First Class Stamp Read Online Free Page B

comfortable for the
night and ran up the flight of stairs to her apartment and slept eight hours
only to come back in the morning and do it all over again.
    The doctors were cautiously optimistic about Gloria’s
recovery and Aldo secretly acknowledged that he couldn’t have continued to run
the store and tend to his wife without his gracious daughter. He would be
forever grateful. And he hoped that one day God would reward her for the years
of selflessness with a good man that would treat her like the princess he knew she
was.

3.
    Two weeks had passed since Ben had mailed his latest letter
to Luca and still no reply. It was unusual for there to be such a long gap
between letters. He thought about it sporadically all day.
    It was a typical Monday for Ben in the office. Matt and Mark
were both at home and Ryan Little was holed up at his computer going over the
previous month’s financial report. Ben sat at his desk perusing his emails when
Tyler, Matt’s stepson, rapped on his open door and sauntered in to sit in the
leather club chair in front of his desk.
    Ben looked up to see his nephew yawn. He inwardly chuckled.
He knew that Tyler had a…a colorful life outside of the office. He and Tim,
Ben’s youngest brother, were joined in their quest to bed all the available
women in Manhattan. Well, not anymore since Tim had become entangled in love.
He was recently married, he’d drunk the kool-aid and had been brainwashed into
settling into a mundane existence like the rest of the Lathem men, although
both of Matt’s stepsons, Tyler and Adam, and Mark’s stepson Derek, were still
all single. Adam was finishing up his residency and would soon go into his
specialized field of pediatrics. He didn’t have time to date – he was too
wrapped up in his work being a doctor. Derek also worked at MEL Holdings. His
was in the engineering side of the business. Any renovation work that was done,
Derek had his hand in it. He was pretty quiet and lived a low key lifestyle. If
he dated much, Ben didn’t know about it.
    And then there was Tyler. He was so like Matt that Ben found
it incredulous they were not biologically related. Tyler even looked a little
like his stepfather, and he certainly was following in his bachelor lifestyle.
Ben looked at the tired expression opposite him and wondered if it came from
one long date or several dates over the course of the weekend.
    “You okay?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” Tyler yawned again. “Didn’t get much sleep last
night.”
    Ben’s eyebrows raised and his head tilted ever so slightly.
    “I wish!” Tyler snickered at the question he knew was on the
tip of Ben’s tongue. “Christopher wanted to stay with me last night, so, being
the awesome big brother that I am, he slept at my house. Well, he didn’t sleep
much.”
    “You had a sleepover with a three year old?”
    “Yep! And I gladly returned him this morning when mom came
to pick him up. It was a once in a lifetime experience. Believe me! Once and
once only .”
    Ben laughed. “That really was not even in the list of things
I imagined you to confessing this morning.”
    Tyler shrugged. “I do love the little guy, but he’s not
staying over again!”
    They proceeded to discuss the file that Tyler held in his
hand. He was headed off to Oklahoma City to negotiate the acquisition of a
portfolio trying to avoid bankruptcy. Tyler had found the deal and was trying to
see it through from beginning to end and had counseled with Matt on the best
way to proceed. He just had a couple more questions for Ben before he hopped
onto the plane that would fly him to the Midwest.
    With Tyler satisfied and out of his office, Ben’s mind
wandered back to Luca. He picked up the phone and called his assistant to find
out what, if anything, was new with Crystal Towers, the skyscraper where Luca’s
mother worked. After a few minutes the reply came that all was well in Rio. Ben
opened a new word document on his laptop and wrote Luca a quick letter,