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Casey moved to stand in front of her, blocking her agitated pacing. “No one said anything about you trying to con me.”
“They just think I had a very good reason for not telling you about what happened in Nashville, right? Like maybe I’m guilty of exactly what I was accused of doing.”
“They didn’t make any judgments about that,” he said, though she noted he couldn’t quite meet her eyes. “They simply told me the facts about what happened.”
“Oh, really?” She planted her hands on her hips, glaring at him. “And just what ‘facts’ did they share with you?”
“I’m sure you know what they were told.”
“I’d like to hear it from you,” she insisted, wondering who in her former firm had been talking about her, and how those “facts” were being spun.
Looking extremely uncomfortable, Casey shoved his hands in his pockets. “They, um, heard that you sold confidential client information to the tabloids. Celebrity clients, sleazy gossip magazines. They said the senior partners found out about it and let you go quietly because they didn’t want the negative publicity to reflect badly on the firm and cause other clients to lose faith in them. And that you left without fighting the charges.”
“And what does that tell you?” she asked bitterly.
“That there must be a hell of a lot more to the story than my cousins found out,” he replied evenly.
“So that’s why you came running over here? To give me a chance to tell you my side?”
His eyes narrowed, as if her display of temper was triggering his own. “I came here because I thought you deserved to know what my cousins had done,” he almost snapped. “Their invasion of your privacy was inexcusable, as I told them, myself.”
“You’re right. It was. I haven’t even told my aunt what happened. Oh, God, you don’t think your cousins…”
“They won’t tell your aunt,” he interrupted firmly. “They haven’t told Molly. Andrew and Aaron and I are the only ones here who know.”
“That’s bad enough,” she grumbled, crossing her arms again and turning away. “Do you have any idea how humiliating this is for me?”
His tone gentled. “I can imagine.”
Placing his hands on her shoulders, he turned her to face him again. “You don’t owe me any explanations, Natalie. What happened to you is no more my business than it was my cousins’. But if you want to tell me, if you want my help…I’m here.”
Still stinging because the choice to tell him was taken away from her, she asked, “What do you think? Do you believe I did what they said?”
“I’d like to hear your side.”
“Spoken like a true lawyer,” she said, pulling away from him and taking a few steps back. “You’re keeping an open mind while you listen to the defendant’s story, right? It’s not your place to determine guilt or innocence.”
“No, it’s not.” He sounded as if he were clinging to his patience with some difficulty. “But I didn’t automatically believe what Andrew told me, either.”
“How magnanimous of you.”
“You aren’t being exactly fair.”
“It’s a matter of trust,” she whispered, turning her head to hide a sudden, mortifying rush of tears. “Do you trust me or not?”
The silence that fell between them then broke her heart. This, she thought dully, was exactly why she hadn’t told Casey the truth from the start.
He couldn’t see her face, because she had turned away from him. He could read her emotions in the slump of her shoulders, and he hated himself for what his instinctive hesitation had done to her.Since he had met her, he’d seen Natalie defensive, guarded, amused, relaxed, even cautiously flirtatious. He’d watched her open herself to Buddy—and to him, in some ways. But he had never seen her looking defeated. Until now.
“I’ve had some trouble with trusting lately,” he said, his voice sounding a bit loud in the too-quiet room. “A couple of people I trusted let me down. Hard. I guess you could say that’s why I’m here, pretending to be a handyman. I needed to think some things through, put them into perspective.”
“I hope you’ve had more luck with that than I have,” she murmured, still looking away.
“I thought I had,” he replied. “I thought I’d gotten over it completely. Apparently, I was wrong.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Moving to stand behind her, he rested his hands on her shoulders, which went rigid beneath his touch. “I didn’t realize it until now, but I let my recent disillusionment color my reactions to what my cousins told me about you. I didn’t immediately jump to your defense because I didn’t want to have my trust betrayed again if I found out I was wrong about you. It was a stupid, cowardly response on my part. I’m sorry.”
