‘I owe you an apology,’ he blurted, and she jumped at his voice.
‘Oh? Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?’
‘No. Something else. But that can wait.’ His hand closed over her fingers which had been busily and purposelessly fiddling with an open packet of sugar granules, and she dropped the packet. They both watched the granules spill across the counter. ‘Please, leave it.’
Philippa paused in her movement to sweep the sugar into one palm. She wasn’t looking at him, but she was listening, at least.
‘Philippa, please. Would you look at me?’
He reached out for her other hand and she let him take it, let him guide her to the stool beside his and perch on it. She looked quickly at his face and away again, hot colour blooming in her cheeks and rapidly dissipating. Matt held her hands, stroking the tops with his thumbs.
‘I’m sorry, Philippa.’ Softly.
‘For what?’
‘For making assumptions about you. For acting as if they were true. For not listening when you tried to tell me the truth. For not respecting your professional ethics. I’m sorry I’ve been coming here night after night and treating you like a body with no purpose other than to satisfy my desire.’
At this her eyes filled, and he silently called himself all kinds of fool for how he’d hurt her. ‘I’d like to start again.’
She began to speak, cleared her throat, began again. ‘Start what again?’
‘Us. I’d like to start us again. Take some time, get to know each other properly.’
‘Why? Why now?’ She looked at him now, and her eyes challenged and accused.
Matt laughed humourlessly. In truth, he didn’t have a good answer. To admit he thought he loved her seemed ludicrous in the circumstances, and her frosty glare dared him to invent a reason. He wouldn’t lie to her, there’d been enough trust issues between them already, but he couldn’t find the words to explain what he wanted. Absurd. One of the city’s most eloquent lawyers and negotiators, and he couldn’t find the words he needed.
He was still holding her hands, she hadn’t pulled away, and he raised them to his lips and kissed her knuckles. Her breath caught, and Matt let go her hands to shape her face for his kiss. She was unresponsive at first, sitting passively below his mouth, and he intensified his kiss, dipping his tongue between her lips to open her mouth and taste her again. She let him, but she didn’t reciprocate, and with a groan he gathered her close in his arms and buried his lips in the hollow of her throat. Matt felt the fire rush through his veins again, just like always. He slid his mouth up the length of her neck and heard her stifle a moan. He nuzzled her, seeking her lips again, and this time she gave them to him, open-mouthed and hot and needy. Without thinking, he scooped her off the stool and carried her the few steps to her bedroom, laid her tenderly on the bed, stripped her with focused intent, got rid of his own clothes and buried himself in her lush, luxuriant warmth.
Every time, it felt like coming home.
Philippa was moving beneath him, urging him to a frenzied pace, and he obliged, setting up a pounding, incessant rhythm that soon had them both crying out their pleasure. It was only as he withdrew from her to collapse, panting, at her side that he realised with a pang of panic that he’d forgotten to wear a condom. He flung his arm across his eyes and swore, then abruptly rolled to face her. Philippa was staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, breast heaving with effort or emotion, he couldn’t tell which, and he ran a slow finger down her cheek until she turned her eyes to his.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I forgot about protection. Do you need me to find an all-night pharmacy?’
‘No. I started the pill weeks ago. I should be okay, pregnancy-wise.’
Matt digested this information, delivered in a flat, matter-of-fact voice, and nodded. ‘And for the other—I promise you I’m disease free. You don’t need to worry.’
‘Likewise.’
‘Good.’ They fell silent again. Then:
‘Is this us starting again? Because at the moment, it looks to me like it has every other time.’
Matt lifted his hand again to her face, caressed her cheek, ran a tender thumb over her eyebrow. ‘I’d like it to be different. Can I stay? Can I hold you while you sleep?’
