All He Really Needs (10 page)

Ten

G
riffin had always loved Greek mythology,
particularly Homer’s
Odyssey.
That bit about Scylla
and Charybdis…that was pure gold. The way Griffin saw it, Homer’s family life
must have been about as fun-filled as his own because anytime he had to deal
with both his mother and his father’s former mistress, that’s how he felt—like
he was trapped with a horrible six-headed monster on one side and a treacherous
whirlpool on the other.

Was it any wonder he hadn’t wanted Sydney to accompany him
through those particular straits? Even Odysseus lost good soldiers on that
trip.

Though Sharlene looked like a defenseless waif—much as his own
mother did—Sharlene was strong. If Caro’s personality sometimes seemed as
formidable as a six-headed monster’s, then Sharlene was the vortex that
unwittingly sucked people in. At heart, Sharlene was nice, a rarity in his
childhood, but good intentions hadn’t stopped her from creating countless
problems and endless grief. He’d spent ten years of his life trapped between
Scylla and Charybdis.

When he was a kid, he’d actually preferred spending time with
Sharlene. Whenever they’d gone to the offices of Cain Enterprises, it had always
been Sharlene who had taken care of them. She’d kept crayons in her desk—a
hundred and sixty-four count crayons, too, not the measly sixteen count—and she
always made sure she had paper to draw on. And when he’d had an emergency
appendectomy when he was seven and his mother was out of town, it had been
Sharlene who had stayed with him at the hospital.

Of course, as an adult, he could see that the emotional vortex
was its own kind of monster. None of which explained why the thought of seeing
her again after all this time made him feel sick to his stomach. But of all the
women Hollister Cain had seduced and used badly, Sharlene had deserved it the
least.

It wasn’t until he’d pulled the car onto the loop and was
heading for downtown that he felt Sydney’s gaze firmly on him.

He glanced over at her, frowning. “What?”

She looked at him with her head cocked slightly to the side.
“You’re nervous.”

He scoffed. “No, I’m not.”

“Really?” she asked, looking pointedly at the spot on the
steering wheel where his fingers tapped out a frantic beat.

“Okay.” Why had he lied in the first place? So he was nervous
about seeing Sharlene again. No big deal. “Maybe a little.”

“You want to tell me why?”

No, he didn’t.

She shrugged as if she didn’t really care either way. “I just
thought it might help. Talking it out might make you less nervous. If she’s as
formidable an opponent as rumor has made her out to be, you might be better off
not displaying any signs of weakness.”

“Rumor? What rumors?”

Sydney shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve just heard stuff around the
office. Sharlene Sheppard is now, what? The COO of Sheppard Capital? She’s
supposed to be an amazing businesswoman.”

“So?”

“And she’s supposed to hate the Cains. And now you’re supposed
to face her down and try to get information from her? This is like braving the
lion in her den. It would be normal to be nervous.”

“She’s really not like that.”

“Are you sure? Because I’ve never seen you nervous before.” Her
shoulders shifted as she gave a little shrug. The movement did nice things for
the little sweater stretched tight across her chest, but even that couldn’t
distract him enough to take his mind off her words. “True, we haven’t been
together that long, but I’ve never seen anything phase you. When you found out
Dalton was resigning and leaving you in charge of a billion-dollar company, you
didn’t even blink. You faced down the board and convinced them to name you
interim CEO and you didn’t even break a sweat. Frankly, they were eating from
the palm of your hand so contentedly, I think you could have asked them to toss
out the interim and just be CEO and they would have done it.”

“Your point?”

“My point is, neither of those situations made you nervous.”
She softened her words with a smile. “But you obviously are now. So I don’t
really know what to do with that.”

“You don’t have to
do
anything with
it,” he muttered, even though he knew it wasn’t the answer she wanted.

He was silent for a long time. Long enough for Sydney to give
another one of those shrugs and to finally turn and look out the window. Like
she’d accepted that he just wasn’t going to answer. The truth was, even he
didn’t think he was going to answer. But then she sighed. The noise was almost
inaudible over the sound of the car’s engine and the ambient hum of traffic, but
he still heard it.

