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watch television, play
video games and Ping-Pong, and roughhouse without breaking anything important.
They even had their own mini-kitchen with a refrigerator, microwave and sink. As
growing boys they were starving at all hours, and Molly didn’t want them running
across the yard to the house in the cold and dark.
    Upstairs were two huge bedrooms and adjoining baths. The rooms
had twin beds and a set of bunk beds to accommodate up to six foster boys at one
time. In addition to Wade and his brothers, there had been other children who
came but didn’t stay long because they went back to their parents or were
adopted by relatives. They rarely had an empty bed back then.
    These days there were just the four of them, each having
outgrown bunk beds. Molly had redecorated after they all moved out, and each
room now had two queen-size beds. Typically the kids all arrived back at the
farm at the same time: Christmas Eve. The big house hadn’t gotten any larger in
the past decade, so the boys found themselves back in the bunkhouse.
    Since he was the only one there, Wade could stay in the
upstairs guest room of the big house. At least until Christmas when the others
arrived. But somehow that felt wrong. Instead, he carried Molly’s requested
groceries inside the big house, put them away and then locked the back door
behind him. He grabbed the rest of his things from the hatch of his SUV and
rolled his suitcase over to the bunkhouse.
    Anticipating his move, Molly had left the porch light on, and
on the mini-kitchen counter was a slice of lemon pound cake wrapped in
cellophane and a note welcoming him home.
    As he read the note he smiled and set the rest of his groceries
beside it. He stashed a small case of water, cream cheese, Sumatran coffee beans
and a six-pack of his favorite microbrewed dark ale in the fridge. He left the
bagels and a bag of pretzels on the counter beside the cake.
    God, it was nice to be home.
    His loft apartment in Tribeca was nice—it should be,
considering what he paid for it. But it didn’t feel like home. With its big
glass windows and concrete floors, it was a little too modern in design to feel
welcoming. It was chic and functional, which is what he thought he liked when he
bought it. But it wasn’t until he set foot in this old barn with the battered
table-tennis table and ancient two-hundred-pound television that he could truly
relax.
    Things hadn’t changed much in the bunkhouse. The futon where he
first made out with Anna Chissom was still in the corner. She’d been his first
girlfriend, a shy, quiet redhead who kicked off a long string of auburn-haired
women in his life. The latest, of course, was giving him the most grief. But he
still wished he could pull Victoria down onto the futon and finish what they’d
started outside that bar.
    He’d done it intending to get under her skin and punish her for
dumping that drink on him. Then he found he liked touching her. Teasing her. He
enjoyed the flush upon her creamy fair skin. The soft parting of her lips
inviting him to kiss her. She responded to him, whether she wanted to or not,
exposing her weakness. Now he just had to take advantage of it. There were worse
negotiating tactics. Yet she wasn’t the only one suffering. He wanted to feel
her mouth against his. And not just so she’d sell him her land.
    Wade flopped back onto the couch and eyed his watch. It was
only nine-thirty. He didn’t normally go to bed until well after eleven,
especially on the weekends. He was tempted to pull out his laptop and get some
work done but was interrupted by the faint melody of his phone.
    It was Brody’s ringtone—the dramatic pipe-organ melody of the
theme to The Phantom of the Opera. It was a
long-running family joke, considering his computer-genius brother was pretty
much living out the plotline as a scarred recluse. But when you had the kind of
life that most of the Eden boys had lived, you developed a pretty thick skin and
a dark sense of humor to make