Obsessed With You (19 page)

“
Did Cathy say anything about
the voice of the woman who called her, anything distinctive that
might be linked to Marsha?”

“
She said she had a throaty
laugh.”

“
I think I already know the
answer to this,” Randy said, “but does Marsha have a throaty
laugh?”

“
She sure does,” Aaron said,
recalling the many times he had heard Marsha laugh. He’d never
thought a thing about it, even after Cathy said that about the
caller.

The delivery person came with
Reuben sandwiches, chips, and big plastic cups of sweet tea. Aaron
gave him a twenty and told him to keep the change.

Halfway through the Reuben,
Aaron’s phone rang. He threw his sandwich on the plate and answered
with his greasy fingers. It was David Winston.

“
Hey, man,” David said. “My
secretary sent me a message that you called. Sorry to not get back
right away. I was on the beach.”

Aaron didn’t even ask David
where he was, like he normally would have in polite conversation.
There was nothing polite about his world now. He launched straight
in.

“
When I left the firm, there
was a woman who had just started working there. She was thin and had
brown hair. I need to know her name.”

“
What’s up, buddy?” David
asked.

“
I’ll tell you all about it
later. I just need her name right now.”

“
If I’m thinking of the same
person you are, her name was Marsha Dillinger. She worked there for
about a year after you left. I’m not sure where she went after
that.”

“
Thanks, David,” Aaron said.
“I owe you one.”

“
Okay,” David said. “I
trust you’ll tell me all about it when I get back to the States.”

“
I definitely will,” Aaron
said. He ended the call and stood up. He shook Randy’s hand.

“
It’s her,” he said. “I’m
going to take care of business now. Send me your bill. Thanks.”

Aaron was so angry when he drove
through the city that he nearly had a wreck when he pulled out in
front of someone to get in another lane. The guy in the other car
gave him the finger and Aaron waved his hand apologetically. Not that
it did any good.

He parked in the garage and
stalked down the sidewalk to the building. He tried to calm down as
the elevator took him up, but it was useless.

Jeanie smiled at him when he
entered the reception area, but he just waved her away. He stalked
all the way down to Marsha’s office. He had forced his face into a
placid demeanor by the time he walked in.

Marsha seemed startled but
pleased to see him. “What are you doing back in our neck of the
woods?” she asked coyly.

“
I was thinking about that
reference letter. I’d like to add something to it,” he said.

“
Oh,” Marsha seemed flattered
that Aaron would go out of his way on a letter for her. She fished it
out of the drawer beside her desk and handed it to him.

Aaron accepted the letter and
proceeded to tear it into shreds in front of Marsha’s horrified
face. “Why are you doing that?” she sputtered.

“
I know what you did to me,
Marsha,” Aaron said. “You’ll never have a good reference from
me as long as you live. I’m going to pursue you as far as the law
will allow me to.”

Marsha held her hand to her
chest. Her eyes were terrified. “What do you mean?” she said.

“
I’ve got the goods on you,”
Aaron said. “You called Cathy and pretended to be someone I was
having an affair with. And you stole my tie and took photos with it
to send to her. Just to break us up, because in your demented mind
you think that you and I can be together.”

“
I never thought that!”
Marsha said indignantly.

“
Or, you were so pissed off at
me for shunning you ten years ago that you decided to take revenge,”
he said. “Either way, I’m going to sue you.”

Marsha crumpled then and started
sobbing. She looked at him with tears streaming from her eyes. “You
couldn’t even do it!” she shouted. “The big man couldn’t even
go all the way!”

That was music to Aaron’s ears.
He had passed out that night with her. Yes, she had stripped him and
yes he was going to do it, probably tried to do it, but failed.

Bob came out of Aaron’s old
office. “What’s going on here?” he asked looking from Marsha to
Aaron. Aaron went over to Bob and shook his hand. Bob looked
completely confused.

“
I’m about to sue Marsha for
defamation of character,” Aaron said. “If you’ve got any sense,
you’ll get rid of her right now. She framed me.”

“
Marsha?” Bob said. “What’s
this all about?”

Marsha grabbed her purse and
pushed past Bob and Aaron. She didn’t say a word as she ran down
the corridor. Her photographs of Delilah still sat on her desk, and
Aaron picked them up and threw them in the trash.

“
It’s a long story, Bob,”
Aaron said. “And I’ll tell you all about it later. For now, just
know that Marsha is the one who broke Cathy and me up. She called her
and pretended to be some mysterious person having an affair with me.
She’s an obsessed and crazy woman.”

“
Okay,” Bob said. “I trust
what you’re telling me. I’ll make sure she doesn’t come back to
work here.”

Aaron shook Bob’s hand. He
didn’t know what trouble Bob had gotten into financially, but if he
could help him down the road, he would.

Aaron got out of the city as fast
as the traffic would allow. It was three o’clock by the time he got
on the highway and could drive fast, all the way to the bay.

It was Valentine’s Day.

Chapter
Seventeen

Cathy really did need to think
about going to work, but somehow she didn’t feel ready for that.
She had mentioned working as a waitress and cook at the B and B to
Zachery once and he strongly voiced his opinion against it.

“
I’ll give you a job at the
office,” he said. “You don’t need to be working your ass off
trying to make a few bucks at the B and B.”

Of course, now Cathy knew how
Zachery felt about waitresses. He was not kind to them and blamed
them for everything wrong with their meal, which was mostly imagined
on his part. That had been a big red flag to her that she had let
slide way too long.

When she got back home that
Monday from her lunch with Lindy, she called Zachery right away. She
would have loved to procrastinate about it, but Valentine’s Day was
looming and she couldn’t have him thinking she was keeping that
date. Even though he was at work, she told him that she was breaking
the date.

