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

Time: 2:53 P.M.

Temperature: 79ºF

Wind Speed: 37 MPH

Wind Gust: 55 MPH

Precipitation: 1.2 in.

He was right. I should have listened to my mother.

But not about fleeing ahead of the hurricane that was heading my way. She’d once told me to look out for guys like Drew Hartwell . . . well, not him, exactly, but “artistic types.”

And what else could you call a carpenter who not only restored old homes and furniture but had built his own, on one of the most hurricane-prone beaches in the world?

Doctors, lawyers, financiers, any kind of business owner . . . fine with Mom. But pursuing a relationship with an artistic guy was almost as bad, to her, as pursuing an art career yourself.

Not that I was pursuing a relationship with Drew Hartwell. I was merely stuck in a truck with him.

Even worse, it had begun to rain in earnest. Large, leaden drops fell like bullets on the pickup.

“Great,” I said, staring sullenly at the boarded-up windows of the houses we drove by. There was absolutely no one else on the street. The entire town might as well have been deserted.

“What?”

“Nothing. Except that now I have to ride my scooter back in the rain.”

He glanced at me. “Didn’t you bring your raincoat?”

“No, I did not bring my raincoat. You rushed me out of there so fast, I didn’t have time to grab it.”

“This is a hurricane, Fresh Water,” he said, sounding amused. “You’re supposed to always have—”

“Well, I don’t!”

He slammed on the brakes. We were in front of my apartment building. Since I’d been unable to get my seat belt buckled back in the Hartwells’ driveway, I would have gone sailing into the dashboard if he hadn’t thrust out a strong arm to stop me.

“Thanks,” I said, uncomfortably aware of how hard the muscles and bones of his arm felt against the softness of my breasts. Uncomfortable, of course, because I liked it.

He, however, didn’t seem to notice. His arm moved past me.

“Stay here,” he said, as he fumbled for something in the glove compartment.

“Why?” I was confused. What he’d been fumbling for turned out to be a clear plastic rain poncho, which he unfolded, then tugged over himself. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to go get your scooter,” he said, turning those too bright blue eyes on me as the rain suddenly came pouring down in buckets all around us. “I’ll throw it in the back of the truck.”

Then, before I could say a word in reply, he stepped out into the silver, streaming rain, slamming the door behind him.

“What?” I watched as he strode toward my scooter, the only such vehicle sitting forlornly in my building’s parking space meant for motorized bikes. “Wait. You can’t— What are you—?”

I flung open the passenger door and was met by a flash of lightning, followed quickly by a clap of thunder.

I didn’t care.

Nor did I care about the hard, stinging rain that quickly soaked my T-shirt and shorts, or the leaves that were being flung about by the wind and slapped against my legs, arms, and face. All I cared about was not allowing Drew Hartwell to do anything nice for me, because then I’d owe him something.

“Wait,” I cried, rushing up to him as he expertly rolled my scooter off its kickstand. “You don’t have to do this. I was only kidding. I’m happy to ride—”

His classy clear plastic rain poncho had a hood, but the wind was so strong it had blown it back, so his dark hair was already plastered to his head. “Get back in the truck.”

“But I—”

Another flash of lightning, followed by another crash of thunder, this one much louder than the last. I felt it reverberate in my chest. Being outside in this weather was probably not a good idea.

Riding a scooter in it was probably an even worse one.

“Get back in the truck,” he roared.

I wouldn’t, however. I hurriedly opened the back of the truck and rearranged the oddities I found there so my scooter would fit—the fishing coolers, toolboxes, shrimp boots, and other assorted paraphernalia of Drew Hartwell’s life, including, for some reason, several folding lawn chairs and, of course, the chain saw.

Then I helped him lift the bike into the bed of the truck, even though he kept roaring at me to stop, that he could handle it.

But I knew how much that thing weighed. Even though it was a small scooter—barely street legal in some states at 50cc, and so not requiring a motorcycle license to drive—it took both our efforts to haul it onto the truck.

He was seething by the time we both climbed damply back into our seats.

“I thought I told you to stay in the truck,” he said.

“Well, I thought I told you that I could handle it on my own.”

“You were going to try to ride that thing, in this?” He gestured at the rain that was now pummeling the windshield in sheets. We could barely see three feet in front of us. The high winds were sending leaves, including whole branches, sailing across the street. I thought I saw some of the frangipani blossoms sail by, even though we were parked beyond the high walls that surrounded the courtyard to my apartment building.

“I would have been fine,” I insisted, “if you’d have let me grab my rain gear. I’ve ridden in worse weather than this.”

This was a lie. I’d never seen weather this bad.

And I hated riding in the rain on my scooter. I didn’t like how slick the yellow lines of the road felt under my wheels. I was no road warrior.

Drew shook his head. He’d evidently seen through my lie. “Now do you see why I said to always bring your raincoat?”

