Time: 10:18 P.M.
Temperature: 80ºF
Wind Speed: 13 MPH
Wind Gust: 21 MPH
Precipitation: 0.0 in.
All the blood in my veins froze.
“What?” I said. “No. No, no, no, that is not at all necess—”
But it was too late. She was already calling across the festively lit yard to her nephew. “Drew? Oh, Drew!”
“No, really, Mrs. H.” I was dying inside. “I’m perfectly fine—”
Even as I said the words, however, I could see Drew loping obediently toward his aunt, Socks the dog—who’d been won over by his new master completely with only a few pieces of brisket—trotting at his side.
“You rang?” Drew’s expression was at once curious and sardonic as he stood before his aunt, taking in, no doubt, my burning cheeks.
“Bree has the breakfast shift at the café tomorrow and needs to leave now,” Mrs. Hartwell said. “She rode her bike here, alone, and you know it isn’t safe for any young girl to be out this time of year by herself.” Young girl? Since when was twenty-five a young girl? “Could you walk her home?”
The last thing I wanted was to look into those eyes of Drew Hartwell’s one more time.
But of course as soon as I raised my gaze to meet his, there they were: those bright blue irises, the same color as the water in Mrs. Hartwell’s pool . . . and gleaming just about as brightly.
“Sure.” Drew gave me one of his snarky half grins. “Guess I owe you one, anyway, right, Fresh Water?”
That grin. Oh God, that grin.
“Honestly,” I said again. “I don’t need—”
“Then that’s decided.” Lucy Hartwell gave a satisfied clap of her hands. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Bree. Nevaeh, Katie, will you help me bring those dips inside? They’ve sat outside in the heat long enough, I think it’s time they went into the AC of the dining room.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The girls rushed to help the older woman.
“Really,” I said, striding after Drew as he headed for the back gate. “I don’t need an escort home. Nothing’s going to happen to me in Little Bridge Island, of all places.”
“Hey.” Drew held up both hands in a “What-do-you-want-from-me?” stance as both Socks and I followed him. “I do what Lu tells me to. I’ve learned better than not to follow her orders.”
“And I appreciate that.” We were in the front yard, which was appreciably quieter—and darker—than the back, lit only by the front porch lamp and the glare from the decorative streetlights, streaming through the branches of the large gumbo-limbo trees that took up most of his aunt and uncle’s lawn. The fragrance of night-blooming jasmine was heavy in the air. “But she’s not here now, and I’m telling you, I’m fine.”
“This your bike?”
Other party guests had chained their bicycles to streetlamps as well, but Drew zeroed in on mine.
“Why do you think that one’s mine?” I asked. “Because it’s purple?”
“That,” he said, poking at the wicker basket, “and the plastic flowers. They’re a nice touch.”
“Yes, it’s mine,” I growled ungraciously, stooping to unlock it. “I happen to like flowers.”
“I’m not saying anything against flowers.” He watched as Socks sniffed his aunt’s fence. It was a white picket, which the Little Bridge Island historic board had deemed was the only acceptable kind of fence for homeowners to install. “The bike just looks like something you’d own, that’s all.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped, certain he wasn’t giving me a compliment.
“Nothing. It was simply an observation. What are you getting so hot under the collar for?”
“I don’t need people making judgments about me based on my taste in bicycle colors.” There is a segment of the population that feels that anything feminine—such as purple bicycles with flowered baskets, and perhaps even pink salt—is less worthy than more masculine things. I was positive he was a member of it. And this certainty was helping me to remember to dislike him, and thus push him away, despite his good looks, because good-looking men especially weren’t to be trusted. “And I don’t need you to walk me home. It’s nice of your aunt to worry about me, but I’m perfectly capable of—”
“Look.” Drew leaned forward to seize both handles of my bicycle. “I was not making judgments about you—”
“Weren’t you?” I stuffed my bike chain into my basket. We were the only two people on the quiet, moonlit street, so my voice sounded especially loud. “My bike’s the only purple one out here with flowers on the basket, and you knew it belonged to me? That wasn’t a judgment?”
