One Shenandoah Winter Read Free Page A

the ravine across the road. Brian asked, “Is my tie straight?”
    â€œYou look just fine.” She gave him as reassuring a smile as she could manage. “I’m sure—”
    From inside the clinic came the noise of a slamming door. A muffled voice said something, only to be answered with a shout of rage. Brian’s nervous features creased with genuine worry. “That doesn’t sound at all good.”
    â€œMaybe we’d better go lend Fuller a hand.”
    They climbed the concrete block stairs and entered the Hillsboro Clinic’s reception area. The place had once been a mill worker’s cottage, given to the state in lieu of unpaid taxes when the mill went bankrupt. That was back when the hill farmers stopped bringing their corn by horse cart to have it ground at the water-powered mill.
    Not long afterward, a local fellow who had made it to medical school and then survived the First World War decided to return home. With the town’s blessing he had turned the old mill house into a much-needed medical clinic.
    But the local fellow had died three years earlier, after doctoring the mountain folk for almost forty years. By then, even the few friends who had managed to outlive him were admitting that the old man was long past his prime.
    Even so, a doddering old curmudgeon a half-century away from medical school was far better than no doctor at all. As the town had come to know at its own cruel cost.
    Connie and Brian entered the open door to find Mayor Fuller Allen standing in the middle of the front room. A sheen of perspiration turned his bald pate to a polished dome. “Doctor Reynolds, I’d be the first to admit the clinic is lacking a few things. But if you’d just—”
    â€œA few things!” The dark-haired stranger swept an angry hand at the door leading to the examining rooms. “I’ve seen better-equipped high school labs!”
    â€œBut Doctor Reynolds—”
    â€œAnd outhouses with a higher standard of cleanliness!” The doctor’s gaze turned their way, and Connie found herself staring at gray eyes smoky with rage. “Are you my nurse?”
    â€œMe?” She took an involuntary step back. “Goodness, no.”
    â€œIda May called in sick,” Fuller said miserably. “Of all days.”
    The angry gaze turned back to the mayor. “My nurse’s name is Ida May?”
    â€œShe’s very highly thought of,” Connie said. Nervousness tumbled the words like they were caught in a wringer washer. “She runs the county health service, knows almost every family within thirty miles.”
    â€œHow thrilling.” The man was watching her as he would a rodent discovered in his operating theater. “Who are you?”
    â€œThis is Connie Wilkes,” Fuller supplied. His normal bonhomie had been deflated like a punctured balloon. “Hillsboro’s assistant mayor.”
    â€œMy abject sympathies,” he snapped. “Are you the one responsible for this nightmare of a clinic?”
    â€œI guess I am.” Connie drew herself up as well as she could. She had not expected this. Nothing like this.
    It wasn’t the man’s anger that caught her so off guard. It was his looks. The doctor was more than simply handsome. He had the sharply defined authority of a very successful and intelligent man. His features were cut with surgical precision. A wide intellectual brow descended to the most penetrating gaze she had ever seen.
    Connie struggled to gather herself, then said, “I told you in my letter how tough things have been for our community.”
    â€œCertainly. But this—” Another angry gesture at the back rooms. “This is an absolute farce!”
    â€œYou’re right.” There was nothing to be gained from glossing over the truth, she saw that now. “It’s just horrible.”
    Her quiet agreement halted his ire, at least momentarily. Connie went on