All He Really Needs (6 page)

“Sharlene doesn’t know anything.”

“Sharlene? Why does that name sound familiar?”

“How should I know?”

“Sharlene is a pretty unusual name. You’re not talking about
Sharlene Sheppard, are you?”

“She was Sharlene Davonivich then, but yeah. Why?”

“And this was before she married Jack Sheppard, your father’s
business rival?” she asked.

“Actually, this was before Jack Sheppard was his business
rival. They used to be partners. Things went bad sometime after Sharlene and my
father broke up.”

Sydney let out a low whistle. “Sometimes the history of Cain
Enterprises reads like an Italian opera.”

Griffin looked slightly abashed. “Yeah. Heartache. Epic
rivalries. It’s like
Les Misérables
but without all
the singing.”

She chuckled, then asked, “Are you sure she’s not involved? How
long were they together?”

Griffin shrugged. “Ten years, maybe.”

“Ten years? Forget what she knows. Forget this wild goose chase
after a pregnant nanny who may or may not have even slept with Hollister. If
this Sharlene person was your father’s mistress for ten years, then she could be
the girl’s mother.”

“No.”

“But you said yourself that your father was selective about who
he let get close to him.”

“Sharlene doesn’t have any children.”

“Maybe she gave the baby up for adoption.” She was really
warming to the idea now. It just made sense. “And if she did, that would
certainly explain the bitterness in the letter.”

“No,” Griffin said. “Sharlene was never pregnant.”

“You can’t know that for sure. Sometimes when women don’t want
people to know they’re pregnant, they hide the pregnancy for as long as they
can. They go away for the last few months, give birth in private. They—”

“Sharlene wasn’t the type. She and my father never hid their
affair.”

“As far as you know.”

Griffin’s hands rested low on her waist and he rubbed his thumb
across her hip bone absently as he spoke. “You’re right. I’m not a hundred
percent certain. But Sharlene was like another mother to me.”

He seemed completely unaware of what his hands were doing, but
it drove her crazy.

She tried to step away, but his grip on her was surprisingly
strong. “So it’s only natural you don’t want to consider that she might have
been the one to write the letter.”

“Actually, what I was going to say is that when I was a kid, I
saw her at least once a week, sometimes more often. If she’d been pregnant, I
would remember it. If she’d gone away, even for a few months, I would have
noticed.”

Sydney frowned, realizing he was right. He probably would have
remembered it.

“Besides,” he continued, finally letting her go. “When they
broke up, it was nasty. If she’d had the kind of leverage a kid would have given
her, she’d have used it then.”

“You don’t know—”

“I do know.” His tone was harsher than she’d ever heard it
before; all traces of the easygoing charmer she knew so well were gone.

For a moment, all she could do was stare at him blankly. Then
she nodded. “Okay. So Sharlene isn’t the girl’s mother. But we should still talk
to her. She might know something.”

He stared at her for a long moment before finally nodding.
“Okay. I’ll give her a call. See if she knows anything.”

Before she could say anything else, Griffin disappeared back
into his office and she was left standing beside the conference table, wondering
exactly what she’d said that had driven a wedge between them. And what she’d
gotten herself into.

If she was honest with herself, it wasn’t the family drama that
surprised her; it was Griffin’s reaction to it. She’d been with him for four
months, for goodness sake. They’d had sex countless times. Spent entire weekends
in bed eating takeout and watching cheesy monster movies on Syfy.

So how was it there were so many things she didn’t know about
him?

Before she could ponder that question anymore, her phone
buzzed. She glanced down to see a text from Jen.

As she typed in a quick response, she shrugged off the question
altogether. There were plenty of things he didn’t know about her, either. Things
she would never tell him. That wasn’t the kind of relationship they had.

Suddenly, that made her sad, even though she wasn’t quite sure
why.

It felt as though their relationship had shifted inexplicably
in the past few days. Yeah, sure, there was that huge obvious shift. He was her
boss now. They weren’t sleeping together anymore. Yeah, all
that
stuff had happened. But there was something else going on, too.
She was seeing a side of Griffin that she’d never seen before. Something beyond
that surface charm she’d originally been attracted to.

