All He Really Needs (7 page)

“Well, pretend for a second that you would stay with a man you
abhorred. Pretend you’d put up with his cheating and his mistresses. Pretend
you’d put up with it for more than a decade because the money was just that
important to you. Pretend you’re just that stubborn or proud or greedy. Now
pretend that the same man who stomps all over you every chance he gets treats
your kids just as badly as he treats you.”

She dropped her gaze as she felt the bottom drop out of her
stomach. She licked her lips because her mouth had suddenly gone dry. Suddenly
she understood why he harbored so much anger toward his mother. Suddenly she got
it.

“No.” Her voice came out as a whisper. She didn’t have kids.
She didn’t even know if she would ever have kids—at least, not biological kids.
She’d always had the idea of doing the foster kid thing someday. If she did have
kids—biological or foster—she would do everything in her power to protect them.
“No, I wouldn’t.”

Griffin nodded, then tossed back the rest of his drink and set
the glass down with a thud. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

With that, he turned and walked out.

He didn’t have to say anything else. Because now she got it.
His father may be a bastard, but that didn’t really bother him because he’d
never really cared about his father. He’d loved his mother. He probably still
did. Despite everything, he would love her. That, more than anything, explained
why he harbored so much anger and resentment. He loved her, but he was
constantly disappointed by her.

She felt the same way about her own biological mother. She’d
lived with her for the first six years of her life. Of course she’d loved her.
And, of course, all kinds of negative emotions were mixed in with the love, but
it was the love that made all of it hurt.

She understood that maybe better than anyone else.

But she was also an outsider in Griffin’s relationship with his
mother. She could see, perhaps more clearly than he could, just how complicated
this was. Unfortunately, none of this insight into the Cain family solved
anything. None of this got her any closer to finding the heiress.

*

One of Griffin’s lifelong goals was to never be as much
of an ass as his father. In fact, his goal was to never do anything like his
father. Yet here he was, bullying his subordinate, bitching about his mother,
Caro Cain, and drinking in the middle of the morning. In short, he was acting
just like his dad. Funny how that had worked out.

Back in his office—Dalton’s office, really—he plunked himself
down in Dalton’s chair, scrubbed a hand down his face, swallowed back his
regrets and tried to think of how to dig his way out of this mess. First step,
naturally, was to find something to eat. It was only ten, but breakfast had been
a bowl of oatmeal five hours ago. He could feel the Scotch eating its way
through the oats right now.

One of the peppermints Dalton always kept in his desk would do
for starters. He unwrapped one of the Brach’s candies and plopped it in his
mouth. Then he started pulling open drawers looking for some nuts or a granola
bar or something. He knew Dalton well enough to figure that the guy had probably
eaten about half his meals right here at this desk.

Tucked into the back of the second drawer, he found something
far more interesting than a pack of almonds. Behind the stack of files was a
nine-by-eleven manila envelope with the word
Confidential
stamped on the front. The return address was from a
company out of L.A. that Dalton sometimes used to do employee background checks.
Not the normal HR kind, either. The hardcore kind. Panic spiked through Griffin.
This company did the kind of background check that would reveal a VP’s
involvement with an international charity. Did Dalton know about Hope
2
O? If he
did, then why the hell had he left Griffin in charge of Cain Enterprises?

In the bottom drawer, he found a jar of almonds and he poured a
few out into his hand before opening the manila folder and pulling out the pages
it contained. It took him several minutes of staring at the file before he
realized what it contained—that was how surprised he was by the envelope’s
contents.

It wasn’t a file on him. It was information about Sydney.

Dalton must have subcontracted the work when he’d decided to
hire her full-time. Yeah, HR would handle all the reference checks and job
recommendations, but it wasn’t uncommon for Dalton to hire out a more in-depth
background search for someone in a position of authority at the company. And now
that Griffin thought about it, that certainly described Sydney’s position. She
knew everything about the company and had access to some very high-level stuff.
She had more influence than most of the junior VPs. Certainly more than he had.
So it only made sense. Still, he hadn’t been expecting it, so seeing the file
surprised the hell out of him.

