“I’ve got a plan,” Carol Murphy announced to her two best friends.

Emma and Ginny had been Carol’s best friends since they’d all been ten, and Carol had always told them everything. She was a little nervous about this though. Her hands felt slightly cold, so she picked up her mug of tea in both hands to warm them up.

The three of them were sitting in a corner table at Tea for Two, the tea shop in downtown Blacksburg, Virginia, that Carol and Ginny had opened earlier last year.

Ginny, blond, gorgeous, and always smiling, arched her eyebrows. “It’s not a Man-Fast, is it? Because you know how well that worked out for Emma.”

Emma slanted her friend a look of mock indignation. “Hey, I managed it for a couple of weeks.”

“It’s not a Man-Fast,” Carol said firmly, trying to bring them back to the topic before they got completely distracted. “I’ve basically been on a Man-Fast for the past year. It’s been more than a year since I’ve even had a date. I’ve succeeded in a Man-Fast far beyond Emma’s dreams.”

She was making light of the subject, but it really was rather depressing to think she’d gone so long without a date. A couple of guys had asked her out in that time, but they were men she barely knew and had absolutely no interest in.

She would be twenty-six soon. She had a good life—with a lot of great friends and her own small business, which was doing as well as could be expected. She was reasonably attractive with long, reddish-brown hair and gray eyes. She could stand to lose about fifteen pounds, and she wasn’t nearly as pretty as her two best friends, but still…

She thought she was a nice person. She didn’t know why no one wanted to go out with her.

“It’s not because men aren’t interested,” Ginny said as if she’d read Carol’s mind. “It’s because you don’t put yourself out there.”

“I try!”

Emma laughed. “I know you think you’re trying, but I don’t think guys know that you are. Guys are sometimes kind of clueless—”

“Sometimes!” Ginny said with an ironic snort.

Emma narrowed her eyes. “Sometimes they are. Your attempts are all so subtle they don’t even know you’re trying to flirt. You can’t be subtle.”

Carol thought about that and wondered if it was true. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that her friends were just trying to make her feel better, but they were usually honest with each other. She was shyer than Emma and Ginny. She was naturally less likely to put herself out there for other people to judge. Maybe that was part of her problem. “I don’t want to embarrass myself,” she admitted.

Ginny chuckled. “See, that’s your problem. You’ve got to be willing to embarrass yourself if you want to really flirt.”

Carol cringed at the visual of her doing something like that—flirting so obviously that everyone would see it.

She was by nature a listener rather than a talker. She loved baking and taking care of people and supporting those she loved. She didn’t like being the center of attention, and it felt unnatural whenever she tried it.

Maybe that was why she’d always gone unnoticed by men.

Or maybe they just weren’t that attracted to her.

“So, what is your plan?” Emma asked. She’d always been the most practical and organized of the three, and she was the one who usually kept them on topic. “Are you going to put yourself out there more? Maybe you should join a dating site or something.”

Carol had thought about that. She’d been thinking about it a lot last year, but then in September something had changed.

She didn’t just want a man.

She wanted one man in particular.

She’d never admitted it to anyone though, and now that the moment was at hand, the words stuck in her throat.

Ginny frowned. “What’s the matter? Surely your plan isn’t that scary.”

“It is,” Carol said. Seeking some sort of distraction from her rising nerves, she looked around the shop and noticed a woman was waiting at the counter. Rachel, one of the college students who was working for them, was clearing up dishes from tables on the other side of the room. “Hold on. Let me take care of her real quick.”

She walked over to the counter, smiling at the woman waiting there. The woman was a frequent customer, and Carol recognized her immediately. She was small and blond and incredibly pretty with a quirky, straight-laced sense of style. Today she wore a sweater-vest over a blouse and a pleated skirt.

“Sorry about that,” Carol said with a smile. “I don’t think Rachel saw you.”

“It’s no problem,” the woman said. She didn’t look impatient or annoyed, so that was a relief. “Do you still have that chai I had last week?”

“Yes, we do! It was really popular, so we’re going to stock it regularly. To go?”

The woman nodded her assent and waited as Carol prepared the tea in a to-go cup. “It’s not very crowded today.”

“No. Wednesday afternoons are always dead for some reason.”

“But business is going pretty well?”

Carol glanced over and saw that the woman seemed to really want to know. “Yeah. We’re doing great.”

“So you’re not going to close anytime soon?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Oh good. I was so happy when you opened up.” The woman flashed her a quick, intelligent smile. “My apartment is right upstairs.”

