The woman turned then and caught Molly staring at her. It might have been awkward, but she simply reached inside the plastic cover, touched the baby and walked over to Molly.
“Hi. I’m Julie,” she said upon arrival.
The woman looked on the verge of total exhaustion but her warm smile seemed genuine.
“I’m Molly Porter—um—Parker. Molly Parker.” The name still felt foreign on her tongue.
Julie rubbed her neck and rolled her head as she apparently worked out some stiffness.
“Is that your baby?” Molly asked.
Julie nodded. “Thomas. He’s finally turning the corner. I would have lost him to pneumonia if it hadn’t been for Justin.”
“Aside from miracles, I can also walk on water,” Dr. Dale quipped with an easy grin as he brought a small basin and rolls of fiberglass tape to set her ankle.
Molly didn’t recognize her own name but she sure recognized the pang of jealousy she felt when Julie gave the gorgeous doctor a familiar, playful shove. Maybe Molly had suffered brain damage after all. That was the only plausible explanation for feeling such an intimate emotion about a total stranger.
“This could be uncomfortable, but I’m reluctant to give you any pain medication that might cause drowsiness because of the concussion,” he explained.
When his palm gently slid beneath her calf, Molly was pretty sure no sedative could have dulled the flood of sensation. His long, tapered fingers were warm where they gripped her flesh. She felt oddly flushed and was glad she was no longer connected to the blood-pressure monitor. Surely it would have registered her inappropriate and humiliating reaction to his touch.
Julie excused herself and returned to baby Thomas while Molly forced herself to stare at the ceiling. Looking at the doctor wasn’t an option. Though she’d lost her memory, she was fairly sure that applying a cast was not supposed to be a turn-on. Lord, maybe she was some sort of slut!
No, she reasoned. If she were, she wouldn’t be feeling the full weight of guilt seizing her chest.
Despite her best efforts to resist, she noticed that he was well toned. Not muscle-bound, just incredibly fit. Her mind went into fantasyland when she postulated that beneath his soft shirt were broad shoulders, a tapered waist and sculpted abdominals. Her gaze darted to his legs for an instant, long enough to fuel her musings. His jeans were faded, well-worn, and she could clearly see the outline of defined thigh muscles.
The room seemed to be getting warmer by the second.
Carefully, he slipped some sort of cotton, open-toed, sock-thing over her foot. It went up her leg about five inches. It felt as if he spent a long weekend adjusting and readjusting the fabric. Molly no longer felt pain from the fracture. Instead, her mind was totally focused on the electric sensation of his determined and well-trained fingers. Each place his skin brushed hers, a tingle lingered.
She felt her face grow hot.
“Is this uncomfortable?” the doctor asked.
Big-time. But probably not in the way you mean. “Nope, not at all.”
“You look flushed. This isn’t supposed to be a test of your fortitude. I can give you something for the pain, if it’s too bad,” he suggested.
She simply shook her head, afraid if she tried to speak, her wayward thoughts would be betrayed in her tone. Besides, what she wasn’t feeling was pain. It was a thrill, a rush of excitement ricocheting around in her stomach. She wasn’t a doctor, but she was sure that her symptoms had nothing to do with any injury.
Obviously satisfied with the first step, he scooted the stool around and braced her injured left foot against his chest.
“This might be uncomfortable,” he warned casually.
But there was nothing casual about the feel of his solid chest beneath her foot. She was aware of its systematic rising and falling as he breathed steadily, in and out. Conversely, her breath was were coming in shallow near gasps.
With slow deliberation, Dr. Dale began to wrap her foot and ankle in cool, wet fiberglass. Every time he stroked and smoothed the wrap, her heart fluttered. Molly was awash in conflicting emotions and a sense of self-loathing.
He was merely doing his job and she was mentally turning it into some sort of torrid moment. Her eyes were riveted to his handsome profile. The man’s face was an attractive combination of sharp angles and expressive compassion. Deep lines formed at the corners of his chocolate eyes as he continued his task.
Molly tried to redirect her thinking by glancing over at Julie and her baby. Apparently the baby was sleeping because Julie was seated, reading The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas.
Depressing reading, Molly thought. At the same instant, she heard selected passages of Thomas in her head. That meant she was either educated or well-read.
“Is that frown due to pain?” the doctor asked, startling her.
Molly shook her head. “I know Thomas.”
“The baby?” he asked, crooking his head toward the sleeping infant.
“The poet.”
Justin dazzled her with a wry smile. The flash of perfectly straight white teeth was accompanied by a glimpse of his very sexy dimple.
Molly struggled to keep her thoughts on task. “If I know poetry, that must mean something.”
“Yeah,” he said as he applied the final touches to her cast. “It means, unlike me, you have the ability to understand poems that don’t rhyme.”
She found herself smiling. “It is something, isn’t it?”
Justin met her eyes and held them. “Yes, it’s a good sign. It most likely means that your amnesia is a temporary reaction to the trauma you suffered. You should expect to get snippets of memory, then most things will come back in time.”
“In time? And what do you mean, ‘most things’?”
He patted her hand. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you never regain a clear memory of the accident. It’s your brain’s way of protecting you.”
Molly stared, stunned. “How am I supposed to know what happened to me?”
He shrugged. “You’ll probably never know unless they find the driver or a witness.”
“Great! I’d really like to know if someone was just irresponsible or trying to hurt me.”
“My educated guess is the latter. I don’t think it’s coincidence that you were beaten and hit by a car in the same week.”
“You have no idea how not comforting that is.”
A man in uniform stepped into the clinic just then. He greeted Julie in passing as he came over to where Molly was still stuck on her paper-covered bed.
Tipping the brim of his hat to her, he first addressed the doctor. “How’s the patient?”
“Um...forgetful?” he suggested with a sheepish wink in Molly’s direction.
“Sheriff Alec Younger,” he introduced. “I need to get some information, if you’re up to it, ma’am.”
“You won’t need a pencil,” Molly quipped.
Her joke was lost on the sheriff. “Ma’am?”
She looked at Justin, silently conveying that she would prefer him to supply an explanation for her strange circumstance.
He picked up on her unspoken need immediately. “Physically, I’ve done everything possible, but there’s a hitch.”
“Hitch?” the sheriff asked.
“There’s