by KaLyn Cooper
“I’ll get her. Now you can relax. It might be a good idea to drink something other than scotch until we get home. Do you really want to meet your daughter-in-law and granddaughter drunk?” Might be too late for that already. “What time is her plane expected?” Jack asked while he leaned against the door and scanned the area, never able to fully relax his vigilance, even though he was no longer in the SEALs.
She told him, and he sighed in relief. He had at least an hour and a half. “Got it handled, Mother. I need to go. See you at home.” Before she asked for another favor, he touched the end button on the screen.
He checked the large dive watch on his wrist. Time was against him. He didn’t have enough time to pick up his sister-in-law and niece, take them home, and get back to the club to…Stacie…Stephanie…Cindy? Whatever her name was. Maybe he’d get her number and call tomorrow. But he never phoned them the next day. He moved on to the next willing woman who wanted nothing more than a little fun for a few hours and memories of Cancun.
“Gotta run,” Jack announced to the table. Rock Star just nodded, more interested in the women under each arm. The girl who’d sat next to Jack had all but crawled into Luke’s lap but did give him a lower lip pout before returning her attention to his friend. Too Tall looked at him. “Family shit,” he said by way of explanation. Throwing a fifty on the table, he left the bar through the back door.
He slid into the company SUV then glanced at the back compartment. He’d hauled SCUBA tanks in it earlier, but they’d been dropped off for refilling. There were still some parts for one of the boats, but there should be room for the luggage. How many bags could a baby and her mother have? Pulling into traffic, Jack realized he had no idea what his sister-in-law looked like. He’d never had the chance to meet her. Jimmy had kept their relationship quiet, a secret from everyone except Jack until their wedding. None of his family had met Jillian until the funeral, and Jack had been unreachable, on a mission when his brother had been murdered.
Jack had never even seen a picture of her. No way, man. She’s mine. Jimmy’s words sounded in his head, repeated every time he’d asked Jimmy to send him a photograph of his girlfriend, the woman who’d eventually become his wife.
“Tell me, bro, what’s she look like?” Jack had asked him over and over again.
“She’s beautiful…to me,” Jimmy had replied. Everyone knew that was man-code for she was a long way from a fashion model. That had been expected since Jimmy had rarely dated. When he’d confessed he was finally interested in a girl, Jack had given brotherly advice when Jimmy seemed to need it. But Jack knew little of the woman who’d captured his brother’s heart.
He pressed speed dial for his house.
“Hey, Mother, what does she look like?”
“Oh, she’s the most darling little thing you’d ever imagine.” His mother didn’t sound sober, but she wasn’t snockered either. “She has the prettiest blonde hair, it’s almost white, and startling blue eyes, and the most beautiful little face.” She sighed heavily.
Yeah, his mother was beyond tipsy, pushing toward plastered.
“Okay, so Jillian is blonde.”
“No, Jackie…Addison. Baby Addison. Who’d you think I was talking about?”
With patience he didn’t really have to spare, Jack asked, “Mother, what does Jillian look like?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t have time for this,” she snipped back. “How many women can be toting a baby through the airport at eleven-thirty at night?”
In the background his older sister was talking. She must have grabbed the phone because hers was the next voice he heard. “She’s kind of paunchy, not really chubby or fat. She’s got a rounded belly, and lots of red hair. She’s kinda short. Yeah, short and paunchy, with a lot of red hair.”
“Thanks, sis. I’ll find her.” He hung up. With that description and his own impressions from conversations with Jimmy, Jack parked the Rover and sauntered into the airport to wait.
Christmas songs in Spanish blared from the speakers interrupted frequently by announcements in both Spanish and English. Minimal decorations of poinsettias, natural to the area, and fake greenery were indications of the fast-approaching holiday season.
Jack watched the line bleed from customs as tired families pushed heavily-laden carts overfilled with suitcases and pulled staggering children through the opaque doors into the tiled lobby, the vacation excitement lost hours ago in cramped airplane seats miles above the ocean.
Melodic giggles preceded the sprinting toddler through the doors as a purple sundress and flying blonde darted around a well-traveled couple in their mid-fifties. The gentleman with graying temples and a grandfatherly smile reached out to the little rocket as she slipped inches past his grasp.
“Sorry, miss. I almost had her,” he apologized to the strawberry blonde who stepped from the customs area. She stretched her long legs to catch the laughing, three-foot-tall dervish.
“Thank you, sir, for trying.” She flashed the man a bright smile. The flash of white against full pink lips almost knocked Jack to his knees. Damn, she was pretty. More than pretty, she’s stunning.
