All He Really Needs (5 page)

He did a quick mental review of his personal schedule. “Make it
nine-thirty.”

“Nine-thirty?” Sydney asked, frowning. “By then, everyone will
have been at work for several hours. Gossip will already be spreading. You need
to get her on your side straightaway.”

She was right, of course. Except he had a virtual meeting with
a bank in Nairobi set up for eight in the morning. It had taken him two weeks to
get the financial officer of the bank to even agree to the meeting. Rescheduling
it would be a nightmare.

“I have another obligation at eight,” he said, hoping she
wouldn’t argue with the note of finality in his voice.

He should have known better. Sydney set her jaw at a stubborn
angle and flipped open her iPad again. “You don’t. I took the liberty of having
your assistant, Marion, forward your schedule to me earlier. Your morning is
free.”

“Marion doesn’t have my complete schedule. I have a phone call
to make at eight.”

Sydney blew out a breath as though she was trying to muster her
restraint. “Can you push it back?”

“No.” It would be four in that part of Africa as it was. This
was the best he’d been able to do.

Sydney pinched her mouth shut but then seemed unable to contain
her ire. “You really don’t want to blow this. DeValera will be looking for a way
to shut you down. If he gets too much time with Merkins first—”

“Okay, eight-thirty. I’ll try to move my other meeting
forward.” And he’d talk really fast.

She must have realized she’d gotten as much as she was going to
because she gave a tight little nod. Then she added, “If you want to send me
your personal schedule also, then I can put everything on a master schedule.
Might make things easier for you.”

“No. Marion never had access to my personal schedule. You don’t
need it, either.”

“How can I function as your assistant if I don’t know when or
where you’ll be?” she asked, frowning.

“Just run everything by me before you firm things up. That’s
how I did it with Marion.”

Her frown deepened and her jaw clenched even tighter. “But I
can’t—”

“Marion made it work. So will you. It’s just how I like to do
things.”

“Fine.” But he could tell from the narrowing of her eyes that
it wasn’t fine at all. She spun on her foot to leave and he was pretty sure he
heard her mutter, “If your personal life has to be that mysterious…”

He nearly called her back and explained the truth about his
work for Hope
2
O but instead he kept his mouth shut.

Marion had been hired for him by his father’s assistant. He’d
liked Marion without ever really trusting her. And to be honest, as wily and
cunning as Hollister was, Griffin wouldn’t be surprised if the whole CEO office
suite wasn’t bugged.

Still he didn’t want Sydney to think he was purposefully
shutting her out—even if that was what he was doing.

“Wait a second.” Instead of letting her leave, he stood and
crossed to where she hovered near the door. He held out the folder he’d gotten
from Dalton. “Here are all the notes from Dalton about his search for the
heiress. Make copies for yourself and take an hour or so to look it over, then
we’ll talk more.”

She looked from him to the folder and then back, finally
meeting his gaze as she took the folder. Her expression was cautious but less
openly distrustful than it had been just moments ago. “Okay.”

“Look, I know I’m difficult to work with. And I know the
company’s in trouble. I’m going to do my damnedest not to screw it up any more
than it already is. Let’s just get through this. Together. Okay?”

“Okay.” She tucked the folder on top of her iPad and left the
office.

Alone in the room, Griffin was all too aware of the overbearing
décor, the heavy French furniture and massive mahogany desk that had been in the
office since Griffin’s own childhood. The very walls seemed to close in on
him.

Juggling the disparate elements of his life was typically
something he excelled at. He kept his work for Cain separate from his work with
Hope
2
O and his love life separate from both. He functioned best with everything
compartmentalized.

He hadn’t been lying to Sydney when he’d told her was going to
try his damnedest not to screw anything up. That was true for the company and
for his relationship with her.

*

Sydney worked furiously for the next couple of hours
setting up the board meeting. The fact that every single member of the board was
willing to rearrange his or her own schedule to be there—either in person or
virtually—was either a good sign or a very bad one.

A half hour before the meeting she went across to the big
conference room on the other side of the building to verify the folks in the IT
department had gotten everything working for the board members who couldn’t be
physically present. She double-checked that catering had done their job, and she
even removed one limp lily from the floral arrangement on the sideboard. Now
everything was perfect.