Carol smiled back. “No wonder I see you here a lot. I hope you’ll keep coming.” She swiped the woman’s card and handed it back to her. “By the way, I’m Carol.”

“Jill.” The woman slid her wallet into her leather tote and took her tea. “And I’ll definitely keep coming.”

Carol logged out of the register and then went to sit down at the table with Ginny and Emma, who were both staring at her with a strange intensity.

“What?” she demanded, looking down at herself to make sure she hadn’t spilled something on her top or gotten flour all over her broomstick skirt. “Why are you looking at me that way?”

“You were about to tell us something,” Ginny explained. “And you were nervous about saying it. So now we want to know what it is.”

“What is your plan?” Emma asked.

There was no sense in stalling or trying to distract them now. They knew she had something important to say, and they’d never let her get away with not saying it. Carol clasped her hands in her lap and stared down at them. “It’s not a Man-Fast,” she said slowly. “But it is about a man.”

“I knew it!” Ginny exclaimed, clapping her hands excitedly. “I knew it! I just now told Emma that’s what you were going to say.”

“I haven’t even said it yet.”

“But what else could it be? You’ve always secretly liked him. All of us knew it,” Ginny said.

Emma and Ginny were both smiling, both looking pleased and proud and brimming with enthusiasm.

Carol shouldn’t have been surprised. They knew each other so well. They would have known where her thoughts had been drifting lately.

“You’ve been into him since middle school,” Emma added. “Remember when you asked him to the dance?”

Naturally Carol remembered it. She’d never been able to forget it. It was one of the most humiliating moments of her life.

When she was thirteen, their school had had a Sadie Hawkins dance. Emma and Ginny had both founds boys in their class to ask, but Carol had had someone else in mind. She’d wanted to go with Emma’s brother, Patrick, who was two years older than her and always so smart and serious and intriguing.

So she’d worked up her courage for a week and then finally made her move one day after school. He’d been doing homework in the dining room of his and Emma’s house, and she’d gone up to talk to him. She’d been so scared she hadn’t been able to say anything immediately, so she’d just sat down at a chair beside him.

He was working on some sort of math problem on graph paper—he was taking math more advanced than anything she could even understand—and he raised his eyes to look at her.

When she didn’t say anything, he said, “What?”

There was nothing else she could do. She was there, and she had to say what she’d come for. So she’d blurted out, “Will you go to the dance with me?”

He stared at her for a minute, his brown eyes absolutely unreadable.

Then he’d lowered his gaze and kept working on his math problem.

That had been it. He hadn’t even answered her. He hadn’t looked at her again.

Carol had wanted to melt into the floor in absolute humiliation, and she’d run away and avoided him for weeks afterward.

“Don’t remind me,” she said, realizing her friends were waiting for her to say something. “If I think about that, I’ll never have the courage to do anything now.”

“He was a kid,” Emma said softly. “He was terrified of girls back then. It wasn’t personal.”

The rejection had felt personal to Carol, but she was reasonable enough to acknowledge that it didn’t mean her hopes for Patrick now were futile. They had a good relationship. They were friends.

She thought they might be even more if he could just start seeing her in a different way.

Then she blinked as she thought about what Ginny had said earlier. “What do you mean, all of us knew it? Not… not everyone knew it, did they?”

“No.” Ginny was twirling her engagement ring absently, as she often did. “Just Emma and me. No one else knows anything. Like I said before, even when you think you’re being obvious, it’s too subtle for guys to pick up on.”

“Patrick has no idea,” Emma added. “Talk about clueless.”

Carol let out a long breath and closed her eyes for a moment.

There it was.

Patrick Stevenson. Emma’s older brother.

The guy she’d liked since she was a kid.

She hadn’t been nursing a desperate love for him or anything, but in the back of her mind, he’d always been the man she most wanted.

Not that he’d ever noticed her at all.

Feeling better that it was out on the table, she said, “Okay, yes. That’s my plan. I want a man, and I want that man to be Patrick. So I need a… I need a plan to make it happen.”

“He already likes you a lot,” Ginny said. “I don’t think it will be very hard to seal the deal.”

Carol shook her head. “Yeah, he likes me as a friend and as his best friend’s little sister. He isn’t attracted to me.”

“How do you know?” Ginny asked.

“Because he’s never given even the slightest indication that he is. I’m not stupid, you know. I know if a guy is attracted to me, and Patrick just isn’t. So I need help with a plan to get him to start seeing me sexually. I’ve got to figure out how to seduce him.”

