Chapter One

The First Hellos

The moving truck groaned up the street just after noon on a shiny Saturday, tires crunching over the old asphalt. Evelyn heard it first — the low diesel rumble pulling her away from her crossword puzzle. She glanced up from the solarium, her reading chalk perched on the end of her nose.

Bruno Walter was in the backyard, fussing with his tomato plant life — she called him in through the cover door.

"Looks like someone finally bought the Carter place,"she said, peering through the lacing curtain.

Together they stood in the den, incline by side, watching through the big sliding glass doorway that opened onto their sloping yard. The Howard Carter house sat just downhill — its rachis windows lined up perfectly with theirs. No fencing, just a wide stretchiness of grass and a low hedge somebody planted long time ago, to a greater extent for decoration than privacy.

Evelyn squinted."Oh my…"

She didn't even try to enshroud the grinning that curled across her lips.

First, they saw her.

The young woman hopped down from the truck's side of meat rail, a cardboard box balanced on her hip. She wore tight dungaree shorts that left a perfect crescent of sun-kissed thigh and a pale pink tank car top that clung to her chest when she bent over to slide the box onto the driveway.

She stood, brushed her hairsbreadth back — long, slack waves the colouration of honey, bouncing over her berm like a shampoo commercial. Savannah. They didn't know her name yet, but the gens would stick to to her even before she introduced herself — she looked like a savannah : sugariness, flabby, wanton to imagine laughing in the sun.

Evelyn felt a slight heyday of invidia, then something more perplex. Savannah had that impossible, unthinking youth — the flush cheeks, the nasty pelt at her second joint, the careless way she tugged her shirt down when it rode up, not caring if person caught a glimpse of flavorless belly.

"Pretty girl,"Bruno Walter murmured, trying not to gaze too obviously.

Evelyn elbowed him, half teasing, but her eyes stayed on the lady friend, too.

Then he stepped out.

Tall — so tall he looked like he might genuflect the truck's roof with his shoulder joint. He carried two big moving boxwood stacked high, coat of arms roped with muscle, forearms veined like a man who never needed to ask for avail. His cutis was smooth, deep Brown University, catching the late sun like polished bronze.

Jax set the loge down and stood back, hands on his hip joint, shirt damp with sweat already. His T-shirt — old, easygoing, clinging just enough — stretched tight across his pectus. He laughed at something Savannah said and reached to tug her ponytail like a tease.

Evelyn felt her throat go dry. There was something so easy about the way he moved — like he owned that yard already. Not cocky. Just… confident. Walter made a voiced grunt of surprise. He'd never admit it, but the young man's sizing made him find small in a way he hadn't felt in years.

"Jehovah,"Evelyn said under her breathing time, feeling a spark low in her belly she didn't dare speak out gaudy."Well… they're… they're lovely."

Walter cleared his throat."Friendly enough, you think ?"

Evelyn's head wandered. Friendly enough for what, exactly ?

It took a week for the first waving across the yards.

Evelyn watched them every few evenings — the young woman dragging boxful inside well after dark, the man carrying a giant headboard all by himself, laughing when Savannah fussed at him to be careful.

One afternoon she found herself in her garden just as savannah was watering a few drooping rose bushes by her new porch. They caught eyes. savanna waved that sweet, easy wave. Evelyn waved back, cheeks warm.

By the end of the week, they were exchanging cultivated hullo. Walter even wandered over one morning with an old garden hoe.

"Need a hand ?"he asked Jax.

Jax's smile was wide-eyed and boyish, but his handshake nearly swallowed Bruno Walter's whole.

"Nah, we got it, sir — but thank you."

Evelyn stood behind the cover, biting her lip as she watched. Savannah bent grass to tug a box open, hair falling like a drapery around her face. Jax's script brushed the pocket-sized of her stake — protective, genitive. There was something galvanic about them, even when they didn't know they were being seen.

That night, Evelyn lay beside Walter in their big bed. She could still see the condition of Savannah's pegleg in those tiny short circuit, the smooth strength in Jax's arms. She closed her oculus, surprised by the affectionateness pooling in her belly.

She wondered, half-dreaming : What did they look like when the sun went down ?

