Sweet Water

by Lena North

  “Maybe, but you made it easier.”

  “Not a problem,” he murmured, and went on, “Why don’t you call me when you’re back in Prosper? We could have dinner and, eh, discuss your friend?”

  I turned slowly and stared at the phone. Did he just try to wiggle a date out of me?

  Mrs. Fratinelli made a snorting sound under her breath, and to my surprise, the skin around her eyes crinkled a little as if she found him as amusing as I did.

  “I might just do that, Jamie,” I laughed. “Don’t know when that’ll be, though.”

  “Okay,” he chuckled, “I’ll stop by if I’m passing by Marshes.”

  “Yeah, you do that,” I replied.

  We closed the call, and I turned, only to find myself staring straight into a small pale blue button. A broad chest stretched out in front of me, so close my nose almost touched the shirt, and I took a small step back in surprise, stumbling a little.

  Dante had apparently walked into the room, and when I sidestepped, he held out an arm to steady me, something that unfortunately jarred my ribs. I flinched, and he caught the small grimace even though I tried to cover it up quickly.

  “I heard from the men that you’ve hurt yourself,” he rumbled.

  “No,” I said, which was stupid.

  “Don’t be an idiot, we can all see the bruises through your shirt.”

  Mrs. Fratinelli made a small sound, but my focus was on the man in front of me. I couldn’t understand why he suddenly seemed angry, so I tried to downplay my injuries.

  “It’s nothing,” I said calmly.

  “The men didn’t think so. Can I have a look please,” he replied just as calmly.

  “No,” I said, which he completely ignored.

  The buttons of my shirt were opened with swift movements, and then he leaned down to survey my ribcage. I looked down too and thought that it didn’t look all that bad. The ugly red and blue welts had faded into a yellow and blueish, almost green, mark, stretching from the pit of my arm, under my utilitarian bra, and all the way to my waist. He sighed and started probing my ribs.

  “This happened a while ago. Who did this to you?” Dante said to which I replied absolutely nothing because it was none of his goddamn business.

  “Is it getting better?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said flippantly and pulled at my shirt until he let go of it. “I keep them wrapped up, and they’re healing.”

  He turned me around and started buttoning up my shirt again, but as he did, he touched my belly. A searing pain speared through me and I couldn’t hold back a small gasp.

  “Your stomach hurts?” he murmured and looked at me with raised eyebrows.

  “It’s been a couple of difficult hours. I’ll be going back to Mrs. Fratinelli’s house now and take a shower,” I replied and then I walked out of there.

  I felt like a coward but the way Dante looked at me was strange somehow, and I wasn’t sure what to think about it. His eyes were a pale, silvery gray, and Wilder and Mac had often talked about how sweet and funny he was. The few times I’d met Dante, he'd looked hard and angry, though, and it felt as if he didn’t want me in the village. I wondered if he was the contact Mac had called, guessing that it probably was. Making me live with Mrs. Fratinelli might be Dante’s way of trying to get me to leave, I thought with a silent chuckle.

  Outside, the street was empty. The crowd that gathered before had dispersed, and I was just about to turn toward the center of the village when I realized that the house was still open, my computer was there, and tools and other things would be laying around. With a sigh, I turned and started walking toward the work site on legs that were surprisingly shaky.

  I was mostly done when Tony joined me. Without a word, he carried the heavier tools into the shed they were stored in. We worked together in silence until everything was locked up, and then we started walking back to the village, he pulled my laptop bag out of my hand.

  “We owe you, Jinx,” he suddenly said.

  “Not at all,” I replied calmly.

  Saving a life wasn’t done for debts and balances, I thought, so there was nothing to thank me for. I was the one who was grateful, for the education I had but never used, for my friend at the hospital in Prosper, for the good graces who made sure there was antivenom in the doc’s cabinet. I’d just been the tool to make it all come together.

  “Yes, we do,” he insisted. “There are two men in this village we can’t afford to lose and today you saved the life of one of them. So, yes. We do owe you. We have no way of clearing that debt, but you should know that we all know.”

  Chapter Four

  Out of reach

  Things changed that day when Daniele got bit by a Riverseed snake, and I’d been busy before, but it had been nothing compared to how things became. Word came back quickly from Prosper that Daniele would not only make it but thanks to the swift actions we’d taken, he was expected to make a quick and full recovery. The following days it seemed like everyone in the village approached me as soon as I walked out of Mrs. Fratinelli’s house.

  I’d been left alone until then, and had spent my days working, in the lab or on the bed in my little room. After the snake incident, it seemed like I was invited to drink coffee every time my eyes met someone else’s, even if we’d never exchanged a single word before. I felt awkward, and my belly hurt from all the coffee, but it would have been be rude and unpleasant to say no, so I spent plenty of time discussing the details around what I had done. From there the conversations invariably moved to clothes if there were mostly women around me, or engine problems if a few men had joined the gathering.

  In addition to the medical miracle I couldn’t make them understand that I hadn’t performed, information about my engineering capabilities had somehow gotten out and this was apparently interpreted to mean that I was good at fixing up old cars and motorcycles. Since these were relatively simple machines, I had no problems at all discussing it, even though I’d technically never actually laid my hands on any kind of motor running on fossil-based fuel.