“I assumed it was yours because it’s kind of girlie.” He released the bike handles and threw his arms into the air, walking a few steps away in frustration. Socks, done sniffing the picket fence, trotted after him, thinking they were going somewhere. But then Drew turned back toward me, so Socks followed. “And you were the only person at that party wearing a kind of girlie dress. It seemed like a logical conclusion. So sue me. What is wrong with you?”
A part of me didn’t want to respond. A part of me warned, Just get on your bike and ride away, Bree.
But another, stronger part of me just kept talking. This is another problem I have. Sometimes, I’m Sabrina, painfully shy. Other times, I’m Bree, who can’t seem to shut up.
“The likelihood of my being attacked on my way home is so small that it’s statistically insignificant,” I informed him. “You’re aware that in the majority of sexual assaults against women, the victim knows her attacker?”
Drew stared at me, dumbfounded. “Are you saying that you think I—?”
“No,” I said, instantly mortified. Why couldn’t I listen to the part of me that was painfully shy, get on my bike, and ride away? But I couldn’t. I was as welded to the spot as the streetlamp beside me. “Of course not. I’m just saying that it’s highly unlikely I’m going to be assaulted by a stranger on my way home tonight, despite what your aunt may think. It’s not really her fault. She, like so many others, has fallen victim to Mean World Syndrome, something I know a lot about because my mother makes her living off it.”
His dark eyebrows furrowed. “Mean world syndrome? What—” He stopped and, as if only just registering what I’d said. “Your mother?”
“Yes, my mother. She’s a judge. Judge Justine.”
“Your mother is Judge Justine . . . Justice with Judge Justine from the radio?” His hands went to his dark hair, causing it to stand more riotously on end than usual. “But she’s . . . famous.”
“Yes.” I stuck out my chin. I’d dug my grave. Now I had to lie in it. “Yes, she is. And not only from the radio. She also did that stint on—”
He said it along with me. “Dancing with the Stars.”
He stared at me, as if completely reevaluating who I was—and what to think of me.
I didn’t blame him. I’d have been reevaluating me, too. All this time he’d thought me one person—Bree, the plucky, long-working, pink-haired waitress, living entirely on her own.
And now suddenly I’d morphed before his eyes into this other person, Sabrina Beckham, with a famous radio personality millionaire mother, one who was no doubt always there to help out financially . . . except of course he didn’t know I was barely speaking to her, or that I’d come to this island in the first place to get away from her, because she, like my ex, had broken my heart.
I probably shouldn’t have told him.
But I couldn’t help feeling as if Drew Hartwell, of all people, deserved to know the truth. At least this way he’d stop thinking I was some dumb Fresh Water.
“So what is Judge Justine’s daughter doing here, of all places?” Drew asked, finally, spreading his hands wide to indicate the whole of Little Bridge. “Working as a waitress in my aunt’s diner?”
“It’s a café,” I reminded him, stiffly.
“Whatever.”
“I’m . . . I’m taking a break to work through some things.”
I saw his gaze narrow. “Drugs,” he said, finally.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’d be thinking drugs if I hadn’t seen you every morning at eight A.M. for the past few months, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”
“See,” I said, slamming the wedge heel of my sandal into my kickstand, then hopping onto my bike. The thought of him thinking about my tail—metaphorical or not—was unsettling. In a good or bad way, I couldn’t tell. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. That kind of negativity—my mother’s perfected it, all in order to engage her listeners. She uses fear—fear that the world is a much more dangerous place than it actually is, that if a girl takes a break for a while to work through some things, she must be on drugs, or that if she walks home at night by herself that she’s going to get sexually assaulted—to convince others that the world is this dangerous and unforgiving place. But it isn’t. Or at least, for the most part, it isn’t. I mean, yes, bad things do happen. My dad died last year—but of cancer, not from being murdered, or anything. And—and, well, bad things have happened to me, too, but it was because of someone I knew, and thought I could trust. Bad things happen to everyone sometimes. That’s just life. I don’t believe the only safe thing to do now is stay home and put bars on my windows and invest my money in gold coins from the U.S. Treasury—”
“Hey,” he said, gently. He’d taken a step forward and wrapped his fingers around my handlebars to keep me from riding off. “Bree. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that crack about you taking drugs. Obviously, you’re the last person who would ever do drugs. You’re way too uptight.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Thanks a lot.”
