All He Really Needs (15 page)

“No. No, I don’t.” Griffin looked at his father first and then
back to his mother, once again shaking his head. “But if Cooper wants to, this
will give him a place to start.”

“What are you saying, boy?”

“I’m out,” Griffin said simply.

“You’re what?” Sydney asked. It was the first time she’d spoken
in the entire conversation and everyone looked at her. Caro still looked tearful
and broken. Hollister looked like he hadn’t even realized she was there. Griffin
turned and smiled at her.

“I’m done. Just like Dalton. I’m done looking for the heiress.
I’m done working for Cain Enterprises. I’m tired of being a part of this sick,
dysfunctional family. So I’m done.” He walked back to where Sydney stood beside
the door and held out his hand. She put her hand in his automatically, even
though she knew she couldn’t hold it long.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

She let him lead her out of his parents’ house. He moved so
fast it was like he was fleeing.

She stumbled along, taking three steps for every two of his. He
knew he was walking too fast for her, but he also knew she’d be able to keep up.
And he just wasn’t willing to stop until they were well clear of the house,
crossing the lawn back to his car. Then she dug in her heels and tugged her hand
from his.

“Wait. Griffin, wait.”

Griffin turned to look back at Sydney, half expecting to see
that she’d stopped because she’d lost a shoe or something. But instead, she was
just standing there under one of the sprawling live oaks that draped over his
parents’ lawn.

“What?” he asked. He wanted to keep moving. To get into his
car, slam it into gear and tear down the highway. It was the same adrenaline
fest he’d experienced earlier today, but instead of being fueled by anger, this
time it was the sweet heady buzz of freedom.

Sydney took a step back from him. Almost as if she was afraid
of him. “You’re making a mistake.”

“What?” This time it was flat-out confusion. What did she mean
a mistake?

“Giving up on the search. Quitting Cain Enterprises. It’s a
mistake. You need to go back in and tell them you’ve changed your mind.”

He let out a bark of laughter. “Are you crazy? Did you hear
that conversation in there? I’m not going to change my mind. I quit.”

“You can’t quit. You can’t leave Cain Enterprises.”

*

Sydney held her breath, waiting for Griffin’s response.
She knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. He was hurt. He was angry.

But instead of taking out his anger on her, he gave a bark of
laughter. “Hell, if Dalton can quit, I can quit.”

“You may not realize it, but Cain Enterprises is who you are.
What would you do if you quit?”

“Who cares what I do? We’ll leave. We could travel. Go anywhere
we want. Get married. We could—”

She held up her hands, cutting him off. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait
a second. Now you want to get married?”

He stared at her blankly for a second, and she had to wonder if
he even realized he’d said it. But then he shrugged. “Sure. Let’s get married.”
He smiled, but there was a frenzied look to his expression. “Don’t you get it? I
don’t have to be part of that family anymore. I don’t have to be a part of that
cycle of misery anymore. I can do anything I want. I can marry anyone I
want.”

Oh, crap. This was worse than she thought. She had fully
expected him to cling desperately to their relationship out of familiarity.
She’d been prepared for that. She had not seen this coming. It simply hadn’t
occurred to her that he would try to sweep her up into his rebellion against his
family, but that’s exactly what he was doing. Irony of ironies, suddenly she was
his
wild oats.

Which was not at all the same thing as being the love of his
life. Despite him proposing to her in what she could only imagine was a fit of
delirium, he hadn’t once mentioned love. And why would he? Sure, they’d been
sleeping together for months, and sure, she had a key to his apartment, but
neither of those things signified any real emotion on his part. Both the sex and
the key were just accidents, really.

If she was a different kind of person, if she wasn’t someone
who needed to be needed, she might risk it. She might agree to marry him, hoping
that later he’d fall for her just as hard as she’d fallen for him. But Sydney
Edwards—Sinnamon Edwards—desperately needed to be loved. Really and truly. Loved
for who she was. And so she couldn’t risk it.

But she also couldn’t tell him that, because Griffin was smooth
and smart and if he thought she needed the words to convince her, he’d probably
say them.

“You can’t run away from your life like that,” she said
instead.

“Why not?” He held her at arm’s length, studying her face as he
asked, “What’s holding me here?”

“Your job, for starters.”

He looked surprised, then suddenly distrustful. “You care so
much about my job?”

“Yes. I do. I care about Cain Enterprises. You do, too. You’re
just too stubborn to see it.” She seemed to have his full attention now, so she
spoke quickly, not wanting to lose this chance to convince him. “All this time
you’ve been searching for the heiress, planning on hiring Dalton back as CEO,
and you haven’t seen that you would actually be just as good a CEO as he was.
Better, maybe.”

