let the rest of the staff know, per their established protocol for this kind of situation, that they’d be sneaking police in the back and to keep all patients out of the halls as much as possible.
That done, Miranda continued seeing patients.
She’d just stepped back into the hall and ordered a strep test for little Rachel Keeney, when Ethan Greer came through the back door of the clinic.
Of course, it would be him. After she’d damned near knocked him over at Dinner Belles earlier in the week. Well, no, he was incredibly solid. She hadn’t been able to avoid noticing that when she’d been pressed up against him for that all too brief encounter.
He hadn’t called about the report on her car. His dispatcher had. She refused to analyze the flare of disappointment she’d felt at that.
Focus.
He strode down the hall with a long-legged swagger that reminded her of a cowboy in an old Western, an impression helped along by the well-worn boots on his feet.
“Chief.” She took him into one of the empty exam rooms and shut the door for privacy. “Thank you for coming. I’m gonna be honest with you—my patient probably isn’t going to be willing to report her husband today. But I have a documented escalation of injuries in her medical records over the past year, and I want to make sure that the police are aware of it.”
“Sensible.”