When Hearts Collide Read Online Free PDF Page B

could make out the signature anyway. They would just attribute it to somebody signing under duress—totally expected with the night’s circumstances. Molly grabbed the pen and signed on the indicated lines.
    “Here you go.” Molly waved the clipboard at the clerk. She heard her grandmother’s voice. “In for a penny, in for a pound.” Well, she was definitely racking up the pounds.
    Twenty minutes later, a nurse arrived, and Molly followed her to the six-bed intensive care unit. Each bed was enclosed with walls of glass, double sliding doors making up the front wall. Bland beige striped curtains hung from the ceiling on U-shaped rods and could be pulled for privacy. Only three of the beds were occupied. Molly waited on the indicated chair.
    “Mrs. Taylor?” a twenty-something nurse called through the double glass doors. “You can see him now. But just for a minute. Can someone take the child? Against the rules, you know.”
    “No, there is only me.”
    “Well, come along then. Maybe she’ll stay sleeping.”
    Striving to keep Gracie asleep, Molly struggled to a standing position. The child moaned, but let herself be shifted without rousing. Molly followed the nurse through the double glass doors.
    Pearce remained unconscious. Partly due to the effect of the anesthetic during surgery, yet was some of it related to the head injury? Molly glanced at the monitor’s digital readout. His numbers were stable for now. Even his pulse rate had returned to an acceptable normal.
    The room remained silent, save for the whoosh of air through the ventilator’s translucent tubing and the audible blips of the monitor. Other than a folded white sheet covering his privates, Pearce lay exposed. Pale, his only color came from the brown tape securing the endotracheal tube to his mouth and the remnants of Poviodine antiseptic coating the surgical sites. His eyes were closed, his face cast in a stark, serene mask.
    Molly stared at the dark-haired man lying in the bed. He’d wanted her to pretend to be his wife. Was he delusional? What’s going to happen when he wakes up and tells people some woman took his child?
    She wanted to confess, but they were too busy to listen. It didn’t help that Gracie kept calling her ‘mommy.’ Her quick scrawl on any documents had gone unquestioned. They just wanted someone to sign, releasing them of any responsibility. That mess she could straighten out later. But what if he wasn’t delusional? What if there was no one to care for the child?
    Gracie moaned, then snuggled her warm face into the curve of her neck. A lump came to Molly’s throat. She’d always wanted children. What would it be like to have her own? For a brief second, Molly allowed herself to imagine Pearce as her husband.
    Despite his pale stillness, she could see how attractive he was. Filling the length of the bed, his body was that of a well-proportioned athlete. The hospital sheet only partially covered his broad torso revealed a wavy mat of dark hair extending in a V above the stark bandage on his abdomen. Molly forced herself to look back at his face. His black hair was tousled, giving him a wild and untamed look that whisked her breath away.
    The nurse turned to walk out of the room. “I’d rather you didn’t disturb him. He was restless when he came back from the operating room, and we just got him settled.”
    The nurse’s voice snapped her back to reality. The thoughts she’d been entertaining had nothing to do with a patient lying critically ill in a hospital bed. “I won’t disturb him.” Molly reassured the nurse.
    Without warning, Gracie jerked her head back. Her eyes flew open, terror reflected in the sapphire saucers. She started to cry. “Where’s my daddy?”
    Before Molly could stop her, Gracie twisted around and caught site of Pearce. Molly felt her heart sink to rest on her fancy sandals, and she geared herself for an uncontrollable emotional crisis. What would the child think, seeing her father