‘Sure. If you want.’ Philippa’s voice was still flat, impassive in its lack of expectancy, its lack of demand. It would take time, he told himself. It would take time for her to trust him too. He eased closer, slipped an arm beneath her shoulders and hugged her in to his chest. She lay stiff in his arms, awkward, and he stroked his hands up and down her spine to relax her. His own eyes grew heavy waiting for her body to soften, and he drifted into oblivion while she lay staring at his chest.
A repetitive banging woke him, and Matt opened heavy eyes and lay still, smelling the faintly lavender-scented hair beneath his nose and savouring the warm silkiness of the skin beneath his fingers. Sometime in the night Philippa had rolled away and he’d followed her, wrapping his body around hers like a cocoon. Soft, regular breathing told him she still slept, and he gently detached himself and rose to investigate the banging.
The lights were still ablaze in her kitchen, the spilled sugar floating grain by industrious grain across the counter in the overloaded mandibles of a flotilla of ants. The screen door leading to the back verandah was flapping noisily in a strong wind that heralded a storm. He secured it, closed and locked the back door behind it, flicked off the light and returned to the bedroom, leaving the ants to their labour.
Philippa murmured in her sleep as he crawled in beside her, wrapping himself around her again before tugging the sheet over them both. He lay contentedly, breathing in her scent, until an almost imperceptible hitch in her breathing told him she was awake, and aware.
This time their loving was slow, silent, and for Matt, it felt like a communion not just of their bodies but of their minds and, he hoped, their hearts. At its peak, he cried ‘I love you’ in his head, trying out the unaccustomed phrase to see how it felt. And it felt right. It felt so right, he whispered it out loud, so Philippa could hear how good it felt, too. But shattered, snug and replete, she was already sleeping.
***
She’d forgotten to set her alarm again.
Pippa could tell from the angle of the sun slanting through the shutters that it was later than she usually woke, but not yet too late. She felt clear-eyed and heavy-limbed, and stretched languidly. If she had to love a man who couldn’t love her back, at least there were compensations in the morning-after department. She’d no doubt beat herself up later about the Olympic-grade backflip on yesterday’s resolution not to sleep with Matt again, but for now she was content to wallow in the scent their bodies had left on her sheets and the memories of the sensual fireworks they’d lit together. She wondered idly when she’d see him again. As usual, they hadn’t made any forward commitments, and for all his talk of getting to know her properly, he’d still taken maybe ten minutes longer than usual before he swept her off to bed. Not that she was complaining. She felt delicious aches in all the right places, and trailed exploring fingers across the stubble-rash he’d left on her breast.
A muffled crash in her kitchen had Pippa crouching behind her bedroom door a heartbeat later, scrambling frantically through her handbag for her mobile phone. Not there, and not on her bedside table. God! Had she left it on the kitchen counter last night? Her eyes scanned the bedroom for anything that might serve as a weapon against the intruder, and halted on the pair of shoes lying haphazardly near the dresser. A man’s shoes. Shiny black brogues. She couldn’t tell if the drastic exhalation was relief or shock. Somehow, the idea Matt had stayed was more surprising, more terrifying, than the thought a stranger was rifling through her kitchen. What was he still doing here?
As it turned out, he was making pancakes.
Fully dressed apart from his shoes and socks, he looked at once smart and adorably dishevelled, his day-old beard and finger-combed hair at odds with the business suit
. He flashed her a grin as she entered the kitchen but didn’t stop what he was doing, expertly tossing a pancake with a deft flick of his wrist onto a plate already prepared with banana slices and blueberries. A couple of mugs of steaming coffee were already on the counter. He presented her the plate with a flourish and handed her the bottle of maple syrup before turning back to the stove to make another.
‘This looks amazing, thank you.’ If the presence of Matt in her house the morning after had been surprising, the fact of being served up breakfast was nothing short of astonishing. Pippa literally couldn’t remember the last time somebody else had prepared her breakfast; she supposed it must have been before her mother died.
‘My pleasure. Did you sleep well?’
