Can't Stop Wanting You: (Oakland Hills Short Story 1)

by Gretchen Galway

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  Author's Note

  About the Author

  CAN’T STOP WANTING YOU

  Copyright © 2014 by Gretchen Galway

  Eton Field, Publisher

  www.gretchengalway.com

  Cover Design: Gretchen Galway

  Cover Graphics: Shutterstock

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  1

  WITH EACH ONE OF HER generous inches jiggling in the skimpy bikini, Jody Lapinski jogged up the stairs from her bedroom in the basement and flung open the kitchen door. She wanted to show her grandmother her new purchase before she lost her nerve.

  “Check this out, Nana,” she said, striking a suggestive pose in the doorway. She’d had to order the plus-sized swimsuit online, since size-16/18 bikinis were thin on the ground in most stores. So to speak.

  “Hello,” said a man near the refrigerator. He was drinking out of her PMS=Pass My Shotgun coffee mug, and looked horribly familiar.

  Her grandmother looked up from where she sat at the kitchen table. “Jody, this is Simon Brogan. He’s moving into the upstairs apartment.”

  Kill me now, Jody thought. She was wearing a bikini. In front of the prom king, the senior class president, the guy who’d driven her best friend into a psychiatric ward.

  “Lapinski,” he said, grinning. “I thought that name sounded familiar. Small world.”

  “Yeah.” Jody tried to find a place to put her hands. They twitched to wrap around his throat and squeeze until his pretty blue eyes bugged out of his pretty blue face.

  “I wondered if you two might know each other,” Nana said, “when Simon mentioned he’d grown up in Huntington Beach.”

  “We knew each other,” Jody said. Melissa, her friend, had tried to tattoo his initials over her heart, but her fake ID hadn’t been good enough.

  “A little bit,” he said. “You’re looking good.” His gaze flickered over her half-naked body.

  Yeah, sure he thought she looked good. Every girl he’d ever dated in high school had weighed less than her left thigh. “What brings you to the Bay Area?” She assumed he’d be living in a suburban tract home with a wife and kids by now. Maybe, she hoped, brightening, he’d spent the last few years in jail and was only now rejoining society, a tragically ill-fated attempt to reclaim a fragment of the success of his youth.

  “I’ve just started as the in-house counsel for a tech company in Berkeley,” he said. “I didn’t have time to find a permanent place. This is perfect.” He smiled politely at Nana.

  So he was a lawyer. Not an ex-con. But she was an optimist; there was still a chance he’d be incarcerated someday soon.

  “He’ll be eating three dinners a week with us,” Nana said.

  Jody suddenly imagined spiking the pasta with arsenic. “With us,” Jody asked, “or on a tray?” Most renters didn’t want to eat with a retired English teacher and her granddaughter, and chose to eat in their suite upstairs.

  “Whatever’s easier,” he said.

  Jody put her hands on her hips, pretending she was comfortable to be seen in a bikini, as if she wore them around all the time, like global-warming lounge wear. “Trays are the easiest.” Her voice was cold.

  The phone rang, and Nana made an apologetic gesture. “I’m so sorry, I’m expecting a call about my trip. I’ll be quick.” She hurried out of the kitchen, adjusting her hair as if the caller would see her over the phone.

  Jody turned to Simon, narrowing her eyes. He wore cargo pants and a T-shirt over an athletic, lanky body; and his wavy auburn hair was a little longer than she remembered, falling into his blue eyes; but otherwise he looked just like he had in high school. “It’s not too late to change your mind,” she said.

  “Still hate me, I see.” He stared openly now at her body. “Nice of you to put me at ease, though.”

  She felt her face warm, and hoped the flush didn’t extend to her torso. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Wearing the swimsuit. No place to hide a weapon.” His gaze drifted over her breasts to her crotch. “Of course, we’d need a cavity search to be sure.”

  Her fingers twitched, hungry for the feel of his neck. “My grandmother would help me dispose of the body if I killed you right now.”

  “Go ahead and try. It’s past time you got the professional help you need.”

  “You have that effect on people,” she said. “Causing suffering wherever you go. No wonder you became a lawyer.”

  He laughed, but his eyes stayed cold. “Pays the bills.” He sipped his coffee. “So I don’t have to live in my grandmother’s basement.”

  “I’m quite capable of paying any bills of my own.” She had a master’s degree in chemical engineering and a job at a local biotech company—hardly a slacker. “I live here because—”

  Her grandmother returned before she could say, because my grandmother is getting too old to live alone, which would’ve annoyed her.

  “It’s none of your business,” Jody finished.

  Nana crossed the kitchen, took the mug out of Simon’s hands, and gave Jody a look. “Is there a problem here?”

  Jody read the warning in her grandmother’s pale blue eyes. Nana wanted a tenant to help pay for her big all-expense tour to Europe later that summer. The last guy had been a graduate student with cash-flow problems. Any adult with a job was good, but a corporate lawyer was like a blue-ribbon pig at the state fair.

  “There’s no problem,” Jody said.

  Nana nodded. “You can get dressed before you make the salad. Simon is staying for supper.”

