Matt—The Callahan Brothers (Brazos Bend Book 2) (39 page)

He suffered during the long minute it took her to find her voice. “What in the world are you doing? Have you lost your mind? Parasailing? With a dog and your bad knee?”

He ignored all that. “I shouldn’t have put your name out for the stalker to find without getting your okay. I was a fool not to trust you. I was an even bigger fool not to trust myself. I knew I was falling for you and it scared me, so I did what I did the way I did it to put some distance between us.”

“You, scared?” she interrupted, obviously shocked by what she was seeing and hearing. He took it as a good sign. “Mr. Superspy?”

“Yellow-striped, panic-struck, like-a-rabbit-in-a-coyote’s-mouth scared. It’s five thousand four hundred and thirty-four miles between Brazos Bend and here,” he continued. “I figure that is still closer than the distance I put between us by betraying you the way I did. I was wrong and I’m sorry and I swear never to do it again if you will give me another chance.”

“Oh, Matt.” Tears pooled in her eyes before she closed them. “It would be so easy for me to just cave in to the fantasy. But you hurt me.”

“I know and I’m sorry. I’m so damned sorry. I love you, Torie. With everything I am, everything I ever could be, I love you. I want to make a life with you. It is not a fantasy.”

“How can I be sure?”

Then he did something James Bond would never do. Matt Callahan sank to his knees before her. “Because I’m not 007. I won’t leave. I refuse to leave. I love you, Torie Bradshaw. Only you. Always you. Forgive me. Love me back. Marry me. I beg you.”

For a long moment, she didn’t react and Matt felt his heart sink from his throat to his knees.

“Oh Matthew.” She grabbed his arm and tried to pull him up. “Get up. You’re going to ruin your tux. It’s Armani, isn’t it? Oh, I can’t believe this.”

Her babbling gave Matt a glimmer of hope. If she were totally unreceptive, she’d have let him bleed out on the sand in front of her. She’d have been cold and calm and collected like she was when she left him.

“Why did you do this? Why did you go to all this ... this ... I don’t even know what to call it? You flew in on a parasail, for heaven’s sake. Wearing a tuxedo!”

“It’s a hang glider, not a parasail.”

“And you brought a dog!”

“I thought bringing her a boyfriend might make Gigi like me.”

The laugh that escaped her mouth was the most hopeful sign yet. “Where did you get this stuff? An Omega Seamaster, a cigarette safecracker?”

“You can buy anything on the Internet.”

“Even this?” She drew a visible breath, then held out her hand, his ring cradled in her palm. “The glass-shattering ring?”

He smiled and allowed all the love he felt for her to show in his eyes. “That, I bought at Tiffany’s in New York.”

“So it is real.” She swallowed hard. “It’s not a Bond gadget. It won’t shatter glass.”

“It’s more powerful than that, Torie. Depending on what you do with it, it can shatter my heart ... or make it whole. Your decision. Your choice.” He took the ring and brought up one knee so that he knelt in honor rather than supplication. Offering the ring back to her, he made the gamble of his life. “I love you, Torie Bradshaw. Will you marry me?”

For a long moment—a long, long, too long moment—she stood frozen and Matt felt his heart start to crumble to dust. But then she smiled. Her eyes teared and she sank to her knees in front of him. “I love you, Matt. Yes, I’ll marry you.”

Reverently, he took her left hand and slipped the ring onto her third finger. He turned her hand over and kissed her palm. A promise.

Then he captured her mouth with his and he kissed her with all the love and emotion that dwelled in his heart. A vow.

“Okay,” Torie said, a tremor in her voice, when he finally broke the kiss. “This is the most romantic moment ever. Better than
Doctor Zhivago
when Omar Sharif writes Julie Christie a poem at the country estate. Better than
An Affair to Remember
when Cary Grant walks into Deborah Kerr’s bedroom and sees that she bought the picture he’d painted. Holy cow, Matt. This is better than when Bogie tells Ingrid Bergman she has to get on the plane!”

