A Case For Trust by Gracie MacGregor Read Free Book Online

Pippa’s grin transformed her weary face. ‘I’d love to help if I can. I’ll give you a call once I have a better idea of my end date here.’
    Pippa drove home on a high which diminished rapidly when she saw Justin Mason’s fire-engine-red sportscar parked at a careless angle outside her house. She hadn’t seen or heard from either of the Mason brothers for more than three weeks, but the memory of Matt Mason’s 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.
    â€˜Make yourself right at home, why don’t you. What are you doing here?’
    Justin was unfazed by the lack of welcome. ‘Hey, beautiful. You look like you’ve had a hard day.’
    Pippa didn’t bother glancing down at her clothes. She knew she was filthy. If the Mason men insisted on turning up uninvited and unannounced, they’d just have to put up with her however they found her. She sank aching muscles into the lounger alongside Justin and sighed her exhaustion.
    â€˜I have indeed had a hard day. We don’t 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€˜I’d love a wine.’
    Pippa sighed again, thought about getting up, waved her hand at the kitchen behind. ‘Help yourself. If it’s going to take a drink to find out why you’re here, you’d better pour me one, too.’
    Justin returned only moments later with two chilled glasses, his familiarity with her kitchen causing Pippa a momentary flash of unease. They weren’t that close, she reassured herself. Usually when they’d 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 he’d 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 hadn’t felt from him before. ‘Justin? Whatever it is, just say it.’
    He abruptly thrust his phone at her. ‘Here. I wanted to show you these.’
    In the fading twilight, Pippa could barely make out the image on his phone. ‘What am I looking at? It’s pretty hard to see when it’s dark, and the picture’s small.’
    Justin snatched the phone from her, fiddled again with its settings, handed it back to her. ‘It’s 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.’
    Pippa raised an eyebrow. ‘Justin, I know nothing about photography—’
    â€˜But you know about plants. The assignment was to come up with a series that might be suitable for a gardening magazine.’ His smile was sheepish. ‘I just took a bunch of snaps of things I liked, but I don’t know what I’ve got and I don’t really know how to put them together in a series.’
    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