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

Time: 9:08 A.M.

Temperature: 87ºF

Wind Speed: 15 MPH

Wind Gust: 35 MPH

Precipitation: 0.0 in.

Hey! Bree!”

He managed to catch me anyway. Well, the dogs did, thinking we were playing some kind of game. They tore after me, barking enthusiastically, and one of them—the beagle—thrust itself in front of me, blocking my path, so my choice was to either stop or trip over him and fall the rest of the way down the steps.

“What?” I turned and demanded ungraciously of my host.

Drew was taking the steps two at a time to reach me. “Where the hell are you going?”

“Back to my apartment building. My landlady evacuated, and she told me Sean was going to stop by and look in on her son’s guinea pigs. But Sean evacuated, too. So could you please get your dogs off me?”

The beagle was standing on the step below me, barking at me. I’d had no idea that beagles could bark so loudly. It was wearing a pink collar, which indicated to me it might be a girl, and was a small dog. But she sounded like one of the cruise ships in the harbor, blowing its horn to warn passengers that it was leaving, so they’d better hurry up with their souvenir purchasing and get back onboard.

“I’m sure the guinea pigs are fine,” Drew said, ignoring my request about the dogs. The black Lab had his cold nose thrust against my crotch, excited about the game he thought we were playing. “It’s not like they have to be walked. And there’s a water bottle in their cage, right? So no chance of dehydration this soon.”

“Have you forgotten?” I gave the black Lab’s large, bullet-shaped head a gentle shove. It did no good. His nose went right back to where it had been before. “My apartment building’s in the same part of the island as the Cascabel Hotel. And the lobby of the Cascabel Hotel flooded.”

To his credit, Drew didn’t say anything like, “Well, they’re only guinea pigs.” He understood—I could tell by the sudden tightening of the skin around his eyes. Sonny’s pets were living things, and they were as loved as any other family member.

“Give me a minute to grab my gear,” he said. He turned and started back up the steps.

Confused, I demanded, “Wait. Why?”

He paused and looked back. “Because I’m coming with you.”

Now a different kind of chill went over my body. “No. No, that really isn’t necessary—”

“Are you kidding? Bree, do you even have a key to your landlady’s apartment?”

I hadn’t thought about this. “Well, no. But—”

“Then how do you plan to get in?”

“I don’t know. Through a window, or something.”

“Aren’t all the windows boarded up?”

I felt ridiculous. But I also felt an equally strong—and very urgent—desire not to be around Drew Hartwell any longer. I’d already kissed him twice in moments of weakness. I needed to get away from him, and fast.

And Sonny’s guinea pigs were the perfect excuse.

“Do you have any tools?” he asked. “Any way of breaking into her place?”

“No. But—”

“I do. Let me just go get them.” He turned and started heading back up the steps to his house.

“Oh,” I said, realizing I still had an excuse to get out of this situation. “But there’s no way we can take your truck. The roads are really bad. You won’t believe how many power lines and trees are down. It took me over an hour just to get out here—”

“That’s okay,” he tossed back over his shoulder. “We can take your scooter.”

My scooter?

This was getting worse and worse. If we took my scooter, that meant he’d be sitting behind me—if he even let me drive, which, knowing him, he probably wouldn’t, which was going to lead to a whole other argument—and since the seat on my scooter wasn’t that big, that meant—assuming I won the argument over who was driving—the front of his body was going to be pressed up against my back, and that I was going to feel all of him against me, because my scooter didn’t have a handle in the back for an extra passenger to hold on to, so he was going to have to hold on to me. And then . . .

No. Just no. This could not happen.

Determined not to allow this, I grasped at whatever excuse I could think of to stop it . . . and realized several were panting on the steps below and beside me.

“But . . . but what about your dogs?” I pointed at the Bobs. “You can’t leave them behind!”

Drew was standing on the top step. He turned to squint down at me, shading his eyes from the sun. “Of course I can. They just came in from a half-hour run on the beach. They’ve had their breakfast. They’re dogs. They’ll be fine.”

“But . . . but . . .” Think, Bree. Think! “The house—aren’t you afraid of looters?”

He laughed. “You’ve been listening to my uncle, haven’t you?”

I didn’t want to mention the pistol Ed had given me, which I still had in my backpack. Instead, I said only, “He did seem concerned.”

“Who’s going to find their way out here?” Drew asked, gesturing toward the debris-strewn beach. “Unless they have a boat. But it’d have to be a pretty big boat to navigate its way through those waters.”

I told myself to calm down. Just because we’d shared a couple of kisses and were probably going to share a scooter didn’t mean it was inevitable that we’d be sharing anything else.

Except that I couldn’t get the way those kisses had made my body feel—like it was alive for the first time in months—out of my mind.

This was the problem. I was starting to worry I wanted to share something else. And that was only going to lead to—

“But I only have one helmet, so—”

“Relax, Fresh Water.” His rakish grin did the same unsettling thing to my insides that his kisses had. “There’s never been anyone I’ve trusted more than you to drive safely. And I’ve done a lot riskier things in my life than ride around without a helmet on the back of a girl’s scooter.”

I was sure this was true.

But I was even more sure that I was the one taking the bigger risk.