Free Obsessed With You by Jennifer Ransom

to
have the house inspected this afternoon.”
    Aaron stepped outside into the
landscaped back yard surrounded by hardwoods on all sides. He kept
his phone close to him in his shirt pocket. His logical brain told
him he was being foolish to chase after a woman who had left him a
week before their wedding, a woman who clearly wanted nothing to do
with him. His business brain told him he was making a bad investment
in a house he was buying sight unseen that needed a lot of
refurbishment. He was taking a big risk, buying another house when he
had this Craftsman already paid for.
    But his heart told him he had to
know that Cathy was all right. He had to find a way to get her back
to him. He would risk everything for her, pay any amount of money, no
matter how foolish.
    Manly called him back at
four-thirty.
    “ The parents replaced all of
the systems eight years ago,” Manly said. “They thought they’d
be there for a long time, but they both died a few years later. The
house looks like hell, but the systems are good.”
    “ Send me the contract,” Aaron
said.
    Then Aaron made the hardest phone
call.
    “ Sissy?” he said when Sherry
answered the phone.
    “ How are you Aaron?” his big
sister said. “We’ve been worried about you.”
    “ I know,” Aaron said. “I
need you to do something for me.”
    “ Okay,” she said a little
warily.
    “ You know that family LLC I
formed for Starlight Farms?”
    “ Yeah. Mom was so happy with
that name you gave it.”
    “ I need you to sign a contract
for me on it,” Aaron said. “I gave you signature rights,
remember?”
    “ I guess so,” Sherry said.
“We’ve never really done anything with the LLC, so I don’t
really think about it.”
    “ I’m buying a house in
Florida and I need you to sign the sales contract as a representative
of Starlight Farms.”
    “ What are you doing, Aaron?”
Sherry asked.
    “ I’m buying a house next door
to where Cathy went,” he said. “I’ve got to see what’s going
on with her.”
    “ This is sounding a little
stalkerish,” Sherry said. “Why are you doing this?”
    “ Because I love her,” Aaron
said simply.
    Sherry sighed. “Okay. Send me
the contract and I’ll sign it. Can we do it by email? I can sign
and scan and send it right back to you?”
    “ Definitely,” he said.
    “ I hope you know what you’re
doing,” she said.
    “ I do know what I’m doing,”
he said.
    “ Because it sounds a little
crazy to me,” Sherry said.
    He could always count on Sherry
to keep it real.
    “ I know. I’ll call you before
I email you the papers.”
    Aaron spent the next day
contacting the realtor who had sold him the Craftsman. He told her he
needed to sell it right away.
    “ But you just got there,”
Melinda Howton, the realtor said with a little whine.
    “ If you’d rather I list with
someone else. . . .” Aaron let her think about that for a
millisecond. His selling the house so soon was none of her business.
    “ No, of course not,” Melinda
said. “We probably can’t even make your money back, but I’ll
list it for fifty thousand more than you paid and we’ll go from
there.”
    “ I won’t be here in a few
days. The house will be empty. Call me on my cell with any offers.”
    Aaron fell asleep on the couch,
as he had every night since Cathy left. He couldn’t bear to sleep
in the bed. He woke up early, staring at the green-tiled fireplace.
Everything in the house was packed except for the couch, the bed, the
coffeemaker, and a package of plastic cups. His life had become
barren in every way.
    He was sipping a hot cup of
coffee when Manly called.
    “ Mr. Smith?” he said. Aaron
nearly choked on his coffee. He had been using the name Richard Smith
when he called the realtors, and it was a name that was going to
stick.
    “ Yes,” he said.
    “ I’ve emailed you the
contract, which the siblings have already signed,” he said. “That
was not an easy thing to accomplish.”
    Aaron really didn’t care