Her sigh was as soft as a whisper but filled with regret.

Before now, their relationship had been perfect. Great sex
untouched by complications, free from the angst and anguish that emotional
involvement brought to the table. He’d thought Sydney was perfectly happy with
that arrangement. Why would she—why would any woman—want to listen to him whine
about his past?

But then there was that sigh. That regret-filled murmur that
sounded like a trumpet’s blare. He hated knowing that she regretted being with
him. Hated knowing that she was sitting here in the car, wishing she was with
the kind of guy who opened up and talked about his feelings. Never mind whether
or not there actually were any guys like that in the world. Never mind that he
had never, in any of his previous relationships, been the kind of guy who talked
about his feelings.

He didn’t like to think that she regretted being with him. So,
as he pulled off the highway toward downtown, he admitted, “Sharlene isn’t a
formidable opponent.”

“She isn’t?”

“No. Sharlene is—or at least was when I knew her—a genuinely
nice person. She’s a good woman. And she never deserved to be involved with
anyone like my father.”

Sydney was quiet for a long moment. When she finally spoke, all
she said was, “I see.”

He hadn’t meant to say anything more than that, but something
about Sydney’s quiet acceptance made his words come out of him in a rush.

“She was his secretary and his mistress for nearly ten years
when I was a kid. Sometimes, during the summer or on school holidays, he’d bring
Dalton and I up to his office. She was the one who would keep us entertained.
She gave us crayons and printer paper for drawing. She even had a little stash
of Brach’s candies in a jar on her desk just for us.”

“Let me guess,” Sydney interrupted. “Peppermints.”

He shot her a sideways glance. “The peppermints were for
Dalton. How’d you guess?”

“He keeps Brach’s peppermints in his desk drawer. I used to
think of it as his one human weakness. You know, before he quit his job and ran
off to be with the woman he adored.” Sydney considered him for a minute. “So
what kind did you like?”

“The white nougat ones with little jellies inside.”

“I liked those, too, when I was a kid.” She nodded seriously.
“So if you have all these great childhood memories of Sharlene—and for the
record, she does sound pretty awesome—then why are you so freaked out about
going to see her?”

“I’m not freaked out.”

“You’re a little freaked out.”

“I’m not—”

“Do you need me to run through the list again of the things
that didn’t make you this nervous?”

Sydney was looking at him with raised eyebrows and an arch
expression. Her tone and words were teasing, but he could see in her eyes that
she wasn’t about to back down on this. He was struck by the sudden urge to pull
over the car and…and what? Demand she get out and mind her own business? Or
maybe just kiss her senseless so that they’d both remember where the boundaries
of their relationship were. This was supposed to be about sex and pleasure. Not
about prying painful childhood memories out into the light.

When he didn’t say anything—because, God, what could he
say?—she kept talking.

“You know, if it was me, I might feel guilty that my father
treated her so badly.”

“Who said he treated her badly?”

“I inferred it from the fact that your father hates Sheppard
Capital and has tried to destroy them financially. If that’s not horrible
treatment, I don’t know what is.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, his voice gruff. “Good point.”

She had him so distracted he’d actually forgotten the
conversation they’d had less than an hour ago. Or maybe he’d just blocked it
out. He wasn’t used to talking about his family with other people.

“Yeah, that’s a nice theory, but I’m well past the age where I
feel like I have to justify my father’s behavior. He’s an ass. There’s no point
in me apologizing for that.”

“And yet you clearly feel guilty for how Sharlene was treated.
If you’re not apologizing for his behavior, then for whose?” She was silent for
a minute, then abruptly she swiveled in her seat so that she was looking at him
straight on. “You can’t feel badly about how you treated her when she broke up
with your father.”

He shrugged, not entirely sure what to say, partly because it
hadn’t occurred to him until just then that he even felt guilty about it.

“She was like part of the family. Like my stepmom or something.
Then, all of a sudden, she was gone from our lives.”

“You were, what? Nine?”

