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

The Little Bridge Electric Company continues to make progress bringing power back to its customers. Some homes have experienced saltwater intrusion and won’t be able to accept power until repairs are made. Progress will be slower in the hardest-hit areas where transmission poles were lost.

I explained it again.

“And remember,” I added when I was done. “It’s important that they don’t feel judged for having left their pets behind. If they do, they won’t call in. We want to save as many animals as we can, so the why of how it happened isn’t important.”

“I got it,” my mother said. “No judgments.”

“No judgments.” I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. “Will you do it today? Like right now, when you hang up?”

“I’ll call Shawna right now and have her do it.” Shawna was my mother’s longtime—and long-suffering—assistant. “And, honey—”

“Yes, Mom?”

“I . . . I like you like this.”

“Like what?”

“So . . . passionate.”

“What?”

“It’s true. You haven’t seemed actually to care about anything since . . . well, in a long time.” She tactfully avoided mentioning Caleb’s—and Kyle’s—name. “Except running away. You cared about that.”

I smiled wryly. “Thanks, Mom.”

“But now for the first time in quite a while you seem to care about something else . . . helping others, which, if I remember correctly, was why you went to law school in the first place—”

“Mom,” I said in a warning voice. “Don’t get your hopes up. I’m not going back to law school.”

“I know, I know. I’m just saying, at least you’re doing something that you feel passionate about, and not just wasting your time waitressing—”

Someday, I really needed to tell her about my paintings. But this was not the day.

“—even if I’m not very happy about where you’re doing it. Did you know that most deaths from hurricanes occur after the storm has passed?”

“I do know that, Mom,” I said. “Thanks. That’s why I really appreciate whatever help you can—”

“Sabrina.”

I looked up at the sound of the deep voice calling my name to see Drew Hartwell leaning against the door frame to the library. As always, he looked good. Good enough to make my heart give a flip inside my chest. He’d found a new clean linen shirt—did he keep a collection of these in every place he’d ever lived?—though he’d buttoned it as haphazardly as all the others, revealing far more tanned chest and abdominal muscles than should be legal.

In one hand he held the bowl of hurricane dip I’d made. Beneath his arm was tucked a bag of chips.

But on his handsome face was an expression of urgency.

I could not imagine what kind of chip-oriented emergency necessitated my getting off the phone, but his raised eyebrows and frown seemed to indicate that there was one.

“Uh, Mom,” I said, “I have to go. This is the only phone line in the house, and I think someone else needs to use it.”

“Oh, of course, honey. But I want you to know that I’m still coming tomorrow, or at least as soon as they can get that runway cleared.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, as Drew rolled a chip in the air, indicating that I needed to speed up the conversation. “Okay. Bye-bye now.”

“Can I use this number to call you back, if I need to?”

“Better let me call you.” A picture of my mom calling and Ed answering the phone entered my head. The vision was not pretty. “Bye, Mom. Love you.”

“Love you, too, sweetie . . .”

“What?” I demanded of Drew as I slammed down the phone. The fact that the mere sight of his lean body, lounging in the doorway, had caused my heart to do jumping jacks inside my chest was making me angry. I was an adult woman who should not be ruled by her hormones.

“Oh, nothing.” He lowered the chip he’d been using to direct the speed of my conversation into the bowl of dip, then put it into his mouth. “I could tell you needed rescuing, is all.”

I glared at him. “I did not need rescuing. I never need rescuing.”

“Oh, really? ‘Don’t get your hopes up, I’m not going back to law school’? That was part of a normal, happy, everyday conversation—”

I held up a hand to stop him from continuing. “That was my mother. I was calling to let her know I’m all right.”

“And the first thing she wanted to know is when you’re going back to law school?”

“It wasn’t the first thing she wanted to know. But yes, as you’ve probably guessed, my mother can be a little controlling. Speaking of which, do you always go around snooping on other people’s phone calls?”

“When they’re yours, I do.” He dunked another chip into the dip, then ate it. “How else am I going to find out anything about you? For a woman, you aren’t exactly communicative, you know. For instance, when were you going to tell me that you went to law school?”

