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He had a lot on his plate right now. In the next month alone, he had two trips to Guatemala planned and one more to Africa. The project in Rwanda was at a critical stage and it was the first in that country. On Griffin’s most recent visit, he’d made inroads to get the project financed by a local bank, but if he didn’t get back down there soon, it might all fall through. The simple truth was, he didn’t have time to be CEO.
Griffin set down his coffee cup to see Dalton watching him with that slightly dazed look people in love usually wore. Griffin wanted to leap across the table and strangle some sense into his brother. “Did it ever occur to you that I might have better things to do?”
For nearly a full minute Dalton just stared at him. Then Dalton burst out laughing, and didn’t speak for another minute until he stopped. “Better things. Nice one.”
Griffin unclenched his jaw. “I’m serious. I just happen to be busy right now.”
Dalton took a lazy sip of coffee and shrugged. “There’s nothing you do as VP of International Marketing that can’t be done by someone else.”
That was probably true. His job at Cain required very little. He liked it that way because it left his hours free for his work with Hope2O. And the occasional dalliance with a beautiful woman … such as Sydney.
But Dalton wasn’t buying his busy schedule as an excuse, so Griffin changed tactics. “Look, you don’t really want to step down at CEO. It’s who you are. You’re the guy who takes care of business. You’re the guy who’s going to find this missing heiress.”
And until this moment, Griffin had believed that. He hadn’t had even a shadow of a doubt that Dalton would find the heiress and, as a result, win the entire Cain fortune as his prize. But he knew his brother. Dalton was fair to a fault. He wouldn’t take the money and run. Once Dalton had secured the Cain fortune, he would carefully divide it up among the three—or four—of them. However, if Dalton backed out of things now, then they were all screwed, Griffin included.
Dalton smiled. “Well, it’s time for you to step up and become that guy because I’m not him anymore.”
The problem was, he wasn’t that guy, either. Ever since he was a kid he’d been hiding his true nature from his family.
He was—and this was a direct quote from Hollister—a pansy-assed do-gooder with a heart of gold. That was a hell of an insult to hear at age nine, especially from the father he worshipped like a god.
So—since he was nine—Griffin had been hiding who he was, had been hiding the fact that he cared about the quality of life of other people in the world. Even the people who didn’t contribute to Cain Enterprise’s bottom line. And he would continue to hide it.
The bleeding-heart liberal born into a Texas oil family. The ugly duckling had nothing on him.
Before now, all he had to do was keep his head down and try to blend in. Now, Dalton expected him to take over. He was going to do the only thing left to do. He would find the heiress. If he controlled his father’s fortune, he could walk away from the day-to-day running of the company. He could devote himself full-time to Hope2O or anything else that struck his fancy. In short, he could do whatever the hell he wanted.
By the time Sydney arrived at the office, she’d managed to calm herself down enough to pass for normal. Now more than ever, she wanted to continue impressing Dalton with her competence and trustworthiness.
If her experience with Brady had taught her anything, it was that she had to depend on herself. When it came down to it, she was alone in the world. She had herself and whatever stability her job provided. That was it. She couldn’t afford to let herself get distracted by a man again.
Certainly not one of the Cains.
She spent the afternoon at her desk, answering what email of Dalton’s she could, and then catching up on the work she’d missed that morning.
It killed her knowing that Dalton and Griffin were out together at lunch, even if she never came up in their conversation. It was a bad omen, like a comet flitting across the sky to herald the impending arrival of a horrible natural disaster.
The two halves of her world were on a collision course and she wasn’t sure how to brace herself for impact.
So she should have been relieved when two o’clock rolled around and the door to the office finally creaked open. Hoping Dalton had decided to come in after all, Sydney leaped to her feet, ready to greet her errant boss.
But it wasn’t Dalton who walked into the room. It was Griffin.
Her heart thudded and she had to fight the sudden and completely irrational urge to bolt. There were three doors in her office. One led to Dalton’s office, another to the conference room. Griffin now blocked the door into the hall, but she could easily flee through the conference room. And, yeah, she knew how ridiculous it was that she wanted to.
But the simple truth was, Griffin wasn’t supposed to be part of her work life. He was the stuff of fantasies, and fantasies should have the common courtesy to stay out of the workplace.
As if Griffin knew exactly what was going on in her head, he flashed her a wry smile. He was carrying a thick manila folder and he looked like he’d spent considerable time running his hands through his hair. “Hey.”
“Hi.” Then she cringed at how breathless she sounded. Hi seemed too informal. Too reminiscent of the way she’d greeted him last night when she’d thrown herself into his arms. She tried again, aiming for cool professionalism. “I mean, hello. Can I do something for you?”
He could clearly tell she was flustered because his smile widened. This was just like him. He loved to tease her.
