All He Really Needs (3 page)

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

I
t 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.

It felt so good having her there, so right. He inhaled sharply
and was immediately hit with the scent of her. Sydney never wore perfume, but
she favored a shampoo that smelled like coconut and lime. He was used to the
smell of her hair, the way it mixed with the naturally sweet smell of her own
skin and made him think of eating pancakes in bed on a perfect, lazy Saturday
morning. But today she’d showered at his place and instead of her normal
tropical, fruity smell, when he inhaled, he got a hit of Sydney layered under
the smell of his own soap. Maybe it shouldn’t have been sexy, but it was. He
felt it like a punch in the gut. She’d been in his shower mere hours ago. The
smell of her only reinforced every instinct he had. She was
his.
Whether she knew it or not, she belonged to him.

Which made her edict that they stop sleeping together all the
more funny.

He gave in to the urge to slip his hand along her jaw and to
pull her closer.

Her mouth parted and she sucked in a quick breath.
Anticipation. But instead of kissing her, he buried his nose in the hair right
behind her ear and drew in a deep breath, just taking in the scent of her
because he wanted to remember forever how she smelled in that instant. To burn
it into his memory.

He felt a little shudder go through her and then he couldn’t
resist running a trail of kisses up under her ear and across her cheek to her
mouth. Then his lips were moving over hers in a soul-searing kiss. The kind that
almost ended up with him ripping her clothes off and devouring her until she
came apart in his arms.

Unfortunately, he didn’t think sex with his assistant would be
a very efficient way to spend his first afternoon as CEO. Besides, even with the
door closed, there was always the risk they’d be interrupted.

It was a struggle, but he mustered enough restraint to lift his
mouth from hers and nudge her hips away from his before he lost all control. For
a long moment she just stood there, face tilted up, lips moistened and parted,
like she was so dazed she hadn’t even realized he was no longer kissing her.

He smiled again, purposefully making light of the irresistible
pull she held over him. “Well, then, you let me know how that goes for you.”

She blinked. “How what goes?”

“That whole not sleeping together thing you have planned.”

The space between her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Then she
backed up a step and jerked her hands away from his hips. “Well, this was hardly
a fair test.”

“Right, sweetheart.” He bopped the tip of her nose with his
finger. “Let me know if you devise a fairer test than that. Meanwhile, I’ll be
in my new office.”

He loved seeing her shocked expression as he sauntered into the
office that used to be Dalton’s and shut the door behind him.

Once he was alone in the room, however, he blew out a long,
slow breath.

When it came to running Cain Enterprises, he wasn’t nearly as
confident as he’d let Sydney believe. He wasn’t worried about the day-to-day
stuff, but the prospect of dealing with the board damn near had him breaking out
in a cold sweat.

The board of directors that Hollister had amassed for Cain
Enterprises was a bunch of vultures. If they knew what had happened in the past
couple of weeks, they’d be circling for sure. First, Hollister—who had never
displayed any sign of weakness to his business opponents—had made a very
irrational decision when he’d sent his sons on this quest. The whole company
hung in the balance as a result.

And now that Dalton had resigned, from the outside, it had to
look like they’d all lost their minds. The board members weren’t fools. If they
knew how unstable things really were, they’d start swooping down to peck out
bits of flesh from what remained of his inheritance.

Right now, the company needed strong leadership more than
anything. The company needed someone who could command respect. Unfortunately,
Griffin knew he wasn’t that man.

He was all too aware of his limitations as a leader. He lacked
his father’s cutthroat business tactics and his brother’s stolid determination.
Perhaps even more importantly, he had no interest in running Cain
Enterprises.

At the moment he had two interests: completing his work for
Hope
2
O and the very tempting new assistant that came along with the CEO job.
Apparently, being CEO was going to interfere with both of those pursuits. Which
was why he had to get this yoke off his neck so he could get back to his real
life. He had to find this damn missing heiress.

He dropped into the chair. Testing the springiness of the seat,
he rocked back but there was very little give. Damn, even Dalton’s chair felt
stiff and unyielding, much like his brother was.

Griffin glanced down and saw that the chair was actually the
same model as the one in his office down the hall. Thanks to an array of knobs
and levers, he could easily adjust it to suit his taste. Instead, he rolled the
chair closer to the desk, flipped open the file Dalton had given him and started
going over the notes Dalton and Laney had made. He left the chair exactly as it
was. He wouldn’t be sitting in it long enough to bother changing it.

*

Sydney stared at the closed door to Dalton’s office,
trying to squelch the sinking feeling in her gut. Except it wasn’t the door to
Dalton’s office anymore. It was the door to Griffin’s office now. This was not
good.

Oh, this was
so
not good.

Feigning a calm she didn’t feel, she turned back toward the
computer at her workstation and mindlessly pulled up her email. If someone came
into the office, she wanted it to look like she was busy. And competent. And not
sitting here fantasizing about her boss.

Her boss.

Ugh.

She was absolutely not going to be that woman.