He mindlessly popped a few almonds into his mouth as he flipped
through the pages. He hadn’t meant to read it. If he hadn’t been hungry and
tired and just drunk two shots of Scotch in quick succession, he would have had
the foresight to shove the pages back into the envelope and let it go.

Instead, his gaze scanned the pages almost without realizing he
was doing it. And once he’d read some of it, he couldn’t stop. In fact, he had
to read parts a second time, just because it all seemed so damn hard to believe.
So completely out of character with the woman he knew.

Finally, he shoved the pages back into the envelope and buried
it at the back of the drawer. He ate more nuts, hoping the salt would quell the
queasy feeling in his stomach. It didn’t.

If he hadn’t felt like a total jackass before, he certainly did
now. Here he’d been bitching about his sad childhood as the poor, ignored rich
boy, and Sydney had real tragedy in her background. She was one bowl of porridge
short of being a character in a Dickens novel. And he’d had the gall to complain
to her.

He was surprised she hadn’t thrown his drink in his face and
walked out on him right then.

Naturally, his first impulse was to apologize. But to do so
he’d have to admit what he’d done, which would relieve his own guilt, but she
wouldn’t be happy about it. Somehow, he didn’t think this was the kind of
information she’d share with just everyone. After all, they’d been sleeping
together for months and she hadn’t mentioned that she’d been a foster child.
That Child Protective Services had removed her from her birth mother when she
was six. Of course, before this morning, he hadn’t trotted out his pathetic
tortured past, either. He hated being the object of pity and he suspected that
Sydney felt the same way. No. It would be much better if he didn’t tell her at
all. If he just buried the information in the nether regions of his brain and
forgot all about it.

Which still left him with the issue of how to make it up to her
for acting like an ass earlier. But that was an issue easily resolved.

He pushed back his chair and dropped the now empty almond
container in the trash. On his way out of the office, he stopped back by the
conference room. Sydney looked up as he stuck his head in the door, her
expression wary.

Before she could ask, he said, “I’m going to follow your advice
and go talk to my mother. See what she knows.”

Surprise flickered over Sydney’s face. “You are?”

“Yeah. I figure maybe you’re right about her. Maybe she can
help.”

“Do you think she will?” Sydney closed the file in front of her
and leaned forward eagerly. “I mean, she has nothing at stake in this. If she’s
anything like you’ve described, maybe she won’t want to help.”

Strangely, that idea hadn’t actually occurred to him. “She
might not be able to help. Her help might be more of a hindrance—” He gestured
to the boxes to make his point. “But I’m sure she’ll want to help.”

“Even if finding the heiress gets her nothing?”

“She won’t see it that way. If I find the heiress, she knows I
won’t cut her off cold. Dalton would never have done that, either, though I’m
not sure if she’d have thought it through. It’s Cooper she has to worry about.
Well, that and the whole shebang reverting to the state. No, she and I may not
have a great relationship, but she knows I’ll treat her fairly. She’ll help if
she can.” Sydney smiled so brightly, he added, “I’m still not sure how helpful
she’ll be, but I’ll try.”

Sydney’s grin didn’t diminish a bit. “Thank you!”

*

In that moment she looked so lovely that he wanted to
cross the room, pull her into his arms and kiss her. Not the kind of
soul-searing kiss that would lead to her spread over the conference table naked,
but a simple kiss. The kind that would honor the delicacy of her beauty. The
kind that would salve the wounds of a broken childhood. The kind that would
promise her a lifetime of safety, security and emotional support.

But he didn’t know how to make those kinds of promises, let
alone how to keep them, so instead he just nodded and walked away.

