Behind the Green Curtain by Riley Lashea Read Free Book Online

than Amelia,
and Amelia looked as unfazed as ever, the steely gaze back in place as if it
had never slipped.
    Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe Caton had
imagined it.
    That piercing, unaffected stare
lingered on her a moment longer before Amelia disappeared through the doorway,
and Caton closed her eyes, hoping it would all be a dream when she opened them.
When Sole came in and asked if she was okay, Caton had no idea how long she had
been standing there, but her coffee was cold by the time she retrieved it from
the bar and retreated to her lair.
    ~ ~ ~
    At least solitary was free of
conflict.
    How she had managed to make
avoidance of both Jack and Amelia vital to her survival in a single morning was
a feat that could have taken gold medals at the Stupidity Olympics. In one fell
swoop, she had taken her self-imposed situation from scarcely tolerable to
completely fucking impossible, and the fact that the dungeon was her only place
of safety in the house was just punishment.
    ‘Place of safety,’ of course, was a
relative term, and solitary was only solitary if the warden decided it so.
    Hours after Caton had confined
herself to the basement, “What the fuck were you thinking?” running through her
head in an agonizing loop, she heard a noise at the door that was easy to
ignore. With the rows and rows of file cabinets and shadowed corners, she had
already discovered the storage room was the kind of place conducive to seeing
and hearing things that weren’t really there.
    As she turned to grab another box
of files, though, Caton found it wasn’t her overactive imagination, but Amelia
who stood in the doorway, impeccably-dressed and completely put-together. Leave
it to Amelia, and her enduring grudge, to finally show up the afternoon Caton
least wanted her around. Absently wondering how long she had been standing
there, Caton rested the box on the table and pulled off the lid.
    “Do you need something?” she asked.
    “No.” Amelia made no move either in
or out of the room, choosing instead to just stand there silently watching as
Caton pulled folders from the box. From the side of her eye, Caton could see
her like a hazy vision, a cruel memory of a terrible mistake.
    The room was as chilly as always,
but heat infused Caton’s face. Sweat formed on her chest, cooling when the air
hit it, causing her to shiver. She hated that she let the woman get under her
skin, but Amelia was clearly embedded in it, whether the sensation was welcome
or not.
    “Are you just going to stand there
and watch me?” Caton’s gaze snapped in Amelia’s direction.
    “For now,” Amelia responded,
settling herself more deliberately in the doorway because she could.
    A sigh rushing past her lips, Caton
laid the files on the corner of the box, too aware of Amelia. Struggling to
remember what letter came after ‘D,’ she fought the urge to wipe her forehead
with her sleeve, assuming further signs of weakness were exactly what Amelia
was hoping to see.
    Though, there could have been a
more aristocratic basis to Amelia’s unexpected appearance. Maybe it was the
thrill of command. A blue collar peepshow. Entertainment for a wealthy woman
who never had to dirty or dry out her hands.
    Under-utilized and pampered,
Amelia’s hands had to be incredibly soft, the thought hit Caton without
warning, and the folders tipped on the edge of the box. She tried to catch them
in a display that must have looked comical from Amelia’s vantage point, but
they spilled to the floor anyway, scattering in every direction. Dropping her
head, Caton stared at the paper stuck to the top of her shoe, before
masochistically shifting her gaze to the doorway and Amelia.
    To her surprise, Amelia seemed to
take no joy in the blunder. Or, if she did, it didn’t show. She just continued
to stand there looking gorgeous and unapproachable, and Caton focused on the
latter, letting Amelia blur into a monster before her eyes.
    “My mom drives a school bus,” Caton
stated, picking up the