  Without turning around, which would’ve given the prom king too much time to ogle her backside, Jody edged to the door to the downstairs. “No problem,” she repeated, feeling for the doorknob behind her.

  “I don’t want to be a bother,” Simon said.

  “Of course it’s no bother,” Nana said. “You’ll be a paying guest. You should be sure of what you’re getting before you move in.”

  His eyes drifted over to Jody and scanned her quickly from head to toe. “Very considerate of you,” he said, a smirk twitching on his lips.

  2

  FACE BURNING, JODY RAN DOWNSTAIRS and threw on jeans and a sweatshirt, the baggiest she had. He’d enjoyed seeing her exposed like that, at a disadvantage, beneath him, uncomfortable; she wasn’t going to let it happen again.

  She was halfway up the stairs when she changed her mind.

  If she showed up in these old, oversized clothes, he’d know he’d rattled her. She returned to her dresser and, with a sigh, put on skinny jeans and a slightly fitted T-shirt. She wasn’t going to wear a cocktail dress, but this would do.

  She checked her face in the mirror. Her dark-blond hair was pulled up into a high ponytail, which was fine. But a hike over the weekend before had sunburned her nose, and now it was peeling. She spit on her finger and rubbed away the dead skin.

  Then she stopped. What am I doing?

  She didn’t care about what a man like that thought about her, about anything. Suppressing the urge to put on some lip gloss, she went upstairs without
another glance in the mirror. Her grandmother stood at the counter chopping broccoli into florets, which told Jody everything she needed to know about tonight’s meal. Nana didn’t complicate her life with new recipes, new foods, new menus; she rotated between the same dozen dinners; each detail, down to the brand of butter, stayed the same. If she was chopping fresh florets, they were having chicken stir-fry. Frozen broccoli would’ve meant London broil. Both called for a mixed-green salad, although the stir-fry meant she’d throw in a few vacuum-packed chow-mien noodles and canned mandarin orange slices.

  Jody was taking the cans out of the pantry when her grandmother said, “He changed his mind about staying for supper.” Her tone was flat, which hinted at disapproval.

  “Oh.” The tension eased in Jody’s shoulders. “Is he…”

  “He’s still moving in, thank goodness.”

  “Mm,” Jody said.

  “I take it you two had a history together when you were in high school,” Nana said.

  Closing her eyes, Jody peeled off the plastic lid from the chow-mien noodles. “He wasn’t my boyfriend.” She ground out the last word.

  Nana waved the possibility aside. “Of course not. You didn’t have any boyfriends. You were such a late bloomer.”

  “That’s me.” Jody popped a crunchy noodle in her mouth. It tasted like a cross between a pencil and a potato chip. She ate another one and went to the fridge to take out the lettuce.

  “Well, he is a very handsome man,” Nana said. “No wonder you had a thing for him.”

  Jody spun around, clutching the bag of spring mix. “There wasn’t a thing.”

  “It’s not his fault you found him attractive,” Nana said. “No reason to carry a grudge.”

  “I don’t. At least, not about that.”

  “You were a late bloomer,” Nana continued. “He could hardly be expected to see a pretty girl under all those sloppy men’s clothes you used to wear. You looked a little bit like your grandfather after he retired.”

  With anyone else, Jody might’ve been insulted, but her grandmother didn’t intend to be hurtful; she was simply—agonizingly—honest. Jody walked over and kissed her on the cheek. “Don’t be mean, Nana.” In high school, she’d been really into 1990s grunge. Her four closest friends chose decades of their own to emulate: ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. Hers was the most recent but hardly the most cool, not in trendy southern California. They’d called themselves the Fab Five, but nobody else had; their classmates called them the Freaky Five, Flab Five, Fat Five…

  “I’m sorry, dearheart,” Nana said, shaking her head. “I’m just afraid of losing this one. He has such a nice credit rating.”

  “I’ll get along. Don’t worry.”

  “You seem awfully angry at him.”

  Jody fitted the can opener over the mandarin orange slices. “Do you remember that friend of mine who ended up in the hospital?”

  “The crazy one?”

  “Melissa had some issues.”

  “Crazy issues,” Nana said.

  Jody drained the oranges, sighing. She hoped Melissa never had to chat to her old-fashioned grandmother about mental illness. “She was dating Simon when she tried to kill herself.”

  “Did he try to help her finish the job?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then you can hardly hold him responsible,” Nana said. “Especially after all these years.”

  Jody sprinkled the oranges over the lettuce. “He never visited Melissa in the hospital. We’d all known each other since kindergarten, lived on the same block, went to the same schools. And then they started dating. But after she dropped out of school, he never talked to her again. Not even an email.”

  “He was young.”

  “He was the same age as I was,” Jody said, “and I knew I never would’ve done that.”

  Nana grunted and then measured out one tablespoon of olive oil and poured it into the nonstick frying pan. “We’ll use the sesame ginger dressing tonight on the salad, don’t you think?”

  Glad her grandmother had dropped the topic, Jody shook the bottle on the counter. “Got it.”

