No Judgments Read online

  “There,” I said, when I’d latched the cat in safely. “All set.”

  As if on cue, a car horn sounded outside. Ed was back with Drew’s pickup.

  Drew took a last look around the living room. “You sure you have everything?”

  I glanced around, then remembered. “The starter!”

  I scampered to grab it from the fridge. Thank God I’d remembered or Daniella would have been crushed. That sourdough starter had been in her family for years. Every holiday, she made tons of loaves, which she shipped off to various members of her family, who worshipped her for making bread that tasted just like Grandma’s.

  Drew eyed the clear container in my hands distrustfully. “Should I even ask?”

  “It’s probably better that you don’t.”

  He sighed. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Emergency Disaster Survival Kit Basics—Pets

  Pet carrier and leash

  Pet medications/travel documents

  Pet food (7–10 day supply)

  Cat litter and box

  Current photos of pet in case you are separated

  Pet bed and toys

  The room into which Mrs. Hartwell ushered me was lovely.

  “I’m sorry it isn’t a bedroom,” she said, apologetically. “But all of our guest rooms are upstairs, and a central room on the first floor is the safest place to be during a storm, especially one that could generate tornadoes.”

  “Oh, no, this is . . . fine.” I could hardly believe what I was seeing. “Thank you so much, Mrs. H.”

  The first-floor library—with its own set of French doors that I could close off from the rest of the house for privacy, as well as to keep Gary from wandering—had originally been the home’s morning room, where the first Mrs. Hartwell (whose husband, Captain Hartwell, had built the house in 1855) had probably sat and answered her correspondence every day after breakfast.

  And why wouldn’t she want to? Where the walls weren’t covered in ornately scrolled white bookcases, double stacked with books, they were stenciled—not papered, because that would have been unheard of in South Florida in 1855—in cornflower blue overlaid with gold fleur-de-lis. The room smelled tantalizingly of pine and old books.

  I felt like an elegant lady just being in the room. Gary seemed to realize that he, too, was moving up in the world, since he quickly made himself at home on the air mattress Ed had inflated for me on the floor, though I noticed that he was eyeing one of the antique love seats, with its temptingly puffy pink silk cushion.

  All the information about the first Mrs. Hartwell was given to me by Nevaeh as I unpacked Gary’s things and set up a litter box for him, deep in a far corner of the room. There was a portrait of the first Mrs. Hartwell hanging over the antique scroll-top desk, and she looked like a handsome but unhappy woman, wearing heavy mourning clothes.

  “All of her four children,” Nevaeh informed me, “died of yellow fever before the age of ten. They said she died of a broken heart soon after.”

  “Oh,” I said. “My.”

  “But no worries. Her husband went to the convent school and found a new girl to marry. They had eleven children, all of whom lived and went on to produce their own kids, and then those kids had kids, and then those kids had kids, one of whom was my uncle Ed!”

  This was one of the strangest local history lessons I’d ever received, but I attempted to roll with it.

  “Wow,” I said. “Neat.”

  “We’re going to have so much fun while you’re here,” Nevaeh assured me, as if thunder wasn’t rolling ominously beyond the lace curtains of my room’s single window (shuttered, so I could see nothing of the view). “We can do each other’s nails!”

  This did not sound fun to me at all, given that I kept my nails clipped as short as possible to avoid nervously biting them.

  But I politely refrained from saying so, since Nevaeh was my hostess by proxy.

  “Sure,” I said. “Maybe later, though. I need to make sure Gary gets settled in.”

  “Oh, of course,” Nevaeh said, though she gave me an odd look, since anyone could see Gary was currently contentedly cleaning himself, as at home as if he’d always lived there. This was a far cry from my apartment, and an even further step up from the animal shelter where he’d spent so many years. Gary clearly thought he’d won the feline lottery.

