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

Most communities enjoy prompt and efficient recovery from large storms. Various emergency-response teams are trained to take immediate action to restore necessary services.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, having him sitting behind me on the scooter. For one thing, I was wearing my backpack—there wasn’t room for it under my seat once he’d stuffed his tool bag in there.

So there was a natural barrier between me and that electrical-charge-inducing skin of his.

But for another thing, he kept his hands to himself—well, except for the fact that he had to hold on to something, and that something was me. He didn’t have any other choice.

Still, after swinging one of his long, lean legs over the seat and making himself comfortable behind me, he asked, politely, “Is this okay?” before settling his big tanned hands on my hips.

And it was okay. Surprisingly so. I nodded and said, “That’s good,” relief flooding through me. I’d been feeling a lot of anxiety about what was going to happen when he got on the scooter.

But suddenly it all seemed to ebb away. I even sort of liked having him back there, his long hairy legs wrapping around me, radiating so much masculine energy. With the bright sunshine beating down on us, and the wind still whipping at us, it made me feel almost happy . . . and definitely secure. Even when he kept pointing at hazards in the road that I could plainly see—such as someone’s deflated swan pool floatie—and calling, “Look out!” in my ear, I could only laugh.

“Oh my God. You are literally the worst backseat driver.”

“Well, you’re the worst front-seat driver. You were headed straight for it!”

“I was not.”

“You were, too. Has anyone ever told you that you need glasses? Because you do.”

The streets were actually a lot easier to navigate going back into town than they’d been on my way out to the beach. That’s because all the people I’d seen out in their yards, cleaning, had also been busy picking up the refuse that had fallen across the roads, including tree debris. There was nothing they could do about downed power lines, but we saw a few crews from the electric company working on those. It was amazing to me how many people hadn’t evacuated. All those times I’d ridden my bike across town, to and from the Mermaid, ahead of the storm, the place had seemed deserted.

But it hadn’t been. The residents of Little Bridge had merely been hunkering down, waiting for Marilyn to pass, so they could begin the hurricane-recovery process.

In some places, however, this was going to take more than a little bit of sweeping and cutting. When I pulled up in front of my apartment building, I was horrified to see that the frangipani wasn’t the only tree that had been lost to the storm. An enormous mahogany that had graced the yard of a neighbor had fallen across the road, crushing a car parked beneath it, directly in front of the entrance to my building’s courtyard.

“Oh, God,” I said, dismayed by the sight.

Drew chose to be optimistic. “It’s probably not that bad. I’m sure your apartment is fine.”

He was wrong. Beyond the gate was an even greater disaster. The storm surge from the harbor had reached the apartment building. I could see the dark line where the water had risen, only about three inches up the pink stucco walls.

Still, the leaves and branches of the frangipani—not to mention the dirt where it had been planted—had been churned around the courtyard like bits of food in a dishwasher, except with nowhere to drain.

Now frangipani—and mud—was stuck to everything . . . except for my neighbors, Patrick and Bill, who had the door to their apartment open and were carefully removing from it everything that had been drenched in the flood.

“Bree!” Patrick cried when he saw me. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”

All three of their dogs had rushed over to greet us when we entered the courtyard, and now Drew and I were fending off happy pug tongue lashings.

“Hi,” I said, gently pushing away Brenda Walsh, their eldest pug, as I hurried over to greet the couple. “I’m so sorry. Is it bad?”

“Could have been worse.” Bill, holding a sodden box of what looked like record albums, returned the kiss I gave him on the cheek. “Here it was only a couple of inches. At the Cascabel, it was four feet! All that beautiful art deco lobby furniture was absolutely ruined. Not to mention, the elevators stopped working. We had to carry the babies down all those flights of stairs in the dark.”

I ignored the told-you-so look that Drew flashed me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said again. “That must have been terrible.”

“You made the right decision not to stay there with us,” Patrick said. “Honestly, we should have known better. But we were just so enchanted with the idea of not evacuating this time.”

“Brandon Walsh!” Patrick shouted at the pug that was slowly and deliberately humping Drew’s leg. “You stop that this instant!”

“Oh, that’s all right.” Drew gave his leg a soft shake, and Brandon (all three pugs were named after characters from the old television show 90210, of which Patrick and Bill were fond) trotted jauntily away. “I have dogs myself.”

“Do you?” Patrick was giving Drew an appraising look. I knew exactly what he was thinking just from his tone and the way his eyebrows were raised: that Drew and I were sleeping together. Patrick had been teasing me from the moment I’d moved into the apartment complex, practically, for not having had a Little Bridge hookup, and now he suspected he’d finally caught me with one. “I don’t recall having seen you around here before—and believe me, with those shoulders, I’d remember. Are you the reason Bree chose not to spend the hurricane in luxury at the Cascabel with us?”

