Behind the Green Curtain (4 page)

Chapter
8

Each day, Sole greeted Caton with a
smile and the offer of coffee. By the third day, Caton gave into her
hospitality, figuring it was going to be a long six months regardless, but
would be considerably less painful adequately caffeinated.

On the rare occasion their paths
crossed, Amelia eyed Caton warily, her expression revealing nothing. She said
“good morning” if it was morning, “goodnight” if Caton was on her way out, but
that was the extent of the conversation, and she never went out of her way, not
even to check on Caton’s progress. Though, it wasn’t too hard for Caton to
imagine the impenetrable woman walking down to the dungeons each night to go
through the day’s work, making sure her commands were being followed and that
Caton knew the alphabet.

It was a blessing, Caton decided,
the easy work, being left alone, a comfortable routine, both mindless and
painless. The storage room was a haven from Amelia’s persistent suspicion and
the plague of her own thoughts, because apparently “good morning” and
“goodnight” were all it took.

Amelia was beautiful, that was an
undeniable fact, but Caton had been around plenty of beautiful women. She’d
even dated her share. Physical attraction simply didn’t explain the way, every
time she happened upon Amelia unexpectedly, Caton felt her mouth go dry, her
heart race and the immediate desire to find something to say that would make
Amelia see her as less of a burden. She really thought she had grown out of
being intensely attracted to people who treated her like a nuisance. By her
thirtieth birthday, she thought she had grown out of senseless attractions
period, and it was rather irritating to discover she could still be dominated
by her hormones at the worst possible time.

Given a say, Caton would have opted
for the path of least resistance, would have been content to persist with her
routine of hiding in the basement for the entirety of her contract. As was the
way of life, though, there was always something waiting to intervene. In this
case, it was Jack, standing next to the bar in the kitchen when Caton walked in
one morning a couple of weeks into her sentence expecting to find Sole alone.
There had been no warning, no sign of his presence in the house. Suddenly, he
was just there, bombarding Caton with the uneasiness she always felt in his
presence, compounded by the fact that he had a home field advantage.

“Good morning.” Sole’s greeting was
slightly more subdued.

“Good morning,” Caton returned with
equal caution.

“Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” Caton said, stepping
up to the bar, discomfort acute as she watched Jack from the corner of her eye.
It wasn’t just that Jack was staring at her - she was rather accustomed to his
unrelenting leering - but the way Jack was staring at her that made Caton
desperate to flee the kitchen. Beneath the blatant intention, there was an
underlying aggression she could feel like pin pricks against her skin.

“Good morning, Caton,” Jack
uttered.

“Morning.” Caton glanced his way,
giving him no more, and managed a distressed smile at Sole as she sat a mug
before her on the counter.

“Sole, go see if Amelia needs you,”
Jack ordered.

Eyes locking with Caton’s, Sole
looked on the verge of disobedience, as if she knew it was a bad idea to go,
and knew it was a bad idea not to go. Vacillating between the two conflicting
paths, she finally chose the path of least resistance herself and walked out of
the room.

Left to the wolf, Caton turned to
face him, showing no concern about being alone in his presence, but readiness
for his boorish behavior, as if she’d been trained from birth in the art of
evading creeper Lotharios.

“How’s it going here?” Jack asked,
taking a step closer that he probably thought Caton didn’t notice.

“I really don’t think your wife
wants me here,” Caton stated.

Where a person with a conscience
might have shown concern, Jack seemed oddly pleased. “I’ve told her many times
to be careful what she wishes for,” he responded. “There are very few things I
can’t provide. Still, I don’t think I deserve all the hostility.” Jack took
another step, and Caton’s hand tightened on the handle of her mug. “After all,
I was just trying to help.”

So, that was it then. Jack and
Amelia had a fight, and Jack wanted to spread the ill will.

“You look nice like this.” His hand
rose between them. “Young.”

“Don’t touch me,” Caton warned him.

“What is your thing with touch?”
Jack asked, hand stilling, but hovering, as if it might land at its leisure.

“I don’t have a thing with touch,”
Caton protested. “I have a thing with people thinking they can touch me when
they can’t.”