This meeting had to go well. If the board didn’t approve
Griffin as interim CEO, she’d probably be out of a job. Yes, she’d find another
one, but this was a good job, especially for someone as young as she was. She’d
lucked into it. She’d first been hired as a temp when Dalton’s previous
assistant had knee surgery, but he’d kept her on when Janine had decided not to
come back.

If she lost this job, her next position wouldn’t pay nearly
this well. Which meant making her mortgage payment would be a strain. It was
already steep, but when she’d first bought her house, it had seemed like such a
good investment. It had represented all the security she’d desperately wanted.
Now, it just represented all that she’d lose if this didn’t go well.

She left the conference room and hurried down the hall to her
office. Griffin was leaving his as she walked in.

“I was just checking on the conference room. Everything looks
good there.”

“Thanks.” He smiled that same breezy smile she was used to, the
flash of white teeth and deep dimples. Suddenly the nerves she felt for the
meeting morphed into a pleasant fluttery sort of anticipation that had nothing
to do with efficient IT and catering departments.

She handed him the folio folder from her desk. “Here’s your
copy of the agenda. I kept it simple.”

He flipped it open and read over it as she spoke. “Looks
good.”

He was about to walk out when she stopped him. “Wait a second.
Is that what you’re wearing?”

“Yeah.” He glanced down as if seeing his jeans and shirt for
the first time.

“You don’t look the part of the business executive.”

“I haven’t exactly had time to go home and change.”

She held up a hand to ward off a protest. “Just give me two
minutes.” She dashed into Dalton’s office and dug around in the coat closet for
a minute before returning. She held out what she’d found. “Here, put this
on.”

Griffin held it out in front of him. “A sweater?”

“Come on, trust me.”

“A sweater?” he repeated, even as he pulled it over his
head.

“I didn’t have a lot to work with here.” She helped him with
the hem, tugging it over his hips. “Dalton keeps a couple of jackets here, but
your shoulders are broader than his, so you couldn’t wear one of those.” Griffin
stilled as she fussed over him, adjusting the sleeves of the V-neck sweater so a
half-inch of cuff showed. Then she grabbed the two ties she’d found and held
them up. “What do you think? Yellow or green?”

His lips twitched, dazzling her with a hint of white teeth and
dimple. “How about no tie?”

“A tie says powerful and important,” she argued.

“A tie with a sweater says Mr. Rogers,” he countered, still
smiling.

She rolled her eyes. “Trust me, nothing about you says Mr.
Rogers.”

Still, she conceded the point and set the ties aside, but she
couldn’t stop herself from reaching up to straighten his collar. Her fingers
lingered on the warm skin of his neck and the faint bristle of growth along his
jaw. He hadn’t shaved this morning, she knew, but he must have shaved the night
before. She thought about what the past twenty-four hours had been like for him.
He’d called her as he’d left the airport—that had been around midnight. He must
have shaved as soon as he’d gotten home, just before she showed up. She’d never
thought about that until now…the way he always shaved just before they saw
each other. The way his jaw was always smooth when he kissed her on her neck.
And anywhere else.

Suddenly she realized they’d both gone completely still. Her
breath caught in her chest as she looked up into his eyes, which were the exact
same shade of blue as his shirt. Heat swirled through her body, turning her
insides to mush and her knees to jelly.

Was he thinking about it, too? About the way he’d nuzzled her
breast just last night? About the way he’d spread her body out before him like a
feast and kissed every inch of her? How she’d done the same to him?

Abruptly, she dropped her hands and stepped away from him.

And this was why it wasn’t a good idea to sleep with her boss.
Up until now, she’d been so worried about the financial implications, she hadn’t
considered the emotional ones. How sex colored every interaction. How it could
distract her. How it could mess with her priorities.

She grabbed a folder off the desk and thrust it toward him.
“Here’s the agenda.”

He waggled the folder already in his hand. “You already handed
me one.”

“Oh.” She glanced down. “This is a spare. In case you need
it.”

She looked up to see him watching her, the smile on his face
broad, his eyes twinkling with amusement. As if he knew just how much he
distracted her. “I think I’m good.”

Oh, yeah. He was good. So damn good it damn nearly killed
her.

“Okay then,” she said, her tone overly bright. “Go hit it out
of the park. Or whatever sports analogy fits.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”

As he headed off to face the board, she had no doubt. He did
have it.

