preface

The summer heat in the quiet suburb was unforgiving, soaking everything in a kind of heavy, breathless humidity that made even the simplest of movements feel decadent. Sarah had always loved the warmth, how it clung to her skin, how it made her favorite silk dresses feel that much softer, that much clingier. After her divorce, the silence in her home grew louder, the echoes of loneliness sharpening by the day. Until John arrived.

Younger. Built like a man who used his hands for a living. And those hands were everywhere lately—patching drywall, fixing her outdoor lights, replacing a faucet—and every movement he made seemed designed to test her self-control. He was polite, respectful. But something simmered between them. Something neither of them dared name. Not yet.

She never wore a bra when she offered him lemonade. And he never looked away.