“I think it’ll be better if you go, Bette. Look, why don’t you surprise Tina, spend a few days in that 7 star hotel that they have in Dubai?   It’s the holidays, right? Maybe spoil her a bit?” he suggested.  He was also thinking that he had been putting a lot on Bette’s plate, perhaps unconsciously, and she really hadn’t had the time to adjust at all, or barely, to the new life with Tina in New York.  Heaven forbid if the work she was doing with him, even if she so clearly enjoyed it, would in any way lead to problems between Bette and Tina.

She hadn’t said anything in response.  So he pushed a bit, “Bette, I just feel no one else will be able to tell me, bottomline, whether the India investment will be a good one.  We can read as many reports, analysis, and what-have-yous… but I need a clear read.  And right now, that clear read is your read. Hell, I don’t trust my own “read” as much as I do yours.”

Still silence on the other end.  Impatiently he said, “Okay Bette… here’s my offer, I cover all the risk, if things go south with that investment.  But you get 20% of the gains, if we hit the jackpot with it.”

Bette finally spoke, “George, you don’t have to. Our standard 10 is fine.”

“Will you please just let me do something nice for you, for a change?” he asked, in mock exasperation, but with a little edge to it.  “Honestly, Bette, if I die tomorrow, I’ll do so with enormous guilt for never having been as good to you as you have been to me!”

Bette laughed lightly.  She could almost see George, on his treadmill, red-faced with frustration.

“Alright, George…” she started to say.

“Finally!,” he said, cutting in. “And I’m throwing in the Dubai holiday for you and Tina, too.  My gift…no I insist… my Christmas gift to you ladies, okay?”

After going over a few more items, they hung up.

Later that evening, as Bette fixed dinner for her and Tina, humming to the iTunes compilation of their favorite opera arias, she was thinking about how to get Tina to agree to spend a few days together in Dubai.