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

that?’
    â€˜I want you to stop the car.’
    â€˜There’s no need to get tetchy, I said I’d take you to the wedding and I’ll take you.’
    â€˜Then stop the car. We’re here.’
    Pippa’s knees shook as she swung them out of the low-slung bucket seat after Matt had pulled up alongside the quiet little bayside chapel. Hunger, she told herself, realising she’d not eaten since Justin’s scrambled eggs the night before. Hunger, plus anxiety about being late. Her tremors had nothing to do with the fact she’d just survived what felt like three long bouts in a verbal boxing ring with a master pugilist.
    Her opponent had pulled her briefcase from the back seat and was heading with long muscular strides towards the church entrance. Pippa hurried after him, and nearly fell over him when he stopped abruptly in the doorway to the packed church.
    Aware of the curious eyes of onlooking wedding guests, and the relief so clearly stamped across the face of the bridegroom as he shuffled down the aisle towards her, Pippa snatched the briefcase from Matt’s hands and met his inscrutable gaze.
    â€˜Thank you. I’m very grateful for the lift. Please don’t wait; I’ll get a taxi back. I don’t want to interrupt your Saturday any more than I already have.’
    He inclined his head, eyelids hooding his expression but then he pierced her with that severe laser gaze. ‘Very well. I’ll see you later.’
    Not if I see you first.

Chapter 5
    Matt couldn’t work her out. From the back corner of the chapel where he watched her produce another flawless wedding ceremony, he rocked on his heels and chafed at the inexplicable, irresistible pull that saw him hanging around to take her home, when by rights he should have been catching up on the backlog in his office, or tracking down Justin, or visiting his mother, or any of a dozen other things he had to do. Instead, here he was, following Pippa Lloyd’s every move with eyes that lingered on her gently glowing face and hands that longed to tuck back one errant tendril that always seemed to escape her fiercely smooth hairstyle. He pushed the tip of his tongue against the back of his teeth; felt again the raw sting where she’d bitten him; remembered what those soft, luscious lips had felt like for the brief time she’d kissed him back. Hard to reconcile that firebrand, the passionate hellcat he’d glimpsed for just a moment that morning, with the demure, calm and oh-so-professional Philippa who was now presenting Mr and Mrs Whoever-They-Were to their cheering families.
    He could understand why Justin coveted her. She was gorgeous, in an effervescent if slightly flaky way. When he wasn’t furious at her obstinacy, he liked how she wasn’t intimidated by the Mason name or his threats. She had guts, he’d give her that much. And independence. Persistence. Look where she’d come from, and what she’d done with her life in spite of it. She’d obviously worked hard to get where she was. He couldn’t really blame her for doing whatever she could to preserve and enhance that advantage. In her shoes, he’d probably do the same.
    In fact, if you ignored that she was a gold-digger after the main chance, if you were prepared to allow for paradoxes that suggested a complex and sometimes contradictory character, you could almost imagine Philippa Lloyd was exactly who she pretended to be. Interesting that, having met him now, she hadn’t turned her attention from Justin to himself. Because Justin Mason wasn’t the main chance. He, Matt, was.
    So why wasn’t she chasing him ?
    It wasn’t pique behind the question. It bloody wasn’t. Kiss or no kiss, brother or no brother, he had no interest in Philippa Bloody Lloyd.
    Then why are you still hanging around some strangers’ wedding waiting to drive her home?
    He couldn’t answer his own question. It was as