  The aroma of sizzling garlic filled the kitchen. Conversation halted as they finished preparing the rest of the meal. Ten minutes later, when they were done and sitting at the table, filled plates in front of them, Nana poured Jody a glass of iced chamomile tea.

  “Do you think he ever figured out you were in love with him?” Nana asked.

  Jody brought the tea to her lips and closed her eyes. I sure as hell hope not, she thought.

  3

  SIMON SET DOWN HIS LAST box at the top of the stairs and wiped the sweat off his forehead.

  The morning was unusually warm for June in Oakland. It was supposed to hit ninety-six later, the forecast said, and his new residence lacked air-conditioning.

  As he pushed the box into the front room of his new apartment, he wondered, not for the first time, if he’d made a mistake moving in a house loaded with personality instead of a generic, corporate long-term rental apartment. Mrs. Lapinski had offered to tear up the contract the night before, when the psycho bikini babe had gone downstairs, but he’d been too soft to take her up on it. She’d already told him how she was relying on his rent to pay for her European tour that summer. He could hardly ruin the poor woman’s vacation, one she said she’d been waiting all seventy-something years to take.

  No. He could put up with a rare heat wave and a few hateful looks—especially if the hater was half-naked.

  He made a face. Jody Lapinski. She hadn’t changed. Seemed to despise him as much as always.

  Well, not always. They’d been friends, real friends, when they were kids living on the same block of suburban tract homes. She’d been as fun as a boy, he’d thought, playing with Legos, skateboarding, laughing at fart jokes, lending him her video games…

  Until puberty had separated the boys from the girls, making friendship impossible. Even if it hadn’t been for Melissa, they never would’ve managed to continue what they’d had. It would’ve had to change…

  Just as he rolled his suitcase into his bedroom and knocked it onto its side, he heard a knock at the door. The apartment was only two small rooms and a bathroom, but it did have a privacy door of its own. He went over and opened it, wiping more sweat off his brow. Maybe Mrs. Lapinski had brought him a fan.

  “Morning,” Jody said. She wore clothes this time, normal clothes from the current decade: a white, tight T-shirt and turquoise shorts. Her long hair was pulled up into a ponytail, showing off her rosy cheeks, big brown eyes, and nice lips.

  Well, they would’ve been nice if they weren’t pressed into a flat line.

  Damn it, she was annoying. She didn’t know what had happened. Why he’d done what he had. And apparently didn’t care.

  He slumped against the door, crossing his arms over his chest, looking her over. “No bikini today?”

  “Not part of the rental agreement.”

  “Pity.”

  She paused, looking as if she was making an effort to control her temper. “My grandmother would like to know if you’ll be eating with us tonight.”

  “Will you be there?”

  Her eyes met his. Something sparked between them. “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll pass,” he said, turning and reaching for the doorknob. “Was that all?”

  “No tray, either?” Her voice was strained.

  He stroked his chin, studied the ceiling. “What’s on the menu?”

  “Spaghetti.”

  He stifled a laugh. Being polite was killing her. “Salad?”

  She nodded.

  He tilted his head. “Excuse me?”

  “Yes, there’s a salad.”

  “I do like salad,” he said. He continued to ponder the ceiling.

  “How nice for you,” she said.

  “Your grandmother mentioned you’re growing organic greens in the garden. Would those be in tonight’s salad?”

  Her face flushed a darker sh
ade of pink. The hot, stuffy hallway was making her sweat, giving her skin a sexy sheen.

  He didn’t mind admitting he found her attractive. He’d always found her attractive. Didn’t mean he didn’t want to throw her off a bridge.

  “She mentioned my garden?” Fresh unhappiness bloomed in her expression.

  “She did. She told me all about it.” He rubbed his hands together. “I can’t wait to enjoy the fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini—let’s see, what else did she get me excited about—oh, I remember. Peppers. Bell peppers.”

  “Calm down. There’s only arugula. And that’s about to bolt in this heat.”

  “But you’ve planted more vegetables for later this summer, surely?”

  “Afraid not,” she said.

  “But she said you had.”

  Her jaw tightened. “I decided not to. The neighbors will be using part of our yard for a wedding in a few weeks. I planted flowers instead.”

  He’d been teasing, trying to get a rise out of her, but saw she wasn’t going to take this particular bait. “Nice of your grandmother to let them use your property.”

  Her smile was uneven, hiding something. “Yes.”

  “You didn’t think she should be so nice?”

  “Look, it’s hot. I’m tired of standing here,” she said. “Do you want a tray tonight or not?”

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” he said.

  She sighed. “Which one?”

  “Will the salad include your home-grown greens?”

  “Since you’re so excited about them,” she said. “Fine.”

  “Then never mind. I’d rather eat out.” He gave her a polite bow as he shut the door, laughing when he heard her curse him from the other side.

  4

  JODY PICKED UP THE TINY mixed-breed Chihuahua and let him lick her face. Zeus was cute in a hideously ugly way—bugging eyes, lolling tongue, tufts of hair in the wrong places. He belonged to Trixie Johnson, the sixty-something woman who lived next door, and charmed most who met him with his loving, irrepressible personality.