Their gazes met and held as he yanked off his tie, stripped off his jacket, and tugged open his shirt. “What about
From Here to Eternity?
”

“The beach scene?” She licked her lips, her gaze following the path of his fingers. “I don’t know, Callahan. You’ll have to go a ways to improve on Burt Lancaster.”

“Oh, I’ve got that covered.” Standing, he pulled her to her feet with one hand even as he lowered her zipper with the other.

“How?” she asked, shuddering as her dress dropped to the ground.

His finger traced a path from her mouth downward, a feather-light caress over the velvet skin of her neck to the lush valley between her bare breasts, across the flat plane of her belly to the tiny strip of lace that remained the only thing she wore. “First, I get you wet.”

Epilogue

Soledad Island

If he catches me, I’m dead.

Torie Callahan took one more photograph of her husband—nude, sated, and sleeping on the sand. Irresistible.

This was elemental man. Battle scarred and beautiful, a perfect male animal in his natural state in a natural setting. Long and lean and powerful, he could have been a cat who’d padded out of the jungle behind him, come to the lagoon to quench his thirst or cool his heated body. Look at how the sweat glistens on his skin, running in rivulets across the bulge of his biceps.

She brought her camera to her face once more and adjusted the lens. What a sexy shot.

“If you don’t put that camera down, I swear, I’ll chuck it into the lagoon. Taking up porn photography now, Victoria?”

She lowered the camera and leered suggestively. “I could make you a star, Callahan.”

“I’d rather you make me a ham sandwich. I’m hungry.”

Laughing, she grabbed the picnic basket and set it beside him. “You make your own ham sandwich, Callahan. I have work to do.”

He sat up and dug around in the picnic basket, pulling out one of the ham sandwiches left over from yesterday’s wedding reception. “What work? You’re not supposed to work. We’re on our honeymoon.”

She held up the needle and thread she’d taken from the small emergency sewing kit she carried in her purse. “I have to mend my wedding gown. You tore it when you ripped it off of me last night.”

“Oh. Sorry, but it was necessary. You were taking too long.”

“All I needed was thirty seconds. It was a sarong, for heaven’s sake.”

“That’s the problem.” He took a bite of sandwich and swallowed it before adding, “Do you have a clue how delicious you looked in it? You tortured me for hours.”

“Hey, you have no one to blame but yourself. You’re the one who told Brazos Bend my wedding gown was a red sarong.”

“Yeah, but you added the sheer details.”

As Matt polished off his lunch, Torie smiled and went to work mending the rip in the carefully designed length of silk. When wrapped around her and tied at the breast, it combined enough solid cloth to make it acceptable to her father, who’d actually flown over from Afghanistan to give the bride away, and enough sheer fabric to please the bride, who’d worked very hard to “torture” her groom. “It wasn’t very nice of you to make Mark turn around during the ceremony, Matthew. You didn’t make Michael or Luke do it.”

“Hey, he deserved what he got. I caught him looking at you. Mike and Luke were too busy gawking at their own lush beauties to sneak a peek at mine.”

“Did I look lush?” She liked the idea.

“Not as lush as Helen and Maddie, but then you’re not seven months pregnant.”

“Maddie’s only five months.”

“Yeah, but she’s having twins, so she’s got a seven-months lush going on.”

Torie laughed and wrapped the mended sarong around herself, covering up the swimsuit she’d put back on following her own nap. “They did look gorgeous, didn’t they? Everything was beautiful. It was a perfect day. A perfect wedding. Even Les said so.”

“That’s because Branch wasn’t here.”

Torie sighed. “Now, Matt.”

“Don’t ‘now, Matt’ me. It was more important to have Mark here than Branch—even if he did goggle my bride.”

“I know. I just wish ... I’m so happy, Matt. I want everyone to be as happy as I am.”

He grabbed her hand and kissed it. “Be patient. If I’ve learned one thing over the past few years, it’s that wounds heal at their own pace and you’ve got to give them time.”

“You and Luke have made strides at making peace, but I’m afraid Branch’s time will run out before Mark’s wound heals.”