The problem was, now that she knew there was more to him than
that, could they ever go back to the relationship they’d had before? She didn’t
think so. Now that she’d seen this Griffin, this guy who cared about the company
and who worked as hard as he played, she’d never be able to forget he existed.
Even if Dalton did come back and she was no longer working for Griffin. She’d
never be able to go back to just sleeping with him, either. So where did that
leave her?

Even before Griffin had taken over as CEO, she’d worried she
was in over her head. She blamed that damned key. Why had everything become so
complicated? Working with him every day constantly strained her willpower. She
didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to keep him at arm’s length.

She could only hope they found this girl soon. Once Dalton
reclaimed his position as CEO, she’d have a little distance from Griffin. Going
cold turkey would be so much easier without having him tempt her constantly. But
what if Dalton never came back? It was a possibility she couldn’t let herself
consider. They would find the girl. Dalton would come back. Griffin wouldn’t be
her boss forever.

She just had to make damn sure they found her soon.

Six

“H
ow’s it going?” Griffin asked from the
doorway to the conference room.

Sydney looked from the stack of papers in front of her to
Griffin and back with her eyebrows raised. “How does it look like it’s
going?”

That signature smile of his crept across his face. “Slowly. It
looks like it’s going slowly.”

She gave an indelicate snort. “Exactly. Your powers of
observation are astonishing.”

It had been two days since the conversation about Sharlene.
That conversation that she’d been so sure had changed everything. And
yet…nothing had changed. By the time she’d left work that day, Griffin had
returned to his normal self. The next morning, she’d briefly considered asking
him whether he’d actually called Sharlene, as she’d suggested. Instead, she
gritted her teeth and started going through the Cain household records.
Forty-two boxes in all. Sydney had dug into the boxes and started looking for
any references to a nanny named Vivian.

Part of her said she was being a coward. The other part pointed
out calmly that she was just doing her job. This was what Griffin had asked her
to do, so she was doing it. If he wanted her doing anything else, he’d tell
her.

The part that thought she was being a coward noted that Griffin
was stubbornly ignoring the obvious. That he needed to go talk to Sharlene—and
possibly his mother also—because a real conversation with an actual human would
get him further than countless hours searching through boxes would.

The problem was, as much as she wanted to pretend otherwise,
Griffin wasn’t just her boss. He’d been her lover first. She knew his personal
needs and his professional ones. If this was Dalton she was dealing with,
there’d be no question. She would just trust her gut. But with Griffin, she had
no idea if her gut was telling her to do what was right for the company or what
was right for her man. Or maybe it wasn’t her gut doing the talking at all.
Maybe this was unfulfilled sexual tension speaking. Because once she found the
heiress, maybe she could justify getting back in Griffin’s bed.

She looked at him, trying not to appreciate his broad shoulders
or the little bit of stubble scattered across his jaw. Since taking over as CEO,
he’d traded in his rugged jeans for twill slacks and his linen shirts for crisp,
pressed cotton. Somehow the fact that he still left the shirts untucked until
right before he went into meetings made the look that much more appealing. The
result was that he always came across as just a little rumpled and disreputable.
It lent an air of intimacy to the office. And, frankly, it made her want to rip
his clothes off.

To keep her hands occupied—and off his buttons—she flipped the
lid off box number nineteen. “I’ve been at this for days now. I’m not even
halfway through these records. And so far, all I can tell you is that your
mother spends too much on shoes and your parents’ accountant pays the bills on
time.”

“I could have told you that,” he said with a smile.

“We’re never going to make any progress here.”

“You think the information is buried too deep?” he asked.

She picked up a sheaf of papers. Printouts from the early
eighties. Old reams of accordion-style paper. The ink from the dot-matrix
printer was faded and damn near impossible to read. In addition, the pages were
so damn musty, she was pretty sure an entire colony of dust mites was
vacationing in her sinuses. She lifted the bottom edge of the stack with her
thumb and let it fan through the hundred or so pages.

“I’ve been through every page of your parents’ household
records. From the year Laney was born and for two years in either direction,
just to be sure. There is no mention of anyone named Vivian. Not anywhere in
these records.”

