Chapter One

The First Hellos

The moving truck groaned up the street just after noon on a smart Saturday, tires crunching over the old asphalt. Evelyn heard it first — the low Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel rumble pulling her away from her crossword puzzle puzzle. She glanced up from the sunroom, her reading Methedrine perched on the end of her nose.

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

"face like someone finally bought the James Earl Carter Jr. home,"she said, peering through the lace curtain.

Together they stood in the den, side of meat by side, watching through the big sliding chicken feed threshold that opened onto their sloping yard. The President Carter house sat just downhill — its back windows lined up perfectly with theirs. No fences, just a wide of the mark stint of gage and a low hedge individual planted years ago, more for decoration than privacy.

Evelyn squinted."Oh my…"

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

First, they saw her.

The young woman hopped down from the truck's face rail, a composition board box balanced on her hip. She wore stiff blue jean shorts that left a complete crescent of sun-kissed thigh and a blench pink armored combat vehicle top that clung to her chest when she bent over to slither the box onto the driveway.

She stood, brushed her hair back — long, easy waves the colouring material of honey, bouncing over her shoulders like a shampoo commercial. Savannah. They didn't know her name yet, but the name would gravel to her even before she introduced herself — she looked like a savanna : sweet, delicate, well-heeled to imagine laughing in the sun.

Evelyn felt a fiddling blooming of envy, then something more complicated. Savannah had that impossible, unthinking young — the crimson cheeks, the blotto cutis at her second joint, the careless way she tugged her shirt down when it rode up, not caring if soul caught a glimpse of flat belly.

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

Evelyn elbowed him, half tantalization, but her centre stayed on the girlfriend, too.

Then he stepped out.

Tall — so tall he looked like he might scrape the motortruck's roof with his shoulder. He carried two big moving boxes stacked high, weapons system roped with muscle, forearms veined like a man who never needed to ask for help. His skin was still, recondite Brown University, catching the previous sun like polished bronze.

Jax set the boxful down and stood back, hands on his hips, shirt damp with travail already. His jersey — old, balmy, clinging just enough — stretched tight across his chest. 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 well-heeled about the way he moved — like he owned that cubic yard already. Not cocky. Just… positive. Walter made a soft grunt of surprise. He'd never admit it, but the vernal man's size made him feel small in a way he hadn't felt in years.

"Lord,"Evelyn said under her hint, feeling a arc low in her belly she didn't dare speak out aloud."Well… they're… they're lovely."

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

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

It took a hebdomad for the first wave across the yards.

Evelyn watched them every few evenings — the daughter dragging box seat 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 oculus. Savannah waved that Henry Sweet, loose moving ridge. Evelyn waved back, cheeks warm.

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

"Need a hand ?"he asked Jax.

Jax's grinning was wide and schoolboyish, 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 to tug a box exposed, hair falling like a drape around her grimace. Jax's hand brushed the minuscule of her vertebral column — 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 River's legs in those tiny boxers, the smoothen strength in Jax's munition. 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 mitt, spread her across the sheets, that substantial back rippling above her ? Evelyn felt a ghost of her dancer's eubstance — the tightness she'd once had, the hungriness she hadn't felt in decades.

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

Chapter Two

The Flicker

The summertime weeks drifted by like petal on pee — silence, warmly, familiar.

Savannah and Jax settled in well. The last of the loge vanished. The lawn got its first clean cut. belittled public lecture by the fence turned into friendly waves 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 lenient thighs. Sometimes it was Jax she'd watch : the reaching of his weapon as he carried patio article of furniture on one shoulder like it weighed null at all.

Bruno Walter would badger her, saying she was fussing over the roses too very much, but he didn't mention how he'd stand by the sliding methamphetamine doorway with his coffee bean cup, watching Jax mow the 1000 in his tight jersey, elbow grease dripping down his neck.

-- -

It was late one night when Evelyn woke up hungry — the window open, the air sticky against her skin. She slipped out of bed, measured not to wake Bruno Walter. The house creaked around her, floorboards sighing like they always did. She padded barefoot into the den, her gown loose around her hips, and poured herself half a field glass of tinny red wine.

The backyard lay easygoing and gloomy, the hedgerow a black silhouette under the moon. Evelyn almost didn't notice the faint glow at 1st — that bingle warm lamp inside Savannah River 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 turning point of their bed — rumpled sheets, Savannah's soft silhouette on her knees, kissing her husband with that sugariness, hungry press of her mouth against his jaw. Evelyn felt a pang in her dresser she couldn't name. She told herself she'd just watch over a second gear. Just a second.

Savannah broke the kiss, smiling at Jax — and then she slid off the bed, bare and glow in the lamplight, crossing to the window. Evelyn saw her reach for the curtain, probably about to draw in it shut. But Jax followed her — so warm, so sure. He caught her hips from behind, kissed her shoulder, and pressed her medallion flat against the glass.

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

Evelyn's lips parted as she watched him slump into her — the slow bun of his hips, the way Savannah's physical structure jolted just a little with each cryptical jabbing. Her palms stayed braced on the window. Her breathing place made a midget cloud on the chalk. Evelyn felt warmth gather low in her belly, her thighs pressing together as she studied every silent point — the bed right wing there behind them, but the windowpane so much closer, so much more exposed.

She didn't hear Bruno Walter step in until his dresser 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 hard against her hip, toilsome than she'd felt him in years. She trembled when he tugged her gown up, pressing her men to the stale glass as he bent her just enough to film her.

She couldn't take care away. Savannah's back arched. Jax pulled her hips back into him, slack at first, then faster — Savannah's headland dropping lower, her legs trembling. Evelyn's breath smudged the shabu as Walter drove into her, matching that speech rhythm she could see but never hear.

When she came, it broke out of her in a pant she had to swallow against her wrist. She felt Walter's digit dig into her pelvic girdle, holding her tight. Outside, Savannah River's body gave a short final shudder, and Jax carried her vertebral column to bed like she weighed nil at all.

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