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

Time: 8:18 A.M.

Temperature: 82ºF

Wind Speed: 6 MPH

Wind Gust: 0 MPH

Precipitation: 0.0 in.

The hurricane was a thousand miles offshore when my ex-boyfriend called to offer me a ride to safety in his private jet.

“No, thanks,” I said, cradling my phone against my shoulder as I wiped a jelly smear off the Formica counter. “That’s really nice of you. But I’m not going anywhere.”

“Sabrina,” Caleb said. “There’s a Category Five hurricane headed straight for you.”

“It’s not headed straight for me. It’s headed for Miami.”

“Little Bridge Island is only a hundred and fifty miles south of Miami.” Caleb sounded exasperated. “The storm could change course at any time. That’s why they call the hurricane track the cone of uncertainty.”

He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. But it was typical of Caleb to feel it necessary to explain the weather to me.

“Thanks for your concern,” I said coolly. “But I’ll take my chances.”

“Take your chances of dying? Do you really hate me that much?”

This was a good question. Caleb Foley had had his good points: like me, he loved a good painting. His family owned one of the largest private collections of nineteenth-century Impressionist works in North America.

He’d also been great in bed, always waiting politely to orgasm until after I did.

But when I’d needed him most—which was definitely not now—what had he done?

Ghosted.

And now he thought he could make it up to me with a free ride in his Gulfstream just because a hurricane might sideswipe the little island to which I’d fled in order to recover from my heartbreak?

Sorry. Too little, too late.

“It’s nice of you to offer.” I ignored his question. “But like I said, I’m not going anywhere.”

I thought of telling him the real reason why—Gary, with whom my life had become inextricably tied, but who was in no shape to travel at the moment.

But what would be the point? I knew what Caleb would say about Gary. He wouldn’t understand.

It felt a little weird keeping something that meant so much to me from this person with whom I’d once shared every little thing in my life.

But it also felt right.

“Besides,” I added, instead, “no one here is evacuating.”

It was true. Instead of panicking and running around, throwing all of their stuff into the backs of their cars the way I always imagined people would when a hurricane was in the vicinity, the residents of Little Bridge Island, population 4,700, seemed to be taking the news in stride. The café where I worked was packed with the usual breakfast crowd, and though a lot of people were talking about the storm, no one seemed alarmed, only vaguely irritated. . . .

Like Drew Hartwell, whom I could hear next to me informing someone over the phone that he wouldn’t be replacing the hundred-year-old window sash they’d hired him to restore anytime soon.

“Because there’s a storm on the way,” Drew said, sounding a little testy as he dabbed more hot sauce onto his Spanish omelet, “and there’s no way the glazing’s going to dry before it gets here. That’s why. If you want an inch of rainwater all over your bathroom floor, that’s your business, but personally, I’d wait until it passes.”

Normally I don’t make a habit of eavesdropping on my customers’ conversations, but then normally Drew Hartwell didn’t use his cell phone in the café. He was good about following the rules that Ed, the Mermaid’s manager slash owner, had listed by the cash register:

NO SHOES, NO SHIRT, NO PROBLEM.

USE YOUR CELL PHONE? GET OUT.

One person who isn’t so good at following the rules? Me. The last one, anyway.

“Beckham!” Ed bellowed at me from behind the counter. I whipped around and saw him glaring at me. He jerked a thumb at my cell phone, then the glass side door. “Take it outside if it’s that important.” His irritated gaze fell on Drew, who happened to be his nephew, but whom he still treated like any other customer. “You, too.”

Drew held up a calloused palm, nodding as he slid off his orange vinyl counter stool and headed toward the door, his phone still clutched to his chin. “Look,” he said to whoever was on the other end of his call. “I get it. But you’re going to have the window boarded up anyway. So it’s not going to make any—”

The rest of his conversation was lost as he stepped outside.

Sorry, I mouthed to Ed. Then, to Caleb, I said quickly, “Listen, I’m at work. I never should have picked up in the first place. I only did because . . . because . . .”

Why had I picked up, especially since Caleb and I hadn’t spoken in months? Maybe because it was eight o’clock in the morning, and he never called this early. I’d assumed it was an emergency, only not an emergency concerning him.

“Look,” I said. “If that’s all you wanted, I’ll talk to you later, okay?” As in, never.

“No, Sabrina. I’ve got to talk to you now. The thing is, your mother—”

I knew it. My pulse quickened. “What about her? Is there something wrong?”

“She’s fine. But she’s the one who’s been bugging me to phone, since you won’t pick up when she calls.”

My heartbeat slowed. Of course. I should have known. Caleb would never have called, let alone volunteered to fly fifteen hundred miles to get me of his own accord . . . not after the way we’d ended things. Or not we, exactly, considering the fact that I was the one who’d packed up my things, handed my keys to his doorman, and left, making me, technically, the one who had ghosted.

But not really. What else could I have done? What kind of relationship had the two of us even had? Not one I’d wanted anything to do with anymore.