The doors opened again, and Jack forced his gaze back to the exit as a few more stragglers pushed through. Complete families with husband, wife, and two kids drove their small herds toward the taxi and shuttle lines. Damn, where is she?
He watched the little purple sundress evade her mother’s reach and admired the way the jeans hugged her tightly toned butt when she bent to capture the child. A mental slideshow of all the things he’d like to do to that body in that position flowed past. Jack considered walking over and offering his card to her with a sizable discount. Hell, he’d make her today’s winner of a free catamaran ride just to see that body in a bikini.
Jack’s gaze swept the area once again. This time he wasn’t looking for potential danger. He was searching for the father of this beautiful baby, husband to the attractive woman. Plenty of men paid attention to them, but none acted as though they belonged with her. He checked out her left hand as she dashed by ten feet from where he leaned against a pillar. No gold ring encircled her finger, but there was a definite indentation where one had been. That could mean many things. Hope ratcheted up another notch.
“Addison Elizabeth Girard, you little Houdini.” The woman scooped up the giggling child in both arms and rolled the baby’s tummy to her lips for raspberries. Squeals of pure unadulterated joy echoed around the nearly empty atrium.
The sight warmed something deep within him. He smiled at the touching scene of mother and daughter, laughing and playing. They were so perfect together. He considered his offer of a free day on his catamaran and pictured her in a tiny bikini chasing little Addison—
Like a punch to the solar plexus, it hit him.
Fuck me.
The beautiful woman he’d had illicit thoughts about was his sister-in-law. He wanted to hate himself for the images that remained seared into his brain. The picture of her and the baby laughing screamed of family. Then his undersexed libido added…my family. Mine.
Every mental picture he’d painted of Jillian was so far removed from the woman in front of him. He’d expected someone with large ugly glasses, her hair forcefully twisted and pinned to her head, her back stalwartly straight. In his mind, he’d been looking for a woman with at least twenty-five extra pounds. His sister had said she was pudgy.
Jimmy had been a big guy, over six feet like himself, but he’d never played sports. He could have played football like Jack, but Jimmy had been lumbering. In fact, he was a little uncoordinated. He was more interested in their grandfather’s Mayan research than sports. He had a hard time envisioning this shapely woman with luscious curves with his brother. Truth be told, he didn’t want to paint that picture because she’d not only been with Jimmy, she’d been his wife. Together, they’d made that beautiful little girl. A daughter Jimmy never got to meet. He’d died when Jillian was five months pregnant.
Straight long hair, mo
re blonde than red, swung side to side just above nicely rounded hips. The short-sleeved T-shirt was the color of the rainforest and matched her playful eyes. He imagined those eyes dark with passion as he pushed into her for the first time.
Shit. No. This is my brother’s wife. Oh, God. How could I think of her like that? But he had and continued to as she swished her way back to the closed customs doors.
She planted the baby on her hip in a gesture she’d obviously done a thousand times and reached for the doors just as they opened. A blue-uniformed customs agent easily pushed the overloaded cart filled with suitcases, boxes, and a baby car seat. The smile he gave her was not exactly friendly, but more of male appreciation.
“Señora Girard, I hope your stay is pleasant. Perhaps I’ll see you around Cancun.” The agent stepped closer to her, and Jack watched her tighten every muscle in her body. He hadn’t invaded her personal space, not yet. In a quiet voice, the twenty-something man added, “I love to dance and visit the clubs after work most nights. Perhaps I’ll see you there.”
She looked dumbstruck for a long minute before she formed an answer. “I…I don’t dance.” She gingerly stepped around to the back of the cart and tried to push it toward the exit.
The baby squirmed and repeated, “Down, Mommy. Down.” She looked for a place to set the persistent child, but there was none.
“Will you promise to hold Mommy’s hand?”
“Ya, ya.” The baby’s head bob was convincing even to him. The second she let the little feet hit the tile, the child was off again, in his direction this time.
He knelt, and his long arms had no problem halting the forward motion of the little purple streak.
“I’ve got you now, Addi.” He stood in a lithe movement and tucked Addison in the crook of his arm.
Terror-stricken green eyes stared at him as Jillian hurried toward them. Reading her body language correctly, he reassured his sister-in-law. “I’m Jack.” Her steps didn’t slow nor did the fear subside from her gaze, so he quickly added, “Your brother-in-law, Jack Girard.”
Jillian stopped mid-stride. Her mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again as if to speak. Then closed.
“Welcome to Mexico, Jillian.”
Chapter Two
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.”
She sucked in air through her nose, and the overpowering smell of a man assaulted her every nerve. She instantly stiffened. As if a cold wind gusted through her body, her mind immediately cleared.