“
Aww, come on, Cathy,”
Zachery said. “I thought we were gonna see how things went after
Valentine’s.”

“
I know I said that, Zachery,”
Cathy told him. “But now that I’ve thought about it without you
here pressuring me, I know it’s not right to go. I’m just not
ready for anything right now.”

“
You mean you’re not ready
for me,” Zachery said. “Maybe you’re scared of your feelings
for me.”

Cathy was tired of pussyfooting
around with Zachery.

“
No,” she said decisively.
“I’m not scared of anything. I just know that this isn’t right.
I’m not over my fiancé, and I don’t know if I ever will be.”

“
That guy’s an asshole,”
Zachery said vehemently. “I can’t believe you’re still jonesing
for him after what he did to you.”

Cathy regretted telling Zachery
about what happened with Aaron. She hadn’t told him every detail,
but enough so that he knew why she left Aaron.

“
You can think what you want,”
she said. “I’m sorry I ever trusted you with any information. I’m
going to go now. Goodbye.”

She ended the call before Zachery
could say a word. She felt relieved that she had finally ended it
with him.

Zachery had distracted her from
the real issue for a while, but she had to face it now. She still
loved Aaron, even if she didn’t have all of the answers to what had
happened between them. She admitted to herself that she loved him
even if he had cheated on her and lied to her. She loved him even
though he left her to play golf.

But even though she loved him, it
didn’t mean she should be with him. She knew that much.

Over the next few days, Cathy
stayed at home. She painted some window frames, a job she hated
because it was so tedious. But it had to be done. Near the end of the
week, she’d had enough of that and went over to her grandfather’s
house to make him a fried fish dinner.

“
I’m going up to the inn
tomorrow night for Valentine’s Day,” her grandfather said as they
were eating. “Want to come with me?”

“
I don’t think I’ll horn in
on you and Eileen,” she said with a laugh. “I just want to be by
myself.”

Her grandfather looked at her for
a moment. “Okay, honey. I think I understand that. Let me know if
you change your mind.”

On Valentine’s Day, Cathy woke
up feeling depressed. She couldn’t stop thinking about Aaron and
what they might be doing on this day, the first Valentine’s Day of
their marriage. She did what she promised herself she wouldn’t: she
went online and gazed at photos of Aaron. There were plenty of them,
mostly from society events. And then there was the one on his firm’s
page where he looked so handsome. She keyed in the page and clicked
the link that said “Our People.” But Aaron’s photo wasn’t
there. Bob’s photo was there and several other people she knew from
the firm, but Aaron was gone.

He left! There was no other
explanation for it. But where did he go? Suddenly, she felt an
overwhelming need to know where Aaron was. Her Google searches proved
fruitless. She only found old listings, but nothing current about
Aaron at all. If he had started his own company, which he had been
hell-bent on doing, then she would have found something about it on
the Internet. You couldn’t have a financial consultant business
without being on the Internet.

Cathy stared at the ceiling fan
in her bedroom. It had been four months since she’d seen Aaron, but
she still had some tears left. She cried into her pillow for several
minutes before hauling herself up and dressing in jeans and a light
sweater. She stuck her phone in her jeans pocket, part of it sticking
out.

The weather was cool, but not
cold as Cathy walked out on the pier. It was a mostly a clear day
with only a few wispy clouds in the sky. The bay was a deep blue,
beckoning her. She went down the full length of the pier and stared
out at the water. Boats floated in the distance and would make their
way to her part of the bay soon.

As she headed back toward her
cottage, trying to decide how she was going to kill this most
horrible of days, her phone slipped out of her pocket. She tried to
grab it before it hit the pier, but she was too late. The phone hit
the wood, then slid straight off the side of the pier into the dark
water.

Cathy cursed as she watched her
phone slide beneath the surface.

Would the phone company have a
record of all her numbers that were stored in her phone? She thought
so but wasn’t sure. She’d have to go into Fort Walton to deal
with it, but she wasn’t in the mood for that on Valentine’s Day.
She knew she’d see decorations with hearts and pink and red
streamers all over the place, and she just couldn’t deal with that.
Valentine’s Day was cruel for the unattached, the broken-hearted.

She tried to occupy her mind with
TV and was successful for a while. But around two, she got restless
again and went outside. She walked down her long driveway and went
along the side of the road to the Laughlin house driveway. The owner
was gone according to Neil, so she thought it was a fine time to look
at the house.

The white Victorian looked shabby
as she got closer to it, but the turret and scroll work on the porch
were fantastic. Cathy knocked on the door and a minute later Neil
opened it.

“
Is it okay if I come in and
look at the house?” she asked him.

“
Come on in, the weather’s
fine,” Neil said.

Cathy followed him into the
foyer. A magnificent chandelier was above her head and dark hardwood
floors at her feet.

Neil took her on the grand tour,
from the first floor and its ghastly kitchen to the second floor,
with its tall ceilings and decorative crown moldings. She went
through every bedroom and stopped in one for a long moment.

“
What is it?” Neil asked her.

“
Nothing,” she said. “That
suitcase on the floor over there looks just like one my fiancé had.”
She shook her head and left the room.

She followed Neil up the turret
steps and marveled at the curved walnut bookcases.

“
This place is amazing,” she
said. “Thanks for showing it to me.”

“
No prob,” Neil said. “I’m
about to finish up for the day. I’m taking Lindy to the B and B for
Valentine’s dinner.”

“
Say hello to my grandfather,”
Cathy said as she stepped out onto the wide front porch. “He’s
gonna be there tonight.”