All He Really Needs

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 …”

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?”