No Judgments: A Novel (Little Bridge Island Book 1)

Time: 5:17 A.M.

Temperature: 80ºF

Wind Speed: 19 MPH

Wind Gust: 35 MPH

Precipitation: 0.6 in.

Emergency Disaster Survival Kit Basics—Home

Gasoline

Propane

Coolers

Gloves

Garbage bags

Battery-charged radio

Batteries

Flashlights

Tools such as utility knife, machete, power drill, chain saw

By dawn the next morning, the wind had picked up noticeably. It was still warm—it was always warm on Little Bridge Island—but the bamboo that Lydia had planted outside our bedroom windows for privacy was beginning to beat against the shutters, as rhythmically as drums.

When I stepped out to get the paper—Daniella insisted on getting home delivery of The Gazette, Little Bridge’s local paper, and I never complained, because every morning over my coffee I liked reading about which of my customers at the café had been busted for DUI—I could see that some of the pink and white blossoms on the frangipani had been sent skittering across the courtyard, piling up against our front door, where they lay like inert ballerinas, their tutus deflated.

The mockingbird was still on his usual perch in the treetop, however, singing his heart out, hoping to attract a mate. So things couldn’t be that bad.

The staff of the newspaper had decided to go for a less than subtle approach with their morning headline: “GET OUT!” screamed the front page, with a photo of motorists lined up along the highway out of Little Bridge.

The morning news shows weren’t any less emphatic. Basically, anyone in the path of Marilyn was still on a road to their demise. There was little to no news from Cuba, over which the slow-moving storm had just passed. All power and communication from there had been lost. The eye of the storm would soon be chugging its way across the Florida Straits on a direct course for the U.S.

We were, as my mother had assured me, all going to die.

I let Gary out to perform his morning ablutions (they included chewing on the few blades of grass that grew beneath the frangipani, and then rolling in the dirt), then let him back inside, gave him his antibiotics for his now toothless gums, fed him, and headed out to the café. I took my bike instead of the scooter since I still wanted to save on gas, and also because they’d said on the news that there would be rain bands on and off all day.

As I pedaled across the quiet, sleepy town, I marveled once again at how many homes had been boarded up, seemingly overnight. I didn’t spot a single one with bare glass showing.

Until I got to the café, that is. There, the boarding process was only just under way. And the person in charge of it was someone I recognized only too well. Someone who wasn’t wearing a shirt.

“Hi,” Drew Hartwell said in a flat voice as I hopped off my bike.

“It’s good to see you, too.”

I pushed down my kickstand with my heel and snaked my lock between my bike frame and the rack, keeping my back toward him. His truck, I noted, was the only vehicle in the parking lot this early. Not even Ed was at work yet.

Drew didn’t reply, merely lifted his drill and sent another bit through the metal grid that secured the shutters he was using to cover the café’s large windows.

“How’s Socks?” I asked, still keeping my gaze pointedly averted from his shirtless chest.

“You mean Bob.”

Now I had to glance at him, because I was confused. “No. I mean Rick’s dog, Socks.”

“He’s my dog now,” Drew said, “and I’ve renamed him Bob. He went through a really bad time, but he’s got a new life now, so I figured he should have a new name to go along with it.”

I was a little startled by this, more by how similar it felt to my own life than anything else. I’d dyed my hair pink and started calling myself Bree, not Sabrina, to represent my new life in Little Bridge . . . or at least, my new life in Little Bridge for now.

It made sense to me that a dog who’d gone through a bad time ought to have a new name, as well, as long as he wasn’t too attached to his old one. Gary had been found as a stray on the streets by volunteers for the animal shelter. They’d decided to call him Gary, and the name seemed to fit him. I hadn’t even considered changing it, since he came cheerfully when called.

But why not change an abused dog’s name to something different to represent his new, better life?

“Well,” I said. The man really did look great without a shirt on. There was no denying it. “That’s good. As long as he’s happy.”

“He seemed very happy,” Drew said, “when I left him this morning. He’d taken over my bed with all my other dogs. I’ll be lucky to get it back, I guess.” He drilled another screw.

Well. This told me something else about Drew Hartwell. He let his dogs sleep in his bed.