Griffin was watching her in that way he had, quietly attentive.
The way that made her think he caught all the subtleties going on beneath the
surface. That he knew that her eyes ached from staring at the blurred ink. That
her back twitched from sitting too long. And, most especially, that every time
she’d gotten sleepy from just sitting there going through the pages, she’d given
herself a two-minute break to fantasize about locking his office door and doing
crazy things to his body. And about the way he liked to drive her completely
crazy with lust before taking her. And the powerful way he drove into her. And
the way he hooked her ankles up over his arms so her hips were at just the right
angle.

And she knew, instantly, that she should not have let that
image flit through her brain because she could feel her cheeks heating up. And
damn it, now he would definitely know what she’d been thinking, even if he was
only guessing before.

Hoping to distract them both, she pushed her chair back and
stood, walking over to the water cooler beside the credenza on the far side of
the conference room and pouring herself a tiny cup of water.

But when she turned back around, it was to find him watching
her. His gaze was hot and she could feel the weight of it against her skin as
potent as a physical touch. Crap, she’d distracted him all right, but not in the
way she’d meant to.

She swallowed most of the water in one gulp, nearly drowning
herself.

“Is it too hot in here for you?” he asked, his voice pitched
low with innuendo. “’Cause I could turn the air-conditioning back on for
you.”

“No, thanks. I know right where the air-conditioning controls
are.”

“Oh, I know you do.” He grinned wickedly and she knew he was
thinking of the time he’d all but begged her to pleasure herself while he
watched. The resulting earth-shattering sex was no doubt seared into both of
their minds. “I was just offering to take care of it for you. If you wanted me
to.”

Damn, but she did want him to take care of it for her. Right
here. Right now.

But that was the very last thing she could do. Because the only
thing worse than sleeping with your boss was sleeping with your boss in the
middle of the day on the middle of the executive board table.

“Ugh, this is so frustrating. It feels like we’re never going
to get anywhere like this.” Especially because the only place she wanted to get
was into Griffin’s pants. Yeah,
frustrating
was the
perfect word. Unfortunately. “I wish we could just talk to your mother about
it.”

Griffin gave a bark of shocked laughter. “Why?”

She shrugged. Wasn’t it obvious? “Presumably she could tell us
exactly who this nanny is.”

“I doubt that.”

“You don’t think she’d remember?”

He gave a snort. “I’d be shocked if she ever knew the woman’s
name to begin with.”

“I find that hard to believe.” What kind of woman wouldn’t know
the name of her children’s nanny?

“Do you remember Mrs. Fortino?” he asked.

“Yes. She’s Laney’s grandmother. She was your housekeeper for
years, right?”

“Exactly. Thirty years. I was fourteen when I realized my
mother had been saying her name wrong. With an
A
on
the end instead of an
O.
”

“So? That’s an easy mistake to make.”

“Yeah, sure. So I corrected my mother. We fought over it. My
mother refused to admit she was wrong. Finally, my mother called Mrs. Fortino in
and told her that regardless of what her name actually was, from that moment on
she was to go by Mrs. Fortina in my mother’s presence. She told the poor women
that if anyone addressed her by her real name, she would be instantly
fired.”

“That’s absurd. You can’t fire an employee over something like
that,” Sydney protested.

“When you’re a self-indulgent narcissist you can do whatever
you want if other people let you get away with it. Mrs. Fortino merely nodded
and asked if that was all. As soon as she left, my mother told me to never again
interfere with the way she ran the household.”

“You think she did it to punish you?”

“She did it because she wanted me to know she was in
charge.”

His cold conviction unsettled her. She knew, of course, that he
wasn’t particularly close to his family, but she’d written it down as a
peculiarity of the rich.

“Well, that’s certainly not very nice, but it has nothing to do
with this.”

“I didn’t tell you the story to elicit your sympathy. I told
you to explain why I don’t think talking to Mother would make any
difference.”

“Surely she’s not that bad.”

“I think they said the same thing about Nero’s mother.”

“Oh, come on.” She sent him a teasing smile. “You’re comparing
her to one of the most reviled women in history? Did she commit murder? Are
there plots to overthrow the government I don’t know about?”

“Wow, you really know your Roman history.”

“What can I say? I liked
I,
Claudius.
My point is, a simple conversation with your mother might
answer many of our questions.”

“First off, there’s no such thing as a simple conversation with
my mother. And second, a conversation with her has never made any situation
better.”

