скачать книгу бесплатно
And here he was about to serve Dalton coffee. As if the machine could read his mind and make coffee, it emitted a series of seductive beeps to indicate Dalton’s drink was ready.
Griffin came out of the kitchen and set a mug on the table in front of Dalton. “So,” he said, clapping his hands together to hide his nerves. “What brings big brother D to my humble abode in the middle of the day?”
Jesus. Big brother D? Why had he said that? He sounded like a jerk. Thankfully, Dalton didn’t seem to notice.
Dalton reached for the coffee. “I think the real question is why you’re not at work in the middle of the day.”
“Hey, jet lag’s a bitch.” Suddenly it occurred to him that as long as Sydney didn’t come out of the bedroom, he had no reason to be nervous. It wasn’t as if Dalton would wander in there on his own. Griffin purposefully stretched his mouth into a salacious grin, just to make sure Dalton knew he wouldn’t be welcomed into the condo’s private quarters.
As if on cue the shower cranked on in the other room.
“Oh,” Dalton said, finally putting together what should have been perfectly obvious.
Griffin glanced at the bedroom door and then back at Dalton. This was the moment of truth.
Sydney took quick, efficient showers. She was efficient about everything except sex. Five minutes max. Another two to dress. Which meant in seven minutes or less, she’d wander out of his bedroom with damp hair, dressed in clothes that had spent the night crumpled on the floor.
Then, one of two things would happen. Dalton would be cool with it, and Sydney would realize their being together just wasn’t that big a deal. Or she would freak. And that would mean the end of their relationship. No more enthusiastic welcomes home. No more warm body beside him in bed. No more mindblowing sex. He wasn’t willing to give up any of those things.
When he noticed Dalton looking at him, he forced a smile. “Give me a second, will you?”
Dalton nodded. “Take your time.”
Griffin crossed the bedroom, made a quick detour through the closet to change clothes and grabbed his keys before heading for the bathroom. Sydney had the hot water cranked all the way up, and steam churned out of the glass-brick shower. The wavy glass distorted the killer curves she normally kept hidden beneath conservative clothes. She wasn’t the kind of woman who showed off her body, but she didn’t seem to mind being naked, either. He loved watching her shower. Unfortunately, this time it couldn’t end with them going back to bed.
Still he couldn’t resist propping his shoulder against the doorway of the walk-in shower and enjoying the open sensuality of her movements and the heavy, relaxed, deep breaths she took as she scraped her nails over her scalp. She gave her hair a final rinse and turned off the faucet, reaching for a towel.
As she dabbed the towel over her face, she realized he was watching, and her lips tipped upward in a smile. “Stop it. You know I have to get to work.”
“I know.”
She wrapped the towel around her chest, tucking the corner in to secure it, and then grabbed a second towel off the rack before edging past him into the bathroom proper.
Even though her smile was relaxed and her words teasing, there was something guarded in her expression. But maybe that was to be expected. She’d made it clear when they first got involved that this was a just-sex kind of relationship. Nothing more. Which was perfect because he was a nothing-more kinda guy.
Still, leaving before his girl even got out of the shower was a little harsh, even for a nothing-more kinda guy.
She bent over at the waist to wrap her shoulder-length auburn hair into one of those turban things only women seemed to be able to manage, then straightened, frowning. “What’s up?”
He fished a house key out of his pocket and set it on the bathroom counter beside the contact case and tiny toiletry bag she carried in her purse. “I have to head out. Lock up when you leave?”
Her frown deepened. “Wait. I don’t want … I mean, why …”
He didn’t give her more time to protest but gave her a quick peck on the lips. “Don’t worry. You can give it back to me the next time you see me. Stay as long as you want. There are muffins or you can find something in fridge. Marcella always leaves stuff like that.”
“But …” she tried to protest again.
He pretended to misunderstand. There was no point in her getting upset before he knew what Dalton wanted. “Text me later tonight and let me know what your plans are.”
She caught up with him just shy of the bedroom door and stopped him with a hand to the arm and an unwavering stare. “What’s going on?”