Taking another step toward her,
Jack smiled, fingers testing their luck.

“Don’t touch me, Jack. I mean it,”
Caton firmly stated.

“I like you calling me by my first
name,” he responded. “Makes it sound like we’re on intimate terms.”

He spoke in a tempering tone, like
he saw Caton as a wild animal he could tame and pet freely. Little did Jack
know, he was about to be on intimate terms with a scalding cup of coffee, and
potentially the knife Sole had abandoned on the bar, if he went too far. Jack’s
fingertips brushing her collarbone, Caton cocked the mug back for dispersal.

“Jesus Christ, Jack,” Amelia’s
voice cut in before she could fire, and, for the first time, Caton was truly
happy to hear it. “Could you at least not try to fuck her while I’m in the
room?”

Smiling at being caught in the act,
which was probably his intention the entire time, Jack turned to face his wife.
“I have to go to work,” he smirked, leaving Caton and Amelia alone, once again,
in the aftermath of his choices.

More shaken than she wanted to
admit, Caton turned to the bar to put her coffee down, grimacing as the ceramic
hit the granite too hard and a small crack appeared along the bottom ring of
the mug. Hearing Amelia’s approach, she circled back around, meeting a
molasses-thick gaze. The dark eyes raking up and down her, Caton couldn’t even
see the judgment in them, though she could certainly feel it was there.

“Well, it all makes sense now,”
Amelia uttered. “What are you, his favorite? Or maybe his least favorite, since
he did send you here.”

Caton suspected it was Amelia’s
idea of a joke, but neither of them was the tiniest bit humored.

“I’m not sleeping with Jack,” she
recovered from the encounter, and subsequent accusation, to assert.

With a derisive laugh, Amelia
started off, leaving a hollow vibration in her wake.

It didn’t matter, Caton tried to
remind herself. What Amelia thought of her had little impact on the course of
events. It wasn’t her job to soothe Amelia’s pain or embarrassment, if the
woman was capable of either emotion. Watching her walk away, though, she
couldn’t let Amelia put her into bed with Jack either, even if it was only in
her mind.

Rushing after her, Caton caught
Amelia’s arm by the doorway, and Amelia whirled on her, more shocked than
angry, as if she didn’t expect Caton to make any bold moves to defend herself.
Hanging on to that tiny spark of surprise, one of the few real reactions she
had seen from Amelia, Caton took a step closer without conscious thought.

“I am not sleeping with Jack,” she
stated. “I have never slept with your husband.”

With every syllable, with each
finger that felt Amelia’s bicep flex beneath it, Caton willed Amelia to believe
her, and there was a flicker. For an instant, Amelia’s icy expression thawed
and Caton could see beyond the deep gray haze into the depths and shadows of
dark brown eyes. Maybe whatever world lay inside Amelia wasn’t as desolate and
unwelcoming as it first appeared.

Gaze falling to Amelia’s lips,
Caton watched them part and eased closer. It wasn’t until the back of Amelia’s
hand brushed against her thigh that she jolted into awareness. Two minutes
before, she was lecturing Jack about thinking he had the right to touch her,
and now she was practically pouring herself onto his wife.

Letting Amelia go at once, Caton
took several desperately-needed steps backward, too scared to look up. When she
finally gathered the courage, it was clear it didn’t matter. Internally, she
was berating herself for her inability to keep a check on something completely
primal, though it had come out of nowhere and surprised her more 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 file that landed on the chair in front of her. “My
father, he’s a janitor. So, if you think I am somehow humbled or humiliated by
getting paid over seven-thousand dollars a month to file, you should know I am
not that proud.”

She was painfully uncomfortable,
though, and, as Amelia held her ground in the doorway, Caton felt as if nothing
she could say would make a difference. Amelia was going to do what she was
going to do, and it was her domain, so there was nothing Caton could do about
it, other than prove herself utterly uncoordinated in the other woman’s
presence.

Dropping to retrieve the files from
the floor, she let the table serve as her shield, blocking her from Amelia’s
view as she gathered slowly and lingered behind the barrier.

When at last she rose, Caton was
alone.

