All He Really Needs(43)
He snorted derisively. “I’d have to be an idiot to make a regular practice of it.”
“Why do you say that?” Sure, she knew why she thought sleeping with coworkers was a bad idea—despite the fact that she was doing it—but she’d also worked enough places to know a lot of people did it anyway.
Instead of answering outright, he asked, “Do you have any idea how much money I’m worth?” Then he muttered a curse. “Or rather, how much I would be worth if my father hadn’t lost his mind.”
She didn’t know any precise numbers. “Not really. But I can guess, based on what the company’s worth and how much stock your father owns. From working with Dalton, I gather that, before your father’s little trip to fantasy land, he intended for your mother to get ten percent of the company stock and for each of his three sons to get thirty percent.”
Which would officially put Griffin into the crazy, stratospherically rich category. Something that made her really uncomfortable if she thought about it too much.
“Exactly. Everyone I work with can make a guess and get within a couple million dollars of my potential worth. Would you want to date someone under those circumstances?”
“Good point.”
“Besides, it’s not just the money. If I made a mistake and trusted the wrong person, it wouldn’t be just me paying for it. It would be the whole family. The entire company.”
She couldn’t help asking, “Have you made a mistake like that?”
“Once. I was young and stupid. It could have been a lot worse than it was.” His hands clenched on the steering wheel and he gave it a little twist, like he was stretching out his arm muscles while he was trying to decide what else to tell her. “But mostly I just learned from watching the way my dad operated. He had women he slept with all over the world, but he rarely let any of them close. Of course, after Sharlene left him, that’s when it got really bad. He didn’t trust anyone after that.”
“Is that why you think this affair he had with the heiress’s mom must have been before he got involved with Sharlene?”
He seemed to ponder that for a second. “Yeah, I suppose so, though I didn’t think it through before now.”
“Here’s what I don’t get—I’ve worked with Dalton for nearly a year now, and I’ve never seen any indication that he’s even half this paranoid.”
“He’s not,” Griffin agreed. “But Dalton’s different. It’s like what you said about the way he looks at you.”
She nodded, knowing what he meant. “Like you’re a resource, not a person.”
“Exactly.” He drummed out another beat on the steering wheel. “It’s not even that he really thinks that. That’s just the perception he gives. But no one would ever look at Dalton and think that he was vulnerable. If you’re going to invade a castle, you don’t try to blast your way through the front gate—you look for the weakest spot in the defenses. You try to find the back door and sneak in that way.”
“Wait a second. You can’t think that’s how people see you!”
“Of course it is.” He shrugged. “I’m the second son. I’ve never been a serious contender for power within the company. I don’t have a real job there.”
Even though she’d had the same thought, she bristled in his defense. “You have a real job!”
“Do I?”
“Of course you do. You’re the CEO.”
He raised his eyebrows in mocking question. “Really? I’ve been interim CEO for about five minutes.”
“And before that you were a VP.”
“A VP of what, precisely?”
“You were the VP of International—” But then her memory failed her and she couldn’t remember what exactly he did internationally.
“International…” he prodded.
“International something.”
“Any idea what I do—or rather did—as VP of International Something?”
“Well, you…travel a lot. And I’m sure you…have a lot of meetings. And…”
“Come on. Seriously, can you describe my job?”
“Well, no. But I’m sure you could.”
“Look, I don’t do a lot at Cain Enterprises. I’m the first person to admit it. If it wasn’t a family business, there’s no way I’d actually work for Cain Enterprises.”
Interesting. And it made her wonder what he would do if he had picked his own profession.
“But you do actually care about the business. You clearly pay attention to what’s going on. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have even had opinions about how to handle the change in leadership.”