A Case For Trust

by Gracie MacGregor

  It wasn’t always that way, of course. Justin had played out his bad-boy tendencies with a bevy of beautiful, brittle, mostly vacuous and mostly blonde women at parties all over the country. Matt had feared Justin was one poor choice from catastrophe, had spent years diverting Justin’s affairs from disaster: an unplanned pregnancy that ended with a bittersweet miscarriage; a bored society wife with a litigious husband; an affair with a client who displayed stalker tendencies when the relationship ended … And then came Lucy. Gracious Lucy. Serene, responsible, elegant Lucy. Tolerant Lucy. Permanent-looking Lucy. All Matt’s worries—at least where Justin was concerned—had appeared to be over.

  But Philippa Lloyd had pushed her interfering, freckled little nose into their relationship and split it apart. If she hadn’t interfered, Justin would be happily married to Lucy by now, and Matt would be free.

  When Justin had announced his engagement to Lucy, Matt had had no description for the emotion that had swept over him. It took him days to understand that the light-headed buzz, the constant hysteria that had him laughing out loud at unexpected and sometimes inappropriate moments, was relief. Sheer, unadulterated relief. He’d thought Justin was sorted; finally, his life was his own again.

  He’d been a fool. He’d taken his eyes off the ball, hadn’t seen the deal through to completion, and now he was stuck with trying to mend the breach.

  His memory of Lucy’s tearful face was vivid. Typically, it had been the ever-responsible, ever-sensitive Lucy who had fronted the Mason family to tell them the wedding was off. Justin hadn’t even put in an appearance until forty-eight hours afterwards. Typically, it had been Lucy who had assumed the blame for Justin’s fickleness, who had admirably controlled her own devastation, who had spoken so generously of the marriage celebrant who had helped them decide to separate (even then, Matt had been suspicious of the celebrant’s motives). But her pain had been written in the tear tracks she’d not quite managed to powder over, and in the velvet voice that cracked as she thanked his family for their acceptance of her and wished them well.

  They’d all been upset. Personally, Matt would have been happier to exile Justin and keep his dumped fiancée in the family bosom, but the Masons didn’t work that way. His mother had extended a gracious invitation for Lucy to stay in touch, but they all knew the awkwardness would prevent further contact. On the other hand, they moved in the same circles. There were plenty of other social occasions that would bring Lucy back into Justin’s orbit—Brad and Alice’s wedding was just the first—and Matt had every intention of encouraging and facilitating contact between them.

  But all the opportunities in the world for Lucy wouldn’t make any difference if Philippa Lloyd was determined to stay in the picture. She made promises easily enough, but it looked to Matt like she broke them just as easily. There was no doubt she was an attractive package—not normally Justin’s type, but that was precisely what made his pursuit of her all the more alarming. Matt preferred being able to predict what Justin was going to do next; he didn’t like it one bit when Justin acted out of character. And Philippa Lloyd—diminutive instead of statuesque, curly strawberry-blonde instead of sleek ice-blonde, whip-smart and feisty rather than vacuous and pliable—was decidedly out of character for Justin.

  Call him selfish, but Matt wanted Justin settled and off his hands. He wanted to be able to head into a Sunday night not worrying about what amorous mess of Justin’s he’d have to add to his already overloaded to-fix list on Monday.

  So be it. He knew what he had to do.

  Turning away from the view that couldn’t hold his attention, he powered up the tablet that rested semi-permanently on one end of the dining table. An email from his clerk, Simon, had come through earlier; it was what had prompted his impromptu visit to Philippa. He felt not the remotest pang of guilt that he’d asked his clerk to work all day Sunday, nor that he’d asked him to delve into the private affairs of a woman who it seemed had committed no real crime. While it was against the code of conduct for a marriage celebrant to have an affair with a client, it wasn’t actually illegal. It wasn’t enough to have her disbarred from practising. He’d needed something more he could use as leverage to keep Philippa Lloyd away from his brother.

