Still, she kept a smile on her face that was at least semi-polite and asked, “Then can I direct you to someone else’s office?”
“No. I’m right where I want to be.” Before she ask what he meant, he pulled a business card down on the desk in front of her. “There. Will that do it?”
“What?”
“Look at the card, damn it.”
His voice was hard and intractable. His face humorless.
She looked from him down to the business card. It had the familiar Cain Enterprises logo on the left-hand side. To the right of that were the words: Griffin Cain. And beneath that: President & Chief Executive Officer.
She stared at the card for a long moment before looking back up at him. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ve been working nonstop for the past two and half weeks to convince the board to name me CEO. Permanently. I groveled before my father. I called in all kinds of favors for this. I’m not quitting. I’m not leaving Cain Enterprises.” With that, he walked around to her side of the desk and pulled her to her feet. Then, before she could question him or protest, he dropped to one knee in front of her. He pulled out a ring box and flipped it open. Inside was a simple diamond solitaire. “Now, will you please marry me?”
The sight of him on his knees before her, the sight of the ring, the entire proposal…it was straight out of a fairy tale. And it killed her to have to turn him down.
“Griffin, I…” She started to shake her head, but she could barely talk past the tears.
He must have heard the denial in her voice because he stood, pulling her into his arms and cupping her face. “Don’t say no.”
“I can’t…I can’t say yes.”
“Why not?”
His expression nearly broke her heart. Because he looked like he genuinely didn’t know why she might say no.
She shook her head and pulled out of his arms. “Griffin, you don’t really care about me.”
To her surprise, he laughed. “That’s ridiculous. Of course I do. I love you.”
Her heart felt like it was trying to crawl right out of her and throw itself into his waiting hands. “You don’t.”
He grabbed her arm and pulled her back to him. “I do. I know you think you know me pretty well, but you don’t get to tell me how I feel.”
She swallowed her heart back down. She couldn’t meet his gaze, so instead, she stared at the top button of his shirt. “You don’t really mean that.”
“I do.”
“No. You don’t. Look, I get why you might think you love me. But you really don’t. It’s just good sex and familiarity.”
“It’s great sex.” He tipped her chin up so she was looking at him. “And it’s love.”
She forced herself to meet his gaze. “No. It’s not.” His arms felt so damn good around her and the sensation made it even harder to say what she had to say, but she forced the words out. “Things have been very complicated for you the past few weeks. You’re confused. If you think you love me, it’s just because I’m the one stable thing in your life right now and—”
Griffin interrupted her with a bark of laughter. “You think you’re the one stable thing in my life?”
“Well, I—”
“Sydney, you make me crazy. You are maddening and delightful and you make me feel things no one else has ever made me feel. You tempt me beyond reason. The one thing you are not is stable.”
“I—”
“You’ve driven me crazy ever since I first met you. Don’t get me wrong, you are right about a lot of things, and you were totally right about me needing to stay on as CEO. But you are not right about why I’m asking you to marry me.”
“I’m not?”
“I’m not asking you because I want stability in my life. I’m asking because I want you in my life.”
“But…you don’t really love me.”
“What on earth makes you think I don’t love you?”
“If you love me,” she challenged, “why didn’t you ever tell me about Hope2O?”
“If you love me why didn’t you ever tell me about Sinnamon?”
For a moment, she stared at him, openmouthed. And then she realized she didn’t have an answer for that.
Slowly, he smiled. “Hey, we both kept our secrets longer than we should have. We’re both really private people. This crazy search for the heiress did turn everything upside down. But that’s not a bad thing. If this hadn’t happened, we probably would have taken a lot longer to get here. But I don’t have any doubt that we still would have gotten here. I love you, Sydney. I think I’ve loved you ever since we first met. And if that doesn’t convince you, then consider this. I spent the past two weeks flying all over the country, meeting with each member of the board to convince them to name me CEO. All so that I could make this proposal perfect. I messed up the first time I asked you to marry me. I wanted to do it right this time.”