Chapter One

The outset Hellos

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

Walter was in the backyard, fussing with his love apple plants — she called him in through the screen door.

"Looks like soul finally bought the Carter blank space,"she said, peering through the lace curtain.

Together they stood in the den, side by side, watching through the big sliding chicken feed threshold that opened onto their slosh yard. The carter house sat just declivitous — its back windows lined up perfectly with theirs. No fence, just a wide reaching of Gunter Wilhelm Grass and a low hedgerow someone planted years ago, more for medal than privacy.

Evelyn squinted."Oh my…"

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

first gear, they saw her.

The young womanhood hopped down from the hand truck's side runway, a cardboard box balanced on her hip. She wore soaked dungaree shorts that left a perfect crescent of sun-kissed thigh and a wan pink tank top that clung to her chest when she bent over to slue the box onto the driveway.

She stood, brushed her hairsbreadth back — long, loose waves the color of honey, bouncing over her shoulder like a shampoo commercial. Savannah. They didn't know her name yet, but the name would get to her even before she introduced herself — she looked like a savannah : sweet, easygoing, promiscuous to imagine laughing in the sun.

Evelyn felt a little bloom of envy, then something more complicated. Savannah River had that impossible, unthoughtful youth — the flushed cheeks, the tight hide at her thighs, the careless way she tugged her shirt down when it rode up, not caring if someone caught a glimpse of flat belly.

"Pretty young lady,"Walter murmured, trying not to stare too obviously.

Evelyn elbowed him, half tantalization, but her oculus stayed on the little girl, too.

Then he stepped out.

Tall — so tall he looked like he might scrape the truck's roof with his articulatio humeri. He carried two big moving box stacked mellow, arms roped with muscle, forearms veined like a man who never needed to ask for help. His skin was smooth, deep brown, catching the late sun like polished bronze.

Jax set the box down and stood back, hands on his hips, shirt damp with sweat already. His T-shirt — old, mild, clinging just enough — stretched tight across his chest of drawers. 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 easy about the way he moved — like he owned that 1000 already. Not cocky. Just… confident. Walter made a soft grunt of surprisal. He'd never admit it, but the Pres Young man's size made him palpate pocket-size in a way he hadn't felt in years.

"Lord,"Evelyn said under her breath, feeling a electric discharge low in her belly she didn't dare speak out meretricious."Well… they're… they're lovely."

Walter cleared his throat."well-disposed enough, you think ?"

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

It took a calendar week for the first wave across the yards.

Evelyn watched them every few evenings — the girl dragging boxes inside well after dark, the man carrying a giant 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 bush by her new porch. They caught eyes. Savannah waved that sugariness, promiscuous undulation. Evelyn waved back, brass warm.

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

"Need a hand ?"he asked Jax.

Jax's grinning was widely and boyish, but his handshake nearly swallowed Walter's whole.

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

Evelyn stood behind the projection screen, biting her lip as she watched. Savannah bent-grass to tug a box assailable, hair falling like a drape around her nerve. Jax's helping hand brushed the diminished of her binding — 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 shape of Savannah's pegleg in those diminutive short, the smooth strength in Jax's arms. She closed her oculus, surprised by the warmness pooling in her belly.

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

Did he annul her up with those big deal, spread her across the sheets, that hard back rippling above her ? Evelyn felt a ghost of her dancer's soundbox — the tightness she'd once had, the thirstiness she hadn't felt in decades.

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

Chapter Two

The waver

The summertime weeks drifted by like flower petal on weewee — quiet, warm, familiar.

savannah and Jax settled in well. The end of the corner vanished. The lawn got its first clean cut. little talk by the fence turned into friendly wafture when they crossed track at the mailbox.

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

Walter would tease her, saying she was fussing over the rosiness too practically, but he didn't credit how he'd base by the sliding methamphetamine hydrochloride door with his coffee cup, watching Jax mow the yard in his tight T-shirt, sweat dripping down his neck.

-- -

It was late one dark when Evelyn woke up thirsty — the windowpane open, the air sticky against her hide. She slipped out of bed, measured not to wake Walter. The house creaked around her, floorboard sighing like they always did. She padded barefoot into the den, her robe loose around her articulatio coxae, and poured herself half a glass of bum red wine.

The backyard lay soft and dark, the hedge a fateful silhouette under the moon. Evelyn almost didn't notice the faint glow at number 1 — that unmarried warm lamp inside Savannah and Jax's sleeping room windowpane. She squinted, her field glass hovering near her lips.

There they were.

Or role of them, anyway.

She could see the corner of their bed — rumpled sheets, Savannah's cushy silhouette on her knee joint, kissing her married man with that sweet, hungry press of her oral fissure against his jaw. Evelyn felt a twinge in her chest she couldn't epithet. She told herself she'd just watch a indorse. Just a second.

savanna broke the kiss, smiling at Jax — and then she slid off the bed, bare and glowing in the lamplight, crossing to the window. Evelyn saw her reach for the mantle, probably about to extract it shut. But Jax followed her — so quick, so sure. He caught her hips from behind, kissed her articulatio humeri, and pressed her medallion flat against the glass.

Evelyn's breathing space caught. She should accept looked away — but she didn't. savannah's header tipped forward, her hair falling in a delicate golden spill. Jax moved in behind her, big hand sliding to her waist. Savannah pushed her coxa back into him like she wanted every inch he could collapse her.

Evelyn's lips parted as she watched him settle into her — the slow roll of his hips, the way savanna's body jolted just a footling with each bass knife thrust. Her palms stayed braced on the window. Her breath made a lilliputian cloud on the 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 Sir Thomas More exposed.

She didn't hear Walter step in until his dresser brushed her back. 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 arduous against her hip, harder than she'd felt him in years. She trembled when he tugged her gown up, pressing her hired man to the cold glass as he bent her just enough to take her.

She couldn't look away. Savannah's back arched. Jax pulled her hip joint back into him, slacken at first, then faster — Savannah River's drumhead dropping lower, her legs vibration. Evelyn's breath smudged the spyglass as Walter drove into her, matching that regular recurrence 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 fingerbreadth dig into her hips, holding her tight. outside, savanna's body gave a minuscule last shudder, and Jax carried her binding to bed like she weighed nothing at all.

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