“No, he’s not.” I hurried to change the subject. “He’s just here to help me break into Lydia’s apartment. Sonny’s guinea pigs are in there. His cousin Sean was supposed to look after them, but he evacuated, and I have no idea if they’re dead or alive.”

Bill looked alarmed. “R2-D2 and C-3PO? Well, what are you doing just standing there? Go save them!”

Drew seemed amused by the exchange. I sent him an aggravated look and pointed at my landlady’s door. “You heard the man.”

Still grinning, he said, “Yes, ma’am. Right away,” and crossed the tree-branch-strewn courtyard, then bent to examine Lydia’s lock.

While Drew’s back was turned, Patrick elbowed me. “So?” he whispered. “What’s the deal? Spill, sweetie, spill.”

I rolled my eyes. There is no deal, I mouthed.

Liar, Patrick mouthed back. I can feel the sparks. He silently mimed the moment from his drag performance when one of his characters—Joan of Arc—is engulfed in imaginary flames.

Ignoring him and the uncanny way he’d sensed the truth about what was going on between Drew and me (was it that obvious?), I said aloud, “I’m so glad my roommate and I had enough sense to move our stuff off the floor so it wouldn’t get ruined.”

Patrick, recovering from his make-believe conflagration, threw me a sour look as Bill cried, “Oh, I know. What were we thinking, leaving all this stuff on the floor?” He nudged one of the boxes of record albums with his foot. “Normally we’d have remembered, but this time we were in such a hurry to get to the hotel, we completely forgot.”

Drew, over by Lydia’s front door, straightened up. “This is a dead bolt,” he said, flatly.

“So?”

“So, I can’t break into a place with a dead bolt. And this one is top of the line, with side panels.”

I blinked at him. I knew what he meant—more than a few of my dad’s clients had been burglars, and they’d given me lessons in lock picking while my unsuspecting father was otherwise occupied. So I knew a dead bolt with side panels was bad news.

But I wasn’t sure how it would keep out someone with a chain saw. “What does that even mean?”

“That means we should go back to my aunt and uncle’s place and use their landline to call your friend and ask her if she’s got a spare key hidden around here somewhere, because otherwise we’re never getting through this door. I can’t even get through a window with the kind of shutters she uses. They’re all bolted into the ground, and I didn’t bring a drill.”

“Drew, we don’t have time,” I said instead. “Can’t you see that water line? The tidal surge got in there. Sonny keeps his guinea pigs in a wire cage on the floor. Those animals could be dying as we speak!”

“I’m pretty sure guinea pigs can swim, Bree. And the water’s gone now.”

“Sure, but the poor little things are probably suffering from shock or hypothermia or both—”

“They don’t have hypothermia. The water was eighty-six degrees. That’s how the storm got so strong. You see, the two ingredients you need to fuel a hurricane are warm waters and wind—”

“Um, if I might interrupt.” Patrick approached us, Donna Martin—his silver pug—in his arms, and mercifully cut Drew off before he could explain to me how hurricanes form, a fact I already knew, having had the Weather Channel on twenty-four-seven before the power went out. “All of the bathrooms in this unit were built with jalousie windows.”

I had no idea what Patrick was talking about, but from the way his dark eyebrows lifted, Drew appeared interested. “Really?”

“Oh, yes.” Seeing my puzzled expression, Patrick explained, “That window in your bathroom with the louvered panes?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Oh. Yeah. What’s up with that?”

I hated that window. The individual glass slats were ancient and discolored and hardly let in enough light for me to see by when I was putting on my makeup. Worse, because the fittings were so old, the panes were loose, and so allowed steamy tropical air to flow into the bathroom instead of keeping it out.

Drew said, “It’s called a jalousie.” To Patrick, he said, “What about it?”

“Well, since those windows are so small and in the back of the building,” Patrick said, “and therefore more protected from the winds, Lydia never bothered to have shutters made for them.”

Drew looked even more interested. “So they aren’t boarded up? Are they big enough for a person to crawl through?”

“Oh, certainly.” Bill hurried over, Brenda and Brandon Walsh trotting at his heels. “I squeezed through ours once when Patrick lost our keys over at the tea dance by the dock—”

“You’re the one who lost the keys, Bill.”

“Um, no, I distinctly recall that it was you, Pat. Remember, you were the one who insisted on wearing that smoking jacket with the hole in the—”

“Sweetheart, that was you.”

Drew reached out and grabbed my wrist. “Come on.”

The next thing I knew, we were rounding the side of the building and picking our way past multiple recycling bins and trash cans—the lids of which had been carefully strapped down with tape by Sonny to keep them from blowing away in the storm—and locked-up bicycles, until we reached a small louvered window in the middle of the stucco wall.