  “I have to go put this in the refrigerator,” I said, showing Nevaeh the container holding Daniella’s yeast starter. “It’s my roommate’s, and it’s super important to her that it stays cold at all times.”

  “Uh, sure.”

  Nevaeh glanced nervously toward the kitchen. I soon realized why. I could hear raised voices coming from there—one belonging to Drew. It appeared he was getting yelled at for something by his aunt and uncle.

  Was this more drama about what had happened last night at the party with Rick Chance? And was it wrong that I felt as if I needed to get in there to watch? Not to defend him, of course—I was quite sure Drew Hartwell didn’t need my help. But I felt a natural curiosity about what was going on.

  “Well.” I got up from the floor and grabbed the handles to the tote bag containing all the foodstuffs I’d brought along. “Do you mind?” Nevaeh looked as if she did mind, so I added, “I brought a cheese ball, too, you know. Maybe you’d like some?”

  Nevaeh finally stood up but looked confused. “What’s a cheese ball?”

  “You don’t know what a cheese ball is? Let me show you.”

  Closing the library doors to keep Gary from roaming—I knew both the parrot and the rabbits would be temptations he might find too hard to resist—I followed Nevaeh toward the kitchen.

  The Hartwells’ fifty-six-inch flat-screen television—so fun but so out of place in such a historic home—was on in the living room. We had to pass it to get to the kitchen. It was tuned, obviously, to the Weather Channel.

  “Things are looking grim here in Key West, Cynthia,” a reporter was saying into the camera as he stood, in all-weather gear, on a pier beneath a leaden sky. “And the first bands of the storm are only hours, if not minutes, away. We can only wonder what it will be like when they finally arrive.”

  Behind him, tourists who’d neglected to evacuate stood wearing shorts and T-shirts, holding cans of beer, and making rude gestures into the camera.

  “Idiots,” Nevaeh said, shaking her head. “And those stupid reporters aren’t even brave enough to come here to Little Bridge, where the storm is actually heading.”

  I raised my eyebrows. She was right. The feed was bouncing among news journalists stationed all over South Florida—Key West, Miami, Naples, and back—but not a single one was in Little Bridge.

  “Maybe,” I ventured, “it’s because they consider this island too small to be of interest.”

  “That’s not it.” Nevaeh’s tone was bitter. “It’s because they know if they stay here, they’ll be trapped. Or die.”

  I glanced at her in surprise, about to ask if she believed this, too, when there was a knock on the front door.

  “Oh, Katie!” she cried, in a completely different voice. “Katie’s here, yay!”

  She turned and went skipping for the door without another word, leaving me, feeling a little stunned, to make the rest of the journey to the kitchen solo.

  Mrs. Hartwell was standing in front of the stove—a very old-looking six-burner, on which multiple pans were sizzling. I could smell the tantalizing scent of frying onion and garlic.

  But she wasn’t looking at what it was that she was cooking. All her attention was focused on her nephew, whose strong, muscular back was pressed up against the refrigerator, his arms folded across his chest and his head bowed low enough that his dark hair fell across his face, obscuring it from view.

  He’d managed to find a new shirt somewhere and had even buttoned it up properly and washed his hands. But he was still wearing the Timberlands with cargo shorts, a look I could only imagine Caleb sporting on Halloween when
dressed as some sort of celebrity contractor from a fixer-upper show on cable television.

  “Haven’t you been listening to a word of what they’ve been saying on the news, Drew?” Mrs. Hartwell was demanding. “This isn’t some run-of-the-mill tropical depression! It’s a full-fledged hurricane—the strongest one that’s come close to this island in years. And you still intend to weather it out in your new house on the beach?”

  “Lu.” Drew sounded tired. “I told you. I built that house to withstand a storm this big.”

  “Fine.” She waved a wooden soup spoon. “That’s great. But why do you have to be in it while the storm is going on?”

  “Because.” I caught a brief glimpse of one of those preternaturally bright blue eyes as he lifted his head. “I’ve got to be there to fix things on the fly in case something goes wrong.”

