A Case For Trust (25 page)

‘I
wish
you would listen to me,' Pippa burst out. ‘It is none of your business. Not any more. It never really was. I wish you would just leave me alone.'

‘I can't do that.'

‘Why, Matt? Why can't you do that?'

He turned away from her cool regard. ‘I feel responsible.'

‘Well, don't. I'm absolving you of any responsibility. I was the doofus who lied on her application form. You were just doing your job.'

‘No. I wasn't. I had it in for you, and your application received more attention than the average application would. You can mount a credible case for discrimination.'

‘I can't imagine your client would be very thrilled about that.'

He shrugged. ‘We'll lose their business. But I have to set things right for you. I know Eleanor offered you a loan, advance payment of a retainer, to keep your landscaping business going. You should accept that. She really wants your expertise. She'll be devastated if you go.'

‘That's very kind. But I've designed her garden specifically so it doesn't need a lot of maintenance. And anyway, landscape gardeners are a dime a dozen. I can give her some recommendations.'

‘It's not just about the garden. She's grown fond of you. She enjoys your company.'

‘And so the retainer is for what, exactly? A paid companion for your mother? That's an insult to us both. Eleanor doesn't need paid company, and I don't need money so badly that I'd charge your mother for my conversation. I knew you Masons were old money, with old-fashioned concepts to match, but that's practically medieval!'

Matt cut off a profanity, shaking his head. He hadn't put so much as a dent in that icy disdain, and it was clear he knew it. ‘Okay, I get it. You don't have to go on with it. She was—
we
were—just trying to help.'

‘Oh yeah? And what other grand ideas have you hatched between you for helping me?'

‘Well, this house contract, for example. I could get that cancelled—'

‘That's the last thing that will help me. I need to pay the bank—'

‘I'll get the contract cancelled, and
I'll
lend you the money. You can repay the bank in full, and then if it makes you feel better, we can draw up a legal contract for you to repay me instead of the bank. Exactly the same terms as you had before.'

Pippa shook her head in wonder. ‘My god, you're really something.' She saw the slow smile spread across Matt's face and slapped it down with alacrity. ‘Jesus,
no
! That wasn't a compliment! Seriously, what planet are you from? What century? You think you can just wave your Mason money around and make everything right again? You think because your mother wants her pet gardener on tap, you can just buy me out? And what do you get out of the deal? Is it just sex I'm supposed to provide as interest, or would you need me to throw in some housekeeping as well? You Masons are unbelievable.'

‘You're deliberately misunderstanding me. We were only trying to help—'

Pippa had had enough. More than enough. If this was the last time she was to see Matt Mason, she didn't want any more scars from the encounter. For either of them. Her tone was gentle, but rock hard in its intent. ‘Look, Matt, let's just stop it there. The very idea is preposterous. Now, why don't you tell me why you're here, so we can put an end to this farce? I've got a two-week contract settlement and I have packing to do.'

Matt sighed deeply, wearily, and leaned back against the verandah post, his eyes on the fretwork above his head. ‘Eleanor told me you were leaving. I just wanted to see you, to …'

Pippa jutted her chin out a little further, preparing for the insult. ‘To what, Matt? To screw me? One last fuck, for old time's sake?'

He shook his head sadly. ‘Please don't keep doing that. Please don't denigrate what we felt for each other.'

Her composure had fled again, and Pippa took a deep breath, two, to calm her voice, control her trembling fury so she could challenge his appeal without weeping. ‘What we felt for each other? From what I can gather, you've felt a healthy chunk of lust mixed in with jealousy of your younger brother and rolled up with some bizarre feudal urge to play out your lord-of-the-manor tendencies with your mother's hired help.'

‘Stop it, Philippa, that's not true.'

‘That's not true? Then tell me, Matt, what is true? What did we feel for each other?'

‘You loved me!'

The force of the shock smacked Pippa so hard in the solar plexus, she had to grip the iron filigree beneath her clenched fingers to prevent herself doubling over.

‘Please don't deny it. You loved me. It wasn't the sex that brought me back night after night. It was knowing you loved me.'

Pippa called up every inch of pride she had in her, straightened her spine, met his eye. ‘I don't deny it. I did love you. In spite of your distrust, your accusations, your threats, even in spite of your betrayal, I loved you. More fool me. You know, I'd have done almost anything to stay in your life, to have you stay in my bed. It's been a salutary lesson, Matt, on just how much I'm like my mother, no matter how hard I've tried not to be. I was prepared to put up with pretty much anything, any amount of appalling behaviour from you, all in the desperate hope you'd eventually love me back.'

‘I did love you back.'

Pippa snorted and pushed away from the table.

‘Philippa, I did love you back. I didn't want to. I don't deny I fought it. I have my own family examples of relationships to terrorise myself with, just as bad as yours. But in the end I realised it was a lost cause. I couldn't help loving you. I still can't. I love you. I would do anything, literally anything—liquidate my assets, abandon my client, destroy my reputation—to undo what I did to you. I've wracked my brain trying to come up with ways to fix things between us; you've rejected every one. So please, tell me. Tell me what it will take for you to love me again, for us to be together again, and I'll do it.'

Pippa released the breath she'd been holding, forced her fingers to let go of the table, rubbed her thumbs over the impressions the ironwork had left. Matt had just said he loved her. The moon and stars were within her reach.

She couldn't take them.

She looked up at the proud, suffering man in front of her. Stress had carved grooves in Matt's cheeks she longed to soothe. He looked quite as devastated as she felt. She didn't doubt his sincerity. She knew he believed every word he told her. But more than anything else she knew, she knew his love could hurt her, could destroy her. She had no protection against him, except what she gave herself. She had to make him understand.

