Excerpt of Christmas in Cancun by KaLyn Cooper

Jillian had been ready to scream for the police when the
man grabbed her baby. She’d read about airport
kidnappings in foreign countries and how, if the parents
didn’t pay up immediately, they’d sell the child. She
didn’t have much money and no idea how to get the massive
amounts she was sure a kidnapper would require. She
couldn’t let him take her baby. No, she wouldn’t let him
take Addi.

The dark evil thoughts that raced through her fatigued
mind delayed understanding the fact that he’d called her
baby girl by name, her nickname. Then he’d said he was
Jack Girard.

Jack? No. This couldn’t be Jimmy’s brother Jack. He was a
Navy SEAL. Every picture she’d seen of him, and there
were several, he’d been in one uniform or another. Or
he’d been in nothing but low-slung swim trunks and behind
the wheel of a boat as a teenager. He’d been clean-cut
with short hair, was close shaven and extremely good
looking.

The man who held her daughter was a different man
altogether.

Jack Girard wasn’t this long-haired, shaggy, sun-
bleached-blond Adonis with bulging tanned muscles under a
blue polo shirt with a sailboat logo emblazoned over an
impressive chest. The man before her looked deadly on
every level. His light blue eyes were hard as arctic ice
with hints of green. Then she watched his whole face
transform as he smiled at Addi and poked a finger into
her baby’s belly. The green had overtaken the blue, and
he looked like a loving father playing with his child.
Her child.

Jillian couldn’t breathe.

“You ready to meet your hellion cousins, little
princess?” His voice was playful, yet its low tones
reverberated through Jillian, shaking parts of her soul
that had been dormant for more than two years. Since her
husband’s murder. Addi squirmed at his touch and giggled.

“Uh…I’ll take her,” Jillian managed to push out through
her tightened throat as she grabbed for her child. When
he turned his broad smile toward her, her world focused
on his white teeth, all of them perfectly straight except
for one eyetooth, which turned slightly.

It was Jimmy’s smile. Except Jimmy was dead.

Her knees went weak. Her vision blurred. No matter how
hard she tried, her lungs refused to work. Indistinct
sounds echoed in the tall room and overwhelmed every one
of her senses. The world went white.

“Whoa.” Jack’s voice shot through the encroaching fog in
her brain, and a strong arm snapped around her back.
“Breathe, Jillian. You’re safe.”