“If that’s the case, then Mark will have to deal with it.” Matt rolled to his feet, reached for his swim trunks, and changed the subject. “Sex, sleep, and a sandwich. Life just doesn’t get any better. What shall we do next? You want to go back to the boat and maybe pop in a DVD, or stay on the island for a while?”

“You and your DVDs. I swear, I’ve created a monster.” Torie glanced toward the luxurious oceangoing yacht that would be their home for the next two months while she photographed the island’s underground caverns for—and she still couldn’t believe this one—
National Geographic
. She knew better than to believe Matt’s claim of innocence in orchestrating the job offer, but since the idea had appealed to her and solved the question of where to begin working their way down her To Do list, she let him get away with it.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet, then slapped her butt and flashed her an unrepentant grin. “Oh, don’t be a spoilsport. I told you it’s research.”

“For your To Do list.”

“Yep.”

The To Do List had been Torie’s solution to Matt’s career debate. Once he’d figured out that the Langley job wasn’t for him, he’d left the CIA, and while he wasn’t ready to give up his involvement with Four Brothers, neither was he ready to become a full-time vintner. Mark’s offer of a part-time position with his private investigation firm had appealed to Matt, but didn’t entirely solve the problem.

The man remained an adrenaline junkie, and Torie recognized it even if he didn’t. That was when she’d had the idea for them to work on her To Do list. After all, a good seventy percent of the items involved a rush of one sort or another. She’d suggested that they make Four Brothers their base of operations, with Matt pitching in to help Mark when and where it suited both brothers. But for two months of every year, Torie wanted to work on crossing off items on her To Do list.

Matt had loved the idea—with the caveat that he be allowed a To Do list of his own. That’s when the DVDs began showing up. What did James Bond movies have to do with what Matt wanted to do before he died?

“Okay, Callahan, you told me to wait until after the wedding.” She scooped her sunglasses off her beach towel and slipped them on. “Well, it’s after the wedding. Are you finally going to show me your list?”

“Hmm ...” He dragged his hand across his jaw, scruffy with a day-old beard. “I guess I probably should. After all, since we spent the morning fulfilling requirements for your Number Three, it is my turn.”

Torie couldn’t help but smile. She could now mark “To have sex with a man she loved in broad daylight on a secluded tropical beach” off her To Do list with a flourish.

“Let’s see it, Callahan. Where’s that notebook you’ve been carrying around with you?”

Now he scratched the back of his neck. “Okay. I hope you’re ready for it.”

Torie knew what to expect from her adrenaline junkie. Of course. Stunts. Now that he wouldn’t have the field agent’s constant supply of dangerous situations, Matt would want to turn to fast cars and faster boats. He’d want to take up skeleton as a sport and fling himself down mountains. He’d want to deep sea dive and jump out of planes. He’d want to ski down an Alp on a broken ski, never mind his bad knee.

And her job would be to grit her teeth and smile. “I guess I knew what I was getting into. I asked for it.”

“Yes, you honestly did.” He handed her the notebook.

The page was divided into two columns. The word “Places” headed the first column. Torie’s gaze skimmed over them. In a lifeboat. On a roof. In a doctor’s office? A hotel room in Cuba. A hotel room in Hamburg. A hotel room in Istanbul. A hotel room in Venice.

She began to get the picture.

A hot tub. A speedboat. A train. “A space capsule?”

“That one might take some work.”

Her gaze shifted to the second column. It was headed by the words “To Do.” She gave him a scolding look over the top of her sunglasses before she began to read. “To Do ... Honey Ryder, Jill Masterson, Domino, Miss Caruso, Mary Goodnight.”

He waggled his brows at the last name. “I think I can rent Scaramanga’s junk. It’s built in the traditional Chinese style, fully decked out. Powered by wind or air.”

Torie hid her laugh by clearing her throat, then continued. “Patricia Fearing, Kissy Suzuki, Dr. Molly Warmflash.”

“A man’s gotta have his annual checkup.”

“So let me get this straight. Your wish list before you leave this earth is ‘‘To Do’ all the Bond girls?”

“Actually, I’ve left a couple off the list. May Day looks too much like a man and the thing Xenia Onatopp does with her thighs scares me.”