He would win them over. He would convince them that he was
fully qualified to be the CEO, just like he’d convinced her in the past few
hours. He clearly understood how the company operated and what it needed. He
even grasped the finer details of the personalities involved. He got people in a
way that even Dalton had not. In that regard, he might even be a better CEO than
Dalton had been.

But that didn’t change any of her plans. She still needed to
find the heiress because she needed to get Dalton back. If the past few minutes
had shown her anything, it was that she couldn’t do her job effectively if she
was working for Griffin, not just because he distracted her and muddled her
senses, but also because he made her doubt her own judgment. And because he was
dangerous to her in a way no other man ever had been.

Five

“W
hat do you think?” Griffin asked as he
strolled into the conference room.

Three days had passed since the board had named Griffin interim
CEO. As she had predicted, he’d won them over with little difficulty. They were
not having the same luck with the search for Griffin’s missing sister.

Sydney had laid out all her research on the conference table.
In addition to the notes that Dalton had passed on to Griffin, she had stacks of
her own notes and forty-two cardboard boxes Griffin’s mother had had sent over.
She hadn’t even touched those yet. Frankly, she was hoping something like an
actual lead would come along and she’d be saved the trouble.

Now, she glared up at him. “Seriously? Why are you out here
again? You’ve checked on me every thirty minutes.”

A mischievous smile spread across his lips. “This is how I
work.”

“Oh, really? When you were in your office down the hall, you’d
come out every five minutes to distract Marion?”

His grin broadened. “Well, I do love Marion—and she does make a
fantastic chocolate bread pudding for me every year on my birthday. But still—”
he gave a hey-what-can-you-do kind of shrug “—come on.”

“Right.” She sighed. He didn’t even have to finish the
sentence. But she said it aloud anyway. “You’ve never slept with Marion.”

“Of course I’ve never slept with Marion. I’ve known her since I
was ten. She’s like a mother to me.”

Sydney scowled at him, even though it was herself she was
irritated with. This was not the time to be flirting.

He must have taken her scowl to heart because he said, “Just to
be clear, in addition to not sleeping together anymore, are we not supposed to
talk about the fact that we slept together? Are we pretending it never even
happened?”

She nearly snorted. If only it were that easy. How could she
order him to pretend it hadn’t happened if she couldn’t do it herself?

“Let’s just try not to talk about it, okay? My point is,” she
said sternly, or rather shooting for stern but landing somewhere vaguely in the
area of disconcerted, “that even though you have every woman in this building
wrapped firmly around your little finger, you’ll find I am not so easy to—”

She broke off before she could get the rest of the sentence out
of her mouth because she could practically see the innuendo forming on the tip
of his tongue.

She waved aside his comment. “Yes, yes. I heard it. Can we just
skip over all the jokes relating to the word
easy?
”

His grin broadened to the point he looked like the damn
Cheshire cat.

“Look,” she continued. “I’m trying to do the right thing here.
Stop making this so difficult.”

“But I’d hate to be the one accused of being easy.” Before she
could protest, he held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I’ll let it go. I
promise.”

Although a smile still teased his lips, there was nothing
malicious in his gaze. He wasn’t teasing her to be mean; he just enjoyed the
game too much to stop.

It was one of those unexpected things about him that she found
so hard to resist. And this constant exposure to his charm made her
feel…nervous. Off balance. Pursued in a way she never had experienced when
they were merely sleeping together. Why was it so much easier to be around him
when all his energy was focused on making her climax rather than on making her
smile?

“Look,” she said, “just stay on your side of the conference
table and this will all go a lot more smoothly.”

He frowned. “So it’s not going well?”

She flipped closed the file in front of her. “You know this is
insane, right?”

Griffin nodded with mock solemnity. “I do.”

“Your father spent his entire life building this company and
now he’s threatening to throw it all away based on some anonymous letter he
got.”

“Exactly.”

“And he’s pitting you and your brothers against one another to
try to find this girl.”

“He is.”

“Has it occurred to any of you that this girl might not even be
real? I mean, obviously, whoever wrote the letter did it just to drive Mr. Cain
crazy. She—or he—obviously—”

Griffin interrupted her. “He? The letter was written by a
woman.”

He reached over her to flip the folder back open and tapped his
finger on the first page—a photocopy of the letter.