Not that this was a bad thing. I let my cat sleep in my bed.

But Gary was only one cat. Drew now had four dogs. It seemed as if things were getting fairly crowded in Drew Hartwell’s bed.

Wait. Why was I even thinking of Drew Hartwell’s bed? I was on a mancation. I wasn’t even supposed to be interested in that kind of stuff. I was only supposed to be working and painting and enjoying a healthy Little Bridge lifestyle. Get it together, Bree!

My conversation with Drew Hartwell seemingly at an end thanks to the scream of his drill, I opened up the café and went to work writing the specials on the chalkboards, as I’d promised Angela I would, minding my own business and paying no attention whatsoever to the extremely good-looking shirtless man putting up the shutters outside the place.

At least, that’s what I told myself. Truthfully, I might have slipped him a glance or two. I definitely overpoured more than a few cups of coffee as I watched him bend over to pick up more screws, and once I accidentally gave the mayor over easy instead of sunny-side-up eggs.

By the eight A.M. hurricane update—when the place was as packed as I’d ever seen it—Drew had mercifully finished shuttering everything except the front door. We had to hang a handwritten sign (Come on in! We’re open!) so people would know there was life inside (although the lights were on, and there was cold AC blowing). This was a relief, not only because he put his shirt back on, but also because I could once again concentrate on my work.

Still, the eight o’clock update was grim. Reports had finally begun to roll in from Cuba. A ten-foot storm surge had taken nine lives so far. The storm was now only two hundred miles away and though winds had dropped to “only” Category 2 level (as Lucy Hartwell had predicted, the mountains of Cuba had taken a lot of energy out of the storm), forecasters expected Marilyn to gather strength over the warm waters between Cuba and the Keys, then hit coastal Florida with “possibly unprecedented strength, causing imminent death.”

Many of the old-timers, upon hearing this, lifted their beers (it was never too early for beer at the Mermaid) in a toast. “To our imminent deaths!”

But this turned out not to be as humorous as they thought when it was reported that, even though the storm hadn’t yet arrived, there’d already been a death in Little Bridge attributed to Marilyn.

“You guys, I was already called to the scene of an accident out on Highway One,” Ryan Martinez, one of the sheriff’s deputies, came in to breakfast to announce. “An evacuee, in a panic to leave town before the rains hit, had a stress-induced heart attack at the wheel, then drove his vehicle straight into the mangroves. He drowned before emergency personnel could get to him.”

“More people die evacuating from hurricanes than from the actual hurricanes themselves,” Ed informed us gravely.

“True.” His shuttering complete, Drew had come inside to enjoy his usual (Spanish omelet, only he’d added a side of real bacon, most likely since he’d expended so many calories lifting the heavy metal panels). “But don’t most deaths occur in the aftermath of storms, from flooding?”

“Yes,” Ryan said. “But that’s not going to happen here. The sheriff’s got me and the other guys helping him set up cots over at the high school as a shelter of last resort for anyone who hasn’t been able to evacuate and feels they might be in danger. High school’s on high ground and built to withstand Cat Five winds. I think we’re gonna have quite a crowd in there.”

I was listening closely. “What about pets?” I asked. “Will you take people with pets?”

“Of course. Me and my girlfriend are going to hunker down there with this fine lady for the duration.”

At the words “this fine lady,” Ryan softly tapped the lowest rung of the stool he was sitting on, and his canine partner—a beautiful and sweet-natured German shepherd who’d been dozing peacefully at his feet—alertly lifted her head and gave her long, fringed tail a wag.

The dog’s sweet nature was deceptive, however. I’d once seen her lock hold of the wrist of a diner fleeing without paying his bill and refuse to release it until Ryan gave her the command.

“We were going to spend this weekend in Orlando at my cousin’s wedding,” Ryan went on, “but duty calls. This’ll be more fun, anyway.”

“Only a cop would consider a hurricane more fun than a wedding,” Angela whispered to me in passing, rolling her eyes, and we both laughed.

As the day wore on, the crowd at the café began to thin out, even the island’s hardiest charter boat captains beginning to take the order to evacuate seriously. Everyone began going home to make sure their houses and boats were secured against the expected 130-mile-an-hour winds.