  He opened the document and scanned its contents for the second time. There it was: there was the weakness he’d decided was worth investigating himself. If Justin hadn’t turned up unexpectedly, he’d have had a much better idea by now. It had seemed incongruous last night to see the professional marriage celebrant climbing into a battered, dusty truck. He’d assumed, when Lucy first spoke of her, that being a wedding celebrant was Philippa Lloyd’s full-time job. But no, it turned out that was her bit on the side. Her main professional interest was this landscaping business, and that was where she was vulnerable. She was a sole trader with no financial partners or guarantors. She had leveraged her house—he’d taken his time that afternoon to examine it; in his opinion it was overvalued against the mortgage—to set up her landscaping business, and while she was increasingly successful, the business was new and still marginal. A liability claim against her professional indemnity insurance, a budget overrun, even a discreet word in the right society ears, and her clients would dry up, the business would go under, she’d lose the house, and that would be the end of Philippa Marriage-Wrecker Lloyd.

  He suppressed the twinge of guilt that touched his conscience. He was doing it for Justin’s sake. For Justin’s, and Lucy’s, and for the future of the Masons. It was the least a responsible brother would do.

  Chapter 4

  ‘Pippa! Come and meet our patron!’

  Pippa rested her forehead momentarily on top of the hands she’d folded over the shovel handle, closed her eyes wearily. It had been a busy day, productive and exhausting, and she just wanted to get these last tomato seedlings planted and staked so she could take herself home for a long soak in the bathtub. She was in no mood—and glancing at her filthy work boots below legs caked in mud, no attire—for making polite conversation. Still, it was business …

  She pasted a bright smile on her face as she turned around to see the centre director gingerly leading a tall, elegant woman of around sixty along the new path. ‘Watch out for the …’

  Too late. The director had collected a shoeful of blood-and-bone fertiliser as she picked her way through the mounds piled on either side of the path. Her realisation that she was carrying the foul-smelling compost along with her turned her formal smile into a fixed grimace. But Pippa’s shouted warning had saved the other woman’s patent leather pumps, and there was nothing but courtesy in the hand she extended to Pippa’s grimy paw. Pippa wiped her own hand ineffectually against her shorts, achieving nothing but an equal exchange of dirt, and shrugged ruefully. ‘Best to give me a wide berth, I think.’

  The director was still examining her shoe, so their visitor introduced herself. ‘I’m Eleanor. I’ve been looking at your plans for the garden. It’s going to be very impressive. I particularly like how you’re building productive elements into the design as well as play. Perhaps when you’ve finished here, you might consider taking a look at my garden at home.’

  A prospective commission lent new energy to Pippa’s fatigued body. She asked her usual preliminary questions, elicited an address and an invitation to call in one afternoon to see the property and provide a quotation. It sounded like an exciting opportunity—a family mansion preserved from Brisbane’s earliest days, surrounded by acres of lawns and English-style gardens. According to Eleanor, it had been kept as a family space for generations, but since her husband had died it was now proving too much for her, even with a part-time gardener.

  ‘I’d like something in keeping with the home’s origins, but much lower maintenance. More trees, more native plantings, less lawn to mow—but I don’t want to colour your perceptions too much before you see it.’

  ‘It sounds beautiful, but a very big job. You understand I’m a sole contractor? You might get a faster result going to a bigg
er landscaping firm.’

  Eleanor regarded Pippa consideringly. ‘I’m not in any hurry. And I don’t want a big landscaping firm with a cookie-cutter design they roll out on every site. I want somebody who will fall in love with our garden and its potential, and work with me to design something special. I think, from what I’ve seen of your work here, you might enjoy the challenge. But if you’re not interested …’

  ‘Oh, I’m interested.’ 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.

  ‘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.

  ‘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?’

  ‘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—’

  ‘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 tightly furled frond of a native tree fern in one; the striking blue berries of a ginger in another.

  ‘Okay,’ she said slowly, ‘I might be able to tell you what some of these are, at least. But let’s go into the kitchen, into the light, so I can look more closely. They’re really hard to see on the phone.’

  There was that skittishness again. Pippa was surprised by Justin’s barely concealed agitation. He looked as if at any moment he might start jumping up and down like an overexcited child. It was the antithesis of his normal cool behaviour.

  ‘I have prints. In the car. If you have time, that is …’ He trailed off uncertainly and Pippa almost laughed aloud at his hangdog expression.

  ‘Sure. I’d love to see them. But Justin, I’m hot and covered in mud, and I’m starving. Bring your photos in, but if you want me to look at them, you’re going to have to rustle up something to eat while I have a quick shower. There are eggs in the fridge, and cheese. The toaster’s in the cupboard under the microwave and the pans are right next to it in the drawer. I’ll have an omelette and toast, thank you. See you in a bit.’

  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 as
signment 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.