Chapter 28
Warren Snyder watched the YouTube clip with his fingers steepled beneath his chin.
Anyone who walked into his Palm Beach corner office would’ve been fooled into believing he was calm.
On some level he was. From a very early age he’d trained himself to suppress his emotions unless he absolutely needed to show them.
Most of the time he allowed enough to bleed through his voice to make a point.
But he was not calm. The overriding description he could conjure up was a sense of furious disquiet.
For five years he’d watched over her. Pieced her back together. Kept her from going over the edge.
Nurtured her.
Readied her.
His patience had been beyond exemplary, a fact for which he was quite proud. He liked to think Logan Michaels would’ve been proud, too, had he been alive.
But now…
Noah King.
The clip wound down to the last two minutes.
Although the lead singer of the band commanded presence on the stage, it was the man who stood next to the electric guitarist that held Warren’s attention.
The man whose gaze was fixed squarely on the woman on the stool as he strummed the guitar, his intent as blatant as the floodlights bathing the stage in harsh light.
Warren switched his gaze to her, and his fingers pressed harder into each other. She glowed with health and vitality, and her grey eyes held very little of the shadows that had plagued her for so long.
He was responsible for that.
Everything she’d become she owed to him. She’d accepted that a long time ago. Had also accepted that the next step hovered just beyond the horizon.
He’d allowed her this one brush stroke on the canvas he’d carefully created. After all, he wasn’t a complete tyrant. The victory wouldn’t be sweet unless she came to him fully and of her own accord.
What he hadn’t calculated for was how broad a stroke she intended to wield. He watched the last thirty seconds of the rehearsal, watched her lose herself in the embrace that was taken in full view of the world.
He inhaled and opened his senses to allow his emotions to flood in. Just enough so he could acknowledge their presence, then free himself of it and get down to the business of strategizing the best way forward.
Anger. Ten seconds.
Disappointment. Twelve.
Jealousy. Seven seconds.
Arousal. Thirty… no, forty seconds.
He processed them all and lit the match to his emotional torch paper. He breathed through the fumes, hit the replay button and watched the clip to the end with complete detachment.
Noah King was not his enemy. But he seemed intent on taking his prize; taking what belonged to him. It was unfortunate that he didn’t know that hell would burn itself out before Warren ever relinquished Leia Michaels to another man.
Calmly, he shut off the computer and picked up the phone.