“Right, sweetheart.” He bopped the tip of her nose with his finger. “Let me know if you devise a fairer test than that. Meanwhile, I’ll be in my new office.”
He loved seeing her shocked expression as he sauntered into the office that used to be Dalton’s and shut the door behind him.
Once he was alone in the room, however, he blew out a long, slow breath.
When it came to running Cain Enterprises, he wasn’t nearly as confident as he’d let Sydney believe. He wasn’t worried about the day-to-day stuff, but the prospect of dealing with the board damn near had him breaking out in a cold sweat.
The board of directors that Hollister had amassed for Cain Enterprises was a bunch of vultures. If they knew what had happened in the past couple of weeks, they’d be circling for sure. First, Hollister—who had never displayed any sign of weakness to his business opponents—had made a very irrational decision when he’d sent his sons on this quest. The whole company hung in the balance as a result.
And now that Dalton had resigned, from the outside, it had to look like they’d all lost their minds. The board members weren’t fools. If they knew how unstable things really were, they’d start swooping down to peck out bits of flesh from what remained of his inheritance.
Right now, the company needed strong leadership more than anything. The company needed someone who could command respect. Unfortunately, Griffin knew he wasn’t that man.
He was all too aware of his limitations as a leader. He lacked his father’s cutthroat business tactics and his brother’s stolid determination. Perhaps even more importantly, he had no interest in running Cain Enterprises.
At the moment he had two interests: completing his work for Hope2O and the very tempting new assistant that came along with the CEO job. Apparently, being CEO was going to interfere with both of those pursuits. Which was why he had to get this yoke off his neck so he could get back to his real life. He had to find this damn missing heiress.
He dropped into the chair. Testing the springiness of the seat, he rocked back but there was very little give. Damn, even Dalton’s chair felt stiff and unyielding, much like his brother was.
Griffin glanced down and saw that the chair was actually the same model as the one in his office down the hall. Thanks to an array of knobs and levers, he could easily adjust it to suit his taste. Instead, he rolled the chair closer to the desk, flipped open the file Dalton had given him and started going over the notes Dalton and Laney had made. He left the chair exactly as it was. He wouldn’t be sitting in it long enough to bother changing it.
Sydney stared at the closed door to Dalton’s office, trying to squelch the sinking feeling in her gut. Except it wasn’t the door to Dalton’s office anymore. It was the door to Griffin’s office now. This was not good.
Oh, this was so not good.
Feigning a calm she didn’t feel, she turned back toward the computer at her workstation and mindlessly pulled up her email. If someone came into the office, she wanted it to look like she was busy. And competent. And not sitting here fantasizing about her boss.
Her boss.
Ugh.
She was absolutely not going to be that woman.
Her mother had been that kind of woman. The kind who casually slept with men to get favors from them. As far as she knew, her mother had never strayed into actual prostitution. She’d traded sex for rent, or car care or so her boss would overlook the fact that she was late for the seventeenth time that month. Even if that wasn’t real prostitution, it had cast a pall over Sydney’s childhood. Poverty, drug use and bad decision-making had dominated her life until she’d been taken away from her mother at the age of six. From there, she’d bounced from foster home to foster home for years before finally settling in at Molly Stanhope’s house when she was eleven.
Molly’s house had been a haven for the last seven years she was in the foster care system. In fact, Molly was still the closest thing she had to a mother. It was Molly who had been her moral compass since then. It was Molly who would not approve of Sydney sleeping with her boss.
Well, who was she kidding? It’s not like Molly would have gushed with approval over Sydney sleeping with Griffin Cain in the first place.
Sleeping with her boss compromised her position in the company. It meant he wouldn’t respect her. Her coworkers wouldn’t respect her and, worst of all, it destroyed her job security. It threatened not just her heart, but her livelihood.
As far as Sydney was concerned that sort of carelessness was a luxury she couldn’t afford. As a product of the foster care system, she had no one to depend on but herself. If the unthinkable happened and she lost her job, she was on her own. There were no loving parents for her to rush back to. There was no safety net. Hell, she didn’t even have a kindly uncle who could lend her a couple hundred bucks if she needed it. All she had was her cat, Grommet. And even he was kind of grouchy. If she was lucky, he might deign to curl up on her lap if she bumped the air-conditioning up.
She was completely on her own.
If she lost her job, she could lose her savings. Her house. Even her foster-siblings would feel it, because she’d been helping a couple of them with college tuition.
Just to give herself the kick in the ass she needed, she dug through her purse for her cell phone and scrolled through their numbers. Five of them had sort of stuck together because they’d all been at Molly’s at about the same time. She passed over Marco and George. They were both good guys if she needed advice on car care or barbecue, but they’d be useless at this sort of thing. Jen was studying abroad this semester and who knew what time it was in Spain. So Sydney pulled up Tasha’s number.
Tasha answered on the third ring. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Nothing.” Sydney aimed for a breezy tone but landed somewhere near strained. “Just thought I’d call and see how you’re doing.”
There was a pause of obviously stunned silence. “On a work day? Are you sick?”
“No. Of course not. I’m fine. What, I can’t call you just to check in?”
“On a work day?” Suspicion strained Tasha’s voice. “I mean, sure, I guess you can. You just never have in the past. Oh, my God, were you fired?”
“No! I mean …” Sydney forced a chuckle. “Calm down. Nothing’s wrong. Dalton’s not in today, that’s all.”
Thank goodness she had a handy excuse because apparently Tasha saw right through all her half-truths.
“I just …” Sydney fought the sudden urge to spill the beans. To tell Tasha everything. To share her burdens. Get a second opinion. The problem was, people usually came to her for help, not the other way around. So instead, she asked, “How’re your finals going?”
And thankfully Tasha let herself be distracted.
“Ugh. Just awful. Political Theory is knocking me for a lo op.”
“I thought you liked that one.”
And distracting Tasha was as easy as that. Fifteen minutes of griping later, Sydney was wrapping up the conversation when Tasha inadvertently delivered the wakeup call Sydney needed.
“I just can’t wait for this semester to be over so I can blow off a little steam.”
“Just don’t do anything too crazy, okay?” Sydney said, that familiar need to protect her sister rising up inside her.
“Don’t worry, I won’t do anything you wouldn’t do.”
Tasha’s words were like a stab in the gut. If that was the barometer, then Tasha could be in serious trouble.
“Just be safe.”
Tasha chuckled. “I know the drill.”
“Yeah, I