Obsessed With You (8 page)

“
It’s good to see those brown
eyes again,” Zachery shouted.

Cathy just smiled. It was too
hard to talk. Zachery was looking very fit. He had been good looking
in high school, but had grown into a very handsome man with nice
brown hair and the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Somehow, she had
forgotten his eyes until that very moment.

“
Let’s dance,” Zachery
said, putting his drink on the bar. He led her to the crowded dance
area and took her possessively in his arms. Since when did Zachery
learn how to dance? But he had learned, and he moved her around like
an expert through several songs. He twirled her and held her close.
He leaned her down and pulled her up. Cathy was surprised to find
herself laughing, all night long.

Zachery stayed with Cathy and
Lindy and Neil. When the countdown to midnight started, he leaned
down and kissed Cathy at the stroke of midnight. She kissed him back.

Chapter
Nine

Aaron stared at his three
computer screens that told him what was happening in the stock
market. It was his business to know that, for his clients and for
himself. He traded stocks for his clients, but he traded options and
stocks for himself. He was good at it, like everything he’d ever
done in his life. Except for Cathy.

After Cathy left, Aaron kicked
himself for leaving to play a golf game on that last morning. If he
hadn’t made business his priority, Cathy might still be there with
him. They had a big struggle to get through over the woman who was
calling her, but he believed he would have gotten to the bottom of
that. His leaving that morning made it impossible for anything to be
worked out.

His mother cried when he called
her to tell her the wedding was called off. She knew him better than
anyone, and knew he had waited to get married until he found the
right person. When she asked him what happened he told her the truth.
She was too straightforward of a person to accept anything else. He
respected her too much to lie to her about it. His father, too. His
parents had given him the gift of character, and it didn’t matter
how much money he made or didn’t make, his character was all that
mattered.

He called all of his friends and
family members who were going to attend the wedding and told them the
news. It was painful and difficult to avoid their questions. But he
did it. He also cancelled the trip to Jamaica, which pained him more
than anything. Aaron was a seasoned traveler, but Cathy was not and
she had been excited about going to Jamaica.

After he’d done his job,
canceling everything he was responsible for, Aaron took off the rest
of the week—the week before the wedding—and the following week,
which would have been his honeymoon.

The house he had bought was empty
and vast, but he had nowhere else to stay. It seemed ostentatious to
him now, a big status symbol just because he had the money. He
wondered if Cathy would have been happy there in the long term. It
was a beautiful house designed in his favorite style, but was it
Cathy’s favorite style? Had he pushed the house on her? He wasn’t
sure now.

On what would have been their
wedding day, Aaron texted Cathy. She didn’t respond back to him and
that didn’t surprise him, though it hurt him to his core. He drank
scotch until he passed out. The rest of that honeymoon week was
pretty much a blur to him. He slept, he drank, he ordered take-out,
he drank, and he slept.

When he returned to work at the
end of October, he was aggravated to see Halloween decorations on the
secretary’s desks and hanging in the hallway. He was further
irritated to see the annual ceramic pumpkin full of candy on Marsha’s
desk as he passed by. Marsha smiled at him when she saw him walking
her way, but he bypassed her without eye contact. He felt bad about
that later.

Aaron found on his return to the
office that he didn’t care about it anymore. He only cared about
one thing, and that was Cathy. The irony wasn’t lost on him when he
cancelled meetings with clients because he wasn’t up for them. He
should have rescheduled the golf game. For his relationship’s sake.
For the love of his life.

Aaron muddled through his days at
the office. Marsha was especially attentive, fussing over him
constantly until he couldn’t take it anymore. One day, she reached
to straighten his tie before a meeting, something she had done in the
past, and he knocked her hand away. The look of hurt in her eyes
stayed with him for a while.

The only client Aaron cared about
was Mrs. Davidson, and it wasn’t because he wanted her to stay with
him after he formed his own company. It was because he knew she was a
good person who relied on him and his expertise. He didn’t want to
let her down.

One evening at dinner, he opened
up to her about his cancelled wedding. She had been too kind to ask
him about it, but she listened intently as he talked. He was
completely honest with her about everything.

“
And you have no idea who could
have set you up like that?” Mrs. Davidson asked. “An old
girlfriend, perhaps?”

“
I’m on good terms with all
of my girlfriends,” Aaron said. “At least I think I am. But the
killer is that photo with the tie in it. I don’t know how that
happened.”

“
That has me stumped, too,”
she said. “Who all knew about the tie?”

“
I guess a lot of people. I was
pretty proud of it when Cathy gave it to me, so I must have bragged
whenever I got a compliment. I did get a lot of compliments on
it—from women, of course.”

“
Of course,” Mrs. Davidson
said with a little laugh.

“
I think you should hire a
private detective,” Mrs. Davidson said. “Let him or her do the
thinking for you.”

Aaron had thought about that in
the days following Cathy’s departure. He would do it now.

The next day, Aaron contacted a
private detective his firm had used in the past. He told him his
story.

“
I need you to give me the name
of every woman you’ve been with in the last ten years,” Randy
Frazer said. “Any woman who would know about your Johnson.”

“
I’ll email it to you,”
Aaron said, cringing.

“
And anyone who knew about the
tie,” he said. “Even if you think it’s not important.”

“
Okay,” Aaron said.

“
Do you know where she got the
tie?” Randy asked.

“
It was some specialty English
store but I can’t remember the name right now.”

“
Let me know if you do remember
it,” Randy said.