Her stare did him in. Something about her warm brown eyes made it impossible for him to lie to her. “Dalton stopped by. We’re going to lunch.”
“Dalton? Dalton, my boss?”
He grinned, partly hoping to disarm her and partly because her shock was amusing. “You know any other Daltons?”
“Do you think he’s here because he knows about us?”
“No,” he said, perfectly honestly. “I think he’s here because he’s up to his neck in this crap our dad has dumped on him. He may be your boss, but he’s also my brother.” He dropped another kiss on her mouth. “Don’t worry, he’ll never know you were here. I’ll take care of it.”
Then, because he just couldn’t resist, he gave her ass a squeeze beneath the towel before leaving the room. She had a great ass. He only hoped that Dalton showing up today hadn’t spooked her so badly he never saw it again.
She was going to kill Griffin. What the hell did he mean, he’d take care of it? Was he going to take care of it like he took care of that pothos ivy that had been slowly dying in his living room? Or like he took care of … Well, crap, she couldn’t even be properly indignant because she couldn’t very well rant against his lax attitude toward taking care of things because as far as she knew, he had absolutely no responsibilities in life other than keeping that damn potted plant alive. And he appeared to be failing at that.
For several stunned minutes, Sydney stood there beside the door, listening to the murmur of voices from the other side. She could distinguish none of the words and barely registered the tone. But she tried because somehow it seemed deathly important that she hear every nuance of their conversation.
Which was ridiculous because this probably had nothing to do with her. Dalton had a lot on his plate right now. She knew that better than anyone. She was one of the few people with whom Dalton could even discuss the missing heiress. For the previous week, he’d asked her to hand her normal workload off to someone else on the support staff so that she could devote her time to doing legwork in the search.
She and Griffin had never discussed the missing heiress, but it made perfect sense he’d be worried about it. His livelihood was also at stake. The entire company was at risk. Her job, too, now that she thought about it.
So of course Dalton would need to talk to Griffin. That made perfect sense. Totally, completely logical.
Still, she kept her ear pressed to the door until she heard Dalton and Griffin leaving the apartment. After that, she dressed quickly, barely giving herself time to towel dry her hair and apply a quick, but necessary, coat of mascara before grabbing her purse on her way out. But she stopped short with her hand on the front door of Griffin’s apartment.
Crap. The key.
Going back to the bathroom her steps were slower. The key to Griffin’s condo sat on the marble countertop, the brass gleaming against the black-veined white marble. She stared at it for a long minute.
“Ugh. Stop being such a wimp. It’s just a key.”
She grabbed it and stalked to the front door, carefully locking the door before dropping the key into the change pocket of her wallet as she walked down the hall to the elevator. She pointedly did not put it on her key chain. It wasn’t that kind of key. She and Griffin didn’t have that kind of relationship.
No, they had a very casual, sex-only kind of thing. A no-key-exchange kind of relationship.
She punched the down button with a tad more force than was necessary. She was just being responsible. Like when they’d first started sleeping together and he’d presented her with the test results of his most recent physical, proof that he was drug and disease free. At first, she felt weird about it. Like it was wrong having that kind of information about someone she barely knew—even someone she was sleeping with. Sure, the information was nominally about sex. But there was other information in there, too. She now knew his cholesterol number and that his last tetanus shot was in 2010—from the time he’d gotten snagged with a hook while deep-sea fishing, she’d later learned.
But she hadn’t wanted to know about the tetanus shot any more than she’d wanted to know the origin of the tiny scar on the side of his neck. Any more than she’d wanted a key to his apartment.
Which was why, when she got out to her car, she sat there for several minutes, sucking in deep, panic-reducing breaths.
What was she doing?
When was she going to stop fooling herself?
Sex with Griffin was a bad idea. Very bad.