She picked it up and waved it around. “No, the letter was
written by someone claiming to be a woman. Someone claiming to have had an
affair with Hollister and claiming to have bore him a daughter. But there’s no
proof. No real evidence.” She put the letter back on the top of the folder and
considered it. “Which brings me back to my point. Whoever wrote the letter knew
him well enough to want revenge and to know this would drive him crazy. But that
doesn’t mean that the person who wrote the letter was actually the girl’s
mother. Or that there even is a girl.”

“Hmm.” Griffin stood, stroking his chin as he paced the length
of her office and back, considering her words. “Good point. But it’s
irrelevant.”

“How so?”

“It doesn’t matter who wrote the letter or even whether or not
there’s a girl to find. Proving there isn’t a girl would be harder than finding
one. It’s like proving there isn’t life on another planet. It’d be damn near
impossible.”

“Well, it might be damn near impossible to find her even if she
does exist.”

Griffin gave her a level look. “So you think Laney’s theory was
wrong? You don’t think this nanny, Vivian, is the one?”

Sydney flipped back through the file to find the color copy
she’d made of the photos Laney had found. The first picture was of two women and
a girl standing on the beach somewhere. As Sydney understood it, the older woman
was Matilda Fortino, Laney’s grandmother. She’d been the Cain’s housekeeper for
Dalton and Griffin’s entire childhood. Dalton had gone to see her because he’d
thought that if anyone had the dirt on his father, it would be her. His search
had brought him to Laney, whom he’d apparently been in love with when he was
younger. As hard a time as Sydney had imagining Dalton—her serious and stoic
boss—falling in love at all, she was glad that he seemed to have found
happiness, even if he hadn’t found his missing sister.

But Laney had believed the girl in this photo might be the
missing girl. There was another picture of the girl’s mother stapled behind the
first. In that picture, she was still pregnant and she had her arm around the
shoulder of another pregnant woman—Laney’s mother. More importantly, the picture
had been taken in the Cain’s backyard.

Laney’s grandmother had Alzheimer’s and could tell them nothing
about the young woman or the girl. However—according to Laney’s notes—Matilda’s
incoherent ramblings had led Laney to believe that the woman had a connection to
Hollister, a connection that might have put her in danger.

Was all this conjecture, or was this a real lead?

Sydney looked at the two pictures and frowned. “I don’t know,”
she said finally. “The connection seems specious at best.”

“I know. It isn’t a lot to go on.”

Sydney looked up to study Griffin, but once again she was
frustrated by his chameleon charm. His mouth was twisted into a smile, but she
couldn’t read his emotions. Was he as doubtful as she was, or did he believe
this girl on the beach was his sister?

Glancing down at the picture, he said, “It would help if
whoever took the picture was close enough to see the girl’s eyes.”

“Why?”

“Well, if she had Cain-blue eyes, then we’d know for sure
Hollister was her father.”

“Cain-blue?” Sydney asked.

“Sure. Didn’t you ever notice that my eyes and Dalton’s are the
same color?”

“No” She couldn’t keep her skepticism from her voice. “Blue
eyes are blue eyes. But you and Dalton look nothing alike.”

“Maybe not,” Griffin chided. “But our eyes are almost
identical.”

Before she could scoff, he grabbed her hand and tugged her
gently to her feet, positioning her to stand between his outstretched legs.

“Look,” he gently urged her. “Tell me Dalton and I don’t have
the same eyes.”

She had no choice but to gaze into Griffin’s eyes. Standing
this close, she was hit with the scent of him. All fresh and minty. His hand,
warm and dry, still clenched one of hers. His thumb rubbed idly across the back
of her hand. She was struck by how gentle his touch, but how rough his skin,
was.

She had been touched by him enough—and intimately at that—that
she knew the skin on his hands was roughened as if by hard manual labor, but for
the life of her, she’d still couldn’t imagine what he might be doing in his
spare time to earn those calluses.

Giving her head a little shake, she tried to focus on his
eyes.

“Well, for starters, the shape of your eyes is totally
different. His eyes are rounder. Yours are more almond shaped. And crinkly.”

“You’re saying I squint?” he teased, his hands releasing hers
to settle on her hips. With nowhere else to put them, she dropped her own hands
to his waist.

