Matt—The Callahan Brothers (Brazos Bend Book 2) (22 page)

But the sweet bliss of oblivion called to him. Maybe he would hit a bar in town, buy a bottle, and get stupid on booze. Liquor was a good way to lose yourself for a while.

A woman is better.

Instinct led him to his truck, then back to the lake house. The bodyguard assured him that all had been quiet. The dog was upstairs in Torie’s bedroom. He’d find the woman herself down by the water with her camera.

Matt saw her in the boat, lying on her stomach on the sun deck , taking photos of a turtle sunning himself on a big flat rock against the shore. Her ponytail drooped over one shoulder. She wore a blue swimsuit top and short white shorts, her shapely legs bent up behind her, her bare feet crossed at the ankles in the air. Matt couldn’t take his gaze off the intriguing curve of her ass. His hands itched to touch her, to trace a lingering, meandering path along her silky skin.

He shouldn’t be here. This was wrong on a dozen different levels.

But she was so ... alive. Driven by the instincts and urges he couldn’t resist, didn’t want to resist, he strode down the walkway onto the dock.

“Matt.” She rolled to a seated position. “How’s your father?”

“Alive.” He stepped into the boat.

“Thank God. What happened? Why did he collapse?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk at all.” He leaned down and captured her mouth with his, pressing her down onto her back as he came over on top of her.
 

He kissed her, devoured her mouth with his lips and tongue and teeth. She tasted of mint and chocolate and smelled of sunshine. He wanted to lose himself in the sweetness of her, to move out of the darkness that haunted him and into the blinding light that resulted from joining with a shooting star like Torie. She was hang gliding and skydiving and ice climbing all at once.

He shifted her body sideways until they lay full atop the cushioned deck. His hand smoothed up the bare length of her leg, across the cotton-covered curve of her hip, then again onto the bare skin of her waist. He reached for the button at her shorts when she yanked her mouth from his. “Wait,” she panted. “What are you doing?”

Nipping at the pulse in her neck, he murmured, “That’s a dumb question.”

She pushed hard against his chest, but Matt didn’t budge. “All right, then. Why are you doing this? I thought we were just a one-night stand.”

“I don’t like those words, the term. Not in reference to you, to us. You are more than that.”

“More, how?”

“I don’t know. I know anything, really, except that I need you to make me whole again. I want you, Victoria. Right now.” He lifted his head and stared down into her eyes. “I need you.”

Her gaze searched his features. She moistened her lips with her tongue. “What’s wrong, Matt?”

He ignored her question and pressed his point by dipping his head and licking the valley between her breasts.

“Oh, you don’t play fair,” she murmured.

“Never.” He tugged her swimsuit top with his teeth and bared her to his gaze. He seduced her with his hands, his mouth, his eyes, and ultimately with his words. “Please, Victoria. Say yes. Let me have you.”

She surrendered with a sigh, and Matt smiled in triumph. In deference to the daylight and the exposed location, he dragged her off the sun deck and onto the cushioned bench seat. It was his last conscious thought as he allowed his instincts full rein and plunged into the mindless heat of lovemaking.

He forgot about his father. He didn’t think about Mark. When he gazed at her glistening beauty, when he lowered his mouth to taste her, his mind harbored not a single thought of John.

Matt saw nothing but Torie, heard nothing but her needy whimpers, smelled only her musky scent. She filled his mind. She accepted his body. She journeyed with him into the dark, sensual oblivion of basic, primal sex.

When it was over, when he collapsed onto her sated body with a groan, he knew that things had changed.

The plan had changed. He’d changed.

God help them both.

Chapter Twelve

“Enough lollygagging around,” Matt said. “We need to go up and get dressed. It’s time to go to town.”

“Town?” Her heart still racing, her breaths still coming in pants, Torie rose up on her elbows. “Did you say we’re going into town?”

“Yeah.”

She watched him step into his jeans and tried to focus on his words instead of his very fine behind or the fact that her emotions were in turmoil. She couldn’t believe she’d just done what she’d done. Casual sex like this was so not like her.

