Sweet Water

by Lena North

  I looked toward the restaurant, and my eyes met Anetta’s. She stood by the stairs and had most likely helped the boys bring our refreshments.

  “Thank you,” I mouthed, and she blew me a kiss.

  Then she opened her arms and hugged her boys as they ran up to her. Danny was there too, and he looked searchingly at me but was apparently satisfied with what he saw because he grinned and picked up his youngest son, and they walked up the steps to join the others on the dance floor. My friends were checking to make sure I was good, and my heart swelled.

  “He calls you Nellie?” Wilder broke the silence.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You look happy,” she continued.

  I laughed then and told her about all that had happened. At first, she asked tons of questions about Marshes and Dante, but then she suddenly went silent.

  “What’s wrong,” I asked quietly.

  Her face was serious, almost sad, and there was a guarded look in her eyes that I’d never seen before. It took her a long time to answer.

  “I’m so sorry, Jinx. I wasn’t there for you, and I did some pretty stupid things…” she said, looking down on her lap.

  “Wilder,” I prompted and waited until she raised her eyes to look at me. “Yeah, you didn’t think things through, but I’m sorry too. I should have trusted you –”

  She started speaking, but I touched her shoulder briefly to stop her.

  “I should have, Wilder. I was so messed up, and I stopped thinking. I should have told you what was going on and allowed you to be there for me. I should have trusted you to understand,” I said, sighed and went on, “I know that you would have helped me, and even when I didn’t tell you what was wrong, you still tried. I also overreacted a bit.”

  She stared at me, and her surprise made me giggle.

  “Mrs. C told me that I was a surprisingly stupid girl for all my intelligence,” I said, knowing well that I was opening a can of worms with that statement.

  “Mrs. C?” she asked.

  “Mrs. Fratinelli. Everyone calls her Mrs. C here,” I said calmly.

  “You seem friendly with her,” she said sourly.

  Aha. That was my cue to say a few things that I’d been thinking about. I hoped Wilder would be willing to listen and understand what I was telling her.

  “Yes, I am,” I started. “There are reasons for how she's acted, and they are hers to share. Or not. She isn’t under any obligation to explain anything to you, Wilder.”

  “But she –”

  “What did she ever do to you, really?” I interrupted. “She raised a horrible son, this is true, and believe me – she knows it. She also kept a blind eye to his activities, but Wilder… she has no money, never had.”

  I made a pause to gauge what kind of reaction I would get, but Wilder’s face was suddenly a blank mask, reminding me very much of how her father often looked. I didn’t find Wilder even half as scary, though, so I barged on.

  “Paolo supported her, so even if she might have suspected what he was up to, what would you expect her to do? And she didn’t abuse you or treat you badly. Sure, she didn’t force her grown up son to bring his stepdaughter to Marshes, but I ask you to please think about one thing... Knowing how your stepfather was, would you really have wanted to spend more time with him? Or were you better off with your grandfather?”

  Her eyes widened, and I could see that I’d scored a point. I had another, tougher, truth to tell her, however.

  “You aren’t squeaky clean yourself, Wilder,” I started.

  “What?” she bristled.

  I took a deep breath and then I spoke, deliberately keeping my voice calm and confident, hoping she’d understand.

  “Willy deliberately funneled most of his money into Double H and left that to you when he died. The money you didn’t inherit was left in the companies he passed on to his only daughter, right?” I waited until she confirmed what I’d said with a small nod. “Your grandfather wasn’t a stupid man, and the amount was exactly what he intended. He wanted your Mom to have it knowing well that she would give it to Paolo, and that you’d never get any of it. Paolo left it for his mother, which was hardly a surprise. Surely Willy would have anticipated that too?”

  I paused again, and she confirmed my words with a surly, “Sure.”

  “But Wilder… You took that money back on a stupid technicality that you would never have been able to justify in court. You had the intent to honor Willy’s last wishes, and that you signed papers with the wrong name wasn’t really an issue because you didn’t know that the name you used wasn’t correct.”

  “But –”

  She was bristling, but I spoke over her immediately.

