Asking for Trouble Read Online Free PDF Page B

was great. As
honeymoons go, I’d rate it right up there. I’ll show you my pictures later, if
you want to see. Other people’s vacation pictures are never that fascinating.”
    “They are to me,” Mira protested. “I’ve never been to Paris.
So romantic.”
    “Thanks, bro,” Gabe told his twin. “Raising the bar again.”
    He got a shrug in return. “Got to do it right. I’m only
going to get one bride. Sadly.” Alec heaved a martyred sigh. “I tried to sell
her on the merits of plural marriage, the whole sister-wife deal, but she’s not
going for it.”
    “Nope,” Rae said. “Afraid you’re stuck with one.   But yes, you did it right. Although it was
strange, too,” she told Mira. “That was the first time it really sank in how
much money Alec has. Flying first class, staying in a suite at the Georges Cinq,
it was all like a movie, some movie that would never be starring me.”
    “What a nightmare,” Alyssa deadpanned.
    “Well, yeah,” Rae said with a laugh. “I’m not complaining. But
he didn’t even check with me, he just set it all up, and it was . . . way
beyond my pay grade. We’d go out to dinner, and I’d look at the prices on the
menu, do the currency conversion, get this—” She put her hand on her
heart. “Whoa, major shock, and have to remind myself that he could afford it.”
    “That we could
afford it,” Alec said. “And here I thought you married me for my money.”
    “Nope,” she said. “I married you for your good looks.”
    “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. And it’s true,” he told the
others, “I could see that calculator brain working every single time we went
anywhere. They need to make those date menus without the prices again, like
they used to.”
    “Always order from the middle of the menu,” Alyssa’s mother pronounced.
“That’s what we were told when I was a girl. You didn’t order the chicken
salad, because that was an insult, like you thought he couldn’t afford anything
more. But you didn’t order the lobster, either, because that would make him
feel taken advantage of.”
    “Until you started dating me,” Dave Kincaid put in. “Then
you knew you had to order the chicken
salad.”
    “Good thing you were worth it,” Susie said. “Lots of
picnics, too.”
    “I was hoping you’d think they were romantic,” her husband complained.
    “They were.” She smiled back at him, and Alyssa felt about
her fifth pang of envy since they’d sat down. Great. Now she was jealous of her parents.
    “Sometimes I think it’s better just to split the check,” she
said, trying to lift her mood, join the fun. “What do you guys think?” she
asked her brothers. “Better, or no? It always seems like it should be, but
then, when I’ve been out with a guy the first time and he lets the check lie
there in the middle of the table, and I can tell he’s thinking I should offer
to split it . . . ugh. It turns me off.”
    “For sure, he pays the first time,” Gabe said.
    “That’s right,” Alec agreed. “Big red flag, Liss.”
    “But then,” she mused, “why should he, really?”
    “Because he asked you,” Gabe said. “He doesn’t have to take
you someplace he can’t afford. If he can only take you out for a hamburger, or
a picnic,” he said with a smile for his mother, “that’s fine. I’ve been that
broke plenty of times. But if he asks you out, he should pay the first time.
You can offer to split the check the second time, if you want.”
    “Of course,” Alec said, “if you ask him out, all bets are
off. Though most guys I know probably wouldn’t be comfortable with the woman
paying even then, not the first time.”
    “I still don’t ask guys out,” Alyssa admitted. “I should, but
the kind of guy I like, I just can’t imagine asking out. I don’t like New Age
men. I mean, I like them, I’m just
not attracted to them. I should be, I know I should be, but I’m not.”  
      “So nobody special
right now?” Gabe asked