Although she couldn’t find much casual about what had just happened.

She dragged her thoughts back to the matter at hand. “I don’t understand. Aren’t I in hiding?”

“Not anymore. My father outed you, Victoria, and it’s necessitated a change in plan.”

“What! What did he do?”

“He said it in the ambulance and again at the hospital. He told anyone who’d listen that the woman who shot his son—the infamous Torie Bradshaw—was here in town and that they needed to beware. All that without knowing what you did to my truck.”

She thought about that a moment. “Okay, well. So you think they’ll make the connection between Vicky Bradshaw and me?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“So I stayed too long. I should have left town like you wanted to begin with.”

“No sense worrying about that now.” He scooped her clothes up off the bottom of the boat and handed them to her. “Besides, it’s not as bad as I made it sound. Your instincts were right, Victoria. Brazos Bend is a good place for you to lie low.”

“But you said—”

“I exaggerated. I wanted you to leave town.”

“Well. Thank you very much.” She yanked on her panties and shorts.

“Oh, don’t be snippy. I told you from the first that you got under my skin. I knew we’d end up—” he waved a hand around— “here.”

“And is here so bad?” She slipped her swimsuit halter over her head, then tied the strings in back. Matt watched the process with obvious regret.

“Not at all. Here is pretty much the best I’ve ever had.”

She wrinkled her nose, but his statement did mollify her somewhat. She didn’t know exactly what she wanted him to say. Did she want him to tell her that he cared for her, that his heart, not just his glands, were engaged?

Did she want him to confess his undying love?

Yes.

Oh, holy cow. She needed to think about this. She never wanted men to confess their undying love. That’s when relationships turned awkward and messy and complicated because she never could say it in return. Why would she want to go there with Matt Callahan?

Because maybe this time, you could say it.

She blinked. Gasped a shocked breath.

Face it, Bradshaw. You’re falling for him.

“No,” she murmured beneath her breath.
I barely know the man.

Yes. You started falling for him back on the island. You know what you need to know.

And she knew him well enough to know that the chances of Matt Callahan losing his heart to her were about as good as those of the state of Texas deciding to outlaw high school football.

You’d best be careful, Torie Bradshaw. If you don’t watch yourself, you’ll be headed for a world of hurt.

She scrambled to her feet. “So, why are we going into town? Surely you’re not taking me to see your father?”

“Not hardly.” Matt’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “That’d be the proverbial final nail.”

In Branch Callahan’s coffin
, she silently completed. “So what’s the change in plan?”

“I can’t leave Brazos Bend now, not with Dad’s situation the way it is. I’ll call in some markers and get some other guys I know on your case.”

“Who? What will they be doing? Where will they go?”

“Look, let’s not get into all of that now,” he suggested, slipping into his deck shoes. “I’m hungry. Today is all-you-can-eat catfish at P3. I’d like to take you there for lunch.”

Catfish? I don’t think so.
“That’s all right. You have sandwich makings here. That’ll be fine.”

“Who wants a sandwich when they can have fried catfish?” he asked as he checked the knots in the dock lines. “You’re in for a treat. Admittedly, it’s not the best catfish I’ve ever had—you gotta go to Bill’s up in Waurika, Oklahoma, for that—but P3 comes in a close second. I promised myself while climbing a mountain in Pakistan that I’d have myself a P3 catfish meal at the first opportunity, and this is it.”

Eyew
. “I’ve never had catfish.”

He flashed her a grin. “You’ll love it.”

She decided to try another tack. “I’ve always thought Italian food was very sensual. Much more than seafood.”

“Catfish isn’t seafood.” Matt helped her from the boat onto the dock. “It is fresh, though. P3’s catch comes right out of a farm on this lake.”

“So we’re having catfish out of Possum Kingdom Lake. How appealing is that?” Her tone made it clear that to Torie, it was anything but appealing.

