By: Pamela Leigh Starr August 2008

1. By: Pamela Leigh Starr August 2008

2. STORMBy Pamela Leigh Starr(To be released August 2008) It was no use. It was dying.

3. Storm:Chapter 1 Dreading the only decision left to her, Sabrina Adams guided the car to the shoulder of the road, moving faster in her sputtering twelve-year old Corolla than the stalled traffic she’d sat in for the last ten hours.

4. Storm:Chapter 1 The narrow shoulder was not quite wide enough to accommodate her compact-sized car. Coming to a complete stop partway on the shoulder and partway on the grassy field running parallel, Sabrina threw her car into park, shut the engine off and stared out the windshield as the radiator released its last, fiery breath with a tremendous puff of smoke.

5. Storm:Chapter 1 She had been warned that the radiator was on its last leg and that her Band-aid approach of periodically adding water would one day fail. The radiator needed to be replaced and she had planned on getting it done one day next week.

6. Storm:Chapter 1 Which was exactly what she had said the week before, and she had meant it, had even put money aside for that exact purpose, but a more pressing matter had derailed her. Sabrina got out of the car and stared at the bumper to bumper traffic stretching as far as she could see. Thousands were fleeing New Orleans, heading for higher ground.

7. Storm:Chapter 1 A hurricane was headed toward New Orleans. Again.

8. Storm:Chapter 1 And like the year before with Hurricane Ivan, it was a snail-moving-through-molasses evacuation. Nevertheless, most people were taking the threat of Hurricane Katrina seriously. Despite the inconvenience… Despite the traffic…

9. Storm:Chapter 1 Despite last year’s memory of a fifteen to twenty hour drive that would normally take no longer than two to five hours…

10. Storm:Chapter 1 Katrina could be the one the entire population of New Orleans had been warned about for as long as she could remember, all her life probably. “New Orleans is a bowl,” she had heard over and over again. With Lake Ponchartrain to the north of the city and the Mississippi River running through it, if the city got a direct hit there would be no place for the water from the storm surge to go. It was a bit hard to imagine, but who would dare to be stuck in such a situation?

11. Storm:Chapter 1 Not her. Which was why, having a car, slightly handicapped as it was, she was evacuating. A little late but that couldn’t be helped. A steady, constant breeze washed over her, a heavy scent of rain in the air. She needed to find some shelter.

12. Storm:Meet Sabrina Sabrina allowed herself to relive part of her birthday adventure, only the good part. After all, it was because of her adventure that her uncle had had to travel to New Orleans to take her grandmother to safety. Because of her adventure, she had left the city just before the highways were closed and long after her grandmother. And it was because of her adventure that she had embarrassed herself more than she had ever done in her life, a major feat in and of itself.

13. Storm:Meet Sabrina “John.” She sighed his name, wallowing in her infatuation. No, not infatuation. Her grandmother thought it was infatuation, and maybe at one time it had been. As a teenager she had sighed and mooned over John Lewis and his identical twin brother Josh every time she saw them and every hour in between. But then, one day she’d found herself mooning over John and only John. He was somehow the more handsome of the two, even taking into consideration the identical twin thing. John was the one she had fallen in love with.

14. Storm:Meet Sabrina John, so sweet and talented and probably still completely mortified and mad as hell that I made a pass at him, Sabrina pressed her face into her palms. She lifted her eyes a moment later to stare at the lights of a three-story building that looked like a school, situated on the side of the dark highway. A lone figure was walking toward the building, carrying what looked to be an instrument case. The deceptively slight build, the straight, confident walk… It couldn’t be him. But as they drove closer Sabrina had no doubt that it was.

15. Storm:Meet Sabrina It made perfect sense. They had both left from the casino hotel where he had played a gig with his jazz band. John had been loading his car when she and Kara had pulled off. Of course she had avoided him. She couldn’t avoid him now. John was walking toward the same shelter where she would probably be spending the next two or three days if the grouchy guy’s prediction was right. Sabrina’s heart beat double-time. She’d get to see him again. But she didn’t want to see him. She’d feel awkward, but what was new about that? But then, he’d feel awkward. Now, that would be new.

16. STORM:Meet John In the soft light easing into the gym John watched her. And he noticed. He noticed her shapely form, though it was a mere outline in the diminished light. He heard deep sigh from across the gym or maybe he had imagined he had heard it because he could see the way her rounded breast moved with each deep, long breath. Sabrina seemed almost a part of him.

17. STORM Meet John John shook his head! Rounded breast. Deep breath. A part of him? This was wrong! All wrong. He couldn’t think of Sabrina like that, not like a women. She was “the pest.” The little girl who at one time was the next door neighbor and sometimes babysitter for his sister Ness (short for Vanessa).

18. Storm:Meet John But it was too late now. He’d noticed her. She was a woman and she was interested in him. From the way she’d pressed herself against him the night before, he had no doubt about that. This was all so very wrong. He didn’t have time for a woman in his life. His career was just taking off. He had landed a temporary spot in a well-known brass jazz band because their trumpet player got busted for drinking and driving and then held for the many parking and speeding tickets in his name. The player’s tough break had been a good one for John.

19. Storm;Meet John He had tried to let Sabrina down without hurting her feelings. She needed to understand that he wasn’t interested in her that way. But now he was coming to understand that he was interested in her that way. But he didn’t want to be, which was why he had been so nasty to her earlier today. That, and the fact that he had been jealous of that trooper, who’d had the nerve to put a hand on her. His eyes having fully adjusted to the sparse light in the gym, John couldn’t keep them off Sabrina as he puzzled over his new feelings for her.

20. Released August 5, 2008