‘Matt, it's not a question of love. It never has been, for us.' She saw his fists clench in response to her gentle, implacable words. ‘From the very beginning, it's been a question of trust. You've never trusted me, and you've given me more reasons than you can ever know for me not to trust you. I don't know how we get past that. I don't even know if I want to.'

She jerked away from the beseeching hand he held out to her. ‘I love you, yes, but I don't want to. I don't want to love anyone this much. It makes me weak. It makes me powerless. And you trying to control me, to buy me, just convinces me more than ever that the best thing I can do for myself is to get the hell away from you. I think it would be best for me if we didn't see each other again.'

Matt rested his head against his arm on the balustrade and stared out at the twilight. When he finally spoke, his voice was so low she had to strain to hear it.

‘Okay. Okay. If that's what you want. I realise I have no right to ask you anything at all, but will you please do one thing for me? Will you please talk to Marissa?'

‘I've already talked to Marissa.'

‘Will you please talk to her again? You have to see that you can't just stick your head in the sand over this insurance issue.'

‘Oh, is that what I'm doing?'

‘Yes, Philippa, that's precisely what you're doing. You've lost your business. You're losing your house. You've just lost a job because of this situation. Who knows when you'll be offered another one. Put your hatred of me aside for a minute and for god's sake listen. If you don't get some help, if you don't seek some advice, if you don't take some legal action to protect yourself and your financial record, you will never recover from this. The record will follow you around for the rest of your life. Everything you've done, everything you've worked for, will be for nothing. Please,
please
talk to Marissa.'

Pippa had no more fight left, and from his defeated posture, the resignation in his tone, it seemed Matt didn't either. It was over. It was done. She badly needed to sob, to wail, to scream over the ending. She badly needed to hold him.

She needed to let him go, and move on.

‘All right. I'll talk to Marissa.'

***

Marissa picked up on the second ring.

‘She's going to call you. You can't have spent all those years in law school for nothing. Find a solution. But it has to be genuine or she'll never go for it. Find a loophole. Find
something
.'

‘But you're the commercial law genius …' Marissa protested.

Matt had already hung up the phone.

***

Marissa had been silent a long time, poring over the file. They'd been at it for what seemed like days, though the government-issue wall clock Pippa had fixed her gaze on insisted she'd been there just over one hour.

‘Why didn't you disclose it?' Marissa's abrupt question startled Pippa.

‘Sorry?'

‘The family history of alcoholism. Why didn't you disclose it?'

Pippa felt the blush of shame creep up her face. It was a fair question, and Marissa was trying to help. But she was tired, and frustrated, and in spite of herself, defensive.

‘I didn't see how it was relevant. Yes, my father was an alcoholic, but that doesn't mean I am. If anything, his drinking caused the opposite tendency in me; I rarely drink at all. And I was ashamed of my father and his alcoholism and I didn't want to be tarred with his brush and I don't believe there
is
a family history of alcoholism. There's his history and there's mine, and when it comes to alcohol they're entirely different. Anyway I thought it was none of their business so I lied. I didn't disclose it.'

‘That's an interesting argument.'

‘Well, perhaps you can come up with a better one, but that's the truth.'

‘No, I mean it. That's an interesting argument. How is alcoholism relevant to this insurance anyway? Health insurance I can perhaps understand, but mortgage insurance? Public liability insurance? If there was a liability claim and they found out you'd been drinking they just wouldn't pay on the claim. There's no actual risk to them in accepting your premium because they have so many protections built into their policy conditions. You were within your rights not to answer the question about your family's history with alcoholism, but they forced you to lie about it.'

‘Forced me to lie? How did they force me?'

‘It was an online application, right? Here, see, here's the printout. Here's the list of all the medical conditions they required you to answer to, and they've only allowed you two answers: yes or no.'

‘And I said no, which was a lie.'

‘Yes, but they didn't give you a choice, Philippa!'

Pippa tried to tamp down the frustration vying with her bewilderment. ‘Of course they did. They gave me the choice to tell the truth.'

‘No. No. They had no right to require an answer from you
at all
. There is no scientific agreement that alcoholism is even genetic, let alone that a family history of alcoholism increases your risk from an insurance perspective. They had no right to even ask you that question, and no right to force you to answer yes or no. But you had no choice; to progress to the next question in the online application, you had to give an answer to the question they shouldn't have even asked. Hell, half of these medical conditions they've listed have no bearing on your insurability. And their argument now isn't about your father's alcoholism; it's about your failure to disclose it when you had every right not to. We could make a counter-claim under the privacy provisions, demonstrating they've been collecting private information about their clients they had no legal right to, and turn the whole thing back on them.'

Marissa slapped the file shut with a pound of satisfaction. ‘We're going to challenge the validity of their application form. We're going to argue they collected information they had no right to collect, specifically to avoid paying out legitimate claims. And we're going to win.'

Marissa sat back with a great heave of satisfaction. Pippa was still cautious. ‘Will the insurance company fight us?'

‘Probably. But if I make the case strongly enough, they might decide to accept your claim and settle. There'll be some assessment of risk against future claims, and the thing is, if we take this to court, it will open up the floodgates and they'll have all sorts of claims coming at them for wrongful judgements and exclusion of payouts. We could sue them for compensation for loss of your house, business disruption and professional reputation. Your claim's likely to come in at around the million mark, and they won't want too many more like that. They'll want to settle quietly. I'll have to seek some advice about what other terms we might get away with, but let's start with that, anyway. So what do you think? Do I have your permission to proceed?'

For the first time in what seemed like a very long time, Pippa felt a gurgle of hope erupt somewhere at the bottom of her belly. She nodded, slowly. ‘Thank you. Yes. If you really think my claim is legitimate, if you think it will work, then yes, please go ahead.'