“No,” she harumphed. “I’m saying you laugh. Dalton never
laughs. Besides, Dalton has this way of looking right through someone. His eyes
have this soulless quality. It’s not disdain or annoyance. Just
disinterest.”

Griffin chuckled. “Exactly. So what about me?”

And this was what stumped her.

“You…really look at people,” she began slowly. Sometimes,
when he looked at her, she felt as though he could see into her very soul, but
she wasn’t going to say that aloud. “And I’m not entirely sure that’s a good
thing because sometimes I’m still not sure if you smile because you enjoy being
with people or if human nature amuses you.”

The smile slowly faded from his expression and she felt the
tension in his hands. Like he was trying to decide if he should push her away or
pull her closer.

Part of her knew she should probably stop talking right then
and there, but instead she finished her thought.

“But you’re not a cruel man, so I don’t think it’s that you’re
laughing at people. It’s more like…just another way of keeping people at a
distance.”

She kept her gaze pinned to the top button of his shirt while
she spoke, all too aware that she was just guessing about him but that her
guesses revealed as much about her as they did about him. If he was really
paying attention. And maybe he wasn’t.

He gently cupped her chin and tipped it up so she met his gaze.
“Is that what you think? That I push people away?”

It’s what I do.

But she didn’t say that aloud. Instead, she asked, “Do
you?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Yes, I suppose everybody does.”

Suddenly this whole conversation felt way too intimate. Even
more intimate than the time they’d spent in bed together because that had been
about sex, not emotion. And if there was one thing she was good at, it was
separating her physical needs from her emotional needs.

So—though she’d told herself that she wasn’t going to sleep
with him again now that he was her boss—she gave into every urge she’d been
suppressing for the past twenty-four hours. She threaded her fingers up through
his hair, luxuriating in the feel of the thick, long strands. She let herself
lean into him. And she inhaled deeply, letting the warm spicy scent of him
invade her senses.

His hands clenched on her hips and this time she had no doubt
about his intention because he pulled her close to him, rocking his hips against
the juncture of her legs. He dipped his head down to her neck and left a trail
of kisses along the sensitive skin there.

His breath was hot against her skin as he murmured, “Isn’t this
crossing that line you drew in the sand?”

“Yes, damn it.” She wished he hadn’t brought it up, but she
couldn’t fault him for it, either. She was the one who’d set the boundary. She
couldn’t begrudge him for respecting her wishes, even if he was ignoring her
desires.

She gave his waist a quick squeeze, relishing the way his
muscles clenched in response to her touch, and then she stepped back.

She smoothed her hands down her sleek tan sweater and gave the
hem a tug. “What were we even talking about?”

“Cain-blue eyes,” Griffin said easily, apparently less
befuddled than she was.

Right. The Cain eyes.

That was the discussion that had led her astray. And—she now
realized—she’d never even really responded to the comment. She’d gone and
rambled on and on about the shape of his eyes and the character of his smile,
but she’d never really admitted that, yes, he and Dalton had eyes that were
exactly the same piercing shade of blue. Not bright sky-blue or deep
indigo-blue, but an eerie sort of sea-blue, turquoise almost, pale in the center
with a dark ring of contrast.

She knew intimately the shade of Griffin’s eyes—just as she
knew their shape. But she was only vaguely aware of what Dalton’s eyes looked
like.

“Well,” she said brusquely, “even if we could see her eyes,
that would tell us nothing. The girl could have brown eyes and still be
Hollister’s daughter.”

“Nah. If she’s Hollister’s daughter, she has blue eyes.”

“You’re just assuming the girl’s mother didn’t have a brown-eye
gene to contribute to the pool?”

Griffin waggled his hand in a maybe/maybe not gesture.

“My instinct tells me that whoever she was, the girl’s mother
would have had blue eyes. My father definitely had a type. My mother, Cooper’s
mother and his other longtime mistress all looked like they could have been
sisters.”

It took a second for the full meaning of his words to sink in.
When they did, she raised her eyebrows in question and asked, “Seriously?”

He gave a dismissive shrug. “Yeah. He liked waifish blondes.
The more fragile-looking the better. And they were all blue-eyed.”

She kept looking at him, waiting for him to pick up on her
train of thought. When he didn’t, she gave his shoulder a playful shove. “Not
that, idiot. I mean, your father had a long-term mistress and no one thought to
question her?”