Did he lift her up with those big hands, spread her across the sail, that strong back rippling above her ? Evelyn felt a trace of her dancer's body — the compactness she'd once had, the hunger she hadn't felt in decades.

Beside her, Walter snored softly, forgetful. But Evelyn lay awake, the windowpane cracked open to the summer child's play, wondering just how much those wide bedroom windows really showed after dark.

Chapter Two

The flutter

The summer hebdomad drifted by like flower petal on water — serenity, strong, familiar.

savannah and Jax settled in well. The death of the boxes vanished. The lawn got its world-class uninfected cut. Small talk by the fence turned into friendly waves when they crossed itinerary at the mailbox.

Sometimes Evelyn found herself standing in her garden just to catch Savannah in the sunlight — her leg bare under a sundress, the hem swaying around those soft thighs. Sometimes it was Jax she'd sentinel : the stretchability of his limb as he carried patio furniture on one shoulder like it weighed nothing at all.

Bruno Walter would tease apart her, saying she was fussing over the blush wine too much, but he didn't quotation how he'd stand by the sliding glass door with his coffee bean cup, watching Jax mow the yard in his tight T-shirt, effort dripping down his neck.

-- -

It was recently one Nox when Evelyn woke up thirsty — the window open, the air gummy against her skin. She slipped out of bed, deliberate not to awaken Walter. The house creaked around her, floorboards sighing like they always did. She padded barefoot into the den, her gown loose around her articulatio coxae, and poured herself half a glass of tatty red wine.

The backyard lay cushy and dark, the hedge a black silhouette under the moon. Evelyn almost didn't notice the deliquium glowing at number 1 — that single warm lamp inside Savannah and Jax's bedroom windowpane. She squinted, her shabu hovering near her lips.

There they were.

Or part of them, anyway.

She could see the corner of their bed — rumpled sheets, Savannah's indulgent silhouette on her knees, kissing her husband with that sweet, hungry press of her mouth against his jaw. Evelyn felt a twinge in her chest she couldn't gens. She told herself she'd just view a instant. Just a second.

Savannah River broke the osculation, smiling at Jax — and then she slid off the bed, bare and glowing in the lamplight, crossing to the window. Evelyn saw her stretch for the curtain, probably about to pull it shut. But Jax followed her — so spry, so sure. He caught her hips from behind, kissed her shoulder, and pressed her palms flat against the glass.

Evelyn's breathing spell caught. She should have looked away — but she didn't. Savannah's question tipped forward, her hair falling in a soft golden release. Jax moved in behind her, big hands sliding to her shank. Savannah River pushed her hips back into him like she wanted every inch he could give her.

Evelyn's brim parted as she watched him fall off into her — the slow rolling wave of his hips, the way savannah's body jolted just a little with each rich jabbing. Her palms stayed braced on the window. Her breather made a tiny swarm on the drinking glass. Evelyn felt warmth gather low in her belly, her thighs pressing together as she studied every silent detail — the bed right there behind them, but the window so much closer, so much Thomas More exposed.

She didn't hear Bruno Walter stair in until his bureau brushed her backbone. He didn't say anything — just slipped his arm around her, his intimation warm at her ear as he followed her gaze. Evelyn felt him punishing against her hip, operose than she'd felt him in years. She trembled when he tugged her gown up, pressing her hired hand to the moth-eaten meth as he bent her just enough to take her.

She couldn't look away. savanna's back arched. Jax pulled her pelvis back into him, slow at first, then faster — Savannah's head dropping depressed, her legs shaking. Evelyn's breathing time smudged the looking glass as Walter drove into her, matching that rhythm she could see but never hear.

When she came, it broke out of her in a gasp she had to swallow against her wrist. She felt Walter's finger dig into her pelvis, holding her tight. exterior, Savannah's trunk gave a trivial final quiver, and Jax carried her back to bed like she weighed nix at all.

The lamp clicked off. The window went glum. But Evelyn's pulse kept humming, her physical structure still pressed to the deoxyephedrine — warm in property she'd almost forgotten. And Walter stood behind her, panting like a man who'd just remembered he was still alive .