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

light then jumped when I found said brother sitting on a feed bin in the far corner.
    “What the hell are you doing here?”
    “Err, checking my emails,” he said, holding up his phone.
    “Which requires darkness?”
    “Um, no, but…”
    I thought back to the fan club hanging around in the barn. “You’re hiding?”
    “Yeah.” He gave a sheepish shrug. “Normally no one comes in here.”
    “I can’t really blame you.” I’d hide too if I was like the pied bloody piper for wannabe bed-mates.
    “So it’s okay if I stay?”
    “If you want. I’ll admit I was hoping you’d hang around the barn a bit longer so your groupies would clear the cobwebs and clean out the water drinkers, but I can see why you wouldn’t want to.”
    He chuckled. “Thanks. I promise I won’t get in your way.”
    The grin he flashed revealed a perfect set of white teeth. Either he had great genes or his dentist was on speed dial. They looked even lighter offset against his tan. How did he get that in winter? Holiday or tanning salon?
    “What makes you think you’ll be any safer in here with me?” I asked.
    “You didn’t shriek and faint?” He gave a wry laugh, but sadly there was some truth in it.
    “I’m not the shrieking kind. Or fainting.”
    I got on with making up the feeds, scooping the right amount of conditioning cubes and chaff into each bowl according to the chart on the wall. Then I added the supplements. The horses got so many the shelves looked like a branch of GNC. It seemed to be a competition among the owners as to who could pump the most extras into their beloved steed. Some of them got more vitamins than food.
    “Do you need a hand carrying those?” Portia’s brother asked as I picked up a pile of bowls to carry to the barn.
    “Nah, you’ll get mobbed. Just stay here.”
    He was being a gentleman, but he clearly hadn’t thought his offer through.
    “Good point. You won’t tell them where I am?”
    “No, your secret’s safe with me.”
    An hour later, after Portia had ridden Samara and the group of admirers had dispersed, her brother re-materialised in the barn. As I watched them walk back to his car, I felt sorry for him. Sitting in a cold feed room couldn’t have been his favourite way to spend Saturday morning. Why didn’t he stay at home? Or at the gym or on the sunbed? I suspected they were both places he frequented.
    “Do you want to have dinner with us?” Susie asked before she disappeared inside.
    “Sounds good, thanks.” Anything was better than my own cooking.
    It wasn’t that I’d spent my life trying out recipes that always went wrong. It was more that I’d never needed to cook so I didn’t know where to start. When I was a kid, we rarely had proper food in the house. As I got older, someone else made me food or I ate things that didn’t need cooking. My microwaving skills were legendary, and I knew how to build a campfire, but I didn’t know where to start with ingredients.
    Maybe I should buy a recipe book? It would give me something constructive to do with my evenings rather than watching crappy TV re-runs. Not only that, the files on the cloud drive kept taunting me. Part of me wanted to buy a laptop and start looking at them, but at the same time, they scared me. I didn’t want to anger my husband’s killer, and I didn’t want to make my nightmares any worse than they already were.
    They were a monster that fed off the black parts of my soul. Each one started with an event from my past then twisted it into a horror that consumed me. I was helpless to stop the visions in my head until I woke.
    That wasn’t the worst of it. I remembered every vivid detail of the nightmares, but it was the night terrors and the sleepwalking that terrified me.
    Nothing was as bad as finding out you’d done something in the middle of the night you had no memory of. Especially when you woke up to find out you’d hurt somebody you cared about. I’d seen some of the most horrible things