“Bingo,” Drew said, and bent to retrieve a screwdriver from his tool kit.

“What are you going to do?”

“This is why jalousies fell out of fashion,” Drew said, using the screwdriver to bend one of the metal brackets holding the lowest louver in place. “They’re fine on porches and breezeways, but for windows to home interiors, not only are they energy inefficient, but”—he popped the second bracket, and the panel of glass fell noiselessly into his hand—“they can also be a security nightmare.”

I swallowed as he handed the heavy glass pane to me, then went to work on the next louver. “You mean . . . this whole time, somebody could have broken into my bathroom window just by removing the louvers?”

He threw me an amused glance. “Well, yes. It’s not very common, but it happens. But I thought you didn’t believe in Mean World Syndrome.”

I blinked at him as he handed me another glass pane. “What?”

“Isn’t that what you told me the other night? That the world is not this dangerous and unforgiving place that people like your mother are always trying to convince everyone that it is.”

I frowned. “Oh, that. Right. But a little common sense—like not having windows that are super easy to break into—never hurt anybody.”

He grinned as he turned back to his work. “True. Well, if you want, I could talk to your landlady when she gets back. There’s a company that makes new, energy-efficient jalousies that also lock in place. That way the building wouldn’t lose its historic charm, and you’d feel more secure.”

“Oh,” I said, as he piled another heavy slab of glass into my arms. “Yeah, thanks. That would be great.”

“Don’t mention it.”

I wondered why he was being so nice to me. It couldn’t only be that he wanted to get into my pants. There were girls all over the island throwing themselves at him who were much prettier than me, and who’d made it clear—within my hearing—that they’d be willing to fulfill his every sexual fantasy, whereas I was pretty obviously a ball of nervous uptight neuroses. Why wasn’t he hanging out with one of those other girls? It was unlikely that all of them had evacuated.

And I was fairly sure the vast majority of them weren’t going to make him follow them around, break into apartments, and rescue their landlady’s son’s guinea pigs, either. There had to be easier ways for him to get laid.

Shortly following the words “Don’t mention it,” he pulled out the final louver.

“There,” he said, looking with satisfaction at my landlady’s now gaping window. “Are you ready?”

“For what?” I lowered the heavy pile of glass to the soft dirt at my feet. Several geckos scampered away, anxious not to be squashed.

“To climb in there.” He nodded at the window while interlacing his fingers, preparing to give me a boost.

I took a wary step backward. “Me? Why do I have to do it?”

“Because I’ll never fit through there.” His dark eyebrows furrowed. “I thought you were the one who was so worried about saving your friend’s guinea pigs. Are you backing out on me now?”

“No.” I threw a nervous glance at the darkened window. “I’ve just never broken into anyone’s apartment before.”

“Oh, but you were fine with me doing it? What, are you worried about what the gossip sites are going to say when they find out—Judge Justine’s Daughter Caught Breaking and Entering?”

“Shhhh.” I instinctively glanced around.

He laughed. “Uh, sorry. Do you think there are paparazzi hiding in the bushes?”

Embarrassed, I shook my head. “Of course not.” I swallowed and laid a hand on the windowsill, pointedly ignoring his cupped fingers. “I can do it myself.”

“Oh, you can?” He lifted an incredulous eyebrow. “Excuse me. I thought you might need a little boost.”

“No, no.” I shook my head. “I’ve got this.”

“All righty, then.” He straightened and stepped back, watching as I struggled to lift myself through the window, which turned out to be higher from the ground than I’d thought. After several unsuccessful attempts to push myself over the sill, I finally turned to look at him.

“Perhaps,” I said, blushing, “I might need a little help.”

“Yeah,” he said, pushing himself from the side of the building where he’d been leaning, watching my struggles with some amusement. “I was wondering when you were going to ask. What’s the trouble, exactly? You don’t trust me not to drop you? Or you’re afraid of falling even more deeply and irrevocably in love with me than you already are?”

My blush grew even deeper as I glared at him.

“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not in the habit of having to rely on tool jockeys who drink beer for breakfast and are too lazy to think up individual names for their dogs.”

He hooted. “Ouch! Lazy? Is that really how you think of me?”

“It is.” I wasn’t going to mention how precisely he’d nailed it—that I’d already lost control of myself around him and kissed him twice. I didn’t want to go for a third time, much less lose my heart to him, even though I was starting to worry it might be too late. “Look, can we talk about my trust issues later? For now I just need to get in there.”

“No problem.” He cupped his fingers again for me to slip my foot into. “You’ve got other issues, too, just to let you know, but we’ll let those slide for now.”

I hesitated before laying a hand on his shoulder. “What?”

