Pitch Black: A Romantic Thriller (Blackwood Security Book 1) by Elise Noble

son’s looking for a nice young lady. I’ll invite him over to keep you company.”
    I went to the tea dance.
    Between eating cakes and the endless cuppas, I gained new friends by taking some of the old boys for a spin round the dance floor. Well, more of a shuffle. I didn’t want to, but Carol insisted.
    “Are their hearts up to this?” I asked.
    “If they’re not, at least they’ll die happy.”
    My husband taught me to ballroom dance soon after we met, insisting it was a useful skill for undercover work at posh functions. I’d grown to love it, and even though he pretended it was a chore, I knew he’d secretly enjoyed it too. He had a particularly dirty tango in him, but we reserved that for the privacy of our own home. 
    Now we’d never dance again.

    The day after the dance found Carol and I at the parish council meeting, which wasn’t so much a meeting as a bunch of self-important idiots bickering.
    “I’m not on the council myself, dear,” Carol said. “But the Women’s Institute has an outing there each month. The arguments can be quite entertaining. It’s a bit like Jeremy Kyle but with better refreshments.”
    She was right. It was all I could do to stop myself from smacking their heads together after an argument about whose turn it was to organise the litter patrol for the Best Kept Village competition.
    I hated to admit it, but Carol’s distraction technique had some merit. With all the bullshit she filled my days with, I didn’t have time to dwell on more difficult subjects. Still, I couldn’t help wishing for something more interesting to do. The old dudes were kind, but I felt out of place being the youngest by thirty years. I could easily live without discussions over the best brand of incontinence pad, the need for which wasn’t helped by the endless cups of tea they all drank. I know I was English, but I was sick of tea. My palate craved a decent espresso, but asking for one would have been sacrilegious round here.
    Yes, my waking hours I could cope with. It was the nights that caused me a problem.
    Rather than sleeping, I’d lie there for hours, thoughts tumbling through the blackness of my mind. How had my life turned into such a mess so quickly? And more importantly, what was I going to do about it?

Chapter 7
    I SAT UP in bed, sweat dripping off me. The mattress was damp, the outline of my body dark against the maroon sheets. Did I scream in my sleep? I had in real life when it happened.
    Once again, I’d relived my husband’s death, the moment seared in my mind like the climax of a horror movie. I’d do anything to rewind the film.
    I tried to calm my breathing as I listened for signs of movement in the house, but the only noise was a car on the road outside. Good, I hadn’t woken Carol. Sleep wouldn’t come again that night, I knew from experience. It would just be me and my wayward thoughts until morning. As always, my husband was on my mind.
    A huge hole gaped in my chest where part of me died with him, and the pain was almost unbearable. We’d planned what would happen in the event one of us died young, but I realised now that had only been paperwork.
    There were so many things I wished I’d said. Above all, I should have told him I loved him, really loved him, in the way I’d pretended not to for fear he wouldn’t feel the same way. I’d have sold my soul to the devil to be held in his arms one last time. He was the person who kept me sane, and now I’d lost my mind.
    Lucifer wasn’t dealing, though. My husband was gone, and I was here.
    I couldn’t risk going home yet, so I needed to think of a plan to survive. The cash I had with me wouldn’t last forever, which made getting a job a priority. Something that wouldn’t involve my name getting into any databases, and something that didn’t require a reference.
    I had two options—low-paid, manual work, or something illegal. The second wasn’t a road I wanted to go down at the moment. Not because I had a