Free All He Really Needs by Emily McKay Page A

movies on Syfy.
    So how was it there were so many things she didn’t know about
him?
    Before she could ponder that question anymore, her phone
buzzed. She glanced down to see a text from Jen.
    As she typed in a quick response, she shrugged off the question
altogether. There were plenty of things he didn’t know about her, either. Things
she would never tell him. That wasn’t the kind of relationship they had.
    Suddenly, that made her sad, even though she wasn’t quite sure
why.
    It felt as though their relationship had shifted inexplicably
in the past few days. Yeah, sure, there was that huge obvious shift. He was her
boss now. They weren’t sleeping together anymore. Yeah, all that stuff had happened. But there was something else going on, too.
She was seeing a side of Griffin that she’d never seen before. Something beyond
that surface charm she’d originally been attracted to.
    The problem was, now that she knew there was more to him than
that, could they ever go back to the relationship they’d had before? She didn’t
think so. Now that she’d seen this Griffin, this guy who cared about the company
and who worked as hard as he played, she’d never be able to forget he existed.
Even if Dalton did come back and she was no longer working for Griffin. She’d
never be able to go back to just sleeping with him, either. So where did that
leave her?
    Even before Griffin had taken over as CEO, she’d worried she
was in over her head. She blamed that damned key. Why had everything become so
complicated? Working with him every day constantly strained her willpower. She
didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to keep him at arm’s length.
    She could only hope they found this girl soon. Once Dalton
reclaimed his position as CEO, she’d have a little distance from Griffin. Going
cold turkey would be so much easier without having him tempt her constantly. But
what if Dalton never came back? It was a possibility she couldn’t let herself
consider. They would find the girl. Dalton would come back. Griffin wouldn’t be
her boss forever.
    She just had to make damn sure they found her soon.
     

Six
    “H ow’s it going?” Griffin asked from the
doorway to the conference room.
    Sydney looked from the stack of papers in front of her to
Griffin and back with her eyebrows raised. “How does it look like it’s
going?”
    That signature smile of his crept across his face. “Slowly. It
looks like it’s going slowly.”
    She gave an indelicate snort. “Exactly. Your powers of
observation are astonishing.”
    It had been two days since the conversation about Sharlene.
That conversation that she’d been so sure had changed everything. And
yet…nothing had changed. By the time she’d left work that day, Griffin had
returned to his normal self. The next morning, she’d briefly considered asking
him whether he’d actually called Sharlene, as she’d suggested. Instead, she
gritted her teeth and started going through the Cain household records.
Forty-two boxes in all. Sydney had dug into the boxes and started looking for
any references to a nanny named Vivian.
    Part of her said she was being a coward. The other part pointed
out calmly that she was just doing her job. This was what Griffin had asked her
to do, so she was doing it. If he wanted her doing anything else, he’d tell
her.
    The part that thought she was being a coward noted that Griffin
was stubbornly ignoring the obvious. That he needed to go talk to Sharlene—and
possibly his mother also—because a real conversation with an actual human would
get him further than countless hours searching through boxes would.
    The problem was, as much as she wanted to pretend otherwise,
Griffin wasn’t just her boss. He’d been her lover first. She knew his personal
needs and his professional ones. If this was Dalton she was dealing with,
there’d be no question. She would just trust her gut. But with Griffin, she had
no idea if her gut was telling her to do what was