In Love by Design (The Adventures of Anabel Axelrod) by Tracy Ellen

talking to live people. After waiting on customers all day at the bookstore, and then spending the evening at Mac’s with a gaggle of women talking nonstop weddings and frightfully graphic birth stories, I was already tired of humans when I got home tonight. That was before I was kidnapped by the princess bride.
    Now that I’ve gone and reminded myself of the evening earlier at Mac’s house, I slumped down in the seat and stared unseeingly at the phone in my hand.
    After Luke ’s disturbing behaviors, my sister Mac was the next big problem on the mental list I’d been composing before being interrupted by my abduction.
    When I was the first to arrive at Mac’s house at seven, I learned she had arranged this to talk privately before the other women arrived. Mac immediately whisked me off to the master bedroom and fell apart before my eyes. Only weeks after telling me that Diego is the light of her life, I was dumbfounded to be informed Mac may be pulling the plug on their marriage. She suspects Diego has married her for money and wants me to investigate.
    As my sister angrily explained her suspicions while I patted her back, I grimaced at the irony. ‘Are Axelrod women just cursed in general? Are we forever doomed to be dancing our cha-cha’s straight down the yellow brick road to relationship Hell like a bunch of sex-starved munchkins?’
    So why does Mac suspect this and why do I have to be the damn investigator?
    I know, that’s what I asked her, too!
    Diego’s behavior was straight out of an Oprah episode on what signs to look for in a cheating spouse. He’s been working day and night, he’s irritable and distracted, he’s been receiving calls and texts at all hours, he patted her on the head like she’s a dog, (I quickly stopped patting Mac’s back) and suddenly he showing no interest in their sex life. To add insult to injury, yesterday Diego asked Mac for ten thousand dollars. He wouldn’t look her in the eye and got angrily defensive when she asked to know, and rightfully so, why he needed the money.
    If Mac’s suspicions were correct, her pride can’t bear for anyone else to know that she knows Diego was stepping out on her. In her opinion, it’s a terrible enough blow for her to publically admit she’d made a mistake by naively marrying him so quickly when all her friends counseled her to wait.
    Ma c’s grand plan was to leave Diego first. In the court of public opinion, she’d be divorcing him on the grounds of his emotional immaturity which, according to her, everyone believed anyway due to their twelve year age difference.
    I tried valiantly not to snicker at hearing that, since isn’t emotional immaturity a given where men are concerned, as compared to women, regardless of any age differences?
    Exactly.
    Seeing the whites of Mac’s eyes showing around her aqua-blue orbs, I sat on the edge of their bed. Calmly, I brought up alternatives for Diego’s behavior other than him not loving her or breaking his wedding vows.
    “You know Mac, all those signs point to being blackmailed, too. Or Diego could be suffering from sad penis dysfunction and he’s seeking treatment. Could either of those be a possibility?”
    Mac’s dark scowl got darker. When I said Mac fell apart, I didn’t mean she started crying. That’s not the way Axelrod women fall apart. We tend to rant and rave while railing at the Universe. Perhaps we scream out a few obscenities, and then we get down to plotting pain-filled revenge.
    My sister rolled her eyes. “For God’s sake, he’s a Latino man, Bel. Their penises are always happy to function. That’s what has me crazy. If that penis is not here,” she stamped her foot indicating her luxuriously appointed bedroom, “doing it with me, then by God, I want to know where it has been before I dump his cheating ass!” She glared at me like I was nuts. “Blackmail? What skeletons could an emotionally immature man of twenty-five possibly have in his closet, for crying out