She understood something else, too. He hadn’t been protecting only her. By keeping her away from his mother, he’d also been protecting himself. However clever they were at hiding their relationship while they were at work, his mother had seen right through the ruse. She now had information about Griffin that she could use against him. He was now vulnerable to his mother’s manipulations. Because of her.
Just like that, all the warm, fuzzy goodness that had been coursing through her veins seemed to seep into her belly and congeal into a mass of nerves.
Despite that sick feeling in her gut, Sydney wasn’t going to back down, either. Caro knew more than she was saying. Sydney had no doubt about that.
“Okay,” Sydney said, keeping her tone diplomatic. “If you don’t remember the girl’s name, surely you can think of someone who might. There’s got to be someone else who can help us find her. How did you hire the nannies?” Sydney asked. “Did you use an agency of some kind?”
Suddenly, Caro’s eyes lit up. “Yes. There was an agency. They sent nanny applications over.”
Griffin sat back in his seat and gave Sydney an appreciative grin. “Great. Then all we need is the name of the agency.”
“I don’t have it.”
“You what?”
“I don’t have it. But Sharlene Sheppard should. Hollister asked Sharlene to help find the nanny. She contacted the agency herself.”
“Okay then,” Griffin said, pushing back his chair. “We go talk to Sharlene.”
Sydney pushed back her chair and stood. She waited until they’d said their goodbyes to Caro and were out of hearing range before asking, “We?”
“Yes,” he said grimly. “In for a penny, in for pound, right? Now that you’ve met my mother, you might as well meet the rest of the cast in this Greek tragedy.”
The whole situation made Sydney sad. She’d always felt like she’d gotten the short end of the stick when it came to family. No father in the picture. A mother more interested in scoring her next hit than in parenting. No extended relatives to take over.
But the tangled mess that was the Cain family made her realize just how lucky she’d actually been. She’d landed with a great foster mom. She had foster siblings she cared about. And at the end of the day, she knew she had people who cared about her. Did Griffin have that? Had he ever had that?
She thought not. And it simply made her want to cry.
Ten
Griffin 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.