She dropped back into her chair and ran a hand over her face. “I’m sorry. That was…”
“Uncalled for?” he offered helpfully.
“I was going to say really bitchy.” She softened her words with a smile. “I’m sorry. I’m freaking out, but I shouldn’t take it out on you.”
Griffin crossed over and sat on the corner of her desk, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re nervous. But don’t worry. We’ll work it out.”
“How’re we supposed to work it out? Dalton has left a billion-dollar company in the hands of an overpaid psych major and a playboy.” She glanced up at him quickly. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Neither of us is prepared to run this company.” But then she broke off and studied Griffin. Really looked at him. Oh, sure. She looked at him all the time. He was her lover. They spent an increasing amount of their spare time together. She’d gone from the point of being in awe of his sheer masculine beauty to being comfortable with his easy grin and smiling eyes. But today she looked at him through a different lens. Today she looked at him as a potential leader.
He’d been raised with wealth and privilege beyond her imagining. He was the second son in a powerful and influential family. But there was the rub. Second son.
She knew from her dealings with Dalton and the other Cains—and from gossip around the office—that the family largely considered Griffin something of a slacker and screwup. Oh, Dalton himself never said that. But everyone knew Griffin had a cushy job. The company paid him insane amounts of money to travel and be charming.
For the first time, she wondered if the cushy job was really the one he wanted.
Cocking her head to the side, taking in his unexpectedly serious expression, she said, “You haven’t had a lot of choice before now. You don’t want to be CEO, do you?”
Because for all she knew, maybe he did. They never talked about work. Or family, for that matter. Or personal ambitions. Maybe he’d always wanted to be CEO but being Dalton’s younger brother had held him back.
Then his face spilt into a grin and he laughed. “Me? CEO?” He shook his head. “No. I’ve never wanted to be CEO.”
She bit down on her lip. “So what is it you do want to do?”
“I want to find the missing heiress. If I do that, all of these problems go away.” His blue eyes gleamed with a satisfaction she wasn’t used to seeing from him outside of bed.
Which was good—it was nice to see him caring about something, even if it was just finding a way to shirk his familial responsibility. But at the same time, it made what she had to say so much harder.
“You know that isn’t actually going to happen, right? Your father has slept with dozens of women. Hundreds. All over the world. Your half sister could be anywhere.”
“Not necessarily. My dad’s usually pretty careful about the whole birth control thing, so if I operate under the assumption that the woman who got pregnant is someone he was in a relationship with—”
“Wait a minute. That in itself is a huge leap. How do you know your dad was a stickler for birth control?” Even as the question flew out of her mouth, she couldn’t believe she was asking it. The absolute last thing she wanted to think about was Griffin’s father’s sexual habits.
“Where do you think I got my paranoia?” His lips twisted in a faint smile that somehow wasn’t. It wasn’t an expression she was used to seeing from him. “He drove it into me at an early age.”
“And this is going to help how? I mean, you have an illegitimate brother, so obviously he did get a woman pregnant.”
“Exactly. But probably not the first time—he’s way too much of a control freak to let that happen. I think he’d actually have to be in the middle of an affair with a woman before he ever got sloppy enough to risk her getting pregnant. Which means—”
“Which means the field of hundreds just got narrowed down to seventy or eighty?” Which still wasn’t great odds, but she had to admit it was better than what she’d originally feared.
“More like fifteen or twenty. The old bastard’s pretty damn careful about who he lets close to him.” His voice was carefully devoid of emotion, but it made her hurt for him in a way she’d never expected to.
After all, she was the orphan in this equation, the one who had grown up with nothing as she was bounced from foster home to foster home. He was the golden boy, the glib son of a billionaire who had never expected anything from him. So why then did she suddenly feel sorry for him?
Not that she could let him see that. Griffin didn’t do pity, self or otherwise.
“So you want to find your sister.” She dragged herself back to the conversation at hand. “And then what? Saddle her with the CEO job?”