Pippa snorted through a mouthful of coffee at the innocent, trite question. They’d barely slept at all, as he well knew. But she had to give him points for trying to establish a routine conversation. Suddenly she felt light-headed, lighthearted, light-spirited. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t sleep much, but when I did sleep, I slept very well, thank you. I wasn’t expecting to see you this morning.’
Matt plated up his breakfast and pulled up a stool beside her at the counter. There was a long pause while he poured the syrup with impressive and unnecessary concentration. Eventually: ‘Do you mind? Do you mind me being here?’
‘No. I don’t mind. Particularly not when you demonstrate such prodigious skill in the pancake-making department.’ She waggled her eyebrows and his taut face relaxed.
‘I have prodigious skill in many departments. I’m a little offended you haven’t noticed,’ he deadpanned. Casually he reached across and pushed a tendril of her hair behind her ear before depositing a syrupy kiss on the cheek he’d just cleared. ‘Have I told you you look devastatingly desirable in the morning? I wish I’d woken you earlier so I could take you back to bed again.’
Pippa looked at him consideringly. This was a new, flirty Matt. She could see he was working hard to keep things light; but was it just an act? She tested him a little—‘What’s stopping you?’—and earned a reproving nip on her neck which softened into a caress that had her arching like a kitten.
‘Tease. You have a wedding to oversee, and I have a flight to Sydney. And I still have to get home to change and pack. So stop playing with that pancake and eat it.’
‘What’s in Sydney?’ She was more curious about whether he’d answer her than about the answer itself. They’d never shared the minutiae of their lives before.
‘A client meeting, tedious in the extreme but important, followed by an even more tedious client dinner. Tomorrow’s clear, but I have to be back in Sydney for the rest of the week—we’re acting in a case in the New South Wales Supreme Court—so I’ll stay down there and come home Friday night.’
Pippa pouted. ‘No pancakes tomorrow, then?’
Matt’s response was fast. He’d already thought about it. ‘You could come with me. Fly down after your wedding today, join us for the tedious dinner, stay tomorrow and fly home tomorrow night. Or even early Monday morning.’
Pippa was already shaking her head regretfully. ‘Lovely idea, but I have another wedding tomorrow.’
‘On a Sunday?’
‘Yes, Matt, people do get married on Sunday. They get married every day of the week, particularly this time of year. It’s not often I get two close together and it does rather chew up my weekend, but I can use the extra income at the moment …’ She saw a frown crease his forehead, as if she’d said something that bothered him. ‘What?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s nothing. Nothing important.’ He was packing away the breakfast mess and on impulse Pippa slipped off her stool and slid her arms around his waist, pressing her face against his broad back and inhaling deeply but prepared to let go at his first signal of dismissal. Instead, his hands rubbed her forearms as they cradled him. ‘I shouldn’t be too late back on Friday night. Can I take you to dinner?’
Pippa froze, heart suddenly hammering. ‘Like a date?’
‘Exactly like a date.’
‘I’d like that.’
‘Good. I’d like that, too.’ They lingered that way for another minute, and Pippa wondered how an embrace so simple and undemanding could offer such comfort. Then Matt was moving again, slipping out of her arms to face her, lifting her chin for a kiss filled with tenderness and want. ‘Thank you for last night.’ He kissed her again, deeply, before regretfully letting her go.
She followed him into her bedroom and sat on the bed as he pulled on his socks and shoes. The silence was companionable rather than awkward; it was remarkable how quickly they’d fallen into ease with one another this morning. Hard to imagine, now, the hostile and contemptuous tenor of their earliest encounters. Yet only last night she’d leapt to defensiveness when she saw him, expecting another interrogation about her visit from Justin. Only yesterday, she’d heard him tell his mother of her flaws, and had convinced herself she never wanted to see him again. What had changed in less than twenty-four hours? The obvious answer was Matt. Matt had changed. From the time he’d arrived on her verandah last night he’d been like a different person, and she’d responded with no care for the past. It was miraculous.
You don’t believe in miracles. There has to be more to it.