“Well, I’ve just found that people are rarely comfortable admitting their real problems during self-analysis.”

He straightened up so I was face-to-face with him. “Oh, really?”

“Really. So it isn’t only that you don’t trust me. It’s something else.” I found myself staring at his lips. They looked so highly kissable. “Don’t worry, though. We’ll get to it, eventually.”

I shook my head. Because of course he was right. It was myself that I didn’t trust . . . around him.

But I was never going to admit that.

“Could we just—” I pointed at the window behind him.

“Oh, sure,” he said.

That’s when he lifted me high enough for me to catch the edge of the windowsill.

“Got it?” he asked.

“Got it.”

I was preparing to push myself through the small opening, not realizing that he had a similar intention—of helping me through it with a push of his own.

“Ow!”

My landing wasn’t soft. The Petroviches kept a wicker laundry basket under their bathroom window. I pretty much destroyed it.

“You all right?” Drew called from beneath the window, having heard the crunch of wicker and my squeal as the wicker wands stabbed me in the right calf. “What was that?”

“Nothing.” I bent to investigate the wound. No blood had been drawn, but the scrape was going to be tender for a while—my first hurricane-inflicted wound. “Just give me a warning next time, okay?”

“Sorry about that.”

I climbed to my feet. “Go around front, I’ll unlock the front door for you.”

“Got it.”

The apartment was dark and dank thanks to the rest of the windows being boarded up and there not being any power. But I didn’t have to see Sonny’s guinea pigs to know that they were alive. I could hear them squeaking excitedly from the other room, having overheard my not-so-graceful entrance into the apartment.

After unlocking the front door for Drew, I followed the sounds into Sonny’s bedroom, where I found the two little rodents—R2-D2, a black-and-white shorthaired, and C-3P0, a longhaired golden “Teddy”—darting around their cage, covered in shavings. The bedding had obviously become soaked thanks to the flood and was now sticking to the poor animals’ fur.

“Oh, you poor things!” I looked around Sonny’s room for something I could put the guinea pigs in in order to get them out of the mess. Fortunately Sonny had left the animals’ traveling case on his bed, along with a bag of the pellets they were supposed to eat.

“Well, boys,” I said to the guinea pigs as they continued to poke their little toes and noses through the mesh of their cage at me, grunting and squealing, almost as if they were trying to describe to me what they’d been through since Sonny had been gone. “Looks like you’re going home with me.”

“Huh.” Drew was standing in the doorway with a beer in one hand—one that he’d evidently found in Lydia’s refrigerator—looking down on the scene with an expression of mild disbelief on his face. I wasn’t sure which he found most incredible, the fact that I was lifting a trembling, grunting R2-D2 into the traveling case, or that he was in the situation at all.

“What,” he asked, “are you doing with that rat?”

“They’re guinea pigs, not rats.”

“If you say so. What are you doing to them?”

“Water leaked in here and got the bedding of their cage all wet. Now it’s sticking to their fur. They’re going to need a bath, I think.”

“Are you even supposed to bathe guinea pigs?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Are you supposed to take beers out of the refrigerators of people you don’t even know?”

He glanced down at the beer in his hand. “Hey, if I don’t drink it, it’s just going to get hot and explode in there. I’m doing your friend a favor. You want one?”

“No,” I said. “I’m taking these guinea pigs back to your aunt’s house, and then I’ll see if I can reach Sonny’s mom and find out whether or not you’re supposed to give guinea pigs a bath.”

“Well.” Drew eyed the animal carrier. “Lu’s going to love that.”

“I think she will, actually. She likes animals. She’s already taken in a pair of rabbits, a parrot, and my cat. Two little guinea pigs aren’t going to make a difference.”

He let out a laugh. “Whatever you say.”

“Well, I can’t leave them here,” I said defensively. “There’s no power. It must be ninety degrees in here. It stinks, and it’s filthy.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you, ergo the beer. But . . .”

I glared at him. “Listen, if you don’t like it, you can leave. I’m sure there must be more important things for you to be doing right now. Aren’t you supposed to be a carpenter? Shouldn’t you be out making emergency repairs on someone’s house?”

“Probably,” he said, a slow grin beginning to creep across his handsome face. “Too bad there’s no cell service, so no one can reach me.”

“Fine. Well, if you want I can drop you back at your house first, before I go to your aunt’s, so you won’t have to face her if you’re so afraid of what you think she’s going to say if I show up there with two so-called rats.”

“Oh, no.” The grin broadened. “I’m sticking around so I can watch how the rest of this plays out. You’re not getting rid of me that easy, Fresh Water.”

And the weird thing was that even though his words should have annoyed me, I sort of liked hearing them.

That’s when I should have realized the true extent of the hurricane’s damage.