Seven

T
raffic in Houston sucked. It always did.
But for once, Griffin didn’t curse the snarl of cars slowing his trip to his
parents’ house. He did not relish the upcoming conversation or the maternal
theatrics that were sure to accompany it. The traffic on the loop was
practically at a standstill, so instead of getting on, he pulled into a nearby
parking lot and used the Bluetooth in his car to put in a call to Carl Nichols,
his second in command at Hope
2
O.

He hadn’t yet told Carl about what was going on with Cain
Enterprises. Until now, some part of him had genuinely believed that this would
all blow over. That after a couple of days of crazy sex with Laney, Dalton would
come to his senses and ask for his job back. But apparently, a little sanity on
his brother’s part was too much to ask for. And because finding the heiress was
proving more difficult than he’d expected, Griffin figured it was time to come
clean with Carl so that things at Hope
2
O wouldn’t devolve too much while his own
attention was elsewhere.

After Griffin explained, Carl was silent for a long minute.
Then he said, “That sounds more like something you would do.”

Griffin snorted. “Right. I’ll just walk away from a half
billion dollars.”

“Why not? Dalton did.”

“Dalton also got offers from ten other Fortune 500 companies
within about five minutes of quitting.”

“Do you want to work for another Fortune 500 company?”

“Don’t be an ass,” Griffin said lightly. “You know I don’t want
a job somewhere else. I barely do the job I have, even though it’s practically
part-time. The only reason I’ve stayed at Cain Enterprises for as long as I have
is because I want to get my hands on my inheritance so I can put it to work at
Hope
2
O.”

“Right. And now your practically part-time job has turned into
a full-time position as CEO.”

“Interim CEO,” Griffin interrupted.

“Interim or not, you’re going to have a hell of a time keeping
up with that job and this one.”

Griffin glared at the sea of red brake lights still clogging
the loop. “You’re right. But I don’t see any way around it. Either I do this job
or I forfeit a fortune.”

Carl was silent for a long moment, then spoke with
disappointment in his voice. “And you just can’t give up the money.”

“You know the money doesn’t mean jack to me. Hope
2
O needs the
money. Not me.”

“No, Hope
2
O needs you on board all the time. It’s your
expertise we need, not your money.”

“You think I should walk away like Dalton did?”

“Hey, I can’t tell you what to do. I’ve never had a carrot
worth half a billion dollars, but ask yourself this—what has the promise of all
that money ever gotten you?”

Griffin didn’t have an answer to that. The conversation moved
on to other Hope
2
O business, and he stayed on the phone with Carl taking care of
obligations he’d been neglecting for a week until long after the traffic on the
loop cleared up. It was well after noon when he finally got back on the road and
finished the drive to his parents’. All the while, in the back of his mind was
the question Carl had posed. What had all the Cain money ever gotten him?

*

Because Griffin was going to talk to his mother, Sydney
felt no compunction abandoning her drudgery to head back to her desk so she
could catch up on her normal duties as EA to the CEO. After a morning away from
her work, things had started to pile up. The whole EA thing hadn’t exactly been
the career path she’d imagined for herself when she’d done her undergraduate
work in psychology. She’d always imagined she’d do postgraduate study and one
day get her therapist’s license. She’d taken her first job as an assistant on a
whim. Just something to pay the bills while she’d waited for the next semester
to start. But she was good at it. The money was great, and she found being in
the thick of things in an office surprisingly rewarding. Today was no different.
Fifty fires had sprouted up during her morning away from the computer, and she
doused them with her usual speed and efficiency. Her inner therapist laughed at
her. The joy she took in her job was an obvious attempt to fill her need to be
needed. To feel like none of it could function without her. She knew that’s why
she loved it and she didn’t even mind.

She was cruising through her work when the phone rang. “Griffin
Cain’s office. How can I help you?”

“Is Griffin available?” asked a woman’s cool voice.

“He’s not in right now. I may be able to transfer you to his
cell phone. May I ask who’s calling?”