But then his smile faltered as he reached back to close the door to the office. “Did you talk to Dalton before I showed up?”
“No.” Something about the way he held himself made her nervous. Like maybe this was more than him just messing with her. “What? Is something wrong?”
“Not wrong exactly …. Have you checked your email?”
“I did when I first got in, but that was a couple of hours ago.” Most of the emails that needed her attention came through Dalton’s in-box, so she didn’t check her own email nearly as often.
“You should check again.” He flash a wry smile as he said it, but he looked pained rather than amused—like the one man on the Titanic who knew how few lifeboats there were.
Without another word, she pulled up her email on her computer. Ten new emails since she’d last checked. She opened only the one from Dalton. She had to read it twice. And then read it again just to be sure.
Then her eyes found Griffin. “He’s resigning?” Then her gaze dropped back to the email and she read it again, sure she’d misread it. Sure she had. “He can’t resign! This is crazy.” Then she looked back at Griffin. “Did you know he was going to do this?”
“Not until lunch.”
“He can’t resign,” she repeated, this time more numbly.
Of course, he could do whatever he wanted. It wasn’t like he was legally obligated to come to work. He wasn’t a prisoner. But still … Dalton was completely devoted to Cain Enterprises. In the eight months she’d worked with him, he’d worked eighteen-hour days. Weekends. Holidays. Cain Enterprises was his entire life.
“Maybe he’s earned it,” she said, barely aware she was speaking aloud. And then her eyes saw the tiny detail that they’d glossed over until now. “Wait a second. It says he’s recommending you for the position of interim CEO.”
“Yeah, that’s what he said.”
“And that he wants me to retain my current position. So that I can fill you in.”
“Yeah. He assured me he was leaving me in good hands.”
Her gaze sought his. “He’s leaving you in my hands?”
Griffin grinned. “Yeah. Ironic, isn’t it?”
Feeling suddenly jittery, she shot to her feet. “No, it’s not ironic! It’s …” But she couldn’t think of the word for what it was.
Unthinkable.
Disastrous.
Humiliating.
Griffin held out a hand as if to ward off her growing panic. “Hey, calm down. This is no big deal.”
“No big deal?” Her voice came out a little squeaky and high-pitched. “My boss—the leader of this company—just quit and left me in charge.”
“Technically, he left me in charge.”
“Oh, really? And what exactly do you know about the day-to-day running of the business?”
“Not much because—”
“Exactly. You don’t know much because you’re always jaunting off to some exotic location to do ‘business.’” She put the bunny ears around the word. But then she immediately felt like a bitch. She was acting horribly. It was just that she didn’t like change and she hated having the rug pulled out from under her. She was stressed and scared and she was taking it out on Griffin.
She dropped back into her chair and ran a hand over her face. “I’m sorry. That was …”
“Uncalled for?” he offered helpfully.
“I was going to say really bitchy.” She softened her words with a smile. “I’m sorry. I’m freaking out, but I shouldn’t take it out on you.”
Griffin crossed over and sat on the corner of her desk, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re nervous. But don’t worry. We’ll work it out.”
“How’re we supposed to work it out? Dalton has left a billion-dollar company in the hands of an overpaid psych major and a playboy.” She glanced up at him quickly. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Neither of us is prepared to run this company.” But then she broke off and studied Griffin. Really looked at him. Oh, sure. She looked at him all the time. He was her lover. They spent an increasing amount of their spare time together. She’d gone from the point of being in awe of his sheer masculine beauty to being comfortable with his easy grin and smiling eyes. But today she looked at him through a different lens. Today she looked at him as a potential leader.
He’d been raised with wealth and privilege beyond her imagining. He was the second son in a powerful and influential family. But there was the rub. Second son.
She knew from her dealings with Dalton and the other Cains—and from gossip around the office—that the family largely considered Griffin something of a slacker and screwup. Oh, Dalton himself never said that. But everyone knew Griffin had a cushy job. The company paid him insane amounts of money to travel and be charming.
For the first time, she wondered if the cushy job was really the one he wanted.
Cocking her head to the side, taking in his unexpectedly serious expression, she said, “You haven’t had a lot of choice before now. You don’t want to be CEO, do you?”
Because for all she knew, maybe he did. They never talked about work. Or family, for that matter. Or personal ambitions. Maybe he’d always wanted to be CEO but being Dalton’s younger brother had held him back.
Then his face spilt into a grin and he laughed. “Me? CEO?” He shook his head. “No. I’ve never wanted to be CEO.”
She bit down on her lip. “So what is it you do want to do?”
“I want to find the missing heiress. If I do that, all of these problems go away.” His blue eyes gleamed with a satisfaction she wasn’t used to seeing from him outside of bed.
