“I’m going to win the heart of the woman I love.”
Okay. So Dalton had officially gone crazy.
“You’re what?” He sat back, waving aside his question. “Never mind,” he said darkly. “I know who’s to blame for this. Laney.”
Dalton’s mouth curved into a sappy smile. “Yeah. Laney.”
Griffin muttered a curse. “You’re throwing away everything for a woman?”
“Laney’s not just—”
“Yeah. I’m sure. Laney’s delightful. Frickin’ wonderful.” He leaned forward and tapped the center of the table to emphasize his point. “I’ve always liked Laney. And even when we were kids I saw that she was special to you. So if you want to be with her, then be with her. But don’t throw away everything you’ve worked for all your life over it.”
Dalton shot him a look that was somewhere between annoyed and amused. “I never thought I’d say this, but you sound remarkably like our father.”
“God, I hope not.” Griffin leaned back and blew out a frustrated sigh. “It’s not that I don’t want you to be happy, it’s just that…”
He had a lot on his plate right now. In the next month alone, he had two trips to Guatemala planned and one more to Africa. The project in Rwanda was at a critical stage and it was the first in that country. On Griffin’s most recent visit, he’d made inroads to get the project financed by a local bank, but if he didn’t get back down there soon, it might all fall through. The simple truth was, he didn’t have time to be CEO.
Griffin set down his coffee cup to see Dalton watching him with that slightly dazed look people in love usually wore. Griffin wanted to leap across the table and strangle some sense into his brother. “Did it ever occur to you that I might have better things to do?”
For nearly a full minute Dalton just stared at him. Then Dalton burst out laughing, and didn’t speak for another minute until he stopped. “Better things. Nice one.”
Griffin unclenched his jaw. “I’m serious. I just happen to be busy right now.”
Dalton took a lazy sip of coffee and shrugged. “There’s nothing you do as VP of International Marketing that can’t be done by someone else.”
That was probably true. His job at Cain required very little. He liked it that way because it left his hours free for his work with Hope2O. And the occasional dalliance with a beautiful woman…such as Sydney.
But Dalton wasn’t buying his busy schedule as an excuse, so Griffin changed tactics. “Look, you don’t really want to step down at CEO. It’s who you are. You’re the guy who takes care of business. You’re the guy who’s going to find this missing heiress.”
And until this moment, Griffin had believed that. He hadn’t had even a shadow of a doubt that Dalton would find the heiress and, as a result, win the entire Cain fortune as his prize. But he knew his brother. Dalton was fair to a fault. He wouldn’t take the money and run. Once Dalton had secured the Cain fortune, he would carefully divide it up among the three—or four—of them. However, if Dalton backed out of things now, then they were all screwed, Griffin included.
Dalton smiled. “Well, it’s time for you to step up and become that guy because I’m not him anymore.”
The problem was, he wasn’t that guy, either. Ever since he was a kid he’d been hiding his true nature from his family.
He was—and this was a direct quote from Hollister—a pansy-assed do-gooder with a heart of gold. That was a hell of an insult to hear at age nine, especially from the father he worshipped like a god.
So—since he was nine—Griffin had been hiding who he was, had been hiding the fact that he cared about the quality of life of other people in the world. Even the people who didn’t contribute to Cain Enterprise’s bottom line. And he would continue to hide it.
The bleeding-heart liberal born into a Texas oil family. The ugly duckling had nothing on him.
Before now, all he had to do was keep his head down and try to blend in. Now, Dalton expected him to take over. He was going to do the only thing left to do. He would find the heiress. If he controlled his father’s fortune, he could walk away from the day-to-day running of the company. He could devote himself full-time to Hope2O or anything else that struck his fancy. In short, he could do whatever the hell he wanted.
*
By the time Sydney arrived at the office, she’d managed to calm herself down enough to pass for normal. Now more than ever, she wanted to continue impressing Dalton with her competence and trustworthiness.
If her experience with Brady had taught her anything, it was that she had to depend on herself. When it came down to it, she was alone in the world. She had herself and whatever stability her job provided. That was it. She couldn’t afford to let herself get distracted by a man again.
Certainly not one of the Cains.
She spent the afternoon at her desk, answering what email of Dalton’s she could, and then catching up on the work she’d missed that morning.