By one o’clock, the place was empty—save for a few of the regular afternoon barflies—and dark, thanks to the shutters and the fact that the sky had become so gray and overcast. Thunder rumbled in the distance—though there was no visible lightning—and the wind was stronger than ever, thirty miles per hour, with gusts of up to fifty, according to the Weather Channel.

“Anyone left in the Florida Keys,” a reporter stationed in Key West cheerfully said into his microphone as wind and surf buffeted him, “must surely have a death wish.”

“Go on home,” Ed said to me and Angela gruffly, switching off both TVs. “I’m gonna close up early today. I’ll pay you through the rest of your shift, though.”

Angela and I eyed each other uncertainly. Although Ed and his wife happily paid their employees’ insurance, they had never, in all the time I’d known them, let us off early with pay.

“Are . . . are you sure, Ed?” Angela asked.

He’d grunted, giving the counter a swipe with his favorite striped dish towel. “No sense staying open for the lunch and dinner shifts today when it’s just gonna be dead like this.” He’d already kicked out the barflies, who’d shuffled amiably off to Ron’s Place, a bar up the street that had never, in anyone’s memory, closed due to weather. “No one’ll be comin’ in anyways once it starts rainin’.”

With Angela hurrying off to her mother’s and no other hurricane parties to go to, I had nothing else to do, so I took Ed up on his offer, pedaling home to feed Gary, have lunch, and make sure all of my belongings were sitting at least a foot off the floor in the event of flooding.

At least, that’s what my plan was until I finally got to my place after battling the wind—which I expected to be much more oppressive than it was, but at this stage was more like riding against the stream of a blow dryer set on cool—and opened the heavy wooden gate to the courtyard to wheel my bike inside . . . and froze.

The frangipani tree that for the entire time I’d lived there had provided shade and, at least part of the year, beauty and fragrance from its blossoms, was gone.

Well, not gone, exactly, but completely uprooted and lying on its side, as if someone had chopped it down, leaving pink blossoms scattered everywhere.

But no one had chopped it down. Its root-ball was facing the gate, leaving a deep, gaping hole in the courtyard floor, while its distressingly broken branches were pressed up obscenely against the doors and windows (fortunately shuttered) to both my apartment as well as Lydia and Sonny’s and Patrick and Bill’s, as if crying, “Let me in! Let me in!”

But thankfully, none of us had been home at the time it had blown over. At least, I didn’t think so. Except for the wind, which continued to lazily sweep the frangipani blossoms back and forth across the tiles, the courtyard was completely still. The mockingbird that for so long had perched atop the tree and sung its little heart out was gone.

Most of the birds on the island, in fact, seemed to be gone. I could hear no birdsong. Clearly, they sensed something instinctively that I did not.

“Crap,” I said aloud. Because I could see no way in which I was going to be able to carve a path through those twisted roots and broken branches—some of them oozing a sticky white liquid—back into my apartment. Not without the aid of a saw. Or possibly a bulldozer. I was locked out of my place until help, in some form, arrived.

Which was bad—really, really bad—because Gary was in there. Sweet, helpless Gary.

I whipped out my cell phone, snapped a shot of the fallen tree, and sent the photo along with a few urgent texts to both my landlady and to Patrick and Bill, then stood there and . . . waited.

What else could I do? I didn’t have any tools, or access to any, and it didn’t seem like the kind of thing to call 911 over when what few emergency personnel we had left on the island were already so stressed with real emergencies. Over and over on the Weather Channel they’d shown clips of the governor saying that anyone who chose not to evacuate was taking their life into their own hands, and not to expect rescue from emergency services, who were evacuating themselves or were already overloaded with real emergencies (which this was not . . . yet).

But of course, this would be a real emergency soon—to me, anyway—if I couldn’t get in to save Gary.

And what about Patrick and Bill? It didn’t look as if they were home—surely if they were they’d have heard the tree fall and be trying to open their door.

But what about Sonny’s guinea pigs?

When no one texted me back in ten minutes I knew what I had to do, even though I really didn’t want to.

I didn’t bother texting him, because Ed was so anti–cell phones. Instead I called him at his home, on his landline. The Hartwells were some of the few people I knew who still had one.

He answered on the second ring. “This is Ed.”

