A Case For Trust by Gracie MacGregor Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Sorry to disturb you,’ he drawled, looking not the least bit sorry. ‘Are you finished with my brother yet?’
    â€˜Your brother? You mean Justin? What makes you think Justin is here?’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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