Open House

Nine million dollars of glass and cedar on a cliff above Lake Tahoe. One last open house of the season. And a storm that keeps everybody away except the three people who should never have been left alone in it.

Dominic Ferraro is forty-one, a former linebacker turned builder with huge shoulders, close-cropped dark hair and a jaw that hasnt seen a razor since Wednesday. He spent fourteen months raising Ridgeline House out of the granite with his own hands, and fourteen months saying absolutely nothing about the two women who walk through it in heels like they own the place.

Simone Achebe is thirty-six, the most dangerous realtor on the east shore, all deep brown curves and long black braids, red lips and a wine-red dress built to sell a view. Juliet Navarro is thirty-three, the stager who chose every pillow in the house, olive-skinned and auburn-haired and poured into black satin, with a wicked mouth and a confession she has been sitting on for nine years.

Tonight the brokers have gone home. The road is a river. The rain is running down twenty feet of glass, the fire is burning low, and the builder has just come in from the deck soaked to the skin.

They have talked about this. They have made rules. They are going to ask him very nicely, and they are going to want to hear him say yes.

And every light in the house is still on.