There was an annoyed huff as though the caller had expected
Sydney to recognize her voice. “This is Caro Cain. I am allowed to call my own
son, aren’t I?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Cain. I’ll patch you through.” But the phone
rang and rang and Griffin never picked up. Sydney switched back over to the
original call and apologized again. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Cain. I’d be happy to
connect you to his voice mail or take a message. Was this in regard to the
conversation you had this morning?”

There was a pause and then, with a touch of uncertainty in her
voice, Caro asked, “The conversation?”

“Yes. The conversation,” Sydney repeated, feeling dumb.
“Griffin left the office, oh…nearly three hours ago.” Surely that was enough
time to get to his parents’ house. If he hadn’t gone there, then where had he
gone? “He said he was going to your house to talk to you.” Unless Caro wasn’t at
home. That explained it. “Are you at home? Perhaps he missed you?”

“You may be my son’s assistant, but I hardly think I need to
clear my schedule with you.” There was a pinched quality to Caro’s voice. “What
did he want to discuss with me?”

Sydney hesitated, her mind flooding with all the negative
things Griffin had said about his mother. But he was the one who’d said he
planned to go talk to her. Surely no harm could come from her just giving Caro a
glimpse of his cards.

“He wanted to talk to you about the missing heiress. We’ve hit
a little roadblock in the course of our research and he thought you would be
able to help him narrow down the search.”

“He did?” Caro sounded surprised, but she recovered quickly.
“Well, of course he did. I was at the house all morning. I wonder why he didn’t
come.”

Sydney nearly harumphed. Caro wasn’t the only one with
questions. It wasn’t that Griffin had to tell her where he was going to be every
second of every day, but his disappearing act was getting old. As his assistant,
it was her job to know his whereabouts, and frankly she was getting tired of
feeling left in the dark.

“I wish he had just called. I’ve already left the house and
won’t be back until this evening.” Apparently, Caro felt the same way as Sydney.
The other woman sighed and then continued in a confidential tone. “We could have
talked this morning and been done with it. As it is, it could be sometime
tomorrow before he catches up with me. Valuable time is wasting and he’s off
doing God only knows what.”

Sydney hesitated a moment before asking, “Then you would be
willing to answer any questions he has? You’d be willing to help him find his
sister?”

“Willing? Well, of course I’m willing. What sort of mother do
you think I am that I might not be willing to help my sons complete this
quixotic quest my husband has sent them on?”

“That’s very generous of you. I’ll make sure I pass on the
message to Griffin.” When she could reach him. Where was he?

“Or…” Caro let the word dangle there suggestively. “If you
happened to know what he wanted to discuss with me, you could join me for lunch
and simply ask me yourself.”

“I…” Oh, God. How was she supposed to answer? “I…” On one
hand, Griffin was nowhere to be found and, as his mother had pointed out, they
were on a time crunch here. On the other, Griffin must have had his reasons for
saying he was going to his parents’ house and then not going.

Maybe the same reasons he didn’t share his schedule with her
and made bizarre phone calls that he didn’t want her listening in on. If he were
a different kind of guy, she might think he was stepping out on her. Maybe she
was being naive. Sure, Griffin was a playboy and a charmer, but in the time
they’d been together, he’d seemed to curb his outrageous flirting. Plus, the
sheer scorn in his voice when he discussed his father’s philandering made her
think he just wasn’t a cheater.

What would it hurt for her to go see Caro Cain and just talk to
her? Maybe it would even be for the best. After all, Griffin obviously didn’t
have a great relationship with her. Perhaps a neutral party could more easily
get an honest answer from her.

“I would love to meet you for lunch,” she found herself
saying.

She quickly jotted down the address, even though she and nearly
everyone in Houston knew the location of the River Oaks Country Club.

As she packed up her bag, she even told herself she was doing
the right thing. She didn’t really believe Griffin would do anything to hurt
Cain Enterprises. Not intentionally. But clearly he was not objective here.

