All He Really Needs(34)

It seemed she could see Caro’s faults so clearly, but perhaps that was because they mirrored her own.

Caro seemed to be waiting for some response, so Sydney spoke, hesitatingly at first. “I can’t speak to your relationship with Hollister. That’s not my place. But I can say this—Griffin also has it in him to be a great man.”

“Griffin?” Caro asked.

“Yes, Griffin.” The surprise in Caro’s voice annoyed her.

“Oh, I’m not disagreeing,” Caro added hastily. “I’m just surprised. You worked for Dalton for much longer. I expected you to be touting his greatness.”

Heat rose in Sydney’s cheeks as she realized her mistake. She had only been Griffin’s assistant for a handful of days, and that’s how Caro would see it. “Of course Dalton is also great,” she fumbled for a response. Something, anything to hide the depth of her involvement with Griffin. “Dalton is incredibly intelligent. And ambitious. And…” Now she was overplaying it. She paused to take a sip of her tea. “I merely meant that I can see greatness in Griffin, too.”

“Yes. I agree.” Caro leveled another one of those cool, assessing stares at Sydney, giving her the feeling that she’d hidden nothing from the other woman but exposed entirely too much.

“Well,” Sydney said with forced confidence. “About those questions I had…”

“Yes,” came a voice from right behind her. “I have some questions, too.”

Sydney’s heart gave a little jump. She knew his voice without having to turn around.

Griffin was here.

She slowly looked over her shoulder. He was standing behind her, just to her right. How much had he heard? More to the point, why was he here? Was he angry with her?

She pasted an ingratiating smile on her face. “Hello, Mr. Cain.”

Her use of his last name must have irritated him because his gaze narrowed slightly. “Ms. Edwards,” he said with a nod. “Mother.” He crossed to Caro’s side and brushed a kiss across her cheek. “You look beautiful, as always.”

Caro offered him a restrained smile. “Hello, dear. I assume you want to join us. We haven’t ordered yet. Shall I have the waiter pull up a chair?”

She was already gesturing when he stopped her with a hand to her arm. “No. Thank you. I’ll take Sydney’s chair. She can’t stay.”

“I can’t?”

“No. You can’t. I need you back at the office.”

“You do?” Nice try, but she wasn’t going to let him bully her, not when she was just starting to feel like she was making real progress with his mother.

“Yes.” He gave her a pointed look. As if she was too dense to get the point. “There’s a lot of work to do today.”

“Then I’ll stay late.” She smiled back at Caro. “Your mother was nice enough to invite me to lunch. It would be rude to leave her now.”

“You can go back to the office and I’ll have lunch with her.”

“But—” Sydney began, but then broke off. Glancing back at Griffin, she said, “Perhaps we should discuss this in private.”

Griffin looked like he’d rather discuss it back at the office, but instead he gave a tight nod. “Mother, if you’ll excuse us?”

“Yes, of course,” she murmured.

“Come on, then.”

Sydney stood, leaving her shoulder bag at the table because that way he couldn’t just show her out. However, instead of taking her out the front of the club, which she’d feared he would do, he guided her out the back, through one of the many glass doors, onto the sprawling patio that overlooked the expansive golf course.

Even though it was late October and theoretically the temperatures should be dropping, it was still in the eighties and the persistent humidity made the air feel sticky. The view of the pristinely manicured lawns of the River Oaks golf course was stunning. It was almost oppressively beautiful. Too beautiful, actually, like the photo on a postcard that’s been touched up so much it no longer looks like a real place.

And she knew that was true of the River Oaks Country Club. There was nothing here that was real. Nothing solid. It was all surgically taut skin and chemically brightened grass.

But perhaps she was prejudiced, her opinions colored by her status as an outsider.

Beside her, Griffin said, “Don’t pretend you came here to lunch with my mother just to admire the view.”

She glanced up at him, taking in the lean lines of his face. Griffin also had that otherworldly quality to him. Not false, exactly, but still too pretty to be real. Unbelievably handsome.

She turned to face him fully. No, she was done pretending.