A Case For Trust (6 page)

Pippa
did
laugh out loud as she grabbed some fresh clothes and headed into the bathroom. From the startled look on his face, it was clearly an uncommon occurrence for Justin to be expected to sing—or cook—for his supper. But Pippa was tired, and had been looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the television. If Justin wanted her help, the least he could do was fix her some dinner.

When she returned to the kitchen twenty minutes later there was a mess of cracked eggshells and spilt milk on the counter, but the delicious aroma of freshly-cooked eggs forced a ravenous growl from her stomach. Justin was looking frazzled—so many new expressions on his handsome face in one encounter, she mused—and his dark suit pants were smeared with butter on one hip where he'd clearly leaned across the plate of buttered toast.

‘I can't flip an omelette,' he grumbled. ‘They're scrambled.'

‘They look and smell terrific,' Pippa said soothingly as she carried two plates heaped with fluffy, steaming eggs to the dining table. Justin followed with the toast and their wine glasses. At one end of the table he had arranged dozens of prints, and as Pippa made to pick one up, he scowled.

‘No buttery fingers on my photos, please. We'll look at them after dinner.'

Pippa hid a smile at his crotchety demeanour. Who'd have thought the über-cool Justin Mason would get so worked up over some happy snaps?

‘Tell me what you're working on,' she said instead, and his confident barrister's persona fell comfortably into place as he regaled her with the details of his afternoon's triumph in court.

As he spoke, Pippa watched his animated features and wondered again why she didn't find him attractive. God knows, Justin Mason always had a queue of women lining up for his attentions. Pippa had seen the evidence every time she'd met him for coffee in town: the covert glances from women in neighbouring seats; the blatant overtures from waitstaff of both sexes. He didn't leave her cold, exactly. Rather, Pippa felt fondness for Justin, had been gentle if firm in her rebuff of his first half-hearted pass at her all those months ago where she might otherwise have been outraged.

His anxiety to return her attention to his photos, once they'd polished off the eggs and rinsed both plates and hands, was endearing, and Pippa teased him just a little as she poured him another wine before finally taking pity on him.

‘Right-oh, then. Show me what you've got.'

***

Pippa grimaced ruefully as the needles of dawn light pierced her bedroom shutters and urged her to get up. She rarely drank alcohol, kept it at home purely for entertaining, and even the single glass she'd had the night before during Justin's visit had left her heavy-headed this morning. Justin, she was sure, would be feeling very much worse.

His informal cataloguing of his photography assignment had taken the rest of the bottle of wine and he'd shrugged carelessly when Pippa had pointed out he wouldn't be fit to drive home. He'd started on another, and the conversation had shifted to Lucy. Justin hadn't seen his former fiancée since the wedding of their friends nearly a month earlier, and he was missing her. He'd dated again, he confided to Pippa, but the thrill of the chase had palled. He was tired of the superficial conversations and the frenetic clubbing. Beautiful though they were, sexy as they were, none of the women he'd dated had stirred him, or even interested him.

None of them were Lucy.

Pippa had smiled gently and probed: was it his heart talking, or the wine? Justin's indignation had been instant and convincing. Lucy was the woman of his heart. Lucy was the woman he loved. Lucy was his future, if only he could persuade her to take him back.

By the time Pippa had piled Justin into a taxi and sent him home, promising his beloved sports car would remain unmolested in her driveway until he was sober enough to collect it, they had devised a plan for wooing Lucy that Pippa thought might just work. As long as Justin's head wasn't too sore to remember it.

She had a wedding booking that afternoon, a delightful elderly couple separated in their youth by strict parents, who had both gone on to marry other people, to raise families, to be widowed, and to rediscover each other in the sunset of their lives. The ceremony was all planned; the paperwork prepared. She had a few hours to kill before she had to get ready, and for once, she decided, she could afford to stay in bed a while. She snuggled under her sheets and quickly slipped back into sleep.

A rapid, relentless pounding on her front door that she'd dreamed was a jackhammer breaking up the concrete under her old carport finally woke her from a heavy slumber. Her eyes swivelled to her bedside clock: eleven-thirty! When had she
ever
slept so late on a Saturday? The fast hammering had abated into an equally relentless and somehow more ominous slow thud, as if somebody was punching the aged timber of her door with both fists.

‘I'm coming!' she yelled, scrambling into the threadbare dressing gown she'd promised herself she was going to replace as soon as she won her next decent landscaping contract. She chanced a quick glance in the mirror and rolled her eyes at the spaghetti mess of red-gold curls and the panda rings of mascara under her eyes. Not much she could do about how she looked now; but whoever her visitor was, she needed to get rid of them quickly so she could shower and dress for the wedding.

She wrenched open the front door and immediately cursed herself for not looking first through the lace-draped window beside it. Matt Mason was on her doorstep, and he wasn't happy. His eyes flickered contemptuously from her sleep-mussed head to her bare toes, which curled under his inspection into the hardwood timbers as if they could dig an escape route through the floor.

‘Sorry to disturb you,' he drawled, looking not the least bit sorry. ‘Are you finished with my brother yet?'

‘Your brother? You mean Justin? What makes you think Justin is here?'

‘His car. Parked outside your house.' Matt's tone was soft, reasonable, without inflection, but a shiver roiled up Pippa's back at the menace in the glare he'd fixed on her. She peered around his massive shoulders; sure enough, Justin's car was still parked where he'd left it the night before. Oh, hell.

‘He's not here.'

Matt snorted at her denial, grasped her shoulders beneath his capable hands and lifted her out of his path as he strode into her house and down the hallway, Pippa squawking as she chased close behind. He threw open one door after another until he found her bedroom; paused at the doorway staring at the empty bed before moving into the room and tugging open the wardrobe doors.

‘Matt, this is ridiculous,' Pippa protested, but he ignored her, brushing her aside again as he headed for the bathroom. ‘You have no right—!'

‘So sue me,' he threw over his shoulder, thrusting aside the old floral shower curtain and finding nobody. ‘Justin!' he roared. ‘Have the guts to face me, dammit.
Who are you calling?
'

‘The police,' Pippa told him, as calmly as she could, though her fingers trembled on the phone buttons. ‘You have no right to barge into my home and throw your weight around. Who the hell do you think you are?' She'd misdialled. With a curse, she cancelled the call and started again, but found the phone removed peremptorily from her fingers and shoved into the pocket of Matt's chinos.

‘Don't bother. I'm going. I told you what would happen if you messed with us.' He raised his voice again. ‘Justin! When you get your clothes back on, get your arse home immediately! There are things you and I need to sort out.'

‘
I
told
you
, Justin's not here. Give me back my phone, please.'

He regarded her steadily, silently; Pippa barely breathed as she waited. Around them, the only sounds were the muttered groans of the corrugated iron roof as it stretched and twisted under the late morning sun.

‘Explain the car.'

‘Look, I'm not some bloody miscreant you're interrogating in court! You can't—'

‘
Explain the car
.'

Pippa thrust a frustrated hand through her curls. She didn't have time for this! Damn the Masons and their high-handed sense of entitlement. But Matt Mason was not budging, and she had a wedding to perform.

‘Fine. He
was
here. He came over last night. He was here a couple of hours, he had a few drinks, and I made him leave his car here and take a cab home.'

‘Why?'

‘
Why?
So he wouldn't drink and drive, of course!'

‘Why was he here?'

‘To get my advice.'

‘On what?'

‘A personal matter.'

‘
About what?
' The tone was clipped, impatient, demanding. But Pippa had already divulged all that she could. Still shy about his new hobby, Justin had made her promise to tell nobody about his photography course; equally she'd sworn not to share with anybody his plans for winning back Lucy. She had nothing more to offer Matt Mason.

‘It's really none of your business, Matt,' she said at last. ‘I've given an undertaking to Justin to keep his confidence. You're going to have to ask him yourself. But do you really think it's necessary to micromanage your brother's business like this? He's a grown man, making his own choices, his own mistakes—'

Her tirade choked off abruptly as Pippa found her mouth effectively closed by another, which overwhelmed, invaded, dominated. She tried to wrench her head away, found it clamped in place under the assault by one vice-like hand around the back of her head. The hard lips had gentled, seeking now instead of plundering; the plunging tongue was sweeping now, tasting out the faint trace of blood that had lined her bottom lip when his mouth had mashed it against her teeth. The grip at her head relaxed, the hand gently sliding to her nape, caressing, tugging the curls there as Matt deepened the kiss again, thrillingly, and this time, when his tongue slid on hers, she met it with a tentative touch of her own, her toes curling again against the bare timber floor boards, warmth pooling at the juncture of her thighs.

And then she bit him.

Abruptly she was free, and she couldn't tell if she'd pushed him away or the reverse. The metallic taste in her mouth was his blood now, and her eyes flew, horrified, to his curiously blank face.

‘What did you do that for!'

She was never again sure if her blurted demand was meant for him or for herself, but he examined the finger he'd pressed against his tongue then looked at her.

‘I have absolutely no idea.' The blank expression had turned quizzical momentarily before returning to its usual hard lines. ‘But it was a mistake. I apologise.'

He strode to the front door and stopped, ran his hand feelingly up the timber panel as if it held some secret his fingers were determined to uncover. Unaccountably, Pippa shivered. He didn't look at her again, but his low voice carried with a tone she thought almost regretful. ‘You might be less enamoured of Justin if you knew what he was really like. And if you were smarter, you'd be more interested in preserving your own business than worrying about his.'

And then he was gone.

Pippa closed the door behind him and slumped against it, drained. Between them, the older Mason brothers had wrecked her Saturday morning. But she had no time to stand around reflecting. She had a wedding to get to!

She showered, dressed, made up her face and styled her hair in record time; grabbed her briefcase and checked to ensure it contained everything she needed, then hurried out to the ute. She grimaced at the mud coating its back tyres—she'd meant to hose those down this morning, before her sleep-in turned her plans to dust—then climbed up into the cabin, eased her silk skirt crease-free over her knees, pumped the accelerator twice and turned the key in the ignition.

Nothing.

No cough, no choke, no reluctant sputtering followed by familiar rattles and hums. Pippa's heart seemed to lodge itself somewhere in the lower reaches of her entrails. She took a deep breath, held it, turned the key again.

Nothing.

Don't panic
. There was still time. She'd call roadside assistance, plead an emergency and be on the road quickly, all being well. She dragged her handbag into her lap; rummaged with increasing impatience through the pockets. Where was her goddamned phone?

Oh no. Oh no no no no no
no
!

Of course. It was in Matt Mason's goddamned pocket.

For the first time, she regretted her decision to do without a landline phone at home. When she'd first moved into her house the telecoms company had said it would take six weeks to connect her; in the intervening time, she'd discovered she could manage perfectly well without a landline and cancelled the phone order to save money. She'd never needed another phone—until now.

She bounced her head on the steering wheel in time with her fist, as if the movement would remind the engine what it was supposed to do. She tried the ignition again, but knew even as she clicked it over it was pointless. The car was dead. For a minute, she wished she was, too.

She could not miss this wedding. She would beg Mr Bates next door to use his phone to call for a taxi. The ceremony was in the beautiful bayside suburb of Cleveland, the better part of an hour away, and the return fare would virtually wipe out her afternoon's payment, but so be it. She would not let her clients down.

Loading herself up with her gear, she was halfway through the front gate when the sight of the black Audi pulling up in her driveway brought her up short.
Now what?
She didn't even wait for Matt Mason to uncurl his lean length from the car, exploding in a fury of frustration and anger.

‘Whatever it is, you can forget it! I don't care about your petty family squabbles! I'm late!
Leave me alone!
'

It took Pippa a moment of breathless heaving following her outburst to notice: Matt was holding out her mobile phone. She snatched it out of his open palm. ‘Thank you.' Her mutter was just loud enough for him to hear as she turned away and searched for the number of the taxi company. She ignored his continued brooding presence as she dialled; swore as she heard the engaged signal; disconnected the call and dialled again; swore again when it was still busy.