A tiny little look at the Storm that is Sterling…

This is a very unedited glimpse at the Prologue for my November Zodius book 2 THE STORM THAT IS STERLING. I had some formatting issues so I had to manually move around the lines so forgive me if a few are off. I struggled with it.

The Prologue lets you meet the hero and heroine who themselves meet for the first time when they are young. This reminds me of a story I heard Kevin Bacon tell the other day in an interview about his wife seeing him in a NY play when she was 12. She came up to him and told him how great he was. Many years later they met again and he said she blew him off and he had to chase her but he just KNEW she was the one. That was such an awesome story. He said he knew she was 'the one'. Sigh….and clearly they are soul mates to come together and then find each other later when she was old enough for it to count. They've been together forever.

Anyway — I hope you will enjoy this tiny little peek!

This is from — THE STORM THAT IS STERLING …..this is from the UNEDITED version!

Prologue

Rebecca Burns was sitting behind a scuffed wooden table in the Killeen, Texas, Llibrary when he sauntered by, and every nerve ending in her body went on alert. "He" being Sterling Jeter, the hot blond hunk of a guy who'd graduated a year ahead of her. And try as she might to keep her attention on Bobby Johnson, the second-year, high school quarterback who she was tutoring for his SAT test, she failed pitifully. As if drawn by a magnet, her gaze lifted and followed Sterling's sexy, loose-legged swagger as he crossed to the computer terminals he'd been frequenting the past three weeks.

Sterling yanked a chair out from behind a desk, and she quickly cut her gaze back to Bobby, who was still struggling through the work sheet she'd given him. Unable to resist, she slid her attention back to Sterling only to find him looking right at her. He grinned and winked, before holding up a Snickers bar. She blushed at the realization that he'd brought it for her, after she'd confessed an undying love for their peanuty goodness the afternoon before.

"I just don't get why I need to know algebra on the football field," Bobby grumbled.

Reluctantly, Becca tore her gaze from Sterling's and refocused on Bobby. who, aAt six-foot-two with brown hair and eyes, and stud status at the school, he was no grand dictionary of knowledge.

"Either you meet the required SAT score for the University of Texas," she reminded him, "or you'll be passing your ball to whoever is open somewhere else."

He shoved the paper away from him and scrubbed his hand through his hair. "This is bull. I don't want some fancy NASA-sponsored scholarship like you got, so I don't see why I have to be some geekie bookworm like you either."

She stiffened at the familiar jab, wondering why she let it bother her, why every once in the while she wished she was a cheerleader or blonde bombshell of a prom queen. Her mother was never a cheerleader or a prom queen. Her mother was teacher, both beautiful and smart. Darn it, Becca liked having her mother's dark brown hair and brains, and she was darn proud of the NASA scholarship. Her parents were proud of her, and that's what counted.

Resolved to ignore his remark, she pushed the paper back toward him. "Let's try again."

"I'm done," he said. "I'm going to talk to Coach. He has to get me out of the SAT."

"Get you out of the SAT?" she asked. "You can't be serious?"

He pushed to his feet. "As a touchdown." And with that smart remark, he headed toward the door.

Becca tossed down her pencil and sighed. Please let the summer end. She couldn't get to Houston and her new school soon enough.

The chair in front of her moved, and the Snickers bar slid in front of her.

"You look like you need this fairly urgently." He sat down across from her, his teal -green eyes a bright contrast to his spiky blond hair. She decided right then that her summer-long goal was to run her fingers through that hair just one time before she left for Houston. And kiss him. She really wanted to kiss him.

"It's a wiser and safer man, who brings a Burns woman chocolate when she's upset. The men in the family swear it's a better survival technique than anything they learned in basic training." Both her father and brother were career military, same as her grandfather had been. She reached for the candy bar. "Thank you, Sterling."

He grabbed the work sheet Bobby had abandoned and started working an algebra problem with such ease, she assumed he was just doodling. They chatted while she waited for her next tutoring session, and she decided he was the best part of her summer wait for college. He took care of his grandmother doing some kind of computer programming work. She thought that made him amazingly sweet.

When it was nearly time for her next student, he abandoned the work sheet and studied her. "I should go."

"Okay." Dang it, she really didn't want him to go.

He didn't go. He sat there, staring at her, the air thick with something—she didn't know what—but it made her stomach flutter.

"You want to catch a movie or something Friday night?"

She smiled instantly, knowing she should play coy—after all, Sterling was older, and more experienced—but not sure she would know how if she tried. Dating wasn't exactly something she'd excelled at.

"Yeah," she said. "I'd like to go to a movie."

His lips lifted. "With me, right?"

She laughed. "Yeah, with you."

Once they'd arranged to meet at the library at seven the next evening, Sterling headed back to the computers. She glanced down at the math work he'd done and smiled all over again. He'd gotten all the questions right. Good looking and smart. She might just fall in love with her hot cowboy.