  “Oh, things will go wrong, all right.” Mrs. Hartwell turned back to her onions and garlic and gave them a vicious stir. “Do you remember how Sandy Point looked after Wilhelmina? That’s what it’s going to be like with this one, but maybe ten times worse.”

  “Now, Lu.” Ed was standing by the pantry door, unloading the barbecue sauce and beer he’d bought at Frank’s. “What the boy is saying makes sense. Lotta people want to be in their own homes so they can make repairs when storms like this hit—”

  “Or so they can be swept away,” Mrs. Hartwell said, angrily turning down the heat on her onions, “in the ten-foot tidal surge they’re expecting. That sounds stupid to me. Do you think that sounds stupid?”

  I noticed with a start that she was pointing the wooden soup spoon in my direction.

  “Me?” I nearly dropped my tote bag. “Oh . . . I really don’t think my opinion matters either way.”

  “Yes, it does. Tell him.” Mrs. Hartwell turned off the heat on her onions and folded her own arms across her chest, mimicking her nephew’s stance exactly. “Tell him he should stay here with us, where it’s safe.”

  I blinked in surprise. Why was she putting this on me? I was a virtual stranger here.

  “Um,” I said. “I really don’t think I—”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. He’ll stay if you ask him to.” Mrs. Hartwell went on. “You’re a pretty girl, and he likes you.”

  “Lu.” Drew’s warning was so low, it was practically a growl.

  “Well, it’s true.” Aunt Lu uncrossed her arms to lay down her soup spoon and wipe her hands on a kitchen towel, though I couldn’t see that she’d dirtied them in any way. “I haven’t seen you this way about a woman since before Leighanne. Lord knew you never liked her much, she just followed you here from—”

  “Do you have room in your fridge for this?” I interrupted hastily, holding up Daniella’s container of starter.

  I did it more for my own sake than Drew’s, since I knew everything Mrs. Hartwell was saying was untrue, and I couldn’t let her embarrass me—or her nephew—a second longer. If Drew Hartwell was interested in me, it was only because I was the only girl on the island with whom he hadn’t yet had sex.

  And sex was the last thing I was interested in, at least for the time being. Or so I told myself.

  From the look on Drew’s face, the feeling appeared to be mutual.

  “Uh,” Mrs. Hartwell said, glancing from the plastic container in my hands to my face. “Yes, I suppose so. Ed, move out some of that beer so she can put that in the fridge, will you?”

  Ed looked dismayed. “But, Lu—”

  “There’s plenty of beer in there already. Put what you’ve got there in the fridge out back in the shed.”

  “But it’ll be raining! You want me to have to go outside to get beer in the—”

  “Ed!”

  Ed moved some of his beer, and I found a nice dark place in the bottom of the Hartwells’ fridge for the starter. I also managed to squeeze in my cheese ball.

  “Now,” I said, straightening. “If you’ll excuse me, I just have to run back to my place really quick to get my scooter. If that area actually does flood, I can’t leave it parked there.”

  “I’ll drop you off.” Drew pulled the keys to his pickup from one of his many pockets.

  Mrs. Hartwell looked stricken. “But you can’t leave! I’m making your favorite—ropa vieja.”

  Drew looked heavenward before taking me by the arm and physically steering me from the kitchen. “Let’s go.”

  “But you’ll be back?” I heard his aunt cry, as he hustled me down the hall. “You’re not going to drive back out to the beach, are you, Drew? Except to get those dogs of yours?”

  He called back to her in Spanish—a language I never learned properly because I took French in school, though I’d picked up a few phrases around my dad’s clients and the café—and the next thing I knew, we’d brushed past Nevaeh and her friend Katie, doing their nails on the living room couch, and burst out the front door.

  “Good God,” he said, as soon as we were headed toward his red pickup, parked in his aunt and uncle’s driveway. “Thanks for that.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. “For what?”