“Hi, Ed,” I said, trying not to sound as desperate as I felt. “It’s me, Bree. I’m really sorry to bother you, but a tree—a really big tree—has fallen across the courtyard of my apartment building and is blocking my door, and the doors to some of my neighbors. I think a wind gust must have blown it over. Anyway, I can’t get in, and my cat is inside, and I think—”

Ed’s voice was sharp with interest. I’d forgotten how much he loved any kind of crisis, especially if it allowed him to use large tools. “A big tree, you say? How big?”

I eyed the tree. How was I supposed to know how big the tree was? I was no arborist. “Really big. Twenty feet, maybe?”

He sounded disappointed. “That’s not so big.”

“Well, it looks like it just flopped over, roots and all—”

Ed sounded more interested. “Root rot. Probably from all the rain last night. Okay, you stay put, we’ll be right over. Where are you again?”

I thanked him and gave him the address. It wasn’t until I hung up that I realized what he’d said . . . we’ll be right over.

We who?

And sure enough, less than five minutes later, Ed Hartwell arrived in a battered red pickup that I recognized as belonging to his nephew . . . with that same nephew driving.

No. Oh, no.

I tried not to notice how enticingly male Drew looked as he swung from the truck, his white linen shirt half-unbuttoned due to the oppressive heat, revealing illicit glimpses of that taut brown stomach and chest.

I especially tried not to notice as he grabbed one of the biggest chain saws I’d ever seen out of the back of his truck. I told myself not to pay attention to how naturally he held it, or how good he looked with it. I mean, a chain saw? Since when was I attracted to men who carried chain saws?

“I don’t know how it happened,” I babbled as the two men walked over. “The tree was fine this morning when I left. And then when I walked in a little while ago after work, it was like this—”

I gestured at the tree. Drew whistled appreciatively at its size.

“Definitely root rot.” Ed, inspecting the damage, sounded more excited than I’d ever heard him. “Rains last night must’ve soaked it, and these wind gusts we’ve been having pushed the whole thing right over. Some of ’em have gotten up to fifty miles per hour, which isn’t that much comparatively, but for a tree with roots like this—” He touched one of the branches, which snapped off in his hand but oozed an unctuous liquid. He shook his head. “This tree is sick. It got too big for the space it was planted in. Not enough permeable surface for its roots to absorb moisture and grow. Even if we pushed it back in, it would just fall over again in the next big windstorm. Tree commission should never have allowed it to be planted here in the first place.”

Yes. Little Bridge Island had a tree commission. No one was allowed to cut down, plant, or trim a tree without its permission. The “Cheers and Jeers” section of the Gazette was often devoted exclusively to savage personal attacks on citizens who’d done a hack job on their trees.

“Lucky you weren’t inside,” Drew commented laconically to me.

“Yes,” I said, keeping my gaze carefully averted from his open shirtfront. “But my cat is inside. Apartment B, right there, with all those branches pressed up against the door? Oh, and my landlady’s son’s guinea pigs are in A. Someone is supposed to be coming over to take care of them, but I don’t know how he’s going to—”

“Easy.”

Then Drew pulled the chain on his saw, and it started right up—so loud that I flung my hands over my ears.

“Do you have to—?”

Grinning, he began to hack away at the branches blocking access to my front door.

“You want to see your cat again, right?” he shouted over the din. “Then the answer is yes, I have to.”

I glared at him. I would have liked to present a calmer, cooler, more collected self in the crisis, but I wasn’t used to people starting chain saws right next to me. Especially people who looked like he did, with his muscles gleaming with sweat, and his five o’clock shadow darkening his jawline.

Things got even worse a few seconds later, when he took his shirt off. Apparently, the heat and humidity simply became too much for him.

“Here,” he said, distractedly handing the limp, damp garment to me. “Mind finding a place for that?”

It wouldn’t have mattered if I did mind, I thought as I took the shirt between a thumb and forefinger. I needed to play nice with him, since he was the one with the chain saw. And not just for myself. Though I’d heard back from Patrick and Bill that they and their dogs were safe—they had already checked in to the hotel—Sonny’s mother had sent a frantic text in response to my voice mail:

No gas. Staying w/friends in Vero Beach. Cousin Sean says he will look after the piggies if you can have tree removed. So sorry, save all bills for me! Much luv, Lydia

So it was up to me to save Gary as well as R2-D2 and C-3PO.

