Asking for Trouble by Rosalind James Page A

Susie answered. “I’m
not having my husband walk around with holes in his socks, looking like he has
a wife who doesn’t care enough about him to notice. And you can just live with
it.”
    She was still giving Joe shirts.
This year, she’d upgraded to sweaters, though Susie wasn’t a very good knitter,
he thought privately. The shoulders were pretty
funky. But he’d put on his new gray sweater with pleasure all the same, because
she’d made it for him.

 
    Alec and Rae’s presents were the last, at Alec’s insistence.
He’d started with gifts for his father, his brother, and Joe. Joe got an atomic
clock with a weather station, which he appreciated. You always needed to know
the weather. Alec gave regular things, practical things, the same kinds of
things Joe gave him.
    Christmas presents for men seemed kind of stupid to him
anyway. If he or Alec needed something, why not just go ahead and buy it, and
know they were getting exactly what they wanted? What was the point of buying
the other guy something, having to guess what he might like—because there
wasn’t anything Alec actually needed that Joe could buy him, or vice versa—and
wrapping it up in pretty paper?
    But the Kincaids always gave presents, so Joe did it too.
He’d done a wool stadium blanket in the green-and-red Kincaid tartan for both
Alec and Gabe this year, which he’d thought had been all right. A blanket was
useful, at least. That was his idea of a present.
    He’d veered a bit from the norm with Dave’s gift, though: Sacramento
Kings season tickets. They had a lousy record, but Dave was loyal, and he’d
been pleased, Joe could tell. So Joe had been happy he’d had the thought.
      Women were
different, of course. Women liked presents, and it had always seemed to Joe
that the more useless the present was, the better they liked it. Well, they liked
to feel special, and he had no problem with that.
    Sure enough, it was the women’s turn for Alec’s gifts now,
and Alyssa and Mira were exclaiming as they opened their gifts, lifted the lids
of identical flat black velvet boxes, and each drew out a pendant hung from a gold
chain. They weren’t identical, but they were the same basic idea: one single, large,
lustrous pearl, nestled in a curving disc of gold that looked like some sort of
shell, or a leaf. Something delicate and pretty, anyway.
    “Thank you,” Mira breathed. “It’s so beautiful.” She held it
up for Gabe to see, and he turned a rueful gaze on his brother.
    “Rae said it would be all right to give your wife jewelry,”
Alec said, clearly reading his twin’s mind. “Don’t blame me. I asked her. I
checked.”
    “Are you kidding?” Mira said happily. “I’m not giving this back.
Oh, he means it might hurt your feelings.” She turned to Gabe with a bit of a
stricken look, but Joe noticed that she was clutching her necklace pretty
tightly all the same.
    “Never mind.” Gabe was already taking it from her, fastening
the clasp behind her neck, and her hand went up to stroke the smooth surfaces
as if she couldn’t help herself. “You just consider it a fringe benefit of
being married to me. We’ll leave it at that.”
    “Oh, guys. Wow.” Alyssa had her own necklace on. She jumped
up and went to the big mirror over the cabinet next to the front door to check
out her reflection. “It’s gorgeous, and I can wear it with anything. Where did
you find them, Rae?”
    “It wasn’t me,” she said. “I had nothing to do with it. That
was your brother all the way. That’s from Tahiti, via Paris. He didn’t even
show me until after he’d done it, after he’d come back from his mysterious
errand. I thought maybe he was buying me a pony, but,” she sighed, “turns out
not.”
    “Mmm,” Alec said, smiling at her. “I may have got you
something too. We’ll get to that. But meanwhile . . . I’ve got a couple more
things under here.” He crouched beside the tree, fished out two slightly larger
flat packages wrapped