Sensitive by Sommer Marsden Page A

thing up to the front door if I could have.”

    I grumbled, but couldn’t blame him. The furniture had been in my family forever and a day.
    Handed down from generation to generation. Made from real, honest-to-goodness wood and not microfiber board stuff and whatnot.

    “Well, you almost knocked my fence down,” I said.

    “I wish I had,” he said and grinned at me. Wiping his brow with his cap despite the chill in the air. “Then I could pull up to the front door.”

    I turned before I said something rude and shivered in the November wind. Autumn in the country. I should be excited. Okay, so I wasn’t so excited. I was reasonably excited for a woman who had let her ex-boyfriend buy her out of their fabulous remodeled city row home. I was mildly excited after weeks of plotting this move and licking my wounds and leaving Joe to the house we had spent so much time putting together.

    Ruby would move in with him, Ruby would be in the house I had helped make fantastic. Ruby would sleep in the master suite with one brick wall that I had feng shuied the shit out of!

    “But I am not bitter and Ruby is the devil,” I breathed. The other moving guy looked up at me, curious and maybe a tiny bit scared. “Hey, hi, how ya doing?” I mumbled and moved away from them.

    Neither of them gave off a vibe, but I was picking something up. Maybe one of them had recently lost a loved one or something.

    On that note, I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Harper Brown and I am a sensitive. I specialize—through no fault of my own but the cosmic roll of the dice—in dead people. Hear, see, feel, touch, converse with them. They scare the shit out of me sometimes, I pass on messages. All that good stuff. Being a sensitive is how I knew Joe was schtupping Ruby and cheating on me. His grandmother, Ida, ratted him out. From beyond the grave. Trust me, that was a message I loved passing on. It took a bit of the sting out of the whole him-banging-someone-else thing.

    “Lady, can we grab some water from the sink?” The driver yelled.

    “Sure, yeah. It’s fine. There’s cups in the…well, there are cups somewhere.! If you can find them, have at ’em.”

    The driver tipped me a wave and disappeared back inside my new stone cottage.

    My. Stone. Cottage. “Okay, so I’m somewhat excited,” I said to myself.

    The same wary mover passed me and gave me a wide berth. I needed to get a dog, otherwise people were going to talk. It’s one thing to see dead people, it’s a whole other ball of wax to walk around talking to yourself all the damn time.

    * * * * *

    I have to be honest, the first thing I noticed were those eyes. Otherworldly. Truly. A blue that made me think gas flame or a neon sign. The fact that he was tall and broad with rich dark hair and a cut jaw, well, hell, that didn’t hurt so much. Since we’re being honest. He was talking to himself, too. Not in a charming way like I do it, but in a distracted way like he was having a conversation. Now, one would think I’d be fairly forgiving on that front. One would be wrong.

    I watched him the way you watch a stray dog or a possibly aggressive child.

    Warily. He looked up as if hearing some kind of hidden signal and his face split in a grin that could only be described as a beam. He beamed at me. “Hi, new neighbor.”

    Again on the no lying front, that grin set my heart to stumbling over itself in my chest. I had a rush of heat in my cheeks that could only mean I was blushing, which usually drives me insane. This time it simply warmed me all over and a fine tremor took up in my hands. “Um, hi there. I’m Harper, your brand spanking new neighbor.”

    My cheeks burned hotter. Why ? Why had I said spanking ? A nervous laugh escaped me, the unsexy ones that almost sound like I’m barking. No worries, though, the handsome stranger smiled.

    He took my hand and my palm felt tingly. As if he were electrocuting me with a joke buzzer or he was plugged in