Chapter 9

Caton wasn’t sure if she was
avoiding Amelia, or if Amelia was avoiding her, but whoever was making the most
effort, she was doing a damn fine job of it. Caton never saw Amelia in the
mornings when she came in, and never when she left in the evenings. It was hard
to tell the woman even lived there, which, Caton suspected, was exactly how
Amelia wanted it.

Whether she desired the title or
not, though, she was still technically Caton’s employer, and, though they
didn’t have to play nice, there were certain permissions Caton was required to
ask from her, and that couldn’t be avoided.

Taking the steps to the second
floor with vigor, she made sure Amelia knew she was coming, but Amelia’s head
still popped up in surprise as Caton’s knuckles rapped the open door, her gaze
leveling Caton and not letting go. She said nothing, either in greeting or
contempt, and Caton looked for signs of anything in her gaze, finding nothing
behind the dark veil Amelia always wore.

She was apathetic, Caton reminded
herself. She was unaffected by Amelia. Still, eyes held captive by Amelia’s
gaze, she lost her mission for a moment, looking away in an effort to recover
it, remembering at last she had come up the stairs to say something. “I, uh...”
she tried, stopping to clear her throat and head. “I have a... a friend... who's
getting an award on Thursday. Can I take the afternoon off?”

Behind Amelia’s facade, Caton knew
there were gears in motion, but she couldn’t see them and had no idea what they
would churn out. “I don't care,” Amelia responded, dropping her gaze back to her
desk.

“I’ll work in the morning,” Caton
added. “I wouldn't have to leave until like two.”

“What part of ‘I don't care’ was
confusing for you?” Amelia looked up solely to pierce Caton with her
indifference.

Feet angling at once toward the top
of the stairs, Caton’s instantaneous physical reaction was flight, but a
surprising flash of rage held her in place against her body’s good sense. She
had no reason to fight with Amelia, no real need to defend herself. She had
gotten what she wanted, and could serve out the remainder of her sentence in
relative peace. The way she had been brushed off, though, as if she wasn’t even
worth a minute-long conversation was enough to provoke her ego, which she,
frankly, had never been good at keeping in check.

“You know what,” she said, and
Amelia seemed almost surprised to still find her there. “I’m confused. I was
under the impression you needed someone here.”

“And I already told you you were
under the wrong impression.” Amelia spoke very slowly, like she was explaining
the situation to a certified idiot, and, once again, Caton could have gone. She
had been dismissed from the moment she appeared in the doorway.

Smoldering anger working its way up
her throat until her teeth pressed together and she felt the burning behind her
eyes, though, she abandoned the unrewarding path of civility. “Why are you such
a cold bitch?” she questioned, knowing as the question left her lips she was
heading to a place from which there was no return, but unable to care. That was
the real question, the one to which she wanted an answer.

The sudden outrage that appeared on
Amelia’s face was so unprecedented, it was deeply gratifying, and Caton felt
the smoking embers inside her spark into flame.

“Excuse me?” Amelia returned, the
two words laced with so much honest anger, they sounded like an explosion,
despite how quietly Amelia uttered them.

“Your heart must be hypothermic.”
Caton couldn’t stop the assessment after seeing how effective her first words
had been against Amelia’s seemingly-impenetrable exterior.

When Amelia stood, it was in a
deliberate manner that made Caton swallow nervously at its intent. It was as if
she had spoken the catch phrase that triggered an assassin, and Amelia looked
decidedly deadly as she approached the doorway. Trying to stand more erect,
Caton was determined to withstand whatever was coming at her, but Amelia’s
presence was imposing as she moved closer, mere inches left between them.

“You don't know anything about me,”
Amelia declared, her always-shielded gaze filled with barely-restrained fury.

Caton had hoped to get a rise out
of her. She didn’t expect the amount of anger, or the underlying passion, that
radiated off the other woman, scorching the air between them.

“Oh, please,” she countered, too
far in the swamp to return to solid terrain. “You are not a mystery. You
married too young and you did it for money. Your husband is aware of this fact
and that’s why he prefers to fuck outside of your marriage, which is just fine
with you, because you don’t want anyone touching you anyway.”