Now I was heading for the door again—the Mermaid’s side door. A rush of humid, saltwater-scented air greeted me as I stepped out onto the sidewalk, ignoring the glare from Ed as well as the curious looks my fellow servers, Angela and Nevaeh, threw me. Neither of them could imagine what was so important that I’d dare take a call during the morning rush. I hardly ever got calls anyway, so this was a first.

A first that was probably going to get me fired.

“Caleb, look—”

“She’s really worried about you, Sabrina. We all are.”

It was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing.

“You know your mom pals around with all those meteorologists from the station,” Caleb went on. “She says they tell her this one is a real monster. If there were such a thing as a Category Six, this would be it. She says—”

“Tell my mom I’m fine,” I interrupted, aware that Drew Hartwell was standing only a few feet away from me, his own cell clutched to his ear, having a not dissimilar conversation. I could hear him telling whoever was on the other end of the phone, “Well, for one thing, because I have other things to do right now than restore a century-old window you waited until the last minute to notice needed repairing. And for another, because I’m going to have to special-order the replacement glass, and there’s no way it’s going to get here before the rain does.”

Except that Drew Hartwell didn’t look particularly worried. He never did. Even now his free hand—the one not holding his phone—had crept beneath his well-worn, sun-faded Little Bridge Island Bocce League T-shirt to scratch lazily at his flat stomach, unconsciously revealing a trail of dark, downy hair that disappeared into the waistband of his cargo shorts . . . the sight of which caused my stomach to give a pleasant lurch, as if I’d just taken a spin on a Tilt-A-Whirl.

What was wrong with me?

Realizing I was staring, I glanced hastily away, remembering the whispered warning my coworker Angela Fairweather had given me on my first day of work: “Stay away from that one. There was a time when that old pickup of his was parked in front of a different house every week. For a while, it was a different house a night.”

Because apparently Drew Hartwell—with his lean six-foot frame, tousled dark hair, permanent deep-sea tan, and summer-sky blue eyes—was as much of a player as Caleb and his friends, just of a different variety: Drew was the homegrown style.

Having been born on Little Bridge Island, Drew had never lived anywhere else, with the exception of a few years on the mainland.

Whereas Caleb and his best friend, Kyle—who’d turned my entire life upside down in a single moment—had been born in New York City and had traveled all over the world, thanks to their trust funds and wealthy parents.

And yet Caleb still didn’t know a thing about women. Or at least the one he was currently speaking to.

“I can tell your mom that you’re fine all you want, Sabrina,” Caleb was saying into my ear. “But she isn’t going to stop calling. She said to tell you that she thinks it’s time you stopped being so stubborn and gave up on this little solo adventure to replace yourself, or whatever it is, and come home. And that it shouldn’t take a Category Five hurricane for you to realize it.”

I smiled wryly. It sounded exactly like something my mom would say. “Well, do me a favor and let her know that I haven’t quite finished replaceing myself, but when I do, she’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I don’t need help from her, or anybody else—especially you.”

“Well, that’s just great, Sabrina.” Now Caleb sounded offended. “Excuse me for caring. You know, last time I talked to you, you were mad at me for not caring enough—”

I felt a different kind of spurt from my gut, far less pleasant than the one I’d experienced at the sight of Drew’s naked stomach. “That’s not what I said, and you know it. There’s a difference between not caring and calling me a liar.”

“I never called you a liar, Sabrina. I just said that maybe you were overreacting—”

“Overreacting? Really, Caleb?”

“Yes, overreacting. You know Kyle gets a little frisky when he’s had too much to drink—”

A little frisky? I was so mad, I had to force myself to gaze past the harbor, out where the turquoise blue sky met the aquamarine sea, in order to steady myself. Something about the sight of that calm, azure water stretching as far as the eye could see always seemed to help me replace my equilibrium. I’d taken to painting it during my time off from work—not, however, when anyone else was around—and it always soothed me.

“I don’t want to get into it again, Caleb,” I said. “I need to go back to my job, or I’ll lose it.”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be a tragedy,” Caleb sneered. “Your waitressing job at some beach bar in Florida.”

I glanced hastily in Drew Hartwell’s direction, fearful that he might have overheard—Caleb could be as overbearingly loud on the phone as he was in person.

But fortunately, Drew still seemed preoccupied with his own call.

“At least,” I hissed at Caleb through gritted teeth, “I have a job.”

“Oh, was that supposed to be a blow to my ego, Sabrina?” Caleb said snarkily. “Because I’ve never had a job, I’m somehow inferior to you? Excuse me for not rising to the bait. Look, if you won’t come with me, at least let me send you a ticket for a commercial flight, since you can’t seem to be bothered to buy one on your own.”

“Don’t even try it,” I snarled into the phone, “because I’m not leaving Little Bridge Island. And it’s Bree now, not Sabrina.”

Then I hung up on him.