“And a real addict would have gone to Miami. Or Key West. There are no drugs here in Little Bridge. At least, no hard stuff.”
Frowning, I stared down at his fingers. In the misty light from the streetlamp, I could see that the knuckles were still raw from where they’d come in contact with Rick Chance’s jaw.
The back of his hand was also lightly furred in dark hair, the same finely textured hair I’d seen when he’d lifted his shirt that morning, making a vee down his taut stomach before disappearing beneath the waistband of his shorts.
Just the reminder caused a tingle in a place I’d sworn to keep away from men for the foreseeable future.
And yet all I could think about was how those hands might feel on my bare skin.
“Let go of my bike,” I said in a strangled voice, lifting my gaze to his.
“No. Look. I’m sorry about your father. I didn’t know. I just . . . Bree—” His voice sounded as choked as my own.
Suddenly, one of those warm, calloused hands closed over my own. The second his skin touched mine, I felt something akin to an electric jolt course through my body.
Except it wasn’t electricity. It was desire.
Oh, no. This couldn’t be happening. I could not want Drew Hartwell. I could not.
Who knows what might have happened next if the street hadn’t been abruptly lit up by a shaft of lightning so brilliant, it cast everything into stark white relief, bright as daylight. For a split second, I could see every smile line in his darkly tanned face, every threadbare patch on his faded blue shirt, every dark eyelash rimming those ocean blue eyes.
Then we were once again plunged into semidarkness, and thunder crashed so loudly that I started, ripping my hand from his and nearly dropping my bike in alarm.
“Wow,” Drew said, looking up. The clouds overhead were racing by at a noticeably more rapid pace, while the leaves of the gumbo-limbo trees had begun to tussle along with the palm fronds in the wind. “Something’s on its way, all right. Must be one of the first—”
Feeder bands, is what he’d probably been about to say. They were the outermost rain bands of the hurricane, and the meteorologists had been telling us to expect them all day.
But another crack of thunder, so loud and long it seemed to reverberate in my chest, cut him off.
When it was finished rumbling, Drew glanced at his wrist. Like many islanders, he wore a heavy, water-resistant dive watch on an ancient-looking leather band.
“Right on time,” he commented.
I looked up at the sky, and the dark clouds sliding across it, and felt relieved. Not only because now I had a perfect excuse to escape—him, and whatever that white-hot flash of yearning had been that had shot through me at his touch. I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready. Not for this. Yet.
“If you mean rain, I’m out of here,” I said. “This dress is dry clean only. Good-bye.”
I tugged on my bike to get him to release it, but he only held on tighter.
“Come on,” he said. “Don’t go. You did do me a solid tonight, so allow me to return the favor. I’ve got my truck here. Why don’t you let me drive you home before it starts to pour?”
I burst out laughing.
“Just how much of a Fresh Water do you think I am, anyway?” I asked, thinking of all of Angela’s warnings about him—that pickup truck of his, never parked in front of the same woman’s house twice. This was exactly the sort of offer a player like Drew Hartwell would make. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I’m going home, like I said. By myself.”
I reached out to pluck his fingers from my handlebars, and this time, he did let go.
“See you later, Drew.” I swung my bike around and began pedaling.
He let me go. But not without trying to get the last word.
“Phone my aunt when you get home, so she knows you got there safely,” he called after me.
I waved—without looking back—to indicate that I’d heard.
I was grateful my back was to him, though, so he couldn’t see through the thin material of my dress how hard my heart was hammering.