“Ew,” Emma said, making a face. “He’s my brother, remember. I don’t really want to think about him and sex.”

Carol sniffed. “If that’s the case, then maybe you can mention to Ginny to not sneak off in the middle of a cookout to do the deed with my brother.”

Ginny giggled and looked a little sheepish. She’d been engaged to Carol’s brother, Ryan, now for two months, and Carol had never seen either of them happier. “Well, I’m sorry, but your brother happens to be insatiable.”

When Carol started to object to this piece of information, Emma interrupted. “Okay, okay. We’ve got to just agree that any specific details about sex with any of our brothers are completely off-limits. But I’m happy to help you with a plan to get Patrick to start thinking about you differently. As long as we agree to use the word attract instead of seduce.”

Carol and Ginny both laughed.

Then Carol nodded, feeling better and more hopeful now that her friends were in on the idea. “Okay. It’s a deal. So we need to come up with a plan to help me attract Patrick. You know how bad I am at this kind of thing, so you both need to really help me.”

“We can definitely come up with some ideas,” Emma said.

“This is going to be fun!” Ginny added.

Carol didn’t know how fun it was going to be. Even the thought of making moves on Patrick absolutely terrified her.

She was very likely to end up feeling like that thirteen-year-old again, mortified and completely rejected.

But this wasn’t going to happen unless she took some real steps. She might think Patrick was the cutest, smartest, funniest, nicest guy in the world, but he didn’t think about her as anything except Ryan’s little sister.

That had to change.

Other women managed to seduce guys all the time.

Surely she was capable of doing it too.

***

That evening, Carol was working in the storeroom, trying to reorganize to make room for a new shipment of gourmet tea and coffee they’d gotten in.

Since she arrived at work every morning at five-thirty, she usually left the shop in the mid-afternoon, letting Ginny manages things in the later hours, but she hadn’t been able to get away today. Now she was tired and had a tension headache wrapping around the base of her skull, and the boxes she’d wanted to put on the lower shelf just wouldn’t fit.

She growled to herself as she tried to squeeze the last box into a space that was simply too small for it.

She’d been feeling hopeful earlier today, when she’d been chatting with her friends about doing something about her feelings for Patrick, but her mood had definitely plummeted since then.

Patrick hadn’t even stopped by today.

He often did, taking a break to come over for a coffee or snack, and she’d been hopeful he would today.

But he hadn’t.

If he didn’t care enough to make a point of seeing her for a few minutes, then she wasn’t sure how much hope she had for more.

She reminded herself it was early days and his feelings for her could change at any moment. She growled again as she tried to force the box into place.

“What did that box ever do to you?” The dry voice came from the doorway to the storeroom behind her.

She gasped and jerked in surprise, hitting her head on the shelf above her. When she straightened up, rubbing her sore head, she saw Patrick had stepped into the room, his leather saddlebag slung over his shoulder and a quizzical lift to his eyebrows. He wore jeans and a wool car coat. His brown hair was slightly rumpled and his brown eyes looked very dark in the artificial light. “Ouch,” she said. “You could have let me know you were there.”

“I thought I did.” His eyes scanned her face, made a quick detour down her body, and then turned to the shelf she’d been working on. “That box is never going to fit, and trying to shame it into being a size smaller is wasted energy.”

A bubble of amusement broke in her throat, despite her aching head and the aftermath of her surprise. “I wasn’t shaming it.”

“You were growling at it for being too big.

“No, I wasn’t.”

His eyebrows lifted a bit more, clearly questioning the credibility of her statement.

With a resigned giggle, she admitted, “I’d just done this whole reorganization of the shelves, and that was the last box on the last shelf. If it doesn’t fit, my whole plan falls apart.”

His eyes rested on her face for a moment with that wry, thoughtful look that was so much a part of him. Then he stepped over, leaned down to take the box she’d been trying to make work, and casually placed it on an empty spot on the shelf above it. “There. It works.”

She laughed even more, tingling excitement spilling over in her heart at the fact that he’d come here to see her and he was being so Patrick-like. “That’s a coffee shelf. Not a tea shelf. It’s supposed to be on the bottom shelf with its co-patriots.”

He hadn’t yet smiled, but his eyes were warm and amused. He shook his head, but then dropped his bag onto the floor and knelt down to start pulling the boxes off the lower shelves.

She knelt down beside him. “You don’t have to mess with it, Patrick. It’s really not a big deal.”

“You wanