“Just fine,” I lied.

“You know Amelia?” Jake asked and Mickey’s eyes went to him.

“She’s my new neighbor,” Mickey shared then added, “The Cameron place.”

I felt Jake’s gaze and tore mine off Mickey to look up at him.

“The Cameron place?” he asked when he got my gaze, then noted, “That’s a fuckuva score.”

“You’re right,” I agreed, even though I wasn’t entirely certain how he meant that. I took a guess and remarked, “It’s an amazing property.”

He nodded. “It is. No way me, Josie and the kids’d ever leave Lavender House, but the realtor had an open house for Cliff Blue so we went and we all loved it. The place is phenomenal.”

I liked that he agreed with me but I was confused.

“Cliff Blue?” I asked.

“Your house, darlin’,” Mickey stated, and I had to control a jump since his voice was a lot closer than before.

I managed that and looked up at him to see he was close. Not as close as I would have liked but could never have, but a lot closer than before.

“My house?” I asked.

“Cameron called it Cliff Blue. It stuck. And it works,” he explained. “Folks who had the lot before had an old house on it. Two generations of women who liked the feel of their hands in the dirt tended that property for nearly seventy years. Place was covered in bluebells. Planted some, they took off, went everywhere. Even jumped the street and now they’re all over my lot, and that’s not a complaint. Cameron liked ’em too, used them in the design, the color, the stained glass, the walk, and was careful not to disturb them if he didn’t have to. Went so far as to plant a bunch more to replace any they killed during construction. ’Cause of that, March and April, your house looks like it’s floating by a cliff on a cloud of blue.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered, his words filling my head with a wondrous image, making me wish for another reason that I’d been able to move in several months earlier. “The realtor should have put a picture of that on the Internet. If I saw it, I would have probably paid full price.”

I couldn’t contain my jump when Mickey’s laughter filled the room, not only because it was an exceedingly handsome sound, but because it came as a surprise.

Before I could ask what was funny, he told me.

“Glad you didn’t, babe. The couple who built that place were pieces of work. She was a raging bitch and that was only capped by how huge of a dick he was. Place was on the market forever because neither would agree on an offer and actually got into it with the buyers so bad they’d pull out. They kept screwing around, the price on your place dropped three times, which is a shame ’cause that house is that house. Not a shame ’cause those two assholes got screwed in the end. But it’s a pain in the ass because that house is in my neighborhood and that kinda shit affects the values of all the properties around it. Figure the only way they could sell was to someone like you who the realtor could keep those two piranhas away from.”