***

With a smile on his lips, Sterling whipped his battered, black Ford F150 into the driveway of the equally damaged trailer he called home and killed the engine.

He leaned back in the seat and pulled the wad of cash from his pocket. Ten thousand dollars and a date with Becca tomorrow night. He was going to kiss her, see what honey and sunshine tasted like, because that's what she reminded him of. Ah yeah. Life was good.

"Yeehaw," he whispered, staring at the cash again. How many nineteen-year-olds had that kind of dough? He was liking this new job. Hack a computer, get cash. He snorted. "And they say that government databases can't be hacked. This lowlife trailer trash proved them wrong." That's what the kids at school had called him after his grandmom had gotten arrested for public intoxication. Trailer trash. Misfit.

"Screw you," he mumbled to the voices of the past. "Screw you all."

Once Sterling had counted the money, down to the ten thousandth dollar, he grabbed a hundred-dollar bill for his date with Becca, and stuffed the wad of cash back in his pocket. Then he snatched the bundle of flowers on the seat. He left the Snickers bar for himself, and then decided better. Candy had worked with Becca, after all. And he'd need all the sweetness he could muster to convince Grandmom to head to that fancy alcohol-rehab center he'd arranged for her to enter up in Temple, Texas. It was even close by, only twenty miles away, which he hoped would help convince her to go. She'd curse and probably hit him. She was good at that, but it didn't hurt anymore. Hadn't for years.

He knew she couldn't help herself. He'd read enough about alcoholism to know she was sick. Yet she'd raised him despite that. Heck, he was to blame, he supposed. He was why his mother had died—the trigger that had set Grandmom off.

He climbed out of the truck and whistled down the path to the front door. The whistle faded the instant he entered the trailer. Grandmom sat on the couch, wrapped in the same crinkly blue dress that she'd gone to bed wearing, a big bottle of Vodka in her hand. Two men dressed in suits sat next to her.

"Look what these men brought me," she said, grinning, holding up her prize.

"We know how you like to take care of your grandmother," one of the men said, his buzz cut flat against his skull.

"Kind of like your father took care of his family," the other man stated, a clone of the first one.

Fuck me! They had to be army or government.

"The resemblance between the two of you is amazing," the first man said, picking up a picture of Sterling's father.

He was standing in front of a helicopter, his blond hair longer than it should have been because he wasn't normal army. He'd been Special Forces, working undercover all over the map. And it had gotten him killed when Sterling was barely out of diapers. The man set the picture back down on the coffee table.

Grandmom grabbed the picture, mumbling to herself. "They're the spitting image of each other." Her gaze lifted, her voice with it. "But Sterling ain't got no clue who his daddy was. Man was never here. Neither was his mama." She took a drink. "They died. Didn't they, Ster… ling?"

The captain focused on Sterling. "We think you're a lot like him. For instance, you both showed an interest in official government business."

Sterling's gut twisted in a knot. He was busted. Big-time freaking busted and going to jail. "I don't know what you're talking about." He wasn't admitting shit. He wouldn't go down without a fight. He had Grandmom to take care of.

"You know," the second man said, "there's a lot that can be forgiven if you serve your country. Enlistment is favorable in certain circumstances."

The first man took the picture from Grandmom. "I'm Captain Sherman, son." He gave a sideways nod to the second man. "This is First Lieutenant Jenson. We served with your father."

Thank the Lord above. They weren't Feds. "What do you want from me?"

The captain answered, "Your father was part of a Special Forces unit where certain 'skills,' like say— computer expertise, can be useful." He wrapped his arm around Grandmom's shoulders. "In exchange for service in this unit, your family will be well taken care of. It's time you enlisted, son. Be all you can be, like your father."

Grandmom gulped from the bottle, and suddenly Sterling realized he was still holding the flowers—those damn flowers that weren't going to erase his problems any more than the wad of cash sitting in his pocket.

"And if I say no?" he asked.

"I don't remember asking," the first man said.

"I'm not a soldier," Sterling said. He was just a kid in a trailer park who knew how to hack a computer.

"You are your father's son," the man said. "Mark my words, boy. You will be a soldier when I'm through with you."

Sterling looked at his grandmother, watched as she gulped from the bottle, her teal green eyes that matched his own the only familiar thing left in her. He saw the hint of contempt that lurked in their depths—the blame for his mother's death. The booze could never quite kill that. Sterling realized right then and there, that the best thing he could do for her was to leave and give her a chance to heal. To get as far away from her as he could, and stay there.

His gaze shifted to the man to his grandmother's right, and Sterling fixed him in an accessing stare. "She'll be taken care of?"

"You have my word."

"Mister," he said. "I don't know you from anywhere. I'll expect that in writing."

A hint of respect flickered in the man's expression. "As well you should."

"Don't suppose you'd wait until after tomorrow night to sign me up and ship me off?" They gave him deadpan looks in reply. "No. I didn't think so." His date with Becca was officially cancelled.