Who Is Deborah?. Elise Title

novel. How naive and innocent I was, then. Or, maybe it was just desperation. Desperation to belong, to feel wanted, to have a real home, to be loved and cherished.

      A gravel path swung around to the main entrance of the house with its oversize double front doors fitted with smoky etched glass around cedar frames. The right door opened just as Greg pulled the car to a stop.

      “Ah, the welcome committee,” Greg muttered dryly.

      My gaze fell on a tall, somber, middle-aged woman who stepped over the threshold, her face expressionless—except for her eyes. Even from this distance, I could recognize a look of undisguised reproach and wariness evident in her dark, lackluster eyes.

      Greg appeared at my side of the car, opening the door and temporarily obscuring my view of the woman I presumed to be Nick’s cousin, Lillian. Greg reached out for my hand to assist me in getting out, then, probably remembering my previous distressing reaction to physical contact, thought better of it, and let his hand drop. He couldn’t know this, but for once, I’d have welcomed his touch. I felt in great need of someone to hold on to just then; someone who was no longer a complete stranger to me at least, someone who didn’t regard me with such overt displeasure as the woman at the door.

      After a moment’s hesitation, I alighted from the car without assistance, while Greg stepped around to the trunk to retrieve my small case—the sum total of my possessions. I felt very much like a sorry waif as I nervously ascended the fan-shaped slate steps to the front door under the watchful eye of the solemn, spare-figured, tight-lipped Lillian. Not even a grudging smile of greeting. A welcoming committee, indeed! Why, the woman went so far as to step back inside the house before I even reached the door! And without saying so much as a word.

      As we followed Lillian inside, I glanced anxiously over at Greg, but he merely presented me with another of his lopsided smiles and an encouraging wink that did little to buoy my plummeting spirits.

      “Well, here we are, home at last,” Greg said cheerily to Lillian, ignoring the woman’s dour expression.

      “He’s in the den. Working,” Lillian responded stiffly, her voice cold and dismissive.

      “Then I’ll just go and rouse him from his ‘work,”’ Greg replied, undaunted.

      Panicked to see my one ally take off, I nearly ran after him. But that would have meant running right into Nick—looking like a scared rabbit, no doubt. Better to calm down a bit and wait for him to come to me.

      Not that it was easy to calm down, left alone with the austere and silent Lillian. I considered easing the tension by saying something, but was at a complete loss. Nor was Nick’s cousin any help. Lillian merely stood there in the vast marble-floored hallway giving me a cold, piercing look, not uttering a word, her proprietary manner making itself markedly clear. It was as though the woman was going out of her way to intimidate me—at which she was succeeding nicely.

      The question was, why? Did I look so different that she was suspicious of whether I truly was Deborah? Did she think Greg had made a mistake? Or was Lillian giving me this cold reception because she resented my return? Had the two of us not gotten along in the past? If so, my bet was it was a case of mutual dislike. And then the thought struck me: Had Lillian been jealous of me? Was Nick more than just a cousin to her? Had she liked having him all to herself again these past two months? Pampering him? Bringing him his meals? Never making demands on his time, I surmised. Not the way I had.

      I felt a flash of irritation. At least the woman could have the decency to speak her mind. I was even building up the courage to confront her. Anything seemed better than this tense, silent face-off. But, as if Lillian suspected I was about to say something, her lips curved slightly in what could hardly be called a smile, and, still without a word, she abruptly turned and took off down the hall, disappearing through a door at the far right.

      Left alone, I fought to regain my composure before my next and very likely even more traumatic encounter ensued. While I waited for the arrival of “my husband,” I regarded the large, sparsely decorated sunken living room to my right. The far wall was all window and sliding-glass doors, affording a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains and the sky, now streaked with brilliant slashes of red, purple and orange as the sun sank lower toward the horizon.

      Pulling my gaze from the breathtaking vista beyond the windows, I focused my attention on the room itself. While there were few furnishings, each item was tastefully placed and reflected an expensive and refined taste. There was nothing large, cumbersome or gloomy here. The eclectic mix of modern pieces and antiques worked beautifully. A few modern paintings hung on the white walls. I recognized the artists, all quite celebrated. There was nothing here painted by an amateur; nothing of Deborah’s—mine—in sight.

      Despite the attractiveness of the room, it had the same starkness as the exterior of the house. It was all too meticulous. All too perfect. And there was an awful heaviness in the air, producing a chill that had nothing to do with temperature, but with something indefinable, something cloying and…sinister.

      Paranoia rearing its ugly head again, I chided myself. I was getting carried away, letting some silly gossip I’d overheard in town distort my perspective, color my feelings. Color them ruby red. The blood-red shade flashed unbidden into my mind.

      I was already trembling badly when I heard a door open behind me. Then footsteps on the cold, ungiving marble. Whirling around, I came face-to-face with him at last. The celebrated author of horror novels.

      I saw now that the two customers back at the general store had been right about Nicholas Steele. He was everything they had said—and more. The inky blue-black eyes that shone with an inner, mysterious glow, the striking, angular features, the arrogance and pride of his tall, stately carriage, the glistening black hair pulled back from his face, and held by a leather band at his nape. “Medieval,” one of the women had described him. Yes, I thought. It was as if this man were somehow from a darker, more dangerous, perhaps more reckless period of history.

      With an air of desperation, I looked past him, hoping to see Greg. But the private investigator had remained inside the den. His own decision? Or Nick’s? Whichever, it was clear to me that this was to be a private meeting between the two of us. A happy reunion? A callous dismissal? I had no idea. Those dark, mesmerizing eyes of his gave nothing away. He stood now no more than three feet from me. Except for the description of him I’d overheard in the shop, I in no way recognized this man who was supposedly my husband. And there was absolutely nothing in his look that indicated recognition of me as his wife.

      He continued his silent survey, much as his cousin Lillian had done a few minutes earlier. But with Lillian, I had felt a mixture of intimidation, discomfort and irritation. My feelings were altogether different now. It was as if I were being tossed pell-mell into white-water rapids, rushing precariously closer to a waterfall. I could even hear the roar of the water in my ears, feel the danger engulfing me. But I felt helpless to stop my course—a course I had so impulsively set in motion the moment I’d agreed to come here to Raven’s Cove and Nicholas Steele. Why, oh, why, hadn’t I listened to Dr. Royce, followed his advice? If I’d seen Nicholas Steele at the hospital, looking at me the way he was looking at me now—silent, appraising, utterly unsettling—would I ever have come here? I really don’t know. Even today, it’s a question I can’t answer for certain.

      But one thing I knew then: I longed to look away, run away, escape this man, this cloying house, but I was so transfixed by his riveting, mesmerizing scrutiny of me that I could do nothing but remain frozen in place.

      Well, not quite frozen. I began to sway. In a daze, I saw him reach out toward me. An instant later, his large hand rested on my shoulder. His touch—it was like fire and ice all at once. I opened my mouth to speak, to cry out, but then his face began to multiply before my eyes; worse still, to spin. Spinning and spinning, faster and faster. And then, mercifully, blackness descended as I fainted dead away.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      A sound of chirping birds broke through my sleep. I fought waking up, rolling onto my stomach and pulling the covers over