Page 1 of Cursed Mountain Man

1

VIOLET

“You sold me a cursed house.”

The male voice behind me had me nearly jumping out of my skin. It took me a second to even get my bearings. I’d been deeply engrossed in new listings I was sending a client who was looking to buy a rental cabin.

I pushed away from my desk and spun my chair around, a smile pasted on my face, ready to tackle whatever complaint was about to come my way. But that smile froze at what I saw.

I was used to the men around this town. Most were ex-military, working on the logging crews or in construction. They all looked like bodybuilders, but they’d achieved their muscles naturally, through hard work.

I thought I’d seen all of them by now, but not this one. This guy was next-level hot. The kind of hot I thought only existed in movies and TV shows.

“I can help you,” I somehow managed to force out. “Who was your agent?”

“Hell if I remember,” he said.

He looked around the open-plan office. We each had little cubbies with walls that only came up to our shoulders, but it was rare that more than a couple of us were here at the same time. We worked out of our houses and moved from property to property throughout the day, stopping by when we needed to grab some signs or talk to each other before heading to our first showing.

“It was five years ago,” he said.

Five years ago. I was a senior in high school five years ago. Actually, that would have been the summer after my senior year, but I certainly wasn’t working here then.

“Middle-aged dude,” the guy continued. “Worked for this real estate agency.”

It was a brokerage, not an agency, but I wasn’t going to get into technicalities. All I knew was that there were no middle-aged men working here now. It was all women, the oldest of whom was the head broker. She was in her early thirties.

“We don’t have anyone here who fits that description,” I said, staring up at him.

He was on the other side of my desk, a hulking form in his navy-blue T-shirt and jeans. What happened to lumberjacks wearing plaid flannel? That was probably a winter thing, but I never saw the loggers around here wearing that in the chilly months either.

I had to keep myself from gawking at him. I didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable. I had to be professional at all costs.

“Let’s see what we can find out,” I said.

Turning back to my screen, I pulled up the database we used for past and present clients. If he’d worked with this brokerage, his name would be in the system.

But as he told me his name—Josiah Miller—and I typed it in, I had second thoughts. What exactly was I going to do with this guy, even if I could find his information? He claimed his house was cursed, and he bought it five years ago. Unless the agent had made some sort of error, neither he nor the brokerage would be responsible. But I couldn’t exactly tell the guy to get lost. I had a professional reputation to protect.

“Here’s your information,” I said. “2322 Memory Lane?”

“Exactly. I’m at the very end lot. I don’t know if somebody died there or what, but I swear something’s fucked up about that house.”

My eyes widened. Stigmatized property laws didn’t apply in North Carolina. Even if someone had been murdered in the house—which was doubtful, since the place couldn’t have been that old when he moved in—“something’s fucked up about that house” was not a reason to come back on a broker with issues.

“What makes you think someone died there?” I asked.

“It’s just dark,” he said. “I can’t explain it beyond that. Sometimes it feels like someone’s watching me…and that someone isn’t happy.”

So, a haunted house? That sounded interesting. I loved that sort of thing. But I had to ask the one question that was on my mind.

“Were you the first person to live there?”

He shook his head. “It was a year old when I bought it. It had been a vacation rental.”

He thought someone came up here on vacation, stayed in the cabin, and died during that short period of time? It was possible. Anything was possible. Still…it was doubtful.

I should probably write this guy off as a wacko. The problem was, I couldn’t. There was something about him…

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