Matt laughed, but showed no sign of changing his mind. Still, she was glad to hear the laughter. He’d been so serious when he arrived, so on edge. She liked it that she could take the edge off for him. After all, he had saved her life, had he not? She enjoyed making him laugh.

Y
ou’re doing it again. Don’t go there, Bradshaw. You’re asking for trouble.

Right. Torie gave her head a shake and started up the walkway. She might like making him laugh, but she wouldn’t enjoy catfish. He was wrong about that. Catfish from Possum Kingdom. Ick. “Who would name a lake after semi-rodent road kill?”

Walking behind her, Matt replied, “Some fellow from Pennsylvania, the way I remember it. Story goes that back in the early nineteen hundreds when some Northerner moved to Mineral Wells to take the waters and got into the fur business. The cedar choppers from this part of the county brought him so many hides he called them ‘the boys from Possum Kingdom.’ The name stuck when they dammed the Brazos River back in the forties.”

“How unfortunate.”

“Now, don’t be snotty. Go put a shirt on. I need to touch base with Mark and Bill; then I’ll meet you at the truck and we’ll head into town.”

Obviously, there was no changing his mind. Sighing, Torie went up to the house, took a quick shower, and spent a moment in front of the closet debating which of her limited number of outfits was most appropriate for lunch at a place named P3. He was standing in the living room speaking with Bill Reynolds when she went back downstairs. He checked his watch impatiently and waited for her to join them.

“It’s been a pleasure, Torie,” Bill said, surprising her.

“You going somewhere?”

Matt said, “He got a call for another job ... something long-term. Since you’ll be staying in Brazos Bend for a while with me, I told him we’ll manage without him. I haven’t forgotten what you said about ... what was his name ... Bruno?”

Torie sensed a need to apply brakes. Things were changing too quickly for her comfort. Neither man appeared willing to listen to her questions or concerns, however, so she gave in, thanked Bill, then attempted to settle her account, only to learn that Matt had taken care of that for her. She brooded about that detail for a moment. It felt a little too much like she was being ... kept.

Mark Callahan walked out of the study, a manila file in his hand. It was the first time Torie had seen him since he shut himself in the room with a bottle of booze in his hand before the ambulance arrived for his father. “Here’s what I have on the boyfriend,” he said to Matt, showing no outward sign of inebriation. “He’s looking good to me.”

Maybe he’d dived into work rather than the bottle, Torie thought.

Matt glanced through the file. “Thanks, I’ll see that Luke gets it.”

“Hope you know what you’re doing, big brother,” Mark observed, giving Torie a quick glance.

Matt shrugged, then gestured for Torie to precede him out the door. As she walked to his truck, she asked him about Mark. “He has some issues concerning your father, doesn’t he?”

“We all have some issues with Branch.”

“But you and Luke went to the hospital. Mark shut himself in the study.”

“I’m sure he’s had enough of hospitals for a while.”

As they climbed into the truck, Torie reflected that the day had certainly taken some unexpected turns. Of course, unexpected was becoming the norm of late. Stalkers, explosions, heart attacks. Boat sex. She’d never had boat sex in her life, and now she had it twice this week.

“We need to make a quick stop at the vineyard,” he told her, turning toward the shortcut over the hill. “I need to catch Les up on what’s happened today.”

Upon their arrival at Four Brothers it quickly became apparent that his partner had already heard the news. “If you’ve come to give me grief about sending that old man over to the lake house, then you can save your breath. He was determined to find you and your brothers. Knew you were around here somewhere.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Matt said.

“I’m not,” Les snapped back, though it was obvious to Torie that he was indeed worried. “As if having that old man show up wasn’t enough, starting an hour ago, your harem returned in force. Funeral food,” he grumbled. “They’re bringing us funeral food now, and the old sonofagun isn’t even dead. Three green bean casseroles in the last half hour. I’m not getting a bit of work done. You better do something about this, Callahan, or I’m going to tell them they need to take their goodies over to the lake house.”