  “For giving me an excuse to get out of there. You saved me. Again.”

  “How did I do that?”

  “With that excuse about having to go get your scooter.”

  “It wasn’t an excuse.” I eyed him as he unlocked the driver’s-side door to the pickup. “I paid good money for that scooter.” Used, but it had still taken a sizable chunk out of my savings. “I don’t want it to get ruined.”

  “Well, good timing, anyway.” He’d climbed behind the wheel, and now he leaned over to unlock the passenger-side door. “You saved my ass.”

  “I assure you,” I said, climbing into the truck, which smelled as pungently as ever of wet dog, “that your ass is the last thing I was thinking of.” This was a lie. I was finding myself thinking about his ass—and other parts of him—more and more often, and it was disconcerting. “Why are you so mean to your aunt, anyway?”

  “Mean to her?” He looked startled. “How am I mean to her?”

  “All she wants is to have her friends and family safe around her during the storm, and you can’t even do her that simple favor?” I pulled at my seat belt. It had given me trouble my first time in the truck and was doing so again.

  He lifted both hands in a so-sue-me gesture. “Since when can’t a guy stay in his own house—that he built himself, by the way—during a storm?”

  “The storm of the century. That’s what they’re calling it.”

  “They say that for every storm. It’s what the media is paid to do, hype things up. It’s how they get ratings. I would have thought you of all people would know that, with your mother.”

  “Yes, but in the case of a hurricane they’re probably right.” I glared at him. “Wow, it must be so great to be Drew Hartwell, king of Little Bridge Island, who can do whatever he wants without regard to anyone or anything else.”

  “Whoa.” He’d turned on the engine, but now he turned it off, and we sat in the driveway with thunder rumbling overhead, and the rain probably—most likely—coming at any moment, which meant I’d get soaked on my ride back on my scooter. “Hold on a minute. Just what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Well, your aunt and uncle raised you, didn’t they? And yet you don’t seem to feel that you owe them even the slightest—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. My aunt and uncle did not raise me. They’re very nice people, and they are raising my niece, for which I am very grateful, since my sister is a bit of a mess at the moment, and Nevaeh’s dad took off basically the second she was born. But I had a pair of very kind, supportive parents until a few years ago, when a semi going the wrong way down Highway One took them both out.”

  I blinked at him, surprised. I’d never heard this.

  “And yes, Lucy and Ed have been great ever since,” he went on. “But I was twenty-five at the time. I did not need surrogate parents then, or now.”

  I sat for a moment in silence, stari
ng straight ahead as a single fat drop of rain plunked down on the hood of the pickup. Then I said, “Well. I’m sorry about your parents. And your sister. That’s awful. In different ways, of course, but still . . . awful.”

  “Thanks. But who are you, anyway,” he demanded suddenly, “to talk about how I treat my relatives? Aren’t you the one whose own family offered to send a private plane to get you out of here before the storm, then turned the invitation down?”

  I whipped my head around to glare at him. “So you were listening to my private phone call after all?”

  “How could I not? You were practically yelling. It was kind of hard not to hear.”

  “You know what.” I grabbed for the door handle. “I don’t need a ride to my place. I’ll walk.”

  “Oh, no.” He flipped a switch, and the door lock snapped into place. I was trapped. “You’re not getting out of this that easily. You can’t judge me for doing the exact same thing you’re doing.”

  “Actually I can, because you’re not doing the exact same thing I’m doing. I’m riding out a hurricane safely, at your aunt’s house on the highest point on the island. You’re doing it recklessly, in a house that’s not even finished, on a beach.”

  “Honey, I’ve got news for you,” he said, turning on the motor again, then revving it. “If you think there’s anywhere safe on this island to ride out what’s heading toward us, you’re crazy.” As I gaped at him, he added, with a wicked grin, “You really should have listened to your mother.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  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?