Page 7 of Mistletoe Dreams
Her stomach dropped. Of course he didn't. She was the one who had had a crush on him every summer she'd visited her grandma back years ago. He hadn't known she was alive then. And from the dismissive way he was looking at her, he didn't really care that she was alive now.
Shoving all of those feelings aside, she forced a friendly but reserved smile onto her face. "I'm Hannah Reynolds. I knew you when I visited Mistletoe Meadows in the summers back when we were children and recognized you from then."
There was no emotion on his face as he jerked his head, acknowledging her words but not showing in any way that her name was familiar to him or that he remembered her from their childhood.
"So you didn't have anything to do with this?" He nodded at the defaced gazebo.
Her eyes widened. He wasn't suspecting her of doing anything wrong, was he? Of course, he'd found her standing here looking at it.
"No. Of course not. You're certainly welcome to search my car or my person or my house. I don't even have paint. Or a hammer, or... anything that would've damaged the wood like that. At least not that I know of," she said.
She must've sounded sufficiently knowledgeable, because he grunted, wrote something down in the notebook he carried, and then turned back toward the gazebo.
"I just got the call not that long ago, and the person seemed to indicate that it probably happened overnight. Do you have an alibi?"
Did she have an alibi?
"I'm sorry, I live alone. But I guess if you need to ask me more questions, I'll be at the clinic today." She couldn't help it. Her words were frosty. Just because she was standing here looking at it didn't mean that she was involved in it in any way. Surely she didn't look like a criminal, did she?
Of course, probably he wasn't allowed to go by how someone actually looked.
"I'll take your name and number. If I have any more questions for you, I'll be in touch."
So he wasn't even going to let her escape with just a mention of her location.
Grinding her teeth and trying not to be unkind, she gave him her name and her number. There was no reason for her not to do it.
"I'll be mentioning that you were found on site when the officer arrived to investigate the crime."
"I just happened to be walking through. I had nothing to do with it." Now he was annoying her. Was this the way investigations usually went? Anyone who was found in the area was automatically a suspect? "Surely you have better skills than this. You don't need to go around accusing innocent people of heinous crimes just because they happen to be within ten feet of the structure when you arrive."
"You need to be respectful toward the policeofficer on scene," Ben murmured. But his tone was dismissive as he wrote in his notebook.
"Are you done with me?" she asked, wishing that she hadn't taken a walk through town to begin with. And annoyed with herself for recognizing him when he obviously didn't even know her. She was so pathetic.
She supposed she could have introduced herself asDr.Hannah Reynolds, but she didn't like to do that. It felt a little bit like bragging and also like she was trying to use her earned title to command respect. She firmly believed that if she were to be respected and admired, it would be on the merits of what she had done, not because of a title she had.
Regardless, she had to put this behind her. She had a community who needed her and a new job that awaited, and she couldn't allow her irritation over an arrogant and incompetent policeman to derail her from the calling that she had, which was to help patients and heal them with God's help.
Because of the extra time she spent at the gazebo, she did not stop to watch the candles being made but instead drove straight to the clinic after she got to her car.
Unsurprisingly, Terry was already there.
"You're early," Terry said, looking up from an iPad with a smile.
"It wouldn't do to be late on my first day. Plus, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't eager to start."
And nervous. The last time she'd practiced medicine, she'd made a horrendous mistake. It had not cost anyone their life, and the stakes were not as high at the clinic as they were at the hospital. That didn't mean that she didn't have that in the back of her head and that it didn't make her feel insecure and like... maybe she didn't have what it took to be a doctor.
Not that her medical degree hadn't been fully and completely earned, because it had.
"Are you ready?" Terry asked, pushing herself up from where she had been sitting.
"Absolutely."
"All right then, I’ll go over today's patients with you. We also take walk-ins as our schedule allows, and so this schedule might not be everyone we see. But at least I can give you a little bit of the background for these folks. I'm sure as you're here longer, you'll get to know folks on your own."
"I appreciate all the help I can get." Hannah was sincere about that. From her understanding, small towns were rather tight-knit, and it would help to have a little bit of information tucked in her back pocket so that... even if she didn't quite fit in, she knew a little something about the people she would be treating.