He dropped her hands and stepped away, leaving a gap of several
feet between them. When he spoke, his voice was flat and devoid of emotion. “So,
what? You think I should just stay here. Find the heiress. Stay on as CEO. Then
we’ll get married?”

She ignored his comment about getting married, because this
time it felt more like a jab than a proposal. “What’s important is that you find
your sister. You have this idea in your head that you can run away to Africa and
reinvent yourself, but you can’t. You think that the only way you’ll ever know
that someone loves you for you is if you give up all your money. But that’s
ridiculous.”

“Is it?” His voice was chilling and as lifeless as a block of
ice.

“Yes. You are who you are, regardless of whether or not you
have the money. And if you walk away from everything now, you’re only robbing
yourself of the chance to be the person you were meant to be.”

“And who’s that? Someone with a lot of money?”

“Someone who might have a sister out there who cares about him.
Someone who is a great CEO. Think about all the people who work at Cain
Enterprises who you know and care about. Jenna and Peyton and Marion. Are you
really just going to walk away from them? You’re just going to abandon the
company? You’re really going to do that?”

“So that’s your big plan for the future. We keep searching for
the heiress. I stay on as CEO of Cain Enterprises.” Suddenly, as he spoke, his
meaning was blaringly obvious. The fog had cleared. “And you’ll be right there
by my side. Because, presumably, once I’m worth close to half a billion dollars,
you’ll get over this fear of being the EA who sleeps with her boss.”

Okay, so he wasn’t playing dumb, he was being dumb.

“You think I’m after your money?”

“Oh, I think you win either way. You’ve said all along you were
in this for job security. So either you get to stay on as the assistant of the
CEO of a company or you end up married to the CEO. Either way, your financial
security is pretty much guaranteed, right?”

“That’s what you think?” she asked. “That all I care about is
the money?”

“Why else would you be so damn desperate to convince me to find
the heiress and to stay on as CEO?”

“Because I want what’s best for you, you dumbass. Did it
honestly never occur to you that I just wanted you to make the best decision for
you?”

“No. That never occurred to me. And you wanna know why? Because
if you do know about Hope
2
O and you really understand what I’m trying to do
there, then you’d understand that nothing would make me happier than funneling
all that money into a worthy charity.”

“Oh, I understand all right.” He made her so mad, she wanted to
launch herself at him and strangle him. Instead, she satisfied herself with
merely stalking across the pristine lawn and getting right up in his face. “I
understand perfectly well that your family has you so emotionally messed up that
you think no one will ever love you for yourself alone. So you think the only
way to earn redemption or respect is to pour all your money into a worthy
cause.”

“I don’t—” He made a meager protest, but she didn’t let him
finish.

She was too furious to stop midrant. “I get that. And that
would be so convenient for you, wouldn’t it? Because then when someone fell in
love with you, it would be just you on the table. And you’d never have to wonder
whether or not they really loved you. And you would never have to suck it up and
just learn to trust someone on their own merits. That would be perfect for you,
right?”

He was stubbornly silent, refusing to acknowledge the truth to
her words.

So she went on. “And maybe that would have worked out for you
if your father hadn’t come up with this damn contest for Cain Enterprises. But
he did and it screwed up all your plans. Because regardless of whether or not
you want to admit it, you care about this company. You care about these people.
And if you walk away from it now, you will end up regretting it forever. You
know what will happen if you don’t play Hollister’s game, don’t you? Cooper
doesn’t want Cain Enterprises. He has his own empire to run. So Cain Enterprises
will end up reverting to the state. Sheppard Capital will probably swoop in and
dismantle it bit by bit.”

“Cooper—”

“I’m not done yet,” she interrupted him again. “Yes, you’ll
know that whatever woman you end up with down the line will really love you for
you—you will damn well guarantee that because you’ll both be living in
sub-Saharan Africa on the salary of an international aid worker. But guess what?
To guarantee your personal happiness you will have sacrificed the jobs and
livelihoods of countless people you really care about.”

Finally, finally, she was done with the barrage of anger that
had rushed out of her. Her! Sydney, who never lost her temper. Who had never
been angry at him, not even when he’d told her about the background check.

But she’d lost her temper now because he was being so damn
dense about himself, about what he really needed.

And now he just stared at her, like she’d lost her ever-loving
mind. So she asked, “Are you really going to sacrifice all of Cain Enterprises,
just so you can have some sort of guarantee that you’re loved? Are you really
willing to make that sacrifice?”

“What if I am?”

“Then you’re not the man I thought you were.”

“And let me guess…if I am that guy, if I’m that guy who can
walk away from millions of dollars, then you don’t want to be with me.”

