Page 77 of No Judgements

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, people come here and they either love the island life or they hate it.”

“Who could possibly hate it?” I asked in genuine astonishment.

But even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I remembered. My mother. My mother had always hated Little Bridge. She’d hated it almost as much as my father had loved it.

“Someone like Leighanne could hate it,” he said. “I met Leighanne when I was working up in New York. Then after my parents died and my sister went into her third or fourth stint with rehab and it was clear I needed to come back to help out with Nevaeh—well, Leighanne volunteered to come with me. On paper, it should have worked—she said she liked dogs and was ready to leave the fast pace and cold winters of the city. But in reality—she couldn’t stand the dogs or stand it here. The lack of seasons and the slow pace, the fact that there were so few different restaurants and stores—it all drove her crazy.”

“Island fever,” I murmured, remembering what Nevaeh had told me.

He looked surprised—but whether it was because I knew the term or that Leighanne had been suffering from it, I wasn’t sure. “Possibly. All I know is, since there weren’t any stores in town that sold the kinds of things she liked, she kept ordering things online—like the Himalayan salt—to make herself feel like she was back in New York, I guess. I kept asking, ‘Why do we need this? Why do we need that?’ I guess, since they made her feel better, I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No,” I said, remembering the angry look on Leighanne’s face when she’d hurled the saltshaker at him. “Probably not.”

“But I did, and I guess that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, because the next thing I knew, she’d packed up everything she’d bought—and I meaneverything, including the salt—and moved out.”

I thought this over as I sipped the wine. It really was delicious.

“Maybe you just weren’t ready to share your space,” I suggested.

“Maybe.” His blue-eyed gaze was bright on mine. “Or maybe I am... with the right person.”

I felt more than a little conscious of how close we were standing to each other—his arm grazed mine as it rested on the deck railing—and also that his gaze hadn’t left mine for a second. The gentle wind from the sea seemed to be pushing both of us toward each other... or maybe it was the wine... or his words:Or maybe I am... with the right person.

Was that person me? I liked dogs. I liked Little Bridge. I liked him.

But I wasn’t ready for another relationship. Look at how my last one had turned out. I was as good at picking guys as I was at careers.

And anyway, what was I panicking for? He wasn’t interested in me. Not like that.

“Bree,” he said in a low voice, as his gaze lowered to my lips.

It was at that moment that all four dogs came bursting back up onto the deck, their run on the beach completed. Bob the beagle, who seemed to have taken a particular liking to me, dashed straight over and drove her front paws, claws extended, right into my thighs.

“Ow,” I cried, buckling over and nearly dropping my wine.

“Bob!” Drew roared, not just at the beagle but at all the dogs, since none of them were behaving with particular decorum. “No! You know better than that. Get in the shower, all of you!”

I was shocked when all four dogs—led by the black Lab, who despite Drew’s insistence that he was the alpha, seemed to be the actual leader of the pack—swarmed beneath an outdoor showerhead. Drew strode toward it, then switched it on. As warm water streamed down on the wriggling bodies, sand poured off them and down a drain on the deck that had clearly been installed for this purpose.

I laughed, amazed. It appeared that Drew had thought through every detail of his dream home on the beach, including his dog-washing duties.

“Sorry about that,” he said, returning to me and the glass of wine he’d abandoned when he seemed to feel that his dogs were clean enough. He’d switched off the water, and the dogs had trotted off to different sections of the deck to shake themselves dry. “Where were we?”

“Uh,” I said. “I don’t remember,” even though I did.You’d been about to kiss me.

And I’d been about to let you.

But before Drew could reply, Socks came slinking shyly over to us, one of the yellow tennis balls in his mouth. His black-and-white body was low to the ground in case his action garnered the wrath of his new owner—that was, after all, the kind of reaction he was used to—but his long, fringed white tail wagged slowly as he looked up at us, his dark eyes filled simultaneously with both hope and anxiety that one of us would take the ball from his mouth and throw it.

“Oh my God,” I said, looking down at the sadly abused dog. “I think I’m going to cry.”

“Yeah. He’s a good boy.” Drew reached down and took the ball from Socks’s mouth, casually—but affectionately—giving the dog a stroke on the head as he did so. “Get the ball, Bob.”

He tossed the ball to the far end of the deck, and Socks took off after it, his sleek body uncoiling like a spring, all muscle and joy.

“You can’t call them all Bob,” I insisted as I watched the dog expertly catch the ball in midair—probably one of thefirst times in his life he’d ever engaged in a game of one-on-one catch. “They really do each have their own unique personalities. Just because your parents named you and your sister basically the same thing doesn’t mean you have to do that to your dogs.”