Amelia appeared stunned, whether by
the fact Caton had the nerve to say it or by the accuracy of the statement,
Caton wasn’t sure, but when Amelia’s anger subsided enough for other emotions
to rise to the surface, Caton looked away to avoid them. Thinking Amelia had
the capacity to feel was what had gotten her into trouble before.

“You’re fired.” Amelia’s voice
wavered for the first time.

“I figured,” Caton countered, only
realizing how much she was shaking as she turned to the stairs and rushed
unsteadily down them, the consequence hitting her square in the chest and
making even the downward trek arduous. All the things she could have done, and
she had done the one thing she absolutely couldn’t. But she couldn’t take it
back. She wouldn’t if she could.

Stepping off the bottom stair in
the foyer, the insults she didn’t get the chance to lob bounded so wildly in
her head, Caton didn’t hear Amelia behind her until a vice tightened on her arm
and she was yanked around like a rag doll. Amelia’s fingers on her almost
violent, Caton could feel her heart pound against them.

“You think that’s all that I am,”
Amelia harshly whispered, mask further slipping. “But you do not know me.”

In the thick of it, Caton didn’t
have time to contemplate the fact that Amelia had followed her for the sole
purpose of continuing to fight.

“I know how you treat people,” she
returned, though it wasn’t true. If anything, it was selfish. She knew only how
Amelia treated her, and she was tired of being made to feel like a commodity
that could be put to use and then disregarded. “I know it has no effect on you.
Nothing has any effect on you.”

“That is not true,” Amelia
countered, blistering gaze forcing Caton to avert her eyes. “Just because I am
not screaming at the top of my lungs or bursting into tears every five seconds
doesn’t mean I don’t feel. I don’t... I am not...” She couldn’t seem to find
the words, or to admit them.

“What?” Caton returned her gaze to
Amelia’s. “Frigid? Dead inside?” The descriptions proved themselves on target
when Amelia flinched in response. “Please. I have never met anyone so
completely devoid of emotion,” she continued, not sure why it mattered so much.
“You could hit a kid and drive over the body. I could walk around here naked
and you wouldn’t even be embarrassed. You would probably just ask why I didn't
have a banker box in my hands.”

Her shock at the scenario silenced
Amelia for only an instant. “Let’s see,” she uttered. “Take your clothes off.”

With a heartfelt scoff, Caton
turned to leave, tired of the game and Amelia’s quiet malice, which always felt
on the verge of becoming a real knife in her back. When Amelia’s touch
softened, though, simultaneously pulling her back, Caton crashed against her,
feeling the give of the fabric between them, instantly aware that Amelia’s body
at least had contour, despite the sharp planes and lines of her
perfectly-pressed apparel.

“Take your clothes off,” Amelia
said again, the request little more than a breath against Caton’s cheek.
Half-plea, half-demand, Caton couldn’t tell which part was more sincere.

Words shivering through her, she
knew she could - that she should - leave, but, meeting Amelia’s eyes, she also
knew she wouldn’t.

Cold. It was the term she had most
associated with Amelia since she first met her. But the heat of Amelia’s body,
in her gaze, contradicted Caton’s initial classification with a vengeance,
turning everything Caton was sure she knew on its head, so that Caton knew
nothing except what she felt, and it prompted her to act without consulting her
rational mind.

Strap falling from her shoulder,
she dropped her bag to the floor. It was easy to pretend she was testing
Amelia, calling her bluff. Somewhere on the edges of her consciousness, though,
Caton knew she had lost all will to protect herself, that, in that instant, she
would acquiesce to anything Amelia asked of her.

As her hands moved to the hem of
her shirt, Amelia backed away, just far enough to allow Caton to pull the
fabric over her head and let it fall on top of her bag. It was cold in the
foyer, Caton had felt it when she first came down, but she could no longer
tell, skin immunized against the room’s chill by Amelia’s eyes sliding over
her, warming everything in their path.

Hands moving to the button of her
jeans, Caton popped it open without hesitation, breath ceasing as Amelia’s gaze
trailed back up to hers. Without so much as a blink, Amelia turned and walked
away, and Caton froze in place, hands grasping tightly to the denim at her
waist as she realized Amelia may have been the one calling a bluff.