“Mommy?” The familiar tiny voice sounded scared, and Jillian’s maternal instincts kicked in.
“I’m okay, baby.” She tried to sound soothing, but she was afraid the lie was evident to even her two-year-old.
“Look at me, Jillian.” Jack’s commanding voice forced her gaze to his. He searched her face as if he was taking inventory of each feature. “You started to faint.”
“I never faint,” she insisted. But as her surroundings came into focus, she discovered she was wrapped in a strong arm and held against a solid chest, her daughter held in the other arm. She couldn’t withhold the shiver that ran through her.
No man had ever held her and her daughter together.
She tried to step out of his grasp, but Jack restrained her firmly against his warm body.
“If I let go of you, are you going to be able to stand?” Jack’s eyes pierced her soul.
She couldn’t speak. He was so close. And so big. Jimmy had been big, but in a teddy bear kind of way. He’d been soft and cuddly, like his personality. Both brothers were about the same height, hovering somewhere around six feet, but the two were as different as night and day. Hard muscles enveloped her against a hard chest. Hard man. Night held her now.
“Please let me go,” Jillian begged and took a deep breath, preparing to shove her way out of his grip. She didn’t like being around men, say nothing about being held in an intimate embrace by a stranger. His eyes looked stricken, and he released her.
Jillian stepped back, and Addi began to whimper. “Come here, baby.” She snatched her daughter from Jack’s arms and planted her on a hip before she pasted on what she hoped was a congenial smile and held out her hand.
“Jack, it’s nice to finally meet you. Ji…Jimmy spoke of you often.” She hated when she stuttered over his name, but she’d said it so seldom in the past two years. The initial pain she’d felt every day, the loneliness every night, had quickly been replaced with exhaustion and work. Every now and again, it would catch her off guard. Like now.
Her free hand extended, Jack took his time before slipping his hand into hers for the brief introductory shake. His fingers were warm as they glided into hers, but when his palm flattened against hers, she felt the contact all the way to her toes. Her gaze flew to his, and she watched the spark brighten his eyes.
Oh, dang. He felt it too.
She quickly pulled her hand free, but the brush of his fingertips across her palm curled her toes in the low-heeled sandals.
She brushed it off. Her nerves were ragged, and her guard was down because she was over tired. After spending most of the night packing and cleaning her apartment, she’d gotten up early and taught her last class of the semester. It was more difficult than she’d ever have thought to say goodbye to the twenty-two gifted students in her Anthropology 4810 class who challenged her constantly. The dean still hadn’t had time to discuss her lack of a contract for spring, which had her extremely worried. The taxi had been late picking them up for the airport, and then their connecting flight had been delayed. It had been one very stressful day. Now she was forced to face Jimmy’s family, people she’d met for the first time
at his funeral.
Nerves. That’s all it was.
“We should go. Mother is expecting us.” He looked away from her to the heavily-laden cart, but she’d heard the rasp in his voice. “Is that everything?”
“Yes,” she croaked out. She needed to get control of this compulsion to run away from men. Jack was her brother-in-law. He wasn’t going to harm her. He was family. Family like she’d never known before. And there were a lot more Girards she’d face shortly, including another brother-in-law. Levi had been brusque at the funeral, just short of rude.
Jillian forced a deep breath and stiffened her resolve. I can do this. I will do this. One step at a time. Wherever the road leads, I’ll survive, and Addi will thrive. It had become her mantra since Jimmy’s murder.
Jack stepped behind the cart and headed through the gauntlet of salespeople pitching timeshares, tourist traps, car rentals, and hedonistic nightclubs. Jillian absorbed everything with a genuine smile. She’d never been out of the country before. She’d never flown before today. The excited little girl inside her who looked forward to a long-awaited adventure warred with the adult conscience that dreaded the familial encounters and resurfacing of emotions that surrounded the death of her husband. At the moment, the child was winning.
“What a beautiful baby girl.” Jillian wasn’t accustomed to all this attention and stopped when approached by a woman in a blue suit with pamphlets in her hand. “You should take her to see—”
“Jillian.” Jack’s harsh tone sliced through the chatter that filled the congested area, and all voices quieted. “Gotta go.”
“I’ll be—”
“Now.” The single word left no room for discussion.
“I’m sorry,” she tried to apologize to the saleswoman.
“I’d never keep a man like him waiting,” the woman said with a spicy smile.
“But he’s—” Jillian felt an arm hook around her waist and pull her away. She glanced at Jack, who had plastered her to his side. She had to quickstep to keep up with his long stride.