When they’d first started sleeping together, it hadn’t seemed like a bad idea. It hadn’t even seemed like an idea. More like … an accident. Like when she’d accidently adopted her cat, Grommet. She’d come home to find the poor, malnourished kitten huddled on her front porch to stay out of the rain. She couldn’t just leave the pathetic tabby there, so she brought him inside. But he was wormy and sick and even had to have part of his tail amputated. The vet had recommended putting him down instead of taking him to the shelter. A thousand dollars plus weekly allergy shots later and she was the proud owner of the ugliest cat on earth.
Sleeping with Griffin was kind of like that.
Except not at all. Because Griffin wasn’t pathetic and he wasn’t tame and she most definitely was not allergic to him.
But when it came to adopting Grommet, she hadn’t meant to keep him. It was supposed to be just for one night. That’s what she’d told herself about Griffin, too.
Last summer, in the middle of a record heat wave, fresh on the heels of an awful breakup with her fiancé, Brady, she’d slept with Griffin.
It was Brady’s fault, really. Nine months before their wedding—a date it had taken him two years to agree upon—he’d reconnected with his high school girlfriend on Facebook. He’d apologized profusely for breaking up with Sydney. But how could she feel anything past the burning indignation of finding out the guy she’d been with for six years was in love with another woman? So much in love that he quit his job and moved halfway across the country to be with her, when he hadn’t even wanted to sell his condo to move into Sydney’s house once they were engaged.
She’d wanted to punch him. It was the first and last time in her twenty-seven years of life that she wanted to do physical violence to another human being.
Instead, she’d calmly emptied the single drawer he’d allotted her in his condo and done the same for the few items he kept at her house. The whole exchange had required only two empty cardboard boxes. She hadn’t even had to take a day off work. And she’d told herself she was fine. Fine.
She’d continued being fine right up until the point she’d stumbled onto a Facebook post about Brady’s wedding through a mutual friend. Then, all of a sudden, she hadn’t been fine anymore. Less than thirty-six hours after Brady married another woman, she did the unthinkable. When she’d run into Griffin Cain in the coffee shop half a block from Cain Enterprises, she’d typed her number into his cell phone. Yes, he’d been flirting with her since she’d hired on at Cain Enterprises. He flirted with everyone. She’d never dreamed she’d be one of his conquests.
Griffin was handsome and charming. With his shaggy, dark-blond hair and ocean blue eyes, he looked better suited to professional surfing than international business. His crooked smile and sexy dimples had all the women in the office swooning.
Still, she’d been sure she’d be able to resist him, despite all the times he wandered into Dalton’s office and propped his hip on the corner of her desk to flirt with her while he waited for Dalton to come to or from some meeting. Despite the way he’d occasionally bring her gourmet coffee and drop it off at her desk with a salacious wink as he headed for Dalton’s office. Despite all that, she knew she could resist him because she knew he treated all the women in the office that way.
And she hated that kind of crap. And she hated people who coasted by on their good looks almost as much as she hated people who got by on their family name. Griffin was the triple-whammy of things she despised in the business world.
Of all the men she knew, he was the guy she was least likely to get romantically involved with. Which was precisely what made him appealing to her after Brady dumped her. She’d been emotionally bruised and battered. When she ran into him that morning at the coffee shop, when he turned on that classic Griffin Cain charm, she did the unthinkable. She decided to sow her own wild oats.
She hadn’t really believed she had any wild oats in her. They certainly had never floated to the surface of her psyche before. But Griffin had somehow gotten the damn things to sprout.
The one night she’d planned on allowing herself with Griffin had turned into a weekend. And then into a month. And then into four.
The brief sexual encounter was no longer brief. She’d managed to keep it purely sexual, but it was no longer uncomplicated. A mere call from him had her leaving her house in the middle of the night for a rendezvous. She’d stayed over at his place. Showered in his shower. Missed a morning of work. And now she had a key to his frickin’ condo.
It was time to stop fooling herself. She wasn’t just having sex with Griffin. She was acting like an addict. And it was time to go cold turkey.
Two
Griffin took a sip of his coffee, looking from the file in front of him to Dalton sitting across the table. He’d coaxed Dalton out of his condo and down the block to his favorite little Argentinean café. Once their coffee had arrived, Dalton had pushed a file folder across the table to him. And then he’d dropped a bomb.
