Her Unforgettable Royal Lover(51)

Dom reached out and put his palm over the fingers still nervously rolling the bread. His grip was strong and warm, his eyes glinting with undisguised anger.

“We’ll discuss what type you are later. Right now, I can pretty well guess what came next. Mr. Smooth used your computer to access state records and mine thousands of addresses, dates of birth and social security numbers.”

“Try hundreds of thousands.”

“Then he sold them, right? I’m guessing to the Russians, although the marketplace is pretty well wide-open these days. And when the crap hit the fan, the feds tracked the breach to you.”

“He hadn’t sold them yet. They caught him with his hand still in my cookie jar.”

Shame and misery engulfed her again. Tears burned as the images from that horrible day played through her head.

“Oh, Dom, it was so awful! The police came to my office! Said they’d been after Jason—the man I knew as Jason DeWitt—for over a year. They’d decoded his electronic signature and knew he’d hacked into several major databases. They’d finally penetrated his shields and not only pinpointed his exact location, they kicked in the door to my apartment and nailed him in the act. Then they charged me with being an accomplice to unauthorized access to public records with intent to commit fraud. They arrested me right there in front of all my coworkers and…and…”

She had to stop and gulp back the stinging tears. “Then they hauled me downtown in handcuffs.”

“At which point they discovered you weren’t a party to the hacking and released you.”

Dom’s unquestioned acceptance of her innocence should have soothed her raw nerves. Instead, it made it even tougher to finish the sordid tale.

“Not quite.”

Writhing inside, she tried to pull her hand away but he kept it caged.

“Jason tried to convince the police it was all my idea. He said I’d teased and taunted him with sex. That would have been laughable,” she said, heat surging into her cheeks, “if the police hadn’t found a closet full of crotch-high leather skirts, low-cut blouses and peek-a-boo lingerie. Jason kept pestering me to wear that kind of…of slut stuff when we went out. It was enough to make the investigators wring me inside out before they finally released me.”

Dom played his thumb over the back of her hand and fought to keep his fury in check. It wasn’t enough that the hacker had played on Natalie’s lonely childhood and craving for a family. The bastard had also cajoled her into decking herself out like a whore. No wonder she’d swung to the opposite extreme and started dressing like a refugee from a war zone.

Even worse, she’d had no one to turn to for help during what had to be one of the most humiliating moments of her life. No parents to rush downtown and bail her out. No sister to descend like an avenging angel, as Zia would have done. No brother to pulverize the man who’d set her up.

She wasn’t alone now, though. Nor would she be alone in the future. Not as long as Dominic had a say in the matter. The absolute certainty of that settled around his heart like a glove as he quietly prompted her to continue.

“What did you do then?”

“I hired a lawyer and got the arrest expunged. Or so I thought,” she amended with a frown. “Then I had the lawyer negotiate a deal with my boss. Since the state records hadn’t actually been compromised, I said I would quietly disappear if he agreed that my employment record would contain no reference to the whole sorry mess. After some weeks of wrangling with the state attorney general’s office, I packed up and left town. I worked at odd jobs for a while until…”

“Until you went to work for Sarah,” he finished when she didn’t.

Guilt flooded her face. “I didn’t lie to her, Dom. I filled out my employment history truthfully. I knew she would check my references, knew my chances were iffy at best. But my former boss stuck to his end of the deal, and my performance reports before…before that big mess were so glowing and complimentary that Sarah hired me after only one interview.”

She turned away, shamefaced.

“I know you think I should have told her. I wanted to. I really did. And I intended to. I just thought…maybe if I tracked down the Canaletto first…helped return it to its rightful owner…Sarah and Dev and the duchess would know I wasn’t a thief.”

“You’re not a thief. Natalie, look at me. You’re not a thief or a con artist or a criminal. Trust me, I’ve been around the breed enough to know. Now I have two questions for you before we eat the soup that’s been sitting here for so long.”