She dropped her gaze as she felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. She licked her lips because her mouth had suddenly gone dry. Suddenly she understood why he harbored so much anger toward his mother. Suddenly she got it.
“No.” Her voice came out as a whisper. She didn’t have kids. She didn’t even know if she would ever have kids—at least, not biological kids. She’d always had the idea of doing the foster kid thing someday. If she did have kids—biological or foster—she would do everything in her power to protect them. “No, I wouldn’t.”
Griffin nodded, then tossed back the rest of his drink and set the glass down with a thud. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
With that, he turned and walked out.
He didn’t have to say anything else. Because now she got it. His father may be a bastard, but that didn’t really bother him because he’d never really cared about his father. He’d loved his mother. He probably still did. Despite everything, he would love her. That, more than anything, explained why he harbored so much anger and resentment. He loved her, but he was constantly disappointed by her.
She felt the same way about her own biological mother. She’d lived with her for the first six years of her life. Of course she’d loved her. And, of course, all kinds of negative emotions were mixed in with the love, but it was the love that made all of it hurt.
She understood that maybe better than anyone else.
But she was also an outsider in Griffin’s relationship with his mother. She could see, perhaps more clearly than he could, just how complicated this was. Unfortunately, none of this insight into the Cain family solved anything. None of this got her any closer to finding the heiress.
*
One of Griffin’s lifelong goals was to never be as much of an ass as his father. In fact, his goal was to never do anything like his father. Yet here he was, bullying his subordinate, bitching about his mother, Caro Cain, and drinking in the middle of the morning. In short, he was acting just like his dad. Funny how that had worked out.
Back in his office—Dalton’s office, really—he plunked himself down in Dalton’s chair, scrubbed a hand down his face, swallowed back his regrets and tried to think of how to dig his way out of this mess. First step, naturally, was to find something to eat. It was only ten, but breakfast had been a bowl of oatmeal five hours ago. He could feel the Scotch eating its way through the oats right now.
One of the peppermints Dalton always kept in his desk would do for starters. He unwrapped one of the Brach’s candies and plopped it in his mouth. Then he started pulling open drawers looking for some nuts or a granola bar or something. He knew Dalton well enough to figure that the guy had probably eaten about half his meals right here at this desk.
Tucked into the back of the second drawer, he found something far more interesting than a pack of almonds. Behind the stack of files was a nine-by-eleven manila envelope with the word Confidential stamped on the front. The return address was from a company out of L.A. that Dalton sometimes used to do employee background checks. Not the normal HR kind, either. The hardcore kind. Panic spiked through Griffin. This company did the kind of background check that would reveal a VP’s involvement with an international charity. Did Dalton know about Hope2O? If he did, then why the hell had he left Griffin in charge of Cain Enterprises?
In the bottom drawer, he found a jar of almonds and he poured a few out into his hand before opening the manila folder and pulling out the pages it contained. It took him several minutes of staring at the file before he realized what it contained—that was how surprised he was by the envelope’s contents.
It wasn’t a file on him. It was information about Sydney.
Dalton must have subcontracted the work when he’d decided to hire her full-time. Yeah, HR would handle all the reference checks and job recommendations, but it wasn’t uncommon for Dalton to hire out a more in-depth background search for someone in a position of authority at the company. And now that Griffin thought about it, that certainly described Sydney’s position. She knew everything about the company and had access to some very high-level stuff. She had more influence than most of the junior VPs. Certainly more than he had. So it only made sense. Still, he hadn’t been expecting it, so seeing the file surprised the hell out of him.
He mindlessly popped a few almonds into his mouth as he flipped through the pages. He hadn’t meant to read it. If he hadn’t been hungry and tired and just drunk two shots of Scotch in quick succession, he would have had the foresight to shove the pages back into the envelope and let it go.
Instead, his gaze scanned the pages almost without realizing he was doing it. And once he’d read some of it, he couldn’t stop. In fact, he had to read parts a second time, just because it all seemed so damn hard to believe. So completely out of character with the woman he knew.