“Well, you could have loaned me yours, and then all of this would have been avoided. I’d be back at your aunt’s by now, and you’d be on your way back to your beach house to fulfill your death wish.”

He gave me a sour look as I struggled to buckle my seat belt.

“Look,” he said. “You know how you feel about those cloud paintings of yours? That’s how I feel about my house. I can’t just leave it. I’d like to, but I can’t. I’ve worked too hard on it, and I love it.”

I didn’t feel like it would be a good idea to remind him that my paintings were one of the last things I’d thought to pack. He seemed to have a slightly idealized notion of me as an artist.

I would have liked to live up to this vision, but I knew the truth: I’d been more worried about Gary than I had about my art.

Instead of replying, I fumbled once again with the seat belt. “Is this thing broken, or what?” I mumbled.

Looking irritated, he leaned over to help. “It’s not broken. You just have to—”

The second his fingers brushed mine, I felt the same jolt shoot through me that I’d felt the night before, when his fingers had closed over mine on the bicycle handle.

Only this time, there was no bike between us, and our mouths were just inches apart. I could feel the heat coming off his body through his damp clothes, heard his breath quicken as our hands touched, and when I looked up, I could see that his gaze was on mine.

There was no question: whatever strange chemical attraction I felt was going on between us, he felt it, too.

It made absolutely no sense. But it also seemed 100 percent right to close the slight distance between our lips by lifting my head and pressing my mouth to his.

The second our lips met, it was like lightning striking all over again. Only this time the lightning was inside the truck—or more specifically, my shorts. I wasn’t sure what I’d been doing with my life instead of kissing Drew Hartwell. It had definitely been time wasted. This, this was what I’d been meant to be doing, because it was making every nerve ending, every fiber in my body feel alive. My toes were curling inside my sneakers. I wanted to straddle him right there behind the wheel.

And he wasn’t exactly urging me not to. His tongue had launched a pretty thorough exploration of the inside of my mouth while both his big, calloused hands cupped my breasts through my soaked T-shirt and bra. With the rain pouring down in torrents around us, we were steaming up the windows of the truck. But I didn’t care, because who was going to walk by to see us?

It was only when he started leaning me back against the pickup’s bench seat and was skillfully peeling off my shirt while murmuring, “Let’s go to my place,” that I suddenly remembered where we were . . . in Drew Hartwell’s truck.

That’s when I sat up . . . so abruptly that I almost head-butted him. “What?”

He sat up, too, after tugging on his cargo shorts to better accommodate his burgeoning erection—which I’d felt, long and rock hard against my thigh. “I said let’s go to my place. I hate making love in cars. I’m too tall. And your place is about to flood—”

“Your place on the beach? Are you insane?”

“I already told you, it’s built to withstand hurricane force—”

What was I doing? This was so not part of how I was supposed to be living my life right now. I was not supposed to be making out with guys—even insanely hot ones—in trucks. I was supposed to be getting my shit together, not doing . . . well, whatever this was.

I yanked my shirt back into place. “I’m not spending the hurricane with you on the beach, Drew. All of my stuff is at your aunt’s house. My cat is—”

“I like your cat. We can go get your cat.”

“So he can die, too? No, thank you.”

“No one is going to die.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Of course I don’t know that. But you could just as easily die crossing the street and being hit by a bus any day of the week—”

“Can we just agree that one’s chances of dying in a hurricane are statistically higher if you stay in a house on the beach than if you stay in a house farther inland?”

“I’ll agree that it depends on the house.”

“Oh my God.” I turned to wipe away some of the steam on the passenger-side window so I could look out at the rain. The crotch of my panties, the only part of me that had been dry, was now just as soaked as the rest of me. “Just drop me back off at your aunt’s.”

“Okay, fine. But I’m not staying there. You are a very attractive woman and I want to be with you in the worst way, but not if it means spending this hurricane at my auntie’s house eating her lemon pudding cake.”

I sent him a withering glance. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. It was only a kiss.”

“Only a kiss?” He leaned forward to turn on the engine. “I think we both know that was a little more than a kiss, Fresh Water.”

“Where I come from, that was a standard greeting,” I said, glad that the cold air blowing on me from the air-conditioning in the dashboard could be my excuse if he noticed that my nipples were rock hard.

“Oh, so you put your tongue in the mouths of all the guys who help you with your seat belt?”

“Basically.”

“Fresh Water, I lived in New York for three years and I never saw anyone kiss their cabbie for helping them with their seat belt.”

“Well, you probably didn’t travel in the right circles.”

“Oh, okay. Whatever you say.”

We drove the rest of the way in silence, which was a mercy, since I didn’t feel like talking. What had I been thinking, kissing him like that? Now I’d started something I really didn’t need, much less want or have time for. He was Drew Hartwell, the last guy on the island any girl who’d sworn off men should be messing with.

And he wasn’t even my type . . . if I had a type, which I wasn’t sure I did. But if I did, it wouldn’t be him. He was too sarcastic, and he often seemed to struggle to wear an actual shirt, and he drove a pickup truck—worse, a pickup truck that stank of wet dog fur and that he seemed often to have left parked overnight in front of multiple women’s homes.

