Matt—The Callahan Brothers (Brazos Bend Book 2) by Emily March Page B

forward with your life.”
    “Doing what?” Matt exploded, guilt churning inside him. Les didn’t know his part in John’s death. Nobody did. Nobody would understand. “Riding a desk at Langley?”
    “Why not? You’re closer to forty than thirty. Field ops is a young man’s game. It was bound to happen sooner or later.”
    “Yeah. Well.” Matt curled his lip. “It’d be later rather than sooner if not for That Damned Woman.”
    Torie Bradshaw. Anger churned through Matt. The woman had wreaked havoc on his life. He’d endured three operations on his leg because of her. Spent months in grueling rehabilitation that failed to return him to one hundred percent despite his and his doctors’ best efforts. The injury had cost him two informers he’d spent more than a year cultivating and effectively set back Uncle Sam’s infiltration of a particularly nasty human-smuggling ring out of Turkey for months.
    Worst of all, Torie Bradshaw cost him Ćurković. Matt had missed a golden opportunity when the S.O.B. showed himself in Vienna. At the time, Matt had been laid up with an infection following his second surgery.
    And as if all that weren’t bad enough, to add insult to injury, she haunted his sleep. At least once a month he’d wake up hard as a railroad spike after dreaming about the witch. It was as if the picture of Torie Bradshaw and her string bikini was imprinted on his mind, and he could do nothing to erase it.
    “Speaking of women,” Les said, interrupting Matt’s black thoughts, “another one of ‘‘em called here yesterday looking for you. I told her you’d be back today.”
    “What! Why’d you do that?”
    “Because I’m not your social secretary, that’s why. You’ve got to do something about this harem of yours, Matthew. They won’t leave me the hell alone. One of them drops by nearly every day hoping to catch you here. And the phone calls! The message machine filled up the first week after you left, so now they call and call and call until I give in and answer. I tried leaving it off the hook, but that just gives them more of an excuse to come out here.”
    Matt dropped back into his chair. “Remind me to kick Luke’s ass next time I see him. This is my brother’s fault.”
    “How’s that?”
    “He got married. Made the women in town think it’s open season on Callahan brothers.”
    “But you’re the only Callahan within a hundred miles of Brazos Bend.”
    “That’s the problem.” Matt’s expression went glum.
    “It’s been my problem and I’m tired of it,” Les fired back. “I expect you to deal with it while you’re here. Understand? Tell them you’re attached, celibate, gay. I don’t care. I just want them to leave me the hell alone.”
    “I’ll take care of it,” Matt replied, grimacing. At least that would be one good thing about choosing a desk job over retirement to grow grapes. He wouldn’t have to worry about the Brazos Bend babe parade.
    Wanting to get his mind off troublemaking women, he asked Les how the season was progressing in the vineyard. The two men spent the next twenty minutes discussing pump troubles, the flea beetles that showed up on the yellow sticky square at the end of an experimental row of Sangiovese, and the weather forecast for the rest of the week. Matt did more listening than discussing. He knew the wine market exceptionally well, but when it came to actually growing grapes and making magic in the winery, he had a lot to learn.
    “What does a flea beetle look like?” he asked his partner.
    Les shook his head in disgust. “I swear. How is it that you grew up in West Texas and you don’t know a leafhopper from a nematode?” Standing, he strolled for the door, saying, “Come with me, grasshopper, and I’ll teach you a bit about bugs.”
    Outside the winery, Les motioned for Matt to climb into the driver’s seat of Les’s modified golf cart. Then he pointed toward the section of grapevines planted on the hillside. “Take us up