Sydney stared down at the open file in front of her, gnawing on
her lip as she considered her next words. Sure, just asking him was the most
straightforward course of action, but she was definitely treading on new ground
here. They didn’t have the kind of relationship where they talked about their
families or their childhoods. He’d already revealed more to her now than he ever
had before. And if it was just human curiosity driving her, she would have let
it go. But there was far more at stake here than her fascination with this man.
If they didn’t find the heiress, the future of the entire company was at stake.
Thousands of people would be out of work, herself included.

“You really don’t like your mother, do you?” she quipped,
trying to make light of an obviously difficult situation.

“What gave me away?” He smiled at her. It was an expression
very similar to his normal charming grin but without any warmth in his gaze.
“Was it the comparison to Nero’s murderous mother?”

She ignored his glib words and asked, “Why?”

He blinked in surprise. “What?”

“Why don’t you like her? Or more to the point, why are you so
angry at her about this?” She gestured to the mess of papers in front of her,
partly to indicate the mass of files his mother had sent over, but also
referencing the mess with his father. “This thing with the missing heiress?
That’s your father’s mistake, not hers. She’s the victim here—”

“My mother is never a victim,” he interrupted.

“She’s just as much a victim as you. Maybe more so. The way I
understand it, in his original will she was going to receive ten percent. Now,
no matter what happens, she gets nothing.”

“You think I’m being too hard on her?” His voice was flat.

“I don’t know. I guess I just…” She stared down at the page
in front of her. One of the corners curled up, and she ran her fingers back and
forth over it so it rolled and unrolled. “I get why you’re angry at your father
over this. I get that. But I don’t understand why you seem to be mad at your
mother, too.”

Without really meeting her eyes, he rounded the board table
that dominated the room and crossed to the antique bar that stood in one corner.
In her months here, she’d never seen Dalton—or anyone else for that matter—pour
themselves a drink in the middle of a meeting. However, Dalton kept the bar
there because that was the kind of businessman his father had been. Apparently,
among Texas oil men of that generation, a deal wasn’t considered sealed until
you’d shared a drink over it. It all seemed very
Dallas
to her.

Even though she’d never seen Griffin drink before now, he
poured himself a Scotch and tossed it back quickly before pouring himself
another.

Finally, he turned and faced her, the glass cradled in his
hand, his legs stretched out in front of him as he leaned back against the bar.
“You’re right. My father is a lying, cheating bastard and he always has been.”
He took a drink before continuing. “But at least he never pretended to be
anything other than what he was. He never hid the fact that he’d do anything to
increase Cain Enterprises profits. He never lied about the other women. He’s a
bastard, but he’s an honest bastard. My mother, however, spent our childhoods
alternately pretending to be the perfect loving mother and ignoring us
completely.”

She studied him with a tilted head. “What makes you think she
was pretending? Maybe she really was a loving mother.”

“Let me ask you this. What would you have done in her
shoes?”

His question surprised her so much, she blinked in surprise.
“What do you mean?”

He pushed himself away from the bar and took a slow step toward
her. “What would you do in her shoes? What would you do if your husband cheated
on you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.” But everything
inside her recoiled from the idea. She wouldn’t tolerate it. Still, every woman
was different. “I guess if I still loved him, I might try to make it work.
Marriage counseling. Something like that.”

“No,” Griffin said, and at first she thought he was arguing
with her logic. But he took another step toward her. “No. Pretend you don’t love
him at all. That you only married him for the money. Would you stay with him?
Just for the money?”

“I would never marry someone just for the money.”

“Pretend for a second that you would. Pretend that you were
rich already and could have married anyone, but you chose someone so ambitious
and ruthless, you knew he could make you rich beyond belief. And then pretend he
turned out to be just as ruthless in his personal life. Pretend he slept with
whoever he wanted and humiliated you in public and in front of your friends.
Would you stay?”

“No.” She felt the flame of embarrassment for his mother just
listening to him. Not just embarrassment, but anger, too. At Griffin, for so
ruthlessly displaying his mother’s shortcomings. Anger made her meet his gaze as
she defended his mother. “But everyone is different. I can’t judge her for
staying. I don’t know her well enough.”