A Case For Trust Read Free Page B

is parked in. But mine is right here. I’ll run you down.’
    Pippa didn’t bother to look where Matt gestured. Justin was already arguing. ‘No need for you to do it, Matt, just lend me your keys. I’ll take her, and be back in a few minutes.’
    â€˜Not on your bloody life. You’re not driving my car with a bellyful of champagne.’
    â€˜I’ve had one glass—’
    Enough was enough. Ignoring the bickering brothers, Pippa turned and strode as fast as she could along the road that ran beside the cliff, slowed just a little by her sharp-pointed heels sinking into the sun-warmed bitumen. When she got to the bench seat up ahead, she would swap her stilettoes for the flats in her briefcase.
    She’d made fair progress towards her objective when she heard the low, pulsing thrum of the car engine behind her; she determinedly ignored it until it pulled ahead of her, stopped, and the passenger door was flung open.
    â€˜Get in.’
    For a second she seriously considered disobeying the command. Considered running full pelt down the hill. Considered hurling herself over the cliff into the Pacific Ocean below. Anything but getting into a confined space to spend one more minute with Matt Mason.
    She got in, and let the slamming door speak for her. The car didn’t move.
    â€˜Fasten your seatbelt.’
    â€˜Oh, for god’s sake, we’re only going a few hundred metres!’ But she buckled her seatbelt, and stared fixedly out the window at the rolling, crashing waves that threw themselves relentlessly across the expanse of golden sand below the headland. Less than a minute later the car was slowing near the lay by.
    â€˜Which is yours?’
    Pippa gestured to the battered utility truck parked at the end of the row.
    â€˜The ute? You drive a ute ?’
    â€˜Thanks for the lift.’ Pippa had the door open and her legs out before Matt had fully stopped the car. Reaching down for her briefcase, her wrist was clamped in a grip which, try desperately as she might, she couldn’t wrench off.
    â€˜I told you before, we’re not done.’
    â€˜ What? What do you want? Would you say whatever you think you have to say and let me go ?’ Pippa’s panic was only partially allayed by the knowledge Justin had seen them drive off together. Common sense told her she would come to no harm at Matt Mason’s hands. Common sense had nothing to do with the instinctual fear that gripped her gut, even less to do with her reflexive flinching from the masculine anger that reminded her of other bruising hands. The grip lessened slightly; enough that she could feel the blood throbbing in her wrist, not enough that she could move to the safety of the air outside the car.
    â€˜Look at me. Look at me. Right. You will give me your word you will not see my brother again. You will not contact him again. You will not seek him out. You will leave . Him. Alone .’
    Fury with herself and her weak response, as much as with the man’s unspeakable arrogance, made Pippa unwise. Suddenly she was thirteen again, tempting the bullying devil with stupid, rebellious bravado. ‘Or what? What will you do? Hit me?’
    Matt recoiled with a physical repulsion as obvious as her own. ‘Hit you? I’m not going to hit you. What do you think I am? I’m not going to hit you. I’m going to ruin you. You and your little smokescreen of a wedding business. You might have thought you had your own Mason wedding all sewn up, but I promise you this: if you ever go near my brother again, by the time I’m done with you you’ll wish you’d never met him. Justin’s going to marry Lucy. She’s exactly what he needs, despite what you’ve persuaded him. There’s no place for the scheming, grasping likes of you in the Mason family!’
    Shock held Pippa captive in the car. Finished with his speech, Matt had let go her wrist and she rubbed it absently with