There were signs of Drew’s beloved four-legged pack everywhere, from abandoned leashes to chew toys littering the truck’s floor to dog hair carpeting just about every available surface. Since I was so damp, a lot of the fur was sticking to me.

But I figured most of it would wash off in the rain once we got back to Drew’s aunt and uncle’s house and I helped him haul my scooter off the truck bed.

Except that when we started to pull into the driveway, I saw a figure waiting for us on the front porch. He was barely recognizable due to all the rain and the fact that he was dressed in full all-weather gear.

But it was most definitely Drew’s uncle Ed.

“Oh, no,” I said. “He’s not—”

“Come on.” Drew was grinning a little devilishly. “You knew he’d be waiting. He loves this stuff.”

Of course I knew that.

But did that make it right when, a moment later, Ed, a man in his sixties, had leaped into the high wind and rain and was signaling for his nephew to back the pickup into the driveway?

Drew put down his window and called, across the sheets of rain, “I got it. I’ll put it in reverse.”

“Don’t put it in reverse,” Ed cried. “Just back it up.”

Drew turned toward me, his eyes bright, his mouth opening to make some smart-ass remark about his uncle’s malapropism, but I held up a hand to stop him.

“Stop. I heard it.”

“Now do you see why I might find riding out a hurricane in my own house preferable to doing it with these lunatics I’m related to?”

I refused to rise to his bait. “I think your family is adorable, and you’re lucky to have them.”

“Of course you’d think that.” Drew sighed as he expertly backed his truck into the driveway. “You’re a Fresh Water. You, like all the other tourists, think we were put on this island for you to gawk at and take photos of for your social media accounts.”

My frustration level at bursting point—for multiple reasons—I snapped, “I’m not a tourist. I’ve been here for three months—not to mention having spent a lot of time here as a child. And though I know that’s hardly any time to you, I think it’s fair to say I’ve gotten to know this island, and both you and your family, fairly well. So what I think is that you’re lucky to have such sweet relatives who love and support you so much, no matter how stupidly you behave.”

He threw a foot on the brake, his dark eyebrows raised in surprise as he gawked at me.

“Stupid?”

“What else would you call your plan to go to the beach for a hurricane?”

Instead of replying, he simply narrowed his eyes at me, threw on the parking brake, then got out of the truck, giving me a curt “Stay here” before slamming the door.

Of course I didn’t listen. I wasn’t going to let two men half drown themselves on my behalf.

I instantly regretted it. The wind had risen again, whipping leaves and palm fronds and of course the rain in all directions . . . but mostly, it seemed, at us. Both Drew and his uncle curtly told me to go inside, and this time, considering the fact that I was wearing no protection at all from the weather, I obeyed, though I only went as far as the front porch so I could watch as the two of them struggled with my scooter.

It was as I was doing this that Mrs. Hartwell came out of the house with a dry beach towel, warm from the dryer.

“Here you go, hon,” she said, draping the towel around my cold, wet shoulders. “You should go inside and take a nice warm shower while you still can. Sometimes the aqueduct authority turns the water off out of an abundance of caution if it floods and they can’t control the water quality or pressure.”

This was something I wished I’d known before deciding not to evacuate. The water could be turned off?

“Thanks.” I wrapped the towel around me. The warm terry cloth felt delicious. “But I’m all right. I just feel so bad that they’re doing all this work for me—”

“Oh, they love it.” Mrs. Hartwell peered affectionately through the rain at the two men she loved most in her life. “Anything involving machines. And if there’s a pretty girl in distress they can help, that’s just icing on the cake.”

I clutched the towel around my shoulders more tightly, feeling even more uncomfortable. “Thanks. But that’s just it. I wasn’t really in distress. I could have ridden it back over here.” It wouldn’t have been fun, but I could have done it. Probably.

She patted me kindly on the shoulder. “Of course you could have. But some people are better suited to some jobs than others. That’s just the way things are. Which reminds me, after you get showered and changed and have maybe had a little bit of a rest, I could use your help in the kitchen.”

“Okay. Sure. I’d be happy to.”

I threw a final glance at Drew. He was wheeling my scooter through the rain toward a safe parking spot out of the gales, near the side of the house, his clear plastic poncho flapping in the wind.

I felt a sudden lurch deep inside my gut. You’re making a terrible mistake, a voice inside me seemed to be screaming.

What? Where did that come from?

And a mistake about what? Staying in Little Bridge for the hurricane? Or staying at the Hartwells’?

Or letting myself get involved with Drew Hartwell?

If it was the latter, why was I feeling such a powerful urge to run back out into the rain, throw my arms around his neck, and beg him not to get back inside that truck?

I didn’t know. None of it made any sense.

So I ignored the feeling and followed his aunt inside the house.

Except I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the biggest mistake of all.