Free Obsessed With You by Jennifer Ransom Page A

how
easy or hard that was. Manly stood to make a nice commission on the
sale of the Victorian.
    “ I’ll get my wife to sign it
and email it back to you as soon as possible,” he said.
    In this case, Sherry Smith, was
going to be his wife as far as anyone in Monmarte Bay knew. Even
though Manly had promised confidentiality, Aaron wasn’t taking any
chances. He was too familiar with human nature to be that foolish.
    By the end of that day, the
signatures were in place, the money was wired, and the sale was
complete. Manly would leave the house keys under the mat at the front
door. Aaron might never even meet Manly in person. He hoped that was
the case. It was safer that way.
    Early the next morning, Melinda
stuck a For Sale sign in the front yard. She came inside wearing her
red business suit and click clacked her way through the bottom floor,
before she stepped up to the upper, carpeted floor where her loud
heels stopped making noise.
    “ I’ll just use the photos of
the house we had before since you haven’t made any changes,” she
said. “Are you leaving today?”
    “ Yes,” Aaron told her. “Just
as soon as I can take care of a few things.”
    After Melinda left, Aaron drove
his Mercedes to the dealer and traded it in for a used white SUV. He
had a feeling that his Mercedes would stick out where he was going.
    He stopped by his bank and
withdrew ten thousand dollars in cash in fifties and tens. Back at
the house, he packed the SUV with two large suitcases, a duffel bag,
and his laptop. In a final round through the house, he picked up
Cathy’s engagement ring where he had stored it in the bathroom
vanity and put it on his key ring. It had killed him to see the ring
lying on the counter that last day. That had told him that Cathy
really considered their relationship to be over. She loved that ring.
She could have kept the ring, of course, but Cathy would never do
that.
    He closed the door on the empty
house for the last time. And then, on a rainy day in late January, he
set the GPS and drove all the way to Monmarte Bay, stopping once at a
Wal-Mart in a city he couldn’t name to buy binoculars, and once to
get a hamburger.

Chapter
Ten
    After dark that day, Aaron turned
off the Interstate that ran parallel to the beach. Then minutes
later, he passed through the little town of Monmarte Bay. The street
was lit with gaslights and he could see activity at a couple of
restaurants, but otherwise, the town was shut down for the night.
    He turned where the GPS told him
to and drove for a few minutes. He watched the mailboxes on the
left-hand side of the road, the bay side. He passed 113 and slowed
down. That was Cathy’s grandfather’s property. His heart started
to thump and his breathing became shallow when he realized he was in
the vicinity of Cathy. She was somewhere down that driveway, but he
had no idea what she was doing.
    A couple of hundred yards down
the road, he spotted 115 and pulled into the long driveway. There
were no city lights to guide his way. He just kept driving until he
saw a house looming up ahead of him.
    The house was dark, everything
was dark, and Aaron cursed himself for not having a flashlight. The
half moon gave enough light for him to find the porch and feel under
the mat for the keys. He opened the door and felt to the right of the
inside wall for a light switch.
    Miraculously, an overhead light
came on revealing an empty room. The floors beneath him were some
kind of wood. He went further into the house, flipping the light
switches as he went. In the harsh light, Aaron could see that the
house was in need of paint. He walked all the way through the house,
up the stairs to the bedrooms, into the bathrooms. Not a stick of
furniture graced the old Painted Lady. There was not a bed or a couch
to lay his head on. The floors were all hard.
    Aaron went back outside and
opened the back of his SUV. He pushed the back seats down and crawled
in. Hungry and a little cold, he fell asleep in his