  “You don’t need that part of the inheritance, Wilder… but she does. She has literally no money at all. Why do you think she let me pay to board in her house? So, you need to ask yourself if you did the right thing, using your lawyers, and threatening her with your badass dad and his investigations? She had no chance, so she backed off, and now you’re looking into some kind of trust for that amount while she’s struggling.”

  I held her gaze, but she didn’t say anything at all, so I pressed my point one more time.

  “Did you honor your grandfather’s wishes, Wilder, or did you blindly seek revenge for something Mrs. C wasn’t actually guilty of?”

  “Well, shit,” she whispered, and I exhaled.

  She understood.

  “I’ll give the money back to her,” she continued determinedly.

  “She won’t take it,” I replied, and when Wilder started protesting, I continued, “She won’t. She’s not happy about what her son did, and she’s very proud. No way she’ll accept money from you. If you’re serious, then maybe you could invest it in some kind of business here in Marshes? They need the help, and she’ll like that some of the money comes back to do good here.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll talk to Mickey tomorrow. We haven’t done anything with the companies except for instructing management to continue as usual. I know Mickey has met them a few times, but you’re right… I really don’t care, and I don’t need the money.”

  I took her hand and squeezed it slightly, murmuring, “Thank you, Wilder. She’s been so good to me, you know. I wouldn’t have managed without her.”

  “Okay,” she said and continued resolutely, “I’ll make an effort to get to know her. I don’t like her, I won’t lie about that, but I’ll try.”

  “Okay,” I echoed. “That’s all I ask for, and if you don’t like Mrs. C, then you don’t. The two of you co-existing in my life will have to be good enough then.”

  “You’ve changed,” she stated, and a grin started to spread on her lips. “I’m not sure I know who you are, but I like this new, mellow, Jinx.”

  I laughed then, and said, “Well, if there’s one thing puking blood has taught me, it’s that life isn’t quite as black and white as one thinks.”

  “You puked blood?” she exclaimed.

  Oh, shit. Apparently, Mac had held his promise and kept the details to himself.

  “If I did, it wasn’t more than a few drops. It was no big deal, and I'm okay now,” I stated, hoping that this would calm her down.

  “Does Mac know?” she asked, and I could tell that Mac had a fight coming up.

  “You can’t be mad at him. You know he was here to help me, and I made him promise not to tell you all that happened. I wasn’t in a very good shape, Wilder, and they were concerned. They had to find a way to calm me down, so when I made him promise not to tell you, he did. I’m sorry.”

  I still held her hand, and she turned it around to squeeze mine, focusing her sharp yellow eyes on me, gauging if I was telling the truth. I relaxed and waited, and after a while, she nodded, once.

  “You’re better now?” she asked finally.

  “Oh, yeah,” I replied with a laugh.

  “Good. Let’s go back to the others then, and we can talk more tomorrow instead. I love this song, and I know
Boz does too so let’s go and find out if he has pulled Dante up on the dance floor yet.”

  I started laughing and got to my feet, thinking that I wanted to see that too, but when we reached the dance floor, I spotted Dante at the makeshift bar to the side and Bo was nowhere to be seen. Several voices called out to me as we made our way through the crowd but I just waved and kept moving.

  “Hey,” Dante said and put his arm around my waist, looking searchingly at me, clearly trying to judge my mood after the conversation I’d just had. I smiled back at him and leaned a little closer. “You’re okay,” I heard, but I didn’t answer.

  I’d turned to the other men and noticed how Hawker aimed his gaze at the arm around my waist. His face was expressionless, but his lips were pressed together in a way I thought was disapproving. I straightened, and my eyes met Miller’s. He clenched his jaws slightly, but then he turned to Dante.

  “So, when will you dance with my brother-in-law?”

  “Huh?” Dante muttered, but I felt his muscles tighten, so I guessed he understood exactly how Miller was baiting him.

  I also guessed that nothing good would come out of that, so I turned to Kit, trying to derail the way conversation was going. “Do you dance?”

  “No,” was his only reply, but he was grinning when he said it, so I turned to his dad.