It killed her knowing that Dalton and Griffin were out together at lunch, even if she never came up in their conversation. It was a bad omen, like a comet flitting across the sky to herald the impending arrival of a horrible natural disaster.
The two halves of her world were on a collision course and she wasn’t sure how to brace herself for impact.
So she should have been relieved when two o’clock rolled around and the door to the office finally creaked open. Hoping Dalton had decided to come in after all, Sydney leaped to her feet, ready to greet her errant boss.
But it wasn’t Dalton who walked into the room. It was Griffin.
Her heart thudded and she had to fight the sudden and completely irrational urge to bolt. There were three doors in her office. One led to Dalton’s office, another to the conference room. Griffin now blocked the door into the hall, but she could easily flee through the conference room. And, yeah, she knew how ridiculous it was that she wanted to.
But the simple truth was, Griffin wasn’t supposed to be part of her work life. He was the stuff of fantasies, and fantasies should have the common courtesy to stay out of the workplace.
As if Griffin knew exactly what was going on in her head, he flashed her a wry smile. He was carrying a thick manila folder and he looked like he’d spent considerable time running his hands through his hair. “Hey.”
“Hi.” Then she cringed at how breathless she sounded. Hi seemed too informal. Too reminiscent of the way she’d greeted him last night when she’d thrown herself into his arms. She tried again, aiming for cool professionalism. “I mean, hello. Can I do something for you?”
He could clearly tell she was flustered because his smile widened. This was just like him. He loved to tease her.
But then his smile faltered as he reached back to close the door to the office. “Did you talk to Dalton before I showed up?”
“No.” Something about the way he held himself made her nervous. Like maybe this was more than him just messing with her. “What? Is something wrong?”
“Not wrong exactly…. Have you checked your email?”
“I did when I first got in, but that was a couple of hours ago.” Most of the emails that needed her attention came through Dalton’s in-box, so she didn’t check her own email nearly as often.
“You should check again.” He flash a wry smile as he said it, but he looked pained rather than amused—like the one man on the Titanic who knew how few lifeboats there were.
Without another word, she pulled up her email on her computer. Ten new emails since she’d last checked. She opened only the one from Dalton. She had to read it twice. And then read it again just to be sure.
Then her eyes found Griffin. “He’s resigning?” Then her gaze dropped back to the email and she read it again, sure she’d misread it. Sure she had. “He can’t resign! This is crazy.” Then she looked back at Griffin. “Did you know he was going to do this?”
“Not until lunch.”
“He can’t resign,” she repeated, this time more numbly.
Of course, he could do whatever he wanted. It wasn’t like he was legally obligated to come to work. He wasn’t a prisoner. But still…Dalton was completely devoted to Cain Enterprises. In the eight months she’d worked with him, he’d worked eighteen-hour days. Weekends. Holidays. Cain Enterprises was his entire life.
“Maybe he’s earned it,” she said, barely aware she was speaking aloud. And then her eyes saw the tiny detail that they’d glossed over until now. “Wait a second. It says he’s recommending you for the position of interim CEO.”
“Yeah, that’s what he said.”
“And that he wants me to retain my current position. So that I can fill you in.”
“Yeah. He assured me he was leaving me in good hands.”
Her gaze sought his. “He’s leaving you in my hands?”
Griffin grinned. “Yeah. Ironic, isn’t it?”
Feeling suddenly jittery, she shot to her feet. “No, it’s not ironic! It’s…” But she couldn’t think of the word for what it was.
Unthinkable.
Disastrous.
Humiliating.
Griffin held out a hand as if to ward off her growing panic. “Hey, calm down. This is no big deal.”
“No big deal?” Her voice came out a little squeaky and high-pitched. “My boss—the leader of this company—just quit and left me in charge.”
“Technically, he left me in charge.”
“Oh, really? And what exactly do you know about the day-to-day running of the business?”
“Not much because—”
“Exactly. You don’t know much because you’re always jaunting off to some exotic location to do ‘business.’” She put the bunny ears around the word. But then she immediately felt like a bitch. She was acting horribly. It was just that she didn’t like change and she hated having the rug pulled out from under her. She was stressed and scared and she was taking it out on Griffin.