Two hours later, Aaron emailed
Randy a list of women he had been with over the past ten years. He
was embarrassed, not because of Randy Frazer, but for himself, that
the list had fifteen names on it, along with any information about
each one he could remember.

“
What about the tie?” Randy
emailed back. “And send me a scan of it. I might be able to pass it
around and get some idea where it came from.”

An hour after that, Aaron emailed
Randy a list of people he thought had seen the tie. That included
clients, friends, and staff people. He had no idea what Randy was
going to do with that information.

“
Let me know if you remember
any other people,” Randy wrote back. “I’ll start working on
this right away.”

The holidays were so difficult
that Aaron preferred not to think about them. Lonely nights,
desperate thoughts. New Year’s Eve had been the worst because he
fully remembered that had been the night he told Cathy he loved her.
He had never said that to a woman in his entire life. Even the ones
he had dated for several months. He had never found anyone he loved
before. Aaron was searching for his true love, someone who would
stand by him like his parents stood together through thick and thin.
Cathy was that woman.

Randy Frazer called him once a
week to report his findings, which were meager. He had found out that
seven of the women Aaron had dated were married, four of them with
children and one of them pregnant. Only two still lived in the
Atlanta area.

“
Just because they’re married
doesn’t mean they don’t have it in for you,” Randy said. “I’d
say it makes it less likely, though. I’ll keep doing background
checks on them and hunt down the rest of the list.”

*************************

When Aaron returned to the office
after the New Year’s, he had made his decision. He called Marsha
into his office.

“
I’ve decided to leave
Peachtree Financial,” he told her.

Marsha’s lip trembled. “But I
thought you were going out on your own and that you were taking me
with you,” she said.

Aaron had never said that to
Marsha, though he probably would have taken her with him. She was the
best secretary he’d ever had. Hell, she was more than a secretary.
She anticipated his needs before he even thought of them himself. She
was his right hand.

“
I’m sorry, Marsha,” he
said gently. He had not been kind to her since his break-up, he
supposed because she was the closest one to him and he took it out on
her in a way.

“
I don’t want to work in this
business anymore,” he said. “I’m sure the company will keep you
on, or I’ll give you a stellar reference if you want to move on to
another firm.”

“
I don’t know,” Marsha said
in a small voice. She turned and left his office. He walked down to
the president’s office to tell him the news. Matt Cranshaw kept him
in his office for an hour trying to talk him out of it. Aaron didn’t
budge. He had much more important things to do with his life.

“
You know how it’s done in
financial places,” Matt said as he shook Aaron’s hand in his
doorway. “You leave the day you say you want to leave.”

“
I know,” Aaron said. “I’m
going to pack up my office now. Thanks for everything.”

Marsha held a tissue to her nose
when he walked toward her. He stopped at her desk.

“
It’s okay, Marsha,” he
said soothingly. “You’ll be better off without this old bear in
your face everyday.”

“
I doubt that,” she said.

He actually had very little in
his office to take away. He wasn’t the type to display photographs,
so there were none of those. He had a few gift items, like an
engraved paperweight, given to him over his years there, but not much
else. He shoved it all into his briefcase and went through the doors
of Peachtree Financial Consultants for the last time. When he got
home, he called Mrs. Davidson and told her what had happened.

“
I’m sure they’ll take good
care of you there,” Aaron told her.

“
I’m not so sure of that at
all,” she said. “But you’ve got to live your life. What are you
going to do?”

“
I’m going to do the only
thing I can do. Find Cathy.”

*************************

Aaron stayed in the house for ten
more days, long enough to take care of business. He moved his
expensive suits into storage, though he couldn’t see a time when he
would wear them again. He kept one gray suit to take with him on his
trip. He moved Cathy’s boxes into storage, including her wedding
dress.

When he wasn’t packing and
storing things, he spent his time on the Internet searching for a
place to rent. He contacted several realtors in the area and said he
was looking for something on Bayside Road. There was a lot available
in the off-season. He wrote down every address given to him, then
compared it to the address of Cathy’s grandfather’s property. He
swooped down on the area with Google Maps, but nothing seemed close
enough to his destination. He was going to have to get something
further away and just deal with it. Then he got a call from a realtor
he’d left a message with several days earlier.

“
I’ve got something you might
like, but it’s for sale, not for rent. It’s a fixer-upper, so
it’s cheap for these parts. But it’s on the bay, so it’ll still
cost you,” the realtor said.

Aaron wrote down the address and
went back to Google Maps. He already knew it would be closer than
anything else.

An acre of woods separated the
house from his target.

The online listing featured
twenty-three photographs of the house and property. It was a
Victorian built at the turn of the twentieth century. The photos
showed shabby rooms in need of updates, but the bones were good. The
views of the bay were spectacular.

“
I’ll need to be assured of
the utmost in confidentiality,” Aaron told the realtor, Manly
Simmons. “This is to be a private retreat for me and my wife and I
don’t want our business splattered all over the place,” Aaron
said.

“
Confidentiality is not a
problem,” Manly assured him.

“
How long has it been on the
market?” Aaron asked.

“
Nearly two years,” Manly
said. “It’s been empty for longer than that. Three siblings
inherited it from their parents, and they’re eager to get rid of
it.”

“
Tell them I’ll give them the
asking price if the systems check out, less if they don’t,” Aaron
said. Normally, he would have negotiated like the shrewd businessman
he was, but he needed that house more than he needed to feed his ego.