  “How about you, Carson?”

  “Hell no,” was the calm reply.

  “Miller?” I asked, guessing that he’d echo his brother and nephew.

  He looked at me with a crooked grin that slowly spread over his face. The band started a new song, and to my surprise, Miller emptied his glass, shrugged out of his leather jacket and stretched a hand out toward me.

  “It’s been a while, Jinx, but yeah. I dance.”

  Carson and Kit started laughing, and Hawker muttered something under his breath. Before I got a word out, I was hauled onto the dancefloor and into Miller’s arms.

  It took less than two seconds for me to understand that when he’d said he danced, the man meant that he could dance. He moved fluidly, rolling his hips and shoulders to the music in a way that none of the others on the dance floor was even close to achieving. Then he was spinning me out and around, only to bring me back into his arms, holding me tightly with one hand low on my back, twisting both of us around. To my surprise, it was easy to follow his steps, and when he grinned at me, I grinned back.

  “Wow,” I said. “You’re good.”

  “You know about the fund we have in Norton?” he asked. Since I knew that they had a fund set up in their mountain village and that this covered basic living expenses for the people living there, I nodded.

  “It includes education too, but I was young and idealistic,” he said.

  “Okay,” I murmured, not knowing why he told me this.

  “I wanted to prove my worth,” he said, spun me around again and when I was back in his arms, he continued, “Told everyone I’d make it on my own. That I’d work my way through Uni.”

  “Okay,” I repeated, still confused by the strange topic and also trying to keep up with his moves which had become more complicated.

  “It wasn’t quite as easy to find work as I thought, but eventually I got a gig as a dancer,” he said, spun me again, pulled me in and as we swayed to the music he murmured in my ear, “Exotic.”

  I stumbled which made him press me closer to his lean body, and I felt his chest shaking a little, but I couldn’t get a word out. Did he just say what I thought he did? And did it mean what I thought he meant?

  I raised my eyes, but he replied before I could ask, which was good because I did not trust my voice.

  “Yeah, it means exactly what you think.” He started shimmying his shoulders, moving up and down slightly, and then he bent me backward, leaning over me. “I was a stripper,” he said calmly and started bringing us up again.

  “Uh…” I said and looked into his dark eyes that were twinkling with barely contained mirth. I cleared my throat. “Does your brother know?” I whispered.

  “Where do you think he met Bo?” was Miller’s laconic reply.

  Oh.

  “Hawker?” I asked. I didn’t look at the man in question, convinced that he didn’t know and if he saw the look on my face he’d find out.

  “Sure,” Miller said, and I blinked. “He performed there too, though just once.”

  Oh. My. God.

  I had absolutely no clue what to say. The thought of Hawker on a stage, undressing to music in front of a crowd, was mind-boggling.

  “It was years later. Hawk lost a bet, and a few of us made him go there and get on stage.” He was silent for a while, and I could tell that he was struggling to keep a straight face. “We couldn’t make him wear the thong,” he said, and then he couldn’t hold his amusement back.

  Holy cow. Hawker had stripped in a club in Prosper. I did not think Wilder had a clue.

  “Thong?” I said stupidly.

  “He had boxer briefs.”

  Miller made a spin, and when he was facing me again, he added, “Latex.”

  I blinked.

  “Red with white snowflakes,” Miller clarified, and spun around again before he pulled me back into his arms, and concluded, “After all, it was Christmas.”

  I started laughing, but it sounded strangled. Surely he was making all of this up?

  “Not kidding.” He read my thoughts, or more likely my face, accurately.

  That only made me laugh harder, and he had to press me closer to keep me on my feet, but he laughed with me.

  When we had calmed down, he pulled me deep into his arms and bent his head down. I felt his goatee scrape my cheek and then he whispered, “I know he scares you, Jinx, but he’s not dangerous. Not to you. Next time he gives you one of his glares, just think about him on that stage, uncomfortable as all hell, women screaming and throwing money at him… and all that’s covering his junk is a pair of red latex briefs with a snowflake pattern.”

