“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?”