“What do you mean, you’re done?” Griffin asked.
“Done.” Dalton leaned back against the booth’s red vinyl upholstery.
“Like, done? Like, you’re not searching for her anymore?”
“Exactly.”
“What, you want me to take over?” Hollister expected them to search for the heir separately. But he hadn’t expressly ordered them not to work together. “I’ve got a trip scheduled for next week, but after that—”
“I’m done.” Dalton leaned forward. “I’m not looking for her anymore. I’m not jumping through any more of Hollister’s damn hoops. I’m out.”
“Fine. You need me to handle this, I’ll handle it. You know how I feel about Hollister’s games. I’ll pass on to you whatever I find.”
“When I say I’m out, I mean I’m out for good. I’m not searching for the Cain heiress. I don’t want Hollister’s damn prize. I’m stepping down as CEO. I’m passing the torch to you.”
“To me?” Griffin dropped the folder like it had caught fire. “I don’t want Cain Enterprises.”
“Neither do I.”
“Of course you do. This is what you’ve wanted your whole life. Every—”
“Right. Everything I’ve ever done has been for Cain and what has it got me? Nothing. So this morning I submitted my resignation.”
“You what?” Griffin recoiled from Dalton’s words.
“I resigned,” Dalton said simply. “I recommended the board name you interim CEO. I can’t guarantee they will, but I talked to Hewitt, Sands and Schield personally. I think they’ll be able to sway the others. Now—”
“You quit?”
“I resigned.” Dalton looked like he might bust out laughing. “Try to keep up.”
“You can’t quit.” Great. His brother finally developed a sense of humor and it turned out to be sick and twisted. “Cain Enterprises needs you. More than ever with Hollister sick.”
“I agree. Cain Enterprises needs a strong leader. But you can be that leader just as easily as I can.”
And that’s where Dalton was dead wrong.
Dalton had been preparing for this job his whole life. Griffin, however, had spent his whole life waiting to take his inheritance and get out of the business. “Even if I wanted to, I’m not prepared to be the CEO. I don’t—”
“My assistant knows everything that goes on in the office. If there’s anything you don’t know, she can bring you up to speed. I know you haven’t worked much with Sydney in the past, but she’s top-notch. She’ll take good care of you.”
Shock must have made his esophagus seize because the sip of coffee Griffin had just taken went straight into his lungs, damn near choking him.
“I don’t … You can’t …” Griffin shook his head. Dalton was stepping down? And he was saying that Sydney would take care of him? The irony was just too much. For years he’d been phoning it in for his job at Cain Enterprises. Just biding his time until he could walk away free and clear. He’d stayed with the company out of duty and because if Hollister knew where his interests really lay, he’d be cut off without a dime. And now, after all this time, Dalton wasn’t just giving him more responsibility, he was handing him the entire damn company. “What the hell brought this on? And what on earth are you going to do if you’re not the leader of Cain Enterprises?”
“I’m going to win the heart of the woman I love.”
Okay. So Dalton had officially gone crazy.
“You’re what?” He sat back, waving aside his question. “Never mind,” he said darkly. “I know who’s to blame for this. Laney.”
Dalton’s mouth curved into a sappy smile. “Yeah. Laney.”
Griffin muttered a curse. “You’re throwing away everything for a woman?”
“Laney’s not just—”
“Yeah. I’m sure. Laney’s delightful. Frickin’ wonderful.” He leaned forward and tapped the center of the table to emphasize his point. “I’ve always liked Laney. And even when we were kids I saw that she was special to you. So if you want to be with her, then be with her. But don’t throw away everything you’ve worked for all your life over it.”
Dalton shot him a look that was somewhere between annoyed and amused. “I never thought I’d say this, but you sound remarkably like our father.”
“God, I hope not.” Griffin leaned back and blew out a frustrated sigh. “It’s not that I don’t want you to be happy, it’s just that …”