“The money is not what I want. It never was.”

“Answer the question, Sydney. If I walk away from Cain
Enterprises, I lose you. Do I have that right?”

“That’s what you don’t get. You never had me to begin
with.”

“You sure about that? ’Cause I’m pretty sure I had you just
about an hour ago.”

“Nice.” She laughed bitterly, even though she wanted to cry.
“If you can’t win an argument with logic, then throw sex back into the mix, just
to make me feel cheap. You know, for someone who doesn’t want to be cruel and
manipulative like your family, you do a damn good job of it.”

“Well, then, you’re going to love this. You don’t want to be
the girl who sleeps with her boss to get ahead. Fine. You’re not that girl
anymore. You’re fired.”

“I guess I should have seen that coming. If you can’t have what
you want, then you’ll damn well make sure no one else does, either.” She let out
a bitter laugh. “You know, if I thought you could actually get away with that,
I’d sue you. I think we’ll both be better off if we just pretend you never said
that.” She turned and started to walk away, but then turned back around and
looked at him. “You want to know the real reason I would never marry you?
Because you’re wrong—it doesn’t have anything to do with the money or whether or
not you get control of Cain. It’s because I saw this coming from a mile away. I
knew from day one that eventually you’d get bored or frustrated and you’d push
me away.”

“So you pushed me away first? You just conveniently waited
until I let all that money slip through my fingers before doing it.”

By now she was so annoyed with him that she couldn’t even
respond, so she circled back around to him trying to fire her. Even though she
didn’t really believe he’d do it. Even though she would sue his pants off if he
followed through, she couldn’t believe he’d threatened it. “Besides, you know
the one thing you’ve forgotten? You can’t fire me. You already quit. You’re not
my boss anymore.”

“Oh, I’ve only told my parents I quit. I’ll sure as hell stay
on at Cain Enterprises long enough to make sure you never work there again.”

“So you’ll put up with something you hate just to make me
miserable?” She swallowed the welling of grief that swelled up in her throat.
“Your father would be so proud.”

Fifteen

S
he thought Griffin would come after
her.

Even after all the horrible things they’d said to one another,
even though her heart felt like it was being crushed under a steamroller, she
honestly expected him to come after her. Even if for no other reason than the
fact that she was on foot, miles from home, in River Oaks, for goodness’
sake.

He didn’t come after her.

He just let her walk away. Which took forever. Just walking
down the block seemed to take an eternity. The whole time, she was painfully
aware of him still standing there on his parents’ lawn, hands fisted on his
hips, watching her walk away.

Of course, she didn’t turn around and check to see if he was
still there. For all she knew, he may have gone back inside and poured himself a
drink. But she never heard his car take off, and he never passed her on the
road. So the whole interminable time she was walking past the six sprawling
estates on his parents’ block, she pictured him standing there behind her,
watching her walk away.

That image was the only thing that kept her from crumbling to
the ground in tears. Because no matter what else happened, she would not let him
see her crying. It wasn’t strength that kept her going. It wasn’t even pride. It
was pure stubbornness. He’d crushed her, but she’d been crushed before.

That was the thing about a kid like her. She’d lost everything
at the age of seven. Everything she’d ever known had been ripped away from her,
even though everything she’d ever known was absolute crap. But once she’d lost
everything, she knew she could live through losing everything again. She might
have been terrified, but she had just kept going.

So now she kept walking. Just putting one foot in front of the
other until she’d finally reached the end of the block. Then she turned the
corner and walked some more. Cars drove past without noticing her—not Griffin’s
car, but others. It was the people on foot who worried her. Twice she saw other
women walking on the other side of the street. Once, it was a nanny pushing a
high-end stroller that she was pretty sure cost more than her car. The second
time a pair of spandex-wrapped trophy wives. Neither spared her more than a
passing glance and she turned another corner. Only then did she admit that she
was lost. In addition to being emotionally adrift, she actually had no idea how
to get herself home.

She wandered down the block for a few minutes before stopping
in front of a house with an impenetrable line of privacy shrubs hiding it from
the street. Near the street, the branches of a massive live oak dipped low to
the ground. She sank to the ground in the shade of the tree, grateful to be at
least somewhat shielded from anyone passing by. Then she dug out her phone and
pulled up the maps app. She dropped a pin at the current location and then asked
for directions back to her own house. Three point eight miles. It might as well
be twenty-three point eight. Yes, it would be possible for her to walk home from
here, but she just didn’t have the energy. She called Tasha.

“Hey, what’s up?” Tasha asked. “That lazy boss of yours isn’t
sick again, is he?”