Her mother had been that kind of woman. The kind who casually
slept with men to get favors from them. As far as she knew, her mother had never
strayed into actual prostitution. She’d traded sex for rent, or car care or so
her boss would overlook the fact that she was late for the seventeenth time that
month. Even if that wasn’t real prostitution, it had cast a pall over Sydney’s
childhood. Poverty, drug use and bad decision-making had dominated her life
until she’d been taken away from her mother at the age of six. From there, she’d
bounced from foster home to foster home for years before finally settling in at
Molly Stanhope’s house when she was eleven.

Molly’s house had been a haven for the last seven years she was
in the foster care system. In fact, Molly was still the closest thing she had to
a mother. It was Molly who had been her moral compass since then. It was Molly
who would not approve of Sydney sleeping with her boss.

Well, who was she kidding? It’s not like Molly would have
gushed with approval over Sydney sleeping with Griffin Cain in the first
place.

Sleeping with her boss compromised her position in the company.
It meant he wouldn’t respect her. Her coworkers wouldn’t respect her and, worst
of all, it destroyed her job security. It threatened not just her heart, but her
livelihood.

As far as Sydney was concerned that sort of carelessness was a
luxury she couldn’t afford. As a product of the foster care system, she had no
one to depend on but herself. If the unthinkable happened and she lost her job,
she was on her own. There were no loving parents for her to rush back to. There
was no safety net. Hell, she didn’t even have a kindly uncle who could lend her
a couple hundred bucks if she needed it. All she had was her cat, Grommet. And
even he was kind of grouchy. If she was lucky, he might deign to curl up on her
lap if she bumped the air-conditioning up.

She was completely on her own.

If she lost her job, she could lose her savings. Her house.
Even her foster-siblings would feel it, because she’d been helping a couple of
them with college tuition.

Just to give herself the kick in the ass she needed, she dug
through her purse for her cell phone and scrolled through their numbers. Five of
them had sort of stuck together because they’d all been at Molly’s at about the
same time. She passed over Marco and George. They were both good guys if she
needed advice on car care or barbecue, but they’d be useless at this sort of
thing. Jen was studying abroad this semester and who knew what time it was in
Spain. So Sydney pulled up Tasha’s number.

Tasha answered on the third ring. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Nothing.” Sydney aimed for a breezy tone but landed somewhere
near strained. “Just thought I’d call and see how you’re doing.”

There was a pause of obviously stunned silence. “On a work day?
Are you sick?”

“No. Of course not. I’m fine. What, I can’t call you just to
check in?”

“On a work day?” Suspicion strained Tasha’s voice. “I mean,
sure, I guess you can. You just never have in the past. Oh, my God, were you
fired?”

“No! I mean…” Sydney forced a chuckle. “Calm down. Nothing’s
wrong. Dalton’s not in today, that’s all.”

Thank goodness she had a handy excuse because apparently Tasha
saw right through all her half-truths.

“I just…” Sydney fought the sudden urge to spill the beans.
To tell Tasha everything. To share her burdens. Get a second opinion. The
problem was, people usually came to her for help, not the other way around. So
instead, she asked, “How’re your finals going?”

And thankfully Tasha let herself be distracted.

“Ugh. Just awful. Political Theory is knocking me for a
loop.”

“I thought you liked that one.”

And distracting Tasha was as easy as that. Fifteen minutes of
griping later, Sydney was wrapping up the conversation when Tasha inadvertently
delivered the wakeup call Sydney needed.

“I just can’t wait for this semester to be over so I can blow
off a little steam.”

“Just don’t do anything too crazy, okay?” Sydney said, that
familiar need to protect her sister rising up inside her.

“Don’t worry, I won’t do anything you wouldn’t do.”

Tasha’s words were like a stab in the gut. If that was the
barometer, then Tasha could be in serious trouble.

“Just be safe.”

Tasha chuckled. “I know the drill.”

“Yeah, I know you do.”

“Hey, are you sure you’re okay?” Tasha asked her out of the
blue.

“Yeah. Great.”

“Because you just missed an opportunity to remind me to call
you if I needed to.”

“Oh. Sorry. You know you can always call. Anytime, day or
night.”

But of course, Tasha never did call. Like Sydney, Tasha was
über-responsible, superpredictable and determined to make a better life for
herself than the one fate had handed her. She was also the last of Molly’s
foster kids Sydney felt really close to. And soon Tasha would graduate from
college, get a job and maybe move away. Maybe she wouldn’t need Sydney
anymore.

Sydney didn’t like to admit it to herself, but she still needed
Tasha. She still needed to be needed.

She’d known this day was coming. She’d even thought she’d been
prepared, back before her boss up and quit, back when her job was stable and her
life still made sense. Now? Well, in the past few hours her life had unraveled
at an alarming rate. But Griffin was right: panicking wouldn’t help anything.
What she needed was a plan. Part one: stay out of Griffin’s bed. At least until
this was all over with. Part two: find the missing heiress.

Of course, both of those things were going to be harder than
they sounded. She’d been helping Dalton look for the missing heiress before he’d
gone off the deep end. She’d already scoured hospital records and county court
records. So far, she’d found diddly.

And then there was the matter of Griffin. If she had any
resistance against him at all, she wouldn’t be in this mess in the first
place.

She didn’t need a plan. She needed a miracle.