I stood up. “Never, because it’s none of your business.”

“Ouch, Fresh Water!” He grabbed his chest as if wounded. “That hurts. After all we’ve been through together?”

“See, that’s the thing.” I crossed the room until I was standing directly in front of him. “You keep calling me Fresh Water like you think I’m so innocent.” Reaching into the bag of chips he was holding beneath his arm, I purposefully let my hand brush against the tender and sensitive skin of his inner bicep while keeping my gaze locked on his. “But I’m not, you know.”

“Oh, you’re not?” His tone was teasing . . . but I was standing close enough that I heard his quick inhale at my touch.

“No.” I plunged the chip I’d grabbed into the bowl he was holding, then raised it deliberately to my lips. “See this dip?”

His gaze was on the chip, which meant it was on my lips, since I was holding the chip in front of my lips. “Yeah.”

“I made it.” I slid the chip into my mouth, enjoying the explosion of flavor on my tongue, and chewed. “Pretty good for an alleged Fresh Water, huh?”

He couldn’t seem to look away from my lips. “I’ll admit I’m impressed.”

What was I doing? First those kisses, now this. I needed to stay away from this guy.

On the other hand, by tomorrow my mother would probably be in town, and the sweet little temporary life I’d built in Little Bridge might be destroyed, much more thoroughly than by any hurricane. Maybe I needed to enjoy what was left of it while I still could.

“I know,” I said. “It’s a shame I have to go now.” I watched as his gaze flicked from my mouth back up to my eyes in surprise.

“Go? Go where?”

“I have to go check on eight cockatiels, two dogs, seven cats, and a tortoise.”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you have a hatchet I could borrow, by the way? One of the people who’s asked me to look in on his pets thinks the only way I’ll be able to get into his house is with a hatchet.”

Drew’s lips flattened into a grim line. He set the chips and dip down firmly on a nearby table. “If you think I’m going to let you go off by yourself on another pet rescue mission—”

I narrowed my eyes. “Let me?”

“We’re supposed to be heading over to the café to help Ed. He’s making a free hot meal for anyone who stops by. That’s the real reason I came in here. Aunt Lucy told me to come get you. Or rather, now that she knows who your mother is, she told me to ask if you’d be willing to help out.”

I smiled at that. “Well, as much as I’d love to, that’s going to have to wait a bit. You won’t believe how many residents of this island evacuated and left their pets behind. Now that they can’t get back, someone has to go take care of them.”

Drew was still frowning. “Unfortunately, I can believe it. I grew up on this island. But I don’t see why the person who has to go take care of them has to be you.”

I stared at him. “Do you know my mother? Because you sound exactly like her.”

He stared back silently. Then after a beat or two, he said, finally, “Yeah. Okay. Well, let me go break the news to Lu, and then check the shed for some more of Ed’s precious gas for the scooter. We’re going to need it if we’re going to be jetting all over the place, chopping down doors to rescue starving dogs and cats.”

“Wait a minute . . .” I caught his arm, not simply brushing it this time. “We?”

He glanced down at my hand, then back into my eyes. I was uncomfortably reminded once again of how very blue the eyes of the Hartwell men were. “Of course we. I’m not gonna loan you my best hatchet and then let you run all around town with it, unsupervised.”

“Uh-huh.” I released his arm, a little reluctantly. His skin had felt warm and welcoming beneath my fingertips. And once again, there’d been sparks. Oh, there’d been sparks. “Seriously, I have to ask—isn’t there something more important you should be doing with your time? I’ve seen you with a chain saw. Why aren’t you out helping people clear streets or repair their homes?”

He looked wounded again. “Bree, you met my dogs. You saw the rapport I have with them. Do you think there’s anything more important to me than the helpless animals of this earth, all of God’s creatures, great and small?”

“Well, I don’t really know you, so . . .”

“Of course you do. I would have thought by now you’d realized that you and I were a team back there with those rats.”

“Guinea pigs.”

“Whatever. Were we not a team?”

“We were definitely something.”

“Okay. Fine, then.” He grinned wickedly. “This is gonna be fun.”