  I stitched up a hand when one of the women cut herself in the kitchen and treated a small burn on a young boy who had played with matches. I met the doctor when he came the week after and Jamie had apparently talked sternly to him because he was in awe, huffing and humming. Once his office and medical cabinet were repaired, he handed me a spare set of keys, and it didn’t help at all that I repeatedly told him that I had no license and was not actually a doctor.

  “You are now,” he said when he came the second Wednesday, and handed me a small piece of plastic-covered paper.

  I stared at the photo-identification, clearly stating that Jiminella Nixée Sweetwater, MD, was licensed to practice medicine anywhere in our country. Then I whipped out my phone.

  “What the hell have you done?” I snapped when Jamie picked up.

  “Ah,” he murmured. “I guess you got your license?”

  “Jamie, what the hell?” I semi-repeated.

  “You broke into another doctor’s medical cabinet, performed surgery, administered antivenom and put a drip on a man,” he stated.

  I said nothing, and waited for him to continue, even though I’d started to suspect where he was going.

  “I got questions about your license, so I told them that you had forgotten to get it filed. Before I knew what they were doing, one of our administrators had filed it on your behalf, and it got fast-tracked for approval. Ba-da-bing,” he concluded.

  Ba-da-bing indeed.

  “Jamie,” I said weakly.

  “You did good work. Everyone here is überhappy that you finally have the license, but you don’t have to use it, you know,” he told me gently. “Just say no.”

  “Okay,” I murmured, wondering how one said no to someone who was injured.

  And just like that, I was suddenly the resident MD in Marshes. Fortunately, they seemed to be a healthy bunch and mostly went to the Wednesday appointments with Doc Peters so it wouldn’t be a big bother,
I hoped. With everything happening I had less time to spend on the data Kit sent me, and I was starting to lag on the work I’d wanted to do before they brought the crystal to Marshes. I compensated by pushing some of it into the evenings, but I couldn’t seem to catch up.

  I also spent too much time worrying about the two persons in the village who didn’t want me to be there.

  One of them was Dante, which I just couldn’t understand. I’d never met the man before and why he disliked me so much was a complete mystery to me. I heard through gossip that he had been livid about the stitches I'd put in the poor woman’s hand, and when I walked over to Tony to help him with a carburetor issue, Dante had interfered, growling at me to go somewhere else, which I did immediately. I’d still heard him shouting about involving me in business that Tony apparently should have been able to handle just as well on his own.

  That stung but I tried my best to shrug it off. Most villagers seemed to like me so if one of them didn’t, it wasn’t so bad. The fact that Dante appeared to be easygoing and friendly with everyone else hurt, though.

  The other one who clearly disapproved of me was my hostess.

  I’d thanked Mrs. Fratinelli for her help with Daniele, but she just glared at me and sneered that she always did what had to be done. Then she went on to explain how I was spending too much time with all the idiots in the village, that I was too skinny, looked like a ghost and needed to work on my appearance.

  “Even the infatuated doctor won’t like the look of you,” she muttered.

  That made me mad, mostly because she was right, and I snapped that I managed very well. I also asked her to either stay away from my things or give me a key to my room. She stared at me, but since I knew someone had been going through my bags, and the old biddy was the only one who had the opportunity, I glared back at her.

  She didn’t hesitate to retaliate.

  “Why I would look at what seems to be an endless supply of boring white shirts I do not know. We have a store in the village, and I know Martha would appreciate some extra sales. Her son needs braces, and once the construction work on your house is done, her man might find himself out of work again.”

  I closed my mouth with a snap around the angry words I’d already prepared, and thought about what Mrs. Fratinelli was actually telling me. I’d known even before I got to Marshes that money was tight in the village, but thinking about what I’d seen in the past weeks made me realize that things probably were worse than I’d initially assumed.

  Suddenly, I also understood why my hostess let me live in her house when she so clearly didn’t want me there. I had no clue what to say and could see that she would not appreciate it if I commented on her financial situation so, after a few uncomfortable seconds, I murmured that she had a point and that I’d certainly augment my wardrobe later that day.

  Then I fetched my purse and walked down to the beach where I sat down to watch the waves, think about everything that was going on, and plan my next days. After a while, I sighed and got to my feet. It was early afternoon, and I couldn’t waste the day on staring at the ocean when there were so many things to do. I decided to start with getting some new clothes.

  The small store was quite lovely and if I had been the kind of girl who actually liked shopping it would have been heaven. Lucky for me, Martha was friendly and sympathetic to my situation. When I handed her my credit card and asked if she could pick out a few things for me, she squealed, controlled herself and asked solemnly what kind of budget I had.

  Budget? I hadn’t exactly thought about that, but since my patents gave me a substantial income that I never spent on anything I told her to go crazy.

  “How crazy?” she asked tentatively. “A little off the bat, or completely bonkers?”

  “Beyond bonkers, Martha,” I replied, but turned abruptly to flip through some of the blouses when I saw the shine of tears in her eyes.

