This week we'll be featuring a selection of delicious and delightful excerpts from our books. A lucky commenter at the end of the week will win a set of books from ALL the authors in e-format.
Just leave your email in the RAFFLECOPTER draw below - and you can earn extra entries by leaving a comment on the blogpost, too.
Today's featured author is SHARON CALVIN and her book A DANGEROUS LEAP.. Please enjoy the excerpt, pop the book on your wishlist if you're tempted, and don't forget to enter the Rafflecopter draw below.
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Book one of Gulf Coast Rescue
Raised by navy parents, Kelly Bishop learned how to pack light and say goodbye at an early age. She's earned her Coast Guard rescue swimmer stripes in some of the toughest waters out there, outperforming men along the way. Now she's ready for a new start in Florida, eager to prove herself as the best of the best.
What she isn't ready for is the spark between her and fellow Coastie Ian Razzamenti.
Ian knows what he wants and he knows how to get it. And what he's always wanted is a stay-at-home wife—someone who can take care of their children while he's out on missions. The attraction he feels for Kelly is intense, but is it worth giving up his big-family dreams?
Life-or-death situations leave little time for distraction—or doubt. When a tropical storm becomes a hurricane and a dangerous enemy reveals himself, their air station springs into action, and Kelly and Ian may not have the chance to decide whether they want to take the leap…
Kelly brought up the last man from the RIB using the quick strop in a tandem hoist. She stayed on board to help Ian while the captain reeled the inflatable back to the sailboat for the last four survivors.
“Jesus!”
Joe’s shout spun Ian around in time to see Kelly launch herself out of the open doorway.
“Shit, shit, shit! Swimmer in the water, swimmer in the water!” Joe shouted to Caitlyn.
It took a moment for Ian to register that Kelly hadn’t been attached to the cable. She’d done a free fall at night? He scrambled to the doorway as Joe shouted directions to Cait over the headset.
“Back thirty. Over sixty. Shit, we’ve got a child in the water. Ryan, radio the boat’s captain. Get everyone below. Repeat, get them off that fucking deck!”
Ian squinted into the driving rain. He could barely make out the sailboat wallowing in the brutal waves. Nothing showed in the water except white-capped foam. Cold fear squeezed blood from his heart and kicked him in the gut. Kelly was in the belly of that black, frothing monster.
Instinct more than training took over when Kelly saw the wave’s backlash suck the child from the sailboat’s deck. One moment the four survivors had been holding on to the railing ready to board the RIB, in the next second only three clung to the listing deck.
As she leaped into the storm’s fury, she assumed a defensive position, anticipating a long drop to the water’s rock-hard surface. Thankfully, another monster wave came up to greet her, and she rode it down into the trough. The wind and waves should bring the child around the boat—if it didn’t crush her against the hull first.
Kelly banished all such negative thoughts from her mind. Instead, she concentrated on establishing a rhythm that matched the ocean’s. The first lesson of open water: don’t fight it, work with it. Become the water.
Breathe when the opportunity presented itself, otherwise hold, kick, glide. She moved at an angle she hoped would intercept the child’s path around the grounded boat. Whenever possible, she swam beneath the violent, churning surface.
And prayed.
Her lungs burned and she swallowed, stalling the urge to breathe a little longer. She kicked to the surface, sucked oxygen in along with more than a mouthful of saltwater, and searched for any sign of movement. Without divine intervention, finding an object as small as a bobbing child would be—
There, something reflective moved on top of the wave. Another precious “bite” of air and Kelly dove beneath the surface, kicking hard, willing the child to be near, to be alive. She forced her strokes to slow, to be more powerful, more definite, to not fight the waves, but to once again find their rhythm.
Unable to hold her breath any longer, she fought her way to the surface. Breathe, dive, kick. She repeated it over and over again, losing track of time and space, driven forward by teasing glimpses of that elusive something in the black distance.
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