Stone Angel by Christina Dodd Read Free Book Online

what difference did it make whether
he lived through the day? Things were disintegrating fast, and if
Irving didn’t arrive at the Sculptor's house pretty soon, the
Sculptor was going to have one of his famous tantrums, and Liam
knew who was first in line for calcification.
    And … and
… he’d always been an “everything for me ” sort of a guy, but every week when he was forced to visit
the Sculptor and he viewed that statue of Sophia, the tears frozen
on her face, an unfamiliar emotion rose in his heart. Horrible
thought, and he wasn’t sure, but he thought it was … selflessness.
Or gallantry. Or something that involved him getting his ass
captured, tortured and killed.
    Worth remembering; he seen the torment on the
face of every statue in there. Amanda had some hare-brained idea;
if it failed, the Sculptor would take cruel, particular pleasure in
freezing Liam in stone.
    He paced away. Paced back.
    But look at Amanda's eyes… She might hate
him. She might blame him. But underneath the fury and reproach, the
face of the woman he loved was pleading, and so, so sad.
    He was such a schmuck. “All right,” he said.
“I’ll go with you to Irving’s house.”
    She beamed with pure joy.
    “ But
I’m not agreeing to
anything. First we’ll discuss the plan and my involvement in it.
For this amount of money, it can’t be a pleasant thing that I have
to do.” He bent all his charm on her. “But for you, darlin’, I
would do almost anything.”
    Amanda had a brief moment where she forgot
the danger she was in and the horrible fate of her sister if she
didn’t succeed. All of the anxiety, the sleepless nights of the
last months fell away in the face of Liam’s smile, the one she used
to believe he saved for her.
    In that
moment, she remembered the months before Sophia was taken, when
Liam had escorted the two of them around New York – for a Broadway
showing of West Side Story ,
an idyllic picnic of cheeses, cold meat and champagne in Central
Park, a slow Sunday stroll through the Metropolitan Museum of
Art.
    She
remembered the nights she and Liam had stayed up after Sophia had
gone to bed. When they had watched When Harry Met Sally and cuddled long after the movie had
ended. He had brought her flowers – lilies, roses, once a fresh cut
bundle of hyacinth – at work so many times, her coworkers had taken
to calling him Casanova. Those months together had been
magical.
    And every moment had been a lie.
    Amanda shook herself. It did not do to dwell
on the past. She was no longer a girl in the first throes of love.
She was a bitter woman, betrayed and alone, tired to her very
core.
    Sighing
with regret, she replied, “You’d do anything for money, Liam, not
for me. Don’t try and make yourself into a knight on a white horse.
I already know who you are, who you work for. You’ll do the job.
Irving will give you money. You can go do whatever it is you
want. As long
as you leave Sophia and I alone . After tomorrow, whether we succeed or fail, I never want
to see you again.” Her voice cracked slightly, the emotions taking
their toll. She cleared her throat and squared her shoulders.
“Never.”
    Liam looked for a moment as though he might
argue. But the expression on her face must have changed his mind.
He smoothed his bottle green apron and adopted an air of studied
indifference. “If that’s what you want.”
    Amanda thought he looked almost sad. But it
was probably just that he enjoyed seeing her every week,
remembering that he had played her for a fool. Perhaps he liked to
watch the dark circles under her eyes get worse and worse as the
nights passed in fitful dream-filled sleep punctuated by hours of
wandering the corridors of Irving’s mansion. She was sure that must
be it – Liam hoped to watch her deteriorate, see her beauty fade
and her hopes of happiness wash away. “Yes,” she said. “It is what
I want. Now perhaps you could take off that apron so we can go
visit Irving and his