Sure, there was a line when it came to respecting a boss’s
decisions. But if he wasn’t available to make the decision, that line was
blurry. And if he wasn’t being one-hundred percent logical and responsible, then
maybe the line even wiggled a little bit.

*

By the time Griffin pulled up in front of his parents’
house, he still hadn’t decided what do to about Hope
2
O. He was so lost in
thought he almost didn’t recognize the Jaguar XK parked at the curb. Only when
he saw the sticker for the rental car company did he remember that the same car
had been parked there nearly three weeks ago when Hollister had made his big
announcement. Which meant Cooper must be visiting. Of all his father’s possible
visitors, only Cooper was enough of an adrenaline junkie to rent a Jaguar every
time he came to town.

Ever since their father’s first heart attack, Hollister had
been sleeping downstairs, in the room at the front of the house that had once
been his office. Now, all the furniture had been replaced by a hospital bed and
enough medical equipment to sustain a surgical ward in a third-world country.
Griffin knew this because he’d actually visited clinics in Africa that got by
with less.

Today, he peeked into the room and saw that his father was
sleeping. He briefly considered waking his father up, but instead he quietly
closed the door just as a nurse bustled around the corner. She was one of three
who cared for Hollister around the clock. Patting her mouth with a napkin, she
said, “I’m sorry, sir. I was just taking a lunch break.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” he assured her. “You’re allowed
to eat.”

The nurse, a pretty woman in her mid-twenties with curves and
twinkling eyes, giggled a little. “Thank goodness,” she said with a smile.

Instead of hurrying back to her food, she lingered. There was
something coy in her posture and expression that let him know that she’d stay
and chat if he wanted her to. It’d be easy enough. He could ask how her lunch
was, tease her about being away from her station, listen sympathetically about
her grueling hours. There’d been a time he would have chatted her up, gotten her
number and a few days later probably taken her to bed. There’d even been a time
when he would have thought that the break he and Sydney were on meant he was
free to do just that. Today, he wasn’t the least bit interested.

Instead of flirting with the girl, he just asked, “His
condition is still stable?”

Her expression faltered, but she quickly rallied, nodding
professionally and saying, “Yes, sir. One of us will contact you if there’s the
slightest change.”

Which answered the question at the back of his mind. She knew
exactly who he was—the heir to the fortune. The man with his hands wrapped
around a golden ticket.

That was always the problem with women who knew about the
money. And, somehow, they always knew about the money. Except with Sydney.
Sydney had never seemed remotely interested in that.

He nodded politely to the nurse. “Thanks.”

Then he made his way down the hall toward the back of the
house, only to see Cooper leaning in the doorway to the kitchen, his hands
shoved into the pockets of his jeans and a smug grin on his face.

“Boy, you’re slipping.” Cooper liked nothing more than to get a
rise out of him or Dalton.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Griffin said.

Cooper nodded in the direction of the hall down which the nurse
had disappeared. “Come on, a prime piece of ass like that? Normally you’d be all
over that.”

“I think I have a little more restraint.” He couldn’t resist
adding a subtle dig. “And a little more class.”

Cooper pushed away from the door. He flashed a toothy,
humorless grin. “Which is your way, I suppose, of saying I have none.”

“Hey, that’s not what I was saying. But the fact that you heard
that is a bit of a Rorschach test of your insecurities, doncha think?”

Cooper had the long and lean build of an Olympic snowboarder,
which is precisely what he had been before he started his own company designing
and manufacturing snowboards. He was the kind of athlete who was as good in
front of the camera as he was on his board. All in all, Cooper was an expert at
playing the game, whatever the game was.

Which was one of the reasons why Griffin couldn’t get a read on
Cooper’s mood, not until Cooper was close enough to give Griffin a friendly slap
on the arm and say, “So how’ve you been?”

“Fine.” Griffin resisted the urge to rub at the spot on his
arm. “So what’re you doing here?”

“I just came by to have lunch with the old man.”

“He’s asleep,” Griffin observed.

“He was tired after eating.”