“Ten.”

“Look, Griffin, your father’s love life is clearly all kinds of
messed up. It was wrong that he had a mistress for all those years and acted
like it was normal for her to spend time with you and be your friend. It was
wrong for them to put a kid in the middle of all that. You were ten. You
shouldn’t have even known what was going on between them, let alone felt guilty
for not sticking up for her or something.”

“Maybe not. But I knew she’d been treated badly. Maybe I
shouldn’t have done something when I was kid. But I’ve been an adult now for
twelve years. That’s long enough that I should have found the time to
apologize.”

She seemed to be considering him seriously, but then she gave a
snort of derision. “If you were acting like an adult at eighteen, then you’re a
better person than I was at eighteen.”

He thought about what he knew about her—the things she’d told
him and the things he’d learned on his own. “Yeah, I don’t believe that for a
minute. At eighteen, you were what? In college, taking eighteen hours a semester
and working two jobs to pay your way.”

He knew he’d slipped up the second the words were out of his
mouth. Suddenly he found himself wishing the traffic would clear. Mere moments
ago, he was glad for the traffic because it allowed him to postpone the
inevitable. Now he wished he was already there.

She hadn’t seemed to have realized his gaff yet, but she was
smart and—unlike so many people he knew—she actually listened to what others
were saying. He figured he only had a few more seconds before—

“Wait a second.”

And there it was.

“Okay, I know I’ve mentioned college. But I never said anything
about two jobs.”

He faked causal. “I was guessing. You’re not the type who would
want to incur a lot of debt. You’re not the type who would have let your foster
mom pay for you.” He glanced in her direction, but her gaze was still narrowed
and suspicious. “It was a lucky guess.”

“Were you guessing about me having a foster mom, too? If you
had to ‘guess’—” she made air quotes “—what college do you think I would have
attended while I was working these two jobs?”

Five semesters at Houston Community College and another four at
the University of Houston. “How would I know?”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m wondering. How would you know?”

He kept his gaze on the bumper of the white Ford in front of
him. Damn traffic.

After a second, he glanced over at her. “How much trouble am I
in here?”

She seemed to be considering him, but there was a playful gleam
in her eyes. “I haven’t decided yet. I guess it depends on how invasively you’ve
invaded my privacy.”

“What would you consider invasive?”

“Well, I know Cain Enterprises did a background check when I
was hired full-time. So, did you just abuse the privileges your name offers you
and get access to my file?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“How do you accidentally read someone’s background check?” That
teasing light in her gaze had dimmed.

“Dalton had the file in his desk. I saw it this morning. I
shouldn’t have read it, but I did.”

And now the details of her life seemed to have lodged
themselves firmly into his brain, even though he’d only read the file once. He’d
felt vaguely sick to his stomach. His disgust had been partly aimed at her
mother because no one’s parent should put their kid through the things Sydney
had gone through. But mostly, he’d been disgusted with himself because he should
never have even looked at the damn thing. Somehow, despite having been neglected
and then abandoned by her mother, despite having bounced around the foster care
system before finally landing in a good home, somehow, despite all that, Sydney
had developed into a decent human being. And she’d deserved better than to have
her past dug up.

She clenched the strap of her purse in her hand. It was a
classic navy shoulder bag made of fine leather, just large enough to hold her
personal belongings and the company-issued iPad. She massaged the strap with
such intensity he half expected to see a wear mark on the leather.

“Do you know about Sinnamon?” she asked abruptly.

“I do.”

Sinnamon was the name Sydney’s birth mother had given her. Her
foster mother had filed a petition to have it changed with she was eleven, which
was a few years after she’d ended up with Molly Stanhope.

“Do you know about Roxy?” she asked after a moment.

“Your birth mother? Yes.”

“What else do you know?”

“More than I should,” he admitted, keeping his gaze glued to
that white bumper as if he could will it out of his way. “The background search
that Cain Enterprises did was pretty extensive. After all, you were hired to be
the CEO’s assistant. It doesn’t get much higher up the chain of command than
that.”