Alice Close Your Eyes

Alice Close Your Eyes
Averil Dean

With haunting prose and deft psychological insight, Averil Dean spins a chilling story that explores the dark corners of obsession—love, pain, and revenge.Ten years ago, someone ruined Alice Croft’s life. Now, she has a chance to right that wrong—and she thinks she’s found the perfect man to carry out her plan.After watching him for weeks, she breaks into Jack Calabrese’s house to collect the evidence that will confirm her hopes. When Jack comes home unexpectedly, Alice hides in the closet, fearing for her life. But upon finding her, Jack is strangely calm, solicitous…and intrigued.That night is the start of a dark and intense attraction, and soon Alice finds herself drawn into a labyrinth of terrifying surrender to a man who is more dangerous than she could have ever imagined. As their relationship spirals toward a breaking point, Alice starts to see just how deep Jack’s secrets run—and how deadly they could be.

With haunting prose and deft psychological insight, Averil Dean spins a chilling story that explores the dark corners of obsession—love, pain and revenge.

Ten years ago, someone ruined Alice Croft’s life. Now, she has a chance to right that wrong—and she thinks she’s found the perfect man to carry out her plan.

After watching him for weeks, she breaks into Jack Calabrese’s house to collect the evidence that will confirm her hopes. When Jack comes home unexpectedly, Alice hides in the closet, fearing for her life. But upon finding her, Jack is strangely calm, solicitous…and intrigued.

That night is the start of a dark and intense attraction, and soon Alice finds herself drawn into a labyrinth of terrifying surrender to a man who is more dangerous than she could have ever imagined. As their relationship spirals toward a breaking point, Alice starts to see just how deep Jack’s secrets run—and how deadly they could be.

“Crisply written, wickedly suspenseful….[Alice Close Your Eyes] reads like a dark, sensual nightmare, and it is the reader who won’t want to close her eyes until all of the book’s tantalizing secrets are finally revealed. Don’t miss it.”

—David Bell, author of Never Come Back and Cemetery Girl

Alice Close

Your Eyes

Averil Dean

www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)

For my mother.

Every spirit builds itself a house.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Contents

Chapter One (#u07286c6c-ce1a-5ac3-9321-1348d526c822)

Chapter Two (#ucfeec79f-9a91-56d8-a139-c10ed8a7f13a)

Chapter Three (#u9afeb625-5d8b-5127-ae3c-654fa69f1251)

Chapter Four (#uf0764551-7cb5-55bd-9861-5bcac545c82a)

Chapter Five (#u498e72e7-9799-56ad-b4c8-92a8f2ef50ea)

Chapter Six (#ub447634a-436a-5aa2-a61e-00be8ceec037)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

Reader’s Guide (#litres_trial_promo)

Questions for Discussion (#litres_trial_promo)

Q&A with Averil Dean (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE

I am inside Jack’s house.

Rain trickles down the windowpanes and a spring thunderstorm rumbles almost inaudibly in the distance as I drift through the blue window light, in and out of the shadows, tracing the objects in the living room with my gloved fingertips. A queen conch shell reclines on the sideboard, its frilled pale pink lip deepening to a slick rose interior as the shell curves in on itself. I pick it up, hold it to my ear. A phantom ocean soughs inside the empty calcium walls. I imagine the bowl filling with surf, overflowing, disappearing under the sand.

The furniture is low and modern, with square brown side chairs and a kidney-shaped coffee table in front of the fireplace. The living room is arranged around a rag-leather area rug, and at one end of the sofa is a floor lamp made from a piece of gnarled, tiger-striped mesquite, stained and rubbed to a satin finish the color of a cinnamon stick. On the wall next to the fireplace hangs a graphic, ceiling-high painting of a raven on its perch.

I circle the room, opening drawers and doors, careful to leave things as I find them. I search the kitchen cabinets and the top shelf of the coat closet, the blanket chest by the door and the bookshelves against the wall, until I find what I came for: a simple wooden box, the contents of which are of no value to anyone but me and the guy who collected them.

A brass clock sits in the center of the mantel, clicking like an old lady’s tongue as I tuck the box under my arm.