All He Really Needs(10)

“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.