Well, me and this half-naked, hard-muscled guy in my courtyard.

“There,” Drew said, in a satisfied tone, switching off the saw. He’d made short work of the frangipani, clipping away the branches blocking all the doors in what seemed like seconds. “That should work for now. Anything else I can do for you, Fresh Water?”

Was there anything else he could do for me? Was he serious?

I blinked at him as he stood there, holding the heavy chain saw, his tanned, well-muscled arms and chest glistening with even more sweat than before, which was odd because the sky was really quite overcast.

Why, yes. Yes, actually, there was quite a lot he could do for me. He could run that razor-stubbled mouth of his all down my—

God, what was wrong with me?

“No,” I said quickly, shaking myself. “No, no, thanks. Thanks so much, both of you, for helping me.” All of my attention had been so focused on shirtless Drew, I’d practically forgotten that Ed was still standing there, too. “I’m so grateful. I’m sure you want to get going—” Please, please get going. “Unless . . .”

Was I being rude? What was the correct protocol when a shirtless man and his uncle came to your house and removed a bunch of tree limbs with a chain saw so you could get inside it?

“Could I, er, get you a drink first? I think I might have some beer in my—”

Before the words were fully out of my mouth, Drew was already setting down the chain saw. Then he took his shirt from my hand, threw it over his shoulder, and strode toward my front door. “Sure. Beer would be great.”

This was not the outcome I’d been expecting.

“I gotta go,” Ed was saying as he looked down at his cell phone—on which, it turned out, he did know how to both send and receive texts. “Lu needs me to pick up more of that smoked barbecue sauce at Frank’s while they’re still open. I guess she just likes me wasting gas when there’s a shortage.”

Drew tossed him a glance. “You’re wasting my gas because you’re in my truck, Ed.”

Ed waved at him dismissively. “I’ll be right back. I’ll pick up more beer, too, if they have any left.”

I watched in some dismay as he left. Don’t, I wanted to cry. Please don’t leave me alone with your hot shirtless nephew.

Especially as the sky was looking more and more overcast, thunder rumbling more often, and the wind getting stronger . . . strong enough that it was picking up all the blossoms that had shaken loose from the branches of the frangipani tree and was sending them spiraling around the courtyard in a desperately sad ballet.

But of course I couldn’t tell him not to go. So instead, my fingers unaccountably shaky, I merely undid the locks and led Drew Hartwell into the cool air-conditioning of my apartment.

“Sorry about the mess,” I babbled. “My roommate’s out of town so I haven’t been bothering to clean up after myself—”

Gary rocketed toward us like a furry gray missile, giving me an indignant meow for having been gone so long, then buried his head against Drew’s work-booted feet.

“Whoa,” Drew said, looking down.

“Oh, that’s Gary.” I noticed my bra from last night lying on the floor, swiftly lifted it, and stuffed it between the sofa cushions before he noticed. “He does that to everyone. I got him from the shelter, he’d been there for years. They don’t know what happened to him before that, they think he was abandoned and lived on the streets for a while. All his teeth rotted out, so I had to have them removed.” I was babbling, but I couldn’t help it. Drew Hartwell was in my apartment. “He’s attention starved.”

“I can tell.” Drew stooped to rub Gary’s head with an outstretched index finger. “Hey, there, Gary,” he said, as Gary purred, contorting himself in absolute ecstasy around Drew’s foot. “You’re a good boy.”

“I’ll . . . I’ll just get you a beer.”

I hurried into the kitchen, trying not to freak out over the fact that Drew Hartwell—Drew Hartwell—was in my apartment, shirtless, being nice to my cat.

“Thanks,” I heard Drew say, from the living room. “And then you better start getting your stuff together. Yours and whatever you need for Gary, here.”

I popped back out from the kitchen, two cold bottles of beer in my hands, not sure I’d heard him correctly. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Your stuff,” Drew said pleasantly, reaching out to take one of the bottles from me. “You should start getting some stuff together. Because I’m taking you back home with me.”