Which was good—it was nice to see him caring about something, even if it was just finding a way to shirk his familial responsibility. But at the same time, it made what she had to say so much harder.
“You know that isn’t actually going to happen, right? Your father has slept with dozens of women. Hundreds. All over the world. Your half sister could be anywhere.”
“Not necessarily. My dad’s usually pretty careful about the whole birth control thing, so if I operate under the assumption that the woman who got pregnant is someone he was in a relationship with—”
“Wait a minute. That in itself is a huge leap. How do you know your dad was a stickler for birth control?” Even as the question flew out of her mouth, she couldn’t believe she was asking it. The absolute last thing she wanted to think about was Griffin’s father’s sexual habits.
“Where do you think I got my paranoia?” His lips twisted in a faint smile that somehow wasn’t. It wasn’t an expression she was used to seeing from him. “He drove it into me at an early age.”
“And this is going to help how? I mean, you have an illegitimate brother, so obviously he did get a woman pregnant.”
“Exactly. But probably not the first time—he’s way too much of a control freak to let that happen. I think he’d actually have to be in the middle of an affair with a woman before he ever got sloppy enough to risk her getting pregnant. Which means—”
“Which means the field of hundreds just got narrowed down to seventy or eighty?” Which still wasn’t great odds, but she had to admit it was better than what she’d originally feared.
“More like fifteen or twenty. The old bastard’s pretty damn careful about who he lets close to him.” His voice was carefully devoid of emotion, but it made her hurt for him in a way she’d never expected to.
After all, she was the orphan in this equation, the one who had grown up with nothing as she was bounced from foster home to foster home. He was the golden boy, the glib son of a billionaire who had never expected anything from him. So why then did she suddenly feel sorry for him?
Not that she could let him see that. Griffin didn’t do pity, self or otherwise.
“So you want to find your sister.” She dragged herself back to the conversation at hand. “And then what? Saddle her with the CEO job?”
He sighed. “You need vision, Sydney. Work with me here. I find Hollister’s missing daughter, I get the money and Dalton is left with nothing. Which isn’t going to sit real well with him, no matter what he says. So when I sweep in and offer him a fat CEO salary plus major stock options in the company, he’s going to jump at it. Especially if he doesn’t have to deal with Dad’s BS. I’ll put him in charge, let him run things the way he wants to.” He dusted his hands together like it was a fait accompli. “Everybody wins.”
“It’s not always about winning.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Sydney. It’s always about winning. It’s only the stakes and the game that change.”
Which summed up all the reasons she couldn’t be with him anymore. When there was nothing on the line, it was easy to spend time with him and not care about philosophical differences or his lifestyle or the fact that everything really was a game to him.
But now that he was her boss, she couldn’t afford to wear those blinders anymore. She couldn’t afford to let a few minutes’—okay, a few hours’—satisfaction get in the way of her job. She liked her job, needed her job for the money and the sense of self it gave her. There was no way she was going to become one of those women who slept with the boss, her survival dependent on the whims of a man she had no hope of holding on to.
No, a few orgasms—earth-shattering or not—were not worth playing Russian roulette with her whole life.
“You really think this is going to work?” she asked Griffin.
“It’s absolutely going to work. Plus, the good news is Dalton is handing over all his research so far and he thinks he has a lead. So we’re golden.” He winked at her. “Trust me.”
As if. She took a deep breath, blew it out slowly and tried to ignore the fact that she suddenly felt like she was making a deal with the devil. “Fine. I’ll help you find your sister. But that’s it.”
“What do you mean, that’s it? That’s all I need.”
“I mean, if we’re going to be working together, if you’re going to be my boss, this thing between us has to end. No sex, no candlelit dinners, no late-night phone calls. We—” she waved her finger back and forth between them “—are officially over.”
For long seconds, Griffin stared at her like he couldn’t quite comprehend what she was saying. Then he did the most amazing thing. He threw back his head and laughed. And laughed. And laughed.
Three
It was cute really, how annoyed she looked.
She set her jaw as bright pink flushed her cheeks. “I’m not joking.”
He tried to clamp down on his laughter. He really did. “I’m not joking.”
“Then stop laughing.” As if to give herself a better angle from which to glare at him, she pushed to her feet.
But from his point of view, it only brought her closer. She’d been sitting not far from him but still out of reach. Now he was easily able to lasso her arm and pull her toward him so she stood between his outstretched legs.
“I’m serious,” she insisted, but there was no force to her words and—as if she could read his mind—her gaze dropped briefly to his mouth.
“I know you are. That’s what makes it cute.” He widened his stance and pulled her close enough so that she was pressed against the vee of his legs, the juncture of her thighs against the hard length of his erection.