  I understood then why he’d told me that story and even though I was still laughing, I was also immensely grateful. He’d just given me the tools I needed to handle Hawker Johns. I got up on my toes and pressed my cheek to his. “Thank you, Miller,” I murmured, and he squeezed my hips slightly to communicate that he heard me. I leaned back to look at him, but then a loud whoop echoed behind me. I twisted around so that my back was pressed to Miller’s chest and watched Bozo sashay toward us across the floor, followed by a grinning Snow.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Oh, shit it’s you

  “Can I have a word, Jinx?” Daniele said.

  He looked serious, and the way he put his question made it not so much a question as a firm request.

  “Okay,” I said, got up from the grass where I’d been sitting with Joe, and walked toward him.

  “I added up the donations,” he said.

  Oh-oh. I’d known they’d guess who the amount I’d donated the evening before came from but had counted on them not wanting to hurt my feelings, so I hadn’t expected anyone to bring it up.

  “Okay,” I repeated, as we moved up on Dante’s back patio.

  There was a long silence, and I studiously kept my eyes firmly on the rather straggly bushes at the back of the small garden. Neither Dante nor Snow seemed to be interested in gardening, I thought and wondered if Mrs. C would tell what needed to be done. I could do some of the things, and perhaps –

  “I’m going to have to give it back to you,” Danny murmured next to me.

  Hell, no. That was not going to happen.

  I turned my head slowly until I faced him, and said calmly, “Give back what?”

  I raised my right eyebrow slightly and tilted my head just a little to the side. Uncertainty passed over Danny’s face, and I suddenly thought about all the flack I’d gotten for being a crappy actress. Apparently, I wasn’t quite as bad at it as they all seemed to think.

  “I know it was from you,” Danny insisted. “No one in this village would have that kind of mon
ey, and even if they did, they wouldn’t donate all of it.”

  I held his gaze, and the determination in his eyes told me that I wouldn’t get away from the discussion we apparently were about to have.

  “Donate what you can,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “That’s what Mrs. C said the rules were, Danny,” I continued. “So I did.”

  “Jinx, no one meant that you should empty your bank account. That you even carry that kind of money around is something else we need to discuss,” he said, and I almost started laughing because he sounded very much like the father he was.

  “I calculated it, Danny,” I explained patiently. “How much would the others in the village donate?” I asked, and he was about to answer, but I went on, “I assumed it would be on average something that was roughly equivalent to their monthly income?”

  He stared at me, and his mouth fell open.

  “Is that what you earn each month?” he whispered.

  Actually, it wasn’t. I was what I’d assumed would be needed in the months I'd planned to stay in Marshes. When I left Prosper, things had been rushed, and I had no clue what to pay for room and board, but I guessed my room would be about the same as my condo back in the city. I’d assumed I’d have to eat at restaurants three times each day and I’d added it up, rounding it quite generously upward to cover for other living expenses. When Mrs. C had told me about the donations, I realized that I hadn’t thought about the money since I arrived. I’d paid Mrs. C two months in advance, and had vaguely registered that the amount was ridiculously low but apart from that I hadn’t thought more about it.

  “Are you crazy?” I asked evasively, feeling uncomfortable. I’d known that my envelope would be thicker than some of the others’, but I hadn’t expected to have to explain myself.

  “Jinx,” Danny murmured, and I could see that he wouldn’t give in.

  “No, Danny, it isn’t what I earn each month. It’s what I make from my patents in a week, okay?” I snapped, annoyed with him for pushing me into a corner I had no desire to be in. “But you don’t understand… I get all this money, every month it just falls into my bank account, and I don’t deserve it. I never asked for it, not really, but I have license agreements with a couple of companies, and I made them give me a small amount for each piece of equipment they sell with my technology in it. I explained what I would have done with the solutions if I’d been the one commercializing them, and they followed my advice. So, yeah, now they’re selling like crazy, and a tiny fraction of what they earn goes into my savings account. I tried to change it because it didn’t feel right to get all that money when I don’t do anything, but they thought it was a joke so they just laughed at me and I felt stupid. Didn’t want to tell them I was serious.”