Sydney had intended to calmly ask for a ride home, but the
instant she heard Tasha’s voice, the whole story poured out.

“I’m going to kill him!” Tasha said indignantly when the story
petered out. “I’m actually going to kill that jerk.”

Despite herself, Sydney let out a strangled laugh. “I don’t
think—”

“No. Really. I think we should kill him. Between you, me,
Marco, Jen and George, that’s what…five of us who grew up in the foster care
system before ending up with Molly. Surely one of us knows someone who grew up
to be a professional hit man, right? I’m guessing Jen. She was always the
toughest.”

Again, Sydney laughed. “Yeah. It would probably be Jen. But
don’t call her just yet. What I could really use now is just a ride.”

Tasha snorted. “Honey, I got in the car as soon as you called.
I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Thirteen minutes later, Sydney climbed into her foster sister’s
beat-up Chevy. Tasha wrapped her in a brief hug before putting the car back into
gear. Tasha was a crappy driver who talked too much with her hands. This was
probably the first time they’d ever been in the car together that Sydney hadn’t
spent the whole drive fearing for her life. Today she simply felt too numb.

For the first five minutes of the drive, Tasha plotted
Griffin’s murder in grisly detail. Because she was in her final year of law
school, most of the discussion was about how to get away with it. Eventually,
she had Sydney laughing so hard she was crying. And then just crying.

When she finally looked up, they were in the parking lot of a
strip mall. Tasha had killed the engine and was frantically digging through the
car’s glove compartment for a tissue. Finally, she held out an old napkin.

“I really can kill him,” Tasha offered.

Sydney blew her nose. “That won’t be necessary.”

Tasha looked down at the dash and swallowed visibly. “I’ve
never seen you cry before.”

“I don’t know that anyone has.” Sydney stared down at the
mangled strap of her purse. She thought about saying more about Griffin—because
she’d cried in front him, but that had been right after they’d had sex and she
didn’t really think he’d noticed. That should have been a sign right there. But
her throat closed over the words. So instead she said, “I don’t know what I’m
going to do about my job.”

“You know he can’t get away with that crap. He can’t fire you
over any of this. We’ll sue his ass. We’ll—”

“I don’t… I know I could totally sue him. And maybe I should.
For justice or whatever. But I don’t really think that he’ll fire me. He’ll come
to his senses and realize he can’t get away with it. But I don’t think I can go
back to work there anyway. I can’t see him every day.”

“You could—”

But she shook her head. “Even if I found another position in
the company, I’d still know I was working for him. I don’t want that.”

And here it was, reason number one why sleeping with her boss
was a bad idea.

For a few long seconds, she was painfully aware of Tasha
studying her. Then Tasha said fiercely, “You’ll get another job!”

“In this economy?” Sydney shook her head. “It could take
months. Yeah, I have my savings, but—” She broke off because her savings weren’t
all that extensive. She’d helped three of her four foster-siblings with college
tuition, but the last thing she wanted was for Tasha to feel badly. “Hey, I can
put the house on the market. I’ll need to find an apartment that allows cats,
but Grommet and I don’t need all that room. It’s a great little place in a great
neighborhood. I’m sure I can—”

She broke off again, this time because Tasha was chuckling.

“What?” Sydney demanded.

“I’m not going to let you sell your house!”

“But—”

“God, you’re so stubborn.”

“I am not.”

“Of course you are.” Tasha twisted in her seat. “Look, you’ve
helped with my tuition for the past four years. I’m not going to let you sell
your house.”

“I didn’t help that much,” she protested. She’d just chipped in
here and there.

“You helped enough. I can get out of my apartment lease and
move in with you. We’ll share the mortgage payment. We could even get by with
one car if we had to. And I’ve still got my job at the law library. We’ll make
it work. You’re my sister. I’m not going to let you lose your home without a
fight.”

Tasha’s words should have made her feel better, but they only
made her cry more. It turned out she had a financial safety net after all. It
was just her emotions that were free falling.

Griffin had ripped all of her long-sought-after security right
out from under her. Her entire adult life, she’d worked to become financially
independent. She’d struggled and scraped and starved to get where she was
now…or rather, where she’d been a week ago. And because she’d slept with
Griffin, she’d lost it all.

She should be devastated. She should be curling into a ball on
the ground in tears. And she was devastated…just not about that. The job, the
money, the security. She could live without all that. So she’d have to start
over. Big deal. She could do that. Even without the safety net of family to help
support her through the tough times, she’d still be fine.