  Crap, I thought. I’d have to find a way to generate some extra income in this village if the idea of selling me a new wardrobe was such a relief.

  “I have jeans and white shirts, Martha. That’s it. I need everything else,” I said determinedly.

  “I can totally do that, Jinx,” she said with a smile so bright it seemed to light up the whole store.

  “Fantastic,” I said. Grinning wryly, I added, “It would be even more fantastic if I could just leave and come back to pick it up later?”

  She laughed at me but agreed to my request, and I walked out of the store with a sigh of relief.

  That had felt good, and it was probably overdue. Compared to the other women in the village, my clothes seemed boring and plain. Maybe some color would look good.

  Next thing to do was to talk to Dante.

  I had decided that I needed to understand why he disliked me so much, and try to mend what had gone wrong between us. Since we’d exchanged a maximum of twenty words in total, it was still completely baffling that anything could have gone wrong at all, but I had to try.

  I found him in the Mayor's house, going through his father’s papers.

  One of the things I’d learned in the past weeks was that Dante’s dad had passed away just a few weeks before I got to Marshes. I assumed Mac knew about it, and probably Wilder too, but I hadn’t heard, and I felt sorry for Dante. People told me that he’d been close with his parents and now he had neither of them left alive. It had apparently been a sudden heart attack, and the old man had died in his sleep, to be found by his only son the morning after.

  I cleared my throat, and he raised his head slowly. There was such pain in his eyes that I gasped and walked into the room with quick steps.

  “What’s wrong, Dante?” I asked, forgetting that we hadn’t actually been formally introduced and that he so far had seemed to dislike me intensely.

  “I’m going through my father’s papers,” he replied as I sat down opposite him.

  “Okay,” I said and leaned back.

  I watched him patiently, waiting for him to either explain or kick me out. He was quite amazingly handsome, I thought. I didn’t like long hair on a man, but the way he kept it tied back looked good on him. His jaw was strong, and there was a short stubble on it, although not the pretend kind, created by a trimmer set to cut at just the appropriate length. It looked like he’d simply eschewed shaving because he had more important things to do. His eyes were a silvery gray, but they were still somehow warm and comforting. The longer I looked into his eyes, the more I felt like I was sinking into a pool of silence. Of peace. I could drown in them, I thought. He held my gaze, and then suddenly his face softened and his mouth curved.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured.

  I raised my brows, expecting him to explain his strange comment, but instead, he looked down at the papers in front of him. His face hardened again, and after a while, he sighed.

  “It’ll all come out so I might as well tell you,” he muttered, and continued resolutely, “My father died exactly six weeks ago.”

  “Okay,” I repeated, not understanding why he told me something I already knew.

  “He was a good man.”

  I opened my mouth, but he spoke before I got a word out.

  “He told me he’d be accused of things, said someone was plotting against him. He swore to me that he didn’t know and didn’t do anything wrong, and I believed him. But I’ve just found evidence among his papers indicating that he was involved with Paolo Fratinelli,” he said, clenched his jaws, and continued determinedly, “Smuggling drugs.”

  I stared at him, and then I asked carefully, “Indicating?”

  “Proving,” he replied.

  I thought about that for a while, and as I did, I kept watching him. Wilder and Mac both liked and respected this man. The grief he felt was visible on his face, and even though I suspected I knew the answer, I still had to ask.

  “What will you do?”

  “Report it to the authorities, of course,” he replied.

  “You would report incriminati
ng evidence against your father? Your, may I add, dead father?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a sigh.

  “Why?”

  “It’s the right thing to do.”

  He sat there full of grief over his dead father but still prepared to do what was right when it would have been so very easy to choose the alternative. Admirable, I thought, but also – kind of naïve and a little bit ridiculous.

  “Yeah, well,” I started, and continued with a small smile, “Good that you won’t have to.”

  “Of cou –”

  “No, you don’t,” I interrupted. “I can pick the incriminating papers out from the pile in front of you, Dante. Your father was clearly a man who liked good quality, and his papers are thick. One hundred twenty gsm’s, at least, maybe even more. There are a few cheap papers in there, though, and they’re ninety gsm’s or maybe even less. They’re probably not your dad’s.”

  He looked down at the pile of papers in front of him and murmured, “Gsm’s?”

  “Grams per square meter. It refers to the substance weight of paper, relating to an area that remains constant, irrespective of sheet size, and it’s usually expressed as grams per square meter.”

  “Jiminella…” he said, and the corners of his eyes crinkled a little.

  Why was he suddenly laughing at me?

  “I still can’t prove that it isn’t his papers though,” Dante said.

  “Wilder saw Paolo put papers in your father’s drawers so, yes you can, if you absolutely have to,” I retorted. “She won’t want to tell anyone about it, though, because she was lurking around at night, seeing all kinds of crap.” He had straightened and stared at me, but my mouth just kept talking, “Do you know the older man with the weird beard?”

  “Uncle Marco? Yeah, of course, I know him,” he snorted. “He’s the one who has pushed me to start going through my father’s things. I think he might accept to be mayor and he’s older, wiser, so maybe it’s better –”

  “Well, he’s doing his sister in law, so he can’t be that wise,” I blurted out.