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wife thinks these home movies
are hilarious (she’s as wacky as he is, obviously) so, she wasn’t
helpful, either.
    Their kids tried to snag
the DVDs, too, but my brother is good. The kids, while not
embarrassed by their parent’s antics, are easily bribed. (You
didn’t hear this from me. I would not resort to bribing my nieces
and nephews unless the situation required such means, and this one
does.)
    Ah, Bentley is back from
his duties, so off to the post office we’ll go. He’s holding a dog
biscuit in his mouth, guess where he was? Yep, Grandmom and
Granddad’s house.
    Thank goodness the herd
manages to keep him active, so he’s not gained any weight, yet.
He’s not hogged my side of the bed, either. (Thank you for
providing the dog bed, but Bentley only uses it during the day.) At
night, the lush seems to prefer sleeping in my bed, using the
second pillow. I’m spoiling him, I’m afraid.
    No pictures this time, as
my digital camera is in pieces. I’m cleaning it, so, next posting
I’ll send some.
    Your friend,
    Lainy
    P.S. Just be yourself
around the rellys as that’s what families and being a part of a
family is all about. Act like you would around Bentley. (I hope
that makes sense.)
     
    Mitch contemplated Lainy’s newest
e-mail. Actually, he contemplated the “Your friend” part. She
definitely was his friend, but he feared he’d begun to think of her
as far more than merely a friend. She’d become his partner and his
confidante. The one person who seemed to complete him.
    She was Bentley’s mom.
    His thinking was bent, for sure. Here
was this poor, unsuspecting woman – who’d kindly taken in his dog
and him – and now he felt like a stalker. He knew he didn’t think
of Lainy Morrison as a friend. Instead, in his mind, she’d taken on
the role of lover.
    Mitch swallowed as he thought about
that. Lover. Everyone he’d ever loved had died. The past proved he
wasn’t loveable. Yet he ached for it.
    Did he want a family so much? Or did
he want Lainy Morrison that much with her family as a
bonus?
    As he went to sign off, Al stuck his
head around the corner. “Yo, cookie boy, we've got orders to head
to the choppers. We're off to work.” Al's exuberance was catching
and Mitch, while grateful to be able to do something in the field,
regretted he'd be separated from his computer. More than the
computer, but that he'd be separated from Lainy. And
Bentley.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Eight
     
    “ No, send this priority,
please, Melanie,” Lainy replied to the uniformed postal worker
behind the counter. A professional, and her first
cousin.
    “ Sure, Lainy. This is going
to Mitch, so I think I can send it with special rates. What’s
inside?”
    “ A prototype for a new
laptop I designed and built.” Lainy wondered if she should have
padded the box better.
    “ Okay, how much you think
it’s worth?”
    Lainy gave a figure and bought the
insurance for the package, all the while chewing the inside of her
cheek.
    “ Hear from Ben?” Melanie
snapped her gum as she placed Lainy’s box in a bin behind
her.
    “ Not lately, why?” Melanie
and Ben were brother and sister, so Lainy figured Ben would keep
Melanie more informed than her, his cousin.
    “ He thought he might have a
stopover at Mitch’s base,” Melanie supplied and Lainy’s heart
thumped.
    “ Really?” Her breath
stopped somewhere in the vicinity of her diaphragm. After the first
hiccup, she swallowed and repressed the urge to leap across the
counter and hold her cousin down for questioning.
    “ He thought so, but won’t
know for certain until he gets his orders.” Melanie snapped her gum
again as she surveyed something on the computer screen in front of
her.
    Deciding she wouldn’t get
very far with Melanie, Lainy hastily thanked her and set off for
home at a faster pace than normal. She leapt out of the vehicle
before it came to a complete stop and raced to her computer. She
pounded out a quick message to her cousin Ben, not