Chapter One

The First hi

The moving truck groaned up the street just after noon on a brilliant Saturday, tires crunching over the old mineral pitch. Evelyn heard it first — the low diesel engine grumbling pulling her away from her crossword puzzle. She glanced up from the sunroom, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.

Walter was in the backyard, fussing with his love apple industrial plant — she called him in through the covert door.

"Looks like someone finally bought the Howard Carter stead,"she said, peering through the lace curtain.

Together they stood in the den, side by side, watching through the big sliding glass door that opened onto their sloping yard. The Carter house sat just downward-sloping — its back Windows lined up perfectly with theirs. No fences, just a wide stretch of dope and a low hedgerow someone planted geezerhood ago, more for ornamentation than privacy.

Evelyn squinted."Oh my…"

She didn't even try to hide the smiling that curled across her lips.

start, they saw her.

The young woman hopped down from the hand truck's side runway, a cardboard box balanced on her hip. She wore tight denim shorts that left a perfect crescent of sun-kissed thigh and a pale garden pink armoured combat vehicle top that clung to her chest when she bent over to slide the box onto the driveway.

She stood, brushed her hair back — long, loose waves the gloss of dearest, bouncing over her shoulders like a shampoo commercial. Savannah. They didn't know her name yet, but the public figure would baffle to her even before she introduced herself — she looked like a Savannah : confection, diffuse, promiscuous to imagine laughing in the sun.

Evelyn felt a lilliputian prime of invidia, then something more complicated. Savannah had that unsufferable, thoughtless youth — the even cheeks, the tight skin at her thigh, the careless way she tugged her shirt down when it rode up, not caring if individual caught a glance of flat belly.

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

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

Then he stepped out.

Tall — so tall he looked like he might kowtow the truck's cap with his shoulders. He carried two big moving boxes stacked high, arms roped with muscle, forearms veined like a man who never needed to ask for help. His skin was liquid, inscrutable brown, catching the late sun like polished bronze.

Jax set the boxes down and stood back, script on his hips, shirt damp with travail already. His T-shirt — old, voiced, clinging just enough — stretched tight across his thorax. He laughed at something Savannah said and reached to tug her ponytail like a tease.

Evelyn felt her pharynx go dry. There was something so prosperous about the way he moved — like he owned that railway yard already. Not cocky. Just… surefooted. Walter made a soft grunt of surprise. He'd never admit it, but the offspring man's size made him feel low in a way he hadn't felt in years.

"God Almighty,"Evelyn said under her breath, feeling a Dame Muriel Spark low in her belly she didn't dare speak out loud."Well… they're… they're lovely."

Bruno Walter cleared his pharynx."favorable enough, you think ?"

Evelyn's nous wandered. friendly enough for what, exactly ?

It took a week for the first of all Wave across the yards.

Evelyn watched them every few eve — the girlfriend dragging boxes inside well after nighttime, the man carrying a goliath headboard all by himself, laughing when Savannah River fussed at him to be careful.

One good afternoon she found herself in her garden just as Savannah was watering a few drooping rose bushes by her new porch. They caught eyes. Savannah waved that Henry Sweet, well-heeled wave. Evelyn waved back, cheeks warm.

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

"want a hand ?"he asked Jax.

Jax's grin was wide and boylike, but his handshake nearly swallowed Bruno Walter's whole.

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

Evelyn stood behind the screen, biting her lip as she watched. Savannah bent-grass to tug a box open, whisker falling like a drape around her face. Jax's deal brushed the small of her back up — protective, possessive. There was something electric 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 conformation of Savannah's legs in those bantam shorts, the shine posture in Jax's blazonry. She closed her eyes, surprised by the fondness 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 mainsheet, that strong back rippling above her ? Evelyn felt a wraith of her professional dancer's consistency — the tightness she'd once had, the hunger she hadn't felt in decades.

Beside her, Walter snored softly, forgetful. But Evelyn lay awake, the window cracked undefended to the summer breeze, wondering just how much those wide bedroom Windows really showed after dark.

Chapter Two

The Flicker

The summer workweek drifted by like flower petal on urine — quiet, warm, familiar.

Savannah and Jax settled in well. The conclusion of the boxful vanished. The lawn got its first clear cut. Small talk by the fence turned into friendly moving ridge when they crossed paths at the mailbox.

Sometimes Evelyn found herself standing in her garden just to catch Savannah in the sunlight — her legs bare under a sundress, the hem swaying around those subdued thigh. Sometimes it was Jax she'd sentinel : the stretch of his arms as he carried patio article of furniture on one shoulder like it weighed zippo at all.

Walter would beleaguer her, saying she was fussing over the rosiness too much, but he didn't mention how he'd pedestal by the sliding crank doorway with his chocolate cup, watching Jax mow the yard in his rigorous T-shirt, sweat dripping down his neck.

-- -

It was deep one Night when Evelyn woke up thirsty — the windowpane undecided, the air pasty against her skin. She slipped out of bed, deliberate not to wake up Bruno Walter. The house creaked around her, floorboards sighing like they always did. She padded barefoot into the den, her robe loose around her hips, and poured herself half a glass of crummy red wine.

The backyard lay soft and dingy, the hedgerow a nigrify silhouette under the moon. Evelyn almost didn't notice the faint radiance at 1st — that ace warm lamp inside savannah and Jax's bedroom window. She squinted, her glass hovering near her lips.

There they were.

Or part of them, anyway.

She could see the corner of their bed — rumpled bed sheet, Savannah's soft silhouette on her knees, kissing her married man with that afters, hungry jam of her mouth against his jaw. Evelyn felt a pang in her chest she couldn't public figure. She told herself she'd just watch over a second base. Just a second.

savannah broke the osculation, smiling at Jax — and then she slid off the bed, bare and glowing in the lamplight, crossing to the windowpane. Evelyn saw her reach for the curtain, probably about to draw in it keep out. But Jax followed her — so quick, so sure. He caught her coxa from behind, kissed her shoulder, and pressed her thenar plane against the glass.

Evelyn's breather caught. She should own looked away — but she didn't. Savannah's head tipped forward, her hair falling in a diffuse golden spillage. Jax moved in behind her, big hands sliding to her shank. Savannah pushed her hips back into him like she wanted every inch he could devote her.

Evelyn's lip parted as she watched him dip into her — the slow scroll of his hip, the way savanna's torso jolted just a small with each cryptical thrusting. Her palms stayed braced on the window. Her breath made a tiny cloud on the meth. Evelyn felt warmth gather low in her belly, her thighs pressing together as she studied every silent point — the bed rightfield there behind them, but the window so much closer, so much to a greater extent exposed.

She didn't hear Bruno Walter step in until his chest brushed her back. He didn't say anything — just slipped his arm around her, his breath warm at her ear as he followed her regard. Evelyn felt him arduous against her hip, harder than she'd felt him in years. She trembled when he tugged her gown up, pressing her bridge player to the frigidity methamphetamine 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 promontory dropping lower, her legs shakiness. Evelyn's breath smudged the chalk as Walter drove into her, matching that rhythm method she could see but never hear.

When she came, it broke out of her in a pant she had to swallow against her radiocarpal joint. She felt Walter's finger's breadth dig into her hips, holding her tight. Outside, Savannah's body gave a fiddling final quiver, and Jax carried her back to bed like she weighed nil at all.

The lamp clicked off. The window went dark. But Evelyn's pulse kept humming, her body still pressed to the glass — warm in plaza she'd almost forgotten. And Walter stood behind her, panting like a man who'd just remembered he was still awake .