He sighed. “You need vision, Sydney. Work with me here. I find Hollister’s missing daughter, I get the money and Dalton is left with nothing. Which isn’t going to sit real well with him, no matter what he says. So when I sweep in and offer him a fat CEO salary plus major stock options in the company, he’s going to jump at it. Especially if he doesn’t have to deal with Dad’s BS. I’ll put him in charge, let him run things the way he wants to.” He dusted his hands together like it was a fait accompli. “Everybody wins.”
“It’s not always about winning.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Sydney. It’s always about winning. It’s only the stakes and the game that change.”
Which summed up all the reasons she couldn’t be with him anymore. When there was nothing on the line, it was easy to spend time with him and not care about philosophical differences or his lifestyle or the fact that everything really was a game to him.
But now that he was her boss, she couldn’t afford to wear those blinders anymore. She couldn’t afford to let a few minutes’—okay, a few hours’—satisfaction get in the way of her job. She liked her job, needed her job for the money and the sense of self it gave her. There was no way she was going to become one of those women who slept with the boss, her survival dependent on the whims of a man she had no hope of holding on to.
No, a few orgasms—earth-shattering or not—were not worth playing Russian roulette with her whole life.
“You really think this is going to work?” she asked Griffin.
“It’s absolutely going to work. Plus, the good news is Dalton is handing over all his research so far and he thinks he has a lead. So we’re golden.” He winked at her. “Trust me.”
As if. She took a deep breath, blew it out slowly and tried to ignore the fact that she suddenly felt like she was making a deal with the devil. “Fine. I’ll help you find your sister. But that’s it.”
“What do you mean, that’s it? That’s all I need.”
“I mean, if we’re going to be working together, if you’re going to be my boss, this thing between us has to end. No sex, no candlelit dinners, no late-night phone calls. We—” she waved her finger back and forth between them “—are officially over.”
For long seconds, Griffin stared at her like he couldn’t quite comprehend what she was saying. Then he did the most amazing thing. He threw back his head and laughed. And laughed. And laughed.
Three
It was cute really, how annoyed she looked.
She set her jaw as bright pink flushed her cheeks. “I’m not joking.”
He tried to clamp down on his laughter. He really did. “I’m not joking.”
“Then stop laughing.” As if to give herself a better angle from which to glare at him, she pushed to her feet.
But from his point of view, it only brought her closer. She’d been sitting not far from him but still out of reach. Now he was easily able to lasso her arm and pull her toward him so she stood between his outstretched legs.
“I’m serious,” she insisted, but there was no force to her words and—as if she could read his mind—her gaze dropped briefly to his mouth.
“I know you are. That’s what makes it cute.” He widened his stance and pulled her close enough so that she was pressed against the vee of his legs, the juncture of her thighs against the hard length of his erection.
It felt so good having her there, so right. He inhaled sharply and was immediately hit with the scent of her. Sydney never wore perfume, but she favored a shampoo that smelled like coconut and lime. He was used to the smell of her hair, the way it mixed with the naturally sweet smell of her own skin and made him think of eating pancakes in bed on a perfect, lazy Saturday morning. But today she’d showered at his place and instead of her normal tropical, fruity smell, when he inhaled, he got a hit of Sydney layered under the smell of his own soap. Maybe it shouldn’t have been sexy, but it was. He felt it like a punch in the gut. She’d been in his shower mere hours ago. The smell of her only reinforced every instinct he had. She was his. Whether she knew it or not, she belonged to him.
Which made her edict that they stop sleeping together all the more funny.
He gave in to the urge to slip his hand along her jaw and to pull her closer.
Her mouth parted and she sucked in a quick breath. Anticipation. But instead of kissing her, he buried his nose in the hair right behind her ear and drew in a deep breath, just taking in the scent of her because he wanted to remember forever how she smelled in that instant. To burn it into his memory.
He felt a little shudder go through her and then he couldn’t resist running a trail of kisses up under her ear and across her cheek to her mouth. Then his lips were moving over hers in a soul-searing kiss. The kind that almost ended up with him ripping her clothes off and devouring her until she came apart in his arms.
Unfortunately, he didn’t think sex with his assistant would be a very efficient way to spend his first afternoon as CEO. Besides, even with the door closed, there was always the risk they’d be interrupted.