When Hearts Collide by Kendra James Read Free Book Online Page A

hand to her abdomen but the pain didn’t go away. What if he never came home? Stop it. You can’t think like that .
    Molly rolled off the bed. She needed to find the child’s next of kin so they could deal with this. Her career had mainly been dealing with adults. She didn’t have a clue how to tell a child about illness, and parents who might never come home.
    “Gracie, do you have a mommy?”
    “She’s gone. I want breakfast.” Gracie grabbed her hand and pulled her along the hall and down the stairs to the kitchen.
    Oh great. That’s the same thing Pearce had said at the accident scene. Gone could mean anything. How can I find out what happened to her mother? Had she died? She needed to find someone to take the child, but she didn’t want to bring up bad memories. She tried another tactic. “Who lives here with you?”
    “Daddy and me.”
    “No one else?” Molly looked around the room. There were several pictures on a desk by the window. Pearce and Gracie. There wasn’t an adult female in one of them.
    “Nope. Just the two of us.”
    This is getting us nowhere. Molly looked around the room, neat and tidy, the same as the rest of the house. By the business card she had in her pocket, Pearce Taylor was a practicing lawyer. Molly doubted he did his own cleaning and cooking. Was there a housekeeper?
    “Gracie, does somebody come in to look after you while your daddy is at work?”
    “I’m a Pink Panther.”
    Molly raised an eyebrow. “What’s a pink panther?”
    “I’m a Pink Panther at my school.”
    “Do you have an aunt or a grandma?”
    Gracie’s blond curls bounced. “Grandma Katherine.”
    Molly let out an audible sigh. Finally a next of kin who could look after the child and let her get on her way.
    “But she doesn’t like to be called ‘Grandma.’”
    “No?” Molly tipped her head.
    “Nope. Makes her feel old.”
    Molly crossed her fingers. “Do you have a phone number for your Grandma?”
    Gracie raced out of the room and down the hall. Molly followed, her sandals clicking on the ceramic floor as she hurried to find out where the child had gone. She found her in a room to the left of the kitchen. It was a large den and smelled of pine and old leather. Molly took in the rich opulence of the room with the wall-to-wall bookshelves, the large cherry desk, and the chestnut brown leather couch. Gracie pulled open the top drawer of the desk, shuffled through some papers, then held up a leather-bound address book.
    “Daddy keeps his numbers here.”
    As Molly accepted the book, she glanced at the photos on the desk–Gracie and Pearce at the beach, on the front lawn, at an amusement park. She could see the love for his child reflected in the tender expressions captured by the camera’s lens–pride, joy, devotion. It was obvious this child was his life.
    Then another picture caught her attention. Behind the others, tilted away from direct view, Molly had to pick it up to see it properly. It was of Pearce, Gracie, and a woman in her mid to late fifties.
    “Who’s this?” Molly pointed to the woman.
    “Grandma Katherine.”
    The woman sat primly on the edge of a red velvet Victorian chair. Pearce stood behind the woman, Gracie sat at her feet. An elongated pinched nose separated the woman’s high cheekbones, but it was the arched eyebrows and flat line of her smile that gave her an authoritarian air. Pearce’s mother? He did have an aristocratic profile, but there the resemblance seemed to end.
    Involuntarily, a shiver sluiced down her spine. She thought of her own grandmother, whose chubby face was furrowed with years of laugher and a life well spent. She felt a wave of pity for the child. She needed to call ‘Grandma Katherine,’ but she wanted privacy for that.
    “Is this your daddy’s mother or your mother’s mommy?”
    “Mommy’s mother. I’m hungry. I want to eat. Now,” Gracie demanded.
    “Let’s get you something then.”
    Molly denied the urge to pick up the phone,