To her surprise and relief,
Amelia’s next move wasn’t to leave her standing half-dressed in the middle of
the foyer. It was to climb three stairs and turn to sink down on the fourth,
gaze returning expectantly to the skin of Caton’s abdomen.

Still inscrutable, Amelia’s stare
was powerful enough to control Caton’s hands from a distance, making one move
to the zipper of her jeans, tugging it down, before they worked in tandem to
push the denim down her thighs. Slipping free of her shoes, she pushed the
jeans aside with her foot and stood like a showpiece in the home of someone
wealthy enough to get away with asking for such a piece of art.

“Did I tell you to stop?” Amelia
questioned quietly, and it too was request.

Any hesitation Caton had gave way
under the enchantment of Amelia’s gaze, and her hands curved up her back,
slipping the satin closure free to let her bra slide from her arms and fall to
the floor.

So, Amelia wasn’t lying, she
realized. She could be affected. Gaze easing down Caton’s body, she shifted on
the stair, an involuntary reaction that made Caton abandon fear. Utterly
vulnerable, more than she could recall being in her life, Caton felt more
powerful than she ever thought she could.

Fingers smoothing down her stomach,
she watched Amelia’s lips tremble, her own body tightening in response to the
ragged breath she heard escape them. Wanting nothing more than to give Amelia
full access, to see what other unexpected reactions she could pull from her,
Caton slipped her thumbs beneath the fabric of her panties, seizing painfully
at the intruding voice.

“I am so sorry.” Sole sounded as
mortified as Caton felt, and Caton spun from the living room door, arms
crossing for cover. Shame hitting her all at once, she thought she might cry,
or throw up all over the imported wood flooring.

“It’s all right, Sole,” Amelia
responded calmly, heightening Caton’s humiliation. Amelia did feel something,
she couldn’t have imagined that, but the woman’s ability to sound completely blasé
about the whole thing made Caton feel like she was the instigator and Amelia
had just happened upon her striptease by accident. “What is it?”

“Mr. Reynolds is on the phone,”
Sole replied, struggling to match Amelia’s composure. “You told me to find you
if he called.”

“Yes, I did,” Amelia returned.
“Tell him I’ll be a minute.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sole sounded happy to
flee.

Even in her absence, Caton found
she couldn’t move, muscles so tense she knew she would be sore for days to
come.

Amelia got up, her shoes clicking
softly down the stairs and over the wood floor, but Caton refused to look at
her. She could picture the victorious expression, the look of entitlement and
arrogance she knew Amelia must be wearing.

The soft fabric of Amelia’s
tailored jacket brushing her bare arm, Amelia’s breaths fell mercilessly
against her shoulder, and her hand rose between them, hovering an inch from
Caton’s stomach, but Caton felt the touch as surely as if it had landed. Then,
Amelia’s hand moved quickly upward, fingers as soft as expected curving around
Caton’s chin, forcing Caton to meet her gaze, ready or not.

There was nothing cavalier in the
way Amelia looked at her. If anything, Amelia looked more human than Caton had
ever seen her, and it stole Caton’s breath. For a moment, she thought she might
be rewarded for her submission. Amelia’s fingers abandoning her chin to slide
down her throat, Caton willed Amelia’s lips to hers, for just one taste.

“You can quit if you want to,”
Amelia declared, releasing Caton and walking off, the steady click of her heels
echoing her departure.

When she was certain she was alone,
Caton dove for her clothes, pulling them on with sloppy haste, recognizing as
she dressed that she couldn’t undo or explain away anything. It wasn’t some
drunken mistake, with a built-in excuse and no repercussions, forgotten in a
night. There was a witness, and she and Amelia were both stone-cold sober.

Fully-dressed, Caton felt no less
naked. Amelia had stripped away her power, if she had any to begin with, and,
in the trench as she was, Caton had only two choices left to her. Retreat, or
surrender.

~ ~ ~

Driving home was an out-of-body
experience. Caton watched her hands perform the necessary functions, but she
couldn’t feel the steering wheel beneath them, her body against the seat, or
the cool metal of the gear shift when she finally pulled into her parking
space, somehow without incident.