No, what devastated her was that she’d lost Griffin. True,
she’d never really had him. Her brain had never believed they’d get to be
together, but somehow, despite that, her heart had believed it. Her heart had
wanted and dreamed of what her brain had never dared to imagine: a life with
Griffin. Her heart would have been happy in Houston, working for Cain
Enterprises, or in sub-Saharan Africa. She would have gone anywhere to be with
him. Unfortunately, he didn’t want or need her.

She’d get over losing her job, but she might never recover from
losing him.

*

In the end, Tasha didn’t need to move in with her. The
grueling search for a new job ended up being neither grueling nor long. The day
after her big fight with Griffin, she’d resigned from Cain Enterprises. At
first, he refused to even accept her resignation. He even went so far as to
offer her a stiff apology. She didn’t wait around to hear him out, but had left
her letter on her desk on the way out. Four days after that, she got a call at
home from Sheppard Capital. Sharlene offered her a job.

At first, Sydney was tempted to refuse. It smacked of charity.
She didn’t want a pity job merely because Griffin felt badly about giving her no
option but to quit.

“Don’t be ridiculous, dear,” Sharlene had said, brushing aside
her protests. “Griffin didn’t call me. Dalton did. He was furious that Griffin
put you in this position. Even in the heat of an argument, he should have known
better. Dalton wanted to hire you himself, but he doesn’t start with the new
company for another three weeks, so I insisted I get first dibs. After all, I
know how hard a good assistant is to come by. Besides, I also know what it means
to be a man’s assistant. To spend your every waking moment anticipating his
needs only to find out he doesn’t need you at all.”

In the end, she had let Sharlene convince her. Not because she
really wanted the job, but because it was easier than fighting her. Besides, she
did need a job. The pay was nearly what she’d made at Cain Enterprises, and it
was nice to go to work somewhere where no one knew that splotchy skin and red
eyes weren’t normal for her.

Sharlene’s own assistant, apparently, had been wanting to move
to their office in Dallas and so, after a week of unemployment, Sydney started
work as Sharlene’s new assistant.

A full week passed while she settled numbly into her new job.
It was midway through her second week at the new job when Griffin walked into
the office.

Seeing him at work was the one thing she hadn’t anticipated
when she’d accepted the job from Sharlene. The sight of him was like a kick to
the solar plexus.

It took every ounce of willpower she had to swallow back her
tears, muster her professionalism and ask politely, “Is Ms. Sheppard expecting
you?”

Griffin looked her up and down without a trace of his normal
easy smile. “No,” he said simply. “I’m not here to see her.”

That gave her a moment’s pause. She hoped to hell that he was
in the wrong office then because she just did not have the energy to be polite
to him when all she really wanted to do was curl into a ball and cry. For about
a month. Or even two.

Still, she kept a smile on her face that was at least
semi-polite and asked, “Then can I direct you to someone else’s office?”

“No. I’m right where I want to be.” Before she ask what he
meant, he pulled a business card down on the desk in front of her. “There. Will
that do it?”

“What?”

“Look at the card, damn it.”

His voice was hard and intractable. His face humorless.

She looked from him down to the business card. It had the
familiar Cain Enterprises logo on the left-hand side. To the right of that were
the words: Griffin Cain. And beneath that: President & Chief Executive
Officer.

She stared at the card for a long moment before looking back up
at him. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ve been working nonstop for the past two and half weeks to
convince the board to name me CEO. Permanently. I groveled before my father. I
called in all kinds of favors for this. I’m not quitting. I’m not leaving Cain
Enterprises.” With that, he walked around to her side of the desk and pulled her
to her feet. Then, before she could question him or protest, he dropped to one
knee in front of her. He pulled out a ring box and flipped it open. Inside was a
simple diamond solitaire. “Now, will you please marry me?”

The sight of him on his knees before her, the sight of the
ring, the entire proposal…it was straight out of a fairy tale. And it killed
her to have to turn him down.

“Griffin, I…” She started to shake her head, but she could
barely talk past the tears.

He must have heard the denial in her voice because he stood,
pulling her into his arms and cupping her face. “Don’t say no.”

“I can’t…I can’t say yes.”

“Why not?”

His expression nearly broke her heart. Because he looked like
he genuinely didn’t know why she might say no.

She shook her head and pulled out of his arms. “Griffin, you
don’t really care about me.”

To her surprise, he laughed. “That’s ridiculous. Of course I
do. I love you.”

Her heart felt like it was trying to crawl right out of her and
throw itself into his waiting hands. “You don’t.”

He grabbed her arm and pulled her back to him. “I do. I know
you think you know me pretty well, but you don’t get to tell me how I feel.”

She swallowed her heart back down. She couldn’t meet his gaze,
so instead, she stared at the top button of his shirt. “You don’t really mean
that.”