“I resigned,” Dalton said simply. “I recommended the board name you interim CEO. I can’t guarantee they will, but I talked to Hewitt, Sands and Schield personally. I think they’ll be able to sway the others. Now—”
“You quit?”
“I resigned.” Dalton looked like he might bust out laughing. “Try to keep up.”
“You can’t quit.” Great. His brother finally developed a sense of humor and it turned out to be sick and twisted. “Cain Enterprises needs you. More than ever with Hollister sick.”
“I agree. Cain Enterprises needs a strong leader. But you can be that leader just as easily as I can.”
And that’s where Dalton was dead wrong.
Dalton had been preparing for this job his whole life. Griffin, however, had spent his whole life waiting to take his inheritance and get out of the business. “Even if I wanted to, I’m not prepared to be the CEO. I don’t—”
“My assistant knows everything that goes on in the office. If there’s anything you don’t know, she can bring you up to speed. I know you haven’t worked much with Sydney in the past, but she’s top-notch. She’ll take good care of you.”
Shock must have made his esophagus seize because the sip of coffee Griffin had just taken went straight into his lungs, damn near choking him.
“I don’t … You can’t …” Griffin shook his head. Dalton was stepping down? And he was saying that Sydney would take care of him? The irony was just too much. For years he’d been phoning it in for his job at Cain Enterprises. Just biding his time until he could walk away free and clear. He’d stayed with the company out of duty and because if Hollister knew where his interests really lay, he’d be cut off without a dime. And now, after all this time, Dalton wasn’t just giving him more responsibility, he was handing him the entire damn company. “What the hell brought this on? And what on earth are you going to do if you’re not the leader of Cain Enterprises?”
“I’m going to win the heart of the woman I love.”
Okay. So Dalton had officially gone crazy.
“You’re what?” He sat back, waving aside his question. “Never mind,” he said darkly. “I know who’s to blame for this. Laney.”
Dalton’s mouth curved into a sappy smile. “Yeah. Laney.”
Griffin muttered a curse. “You’re throwing away everything for a woman?”
“Laney’s not just—”
“Yeah. I’m sure. Laney’s delightful. Frickin’ wonderful.” He leaned forward and tapped the center of the table to emphasize his point. “I’ve always liked Laney. And even when we were kids I saw that she was special to you. So if you want to be with her, then be with her. But don’t throw away everything you’ve worked for all your life over it.”
Dalton shot him a look that was somewhere between annoyed and amused. “I never thought I’d say this, but you sound remarkably like our father.”
“God, I hope not.” Griffin leaned back and blew out a frustrated sigh. “It’s not that I don’t want you to be happy, it’s just that …”
He had a lot on his plate right now. In the next month alone, he had two trips to Guatemala planned and one more to Africa. The project in Rwanda was at a critical stage and it was the first in that country. On Griffin’s most recent visit, he’d made inroads to get the project financed by a local bank, but if he didn’t get back down there soon, it might all fall through. The simple truth was, he didn’t have time to be CEO.
Griffin set down his coffee cup to see Dalton watching him with that slightly dazed look people in love usually wore. Griffin wanted to leap across the table and strangle some sense into his brother. “Did it ever occur to you that I might have better things to do?”
For nearly a full minute Dalton just stared at him. Then Dalton burst out laughing, and didn’t speak for another minute until he stopped. “Better things. Nice one.”
Griffin unclenched his jaw. “I’m serious. I just happen to be busy right now.”
Dalton took a lazy sip of coffee and shrugged. “There’s nothing you do as VP of International Marketing that can’t be done by someone else.”
That was probably true. His job at Cain required very little. He liked it that way because it left his hours free for his work with Hope2O. And the occasional dalliance with a beautiful woman … such as Sydney.
But Dalton wasn’t buying his busy schedule as an excuse, so Griffin changed tactics. “Look, you don’t really want to step down at CEO. It’s who you are. You’re the guy who takes care of business. You’re the guy who’s going to find this missing heiress.”
And until this moment, Griffin had believed that. He hadn’t had even a shadow of a doubt that Dalton would find the heiress and, as a result, win the entire Cain fortune as his prize. But he knew his brother. Dalton was fair to a fault. He wouldn’t take the money and run. Once Dalton had secured the Cain fortune, he would carefully divide it up among the three—or four—of them. However, if Dalton backed out of things now, then they were all screwed, Griffin included.
Dalton smiled. “Well, it’s time for you to step up and become that guy because I’m not him anymore.”
The problem was, he wasn’t that guy, either. Ever since he was a kid he’d been hiding his true nature from his family.
He was—and this was a direct quote from Hollister—a pansy-assed do-gooder with a heart of gold. That was a hell of an insult to hear at age nine, especially from the father he worshipped like a god.
So—since he was nine—Griffin had been hiding who he was, had been hiding the fact that he cared about the quality of life of other people in the world. Even the people who didn’t contribute to Cain Enterprise’s bottom line. And he would continue to hide it.
The bleeding-heart liberal born into a Texas oil family. The ugly duckling had nothing on him.
Before now, all he had to do was keep his head down and try to blend in. Now, Dalton expected him to take over. He was going to do the only thing left to do. He would find the heiress. If he controlled his father’s fortune, he could walk away from the day-to-day running of the company. He could devote himself full-time to Hope2O or anything else that struck his fancy. In short, he could do whatever the hell he wanted.
By the time Sydney arrived at the office, she’d managed to calm herself down enough to pass for normal. Now more than ever, she wanted to continue impressing Dalton with her competence and trustworthiness.
If her experience with Brady had taught her anything, it was that she had to depend on herself. When it came down to it, she was alone in the world. She had herself and whatever stability her job provided. That was it. She couldn’t afford to let herself get distracted by a man again.
Certainly not one of the Cains.
She spent the afternoon at her desk, answering what email of Dalton’s she could, and then catching up on the work she’d missed that morning.
It killed her knowing that Dalton and Griffin were out together at lunch, even if she never came up in their conversation. It was a bad omen, like a comet flitting across the sky to herald the impending arrival of a horrible natural disaster.
The two halves of her world were on a collision course and she wasn’t sure how to brace herself for impact.
So she should have been relieved when two o’clock rolled around and the door to the office finally creaked open. Hoping Dalton had decided to come in after all, Sydney leaped to her feet, ready to greet her errant boss.
But it wasn’t Dalton who walked into the room. It was Griffin.
Her heart thudded and she had to fight the sudden and completely irrational