‘Matt,’ she started tentatively, ‘last night, when you arrived, there was something you wanted to talk about.’
He glanced up briefly from tying his shoelace, and quickly returned his eyes to his shoes, knotting the laces with a harsh tug before straightening again. Had she imagined the flash in his eyes? She hadn’t, she knew. Was it worry, or anger, or something else?
But he was sitting beside her now, gathering her into a hug, catching her lips passionately with his own before releasing her again. ‘It’s nothing, don’t worry about it. I’ll sort it out. Tell you about it Friday night.’
‘You promise? Promise we’ll talk Friday night?’
‘I promise.’
‘It’s just … things seem different. Between you and me. Good different, but … different. I’m not sure I understand.’
He lifted her chin for another kiss. ‘We’ll talk on Friday night. I promise. But now I have to go.’
She waved him off from her front verandah, still brooding in spite of his cheery farewell. She told herself not to look for trouble, but released from the spell of his physical presence, her memories of his accusations and threats came flooding back, and with them, all her doubts.
Chapter 12
The first clue something was wrong came when a large order for paving stones failed to arrive. At first Pippa thought the truck was just late—she was using a new supplier, from the other side of the city, and figured the driver hadn’t allowed enough time for traffic. But when she’d wasted an hour pottering about Eleanor’s garden looking for things to do while she waited, she phoned the paving company. Her credit account had been closed.
‘What? Why? There has to be some mistake.’
‘Dunno, love. The accounts people don’t get here for another hour yet. You’ll have to sort it out with them.’
Pippa saw her work day slipping away from her. ‘Well, can I pay with my credit card now over the phone, and get you to send the pavers out right away?’
The dispatcher was agreeable enough, and took her credit card details. But his tone was gruff a minute later. ‘Declined, love. Looks like you’ve got a problem.’
Pippa ended the conversation confused and frustrated. What the hell was going on? The loan had been approved, she’d had no indication from her bank there was a problem. Unless … she picked up her mobile phone and ran through the missed calls menu. Yesterday an unidentified number had called her several times while she worked, leaving no message. It happened often enough for her not to worry. Usually she’d eventually discover it was just a sales rep wanting to sell her something and not willing to leave return contact details.
She opened up the banking application on her phone and logged in to check her account bal
ances, only to receive an automated message to contact her bank.
That couldn’t be good.
It had to be a mistake. Whatever had gone wrong, it had to be a simple mistake. She had a good record with her bank, was meticulous in paying her bills when they fell due and when she’d needed to extend her borrowings, the bank hadn’t quibbled. Sure, it had made her apply for mortgage insurance, but the account manager had assured her that was just bank policy, no impugnment of her financial credibility.
It had to be a mistake. But with the bank not opening for another two hours, there was little she could do to rectify it, and in the meantime, she was losing a valuable work day. She wandered around the garden, picking the occasional dead flower head, but there was nothing to do there either: she’d already prepped the site for paving, expecting it would take her a week or more. And all the time, the knot of nerves in her stomach expanded and tightened.
To hell with it. There was no point hanging around wasting time. She’d go home, change out of her overalls and suit up ready for the bank. If there had been a mistake, she figured they’d be faster sorting it out if she turned up in person and looked more like a businesswoman and less like a labourer. She might even shop for a frock for Justin’s exhibition opening tomorrow night.
She packed up her ute, worrying over how she would reorganise the work schedule to start paving tomorrow, and started when Eleanor greeted her.
‘Good morning, Philippa! Just arriving, or just leaving?’
Pippa tried not to react defensively. ‘Just leaving, actually. There’s an issue with the pavers order I need to sort out. But it won’t disrupt the schedule too much.’
Eleanor waved a carefree hand. ‘I’m not worried about the schedule. We’re already well ahead of where I imagined we would be by now. You should give yourself the day off. You work too hard. Why not come in and have some breakfast with me?’
A Case For Trust Page 13