Pippaâs grin transformed her weary face. âIâd love to help if I can. Iâll give you a call once I have a better idea of my end date here.â
Pippa drove home on a high which diminished rapidly when she saw Justin Masonâs fire-engine-red sportscar parked at a careless angle outside her house. She hadnât seen or heard from either of the Mason brothers for more than three weeks, but the memory of Matt Masonâs warning, of her unwilling promise, was still fresh. Almost reflexively her eyes darted along both sides of the street, checking for a black Audi. Her relief at the quiet, empty road was almost as great as her annoyance with the elder Mason. How dare he make her feel nervous of receiving visitors he might not approve? At her own home!
There was no sign of Justin, in his car or in her front yard, and Pippa strode down the hallway to the back of her house, unlocked the back door and found him casually ensconced in a lounger on the back verandah, long legs propped atop the railing and the familiar, remorseless grin splintering his heartbreakingly handsome features.
âMake yourself right at home, why donât you. What are you doing here?â
Justin was unfazed by the lack of welcome. âHey, beautiful. You look like youâve had a hard day.â
Pippa didnât bother glancing down at her clothes. She knew she was filthy. If the Mason men insisted on turning up uninvited and unannounced, theyâd just have to put up with her however they found her. She sank aching muscles into the lounger alongside Justin and sighed her exhaustion.
âI have indeed had a hard day. We donât all get to spend our time playing fancy dress in robes and wigs and lunching at the Brisbane Club. What are you doing here?â
âIâd love a wine.â
Pippa sighed again, thought about getting up, waved her hand at the kitchen behind. âHelp yourself. If itâs going to take a drink to find out why youâre here, youâd better pour me one, too.â
Justin returned only moments later with two chilled glasses, his familiarity with her kitchen causing Pippa a momentary flash of unease. They werenât that close, she reassured herself. Usually when theyâd met they had done so in a city coffee shop; it was only that one night when Justin had been held up late in court that heâd visited her at home rather than keeping her waiting in the city.
She wiped the condensation from the glass across her brow, felt its cool relief relaxing her frown. Justin was fiddling with his phone, his wine sitting ignored on the table beside him. There was a skittishness, an air of nervous tension about him that Pippa hadnât felt from him before. âJustin? Whatever it is, just say it.â
He abruptly thrust his phone at her. âHere. I wanted to show you these.â
In the fading twilight, Pippa could barely make out the image on his phone. âWhat am I looking at? Itâs pretty hard to see when itâs dark, and the pictureâs small.â
Justin snatched the phone from her, fiddled again with its settings, handed it back to her. âItâs my first assignment from my photography course. If you scroll, you can see the rest. There are about thirty shots there, and I need to cull them down to a dozen. I thought you could help me choose.â
Pippa raised an eyebrow. âJustin, I know nothing about photographyââ
âBut you know about plants. The assignment was to come up with a series that might be suitable for a gardening magazine.â His smile was sheepish. âI just took a bunch of snaps of things I liked, but I donât know what Iâve got and I donât really know how to put them together in a series.â
Pippa was scrolling through the photos, still struggling to make out details. The shots were dark, with gloomy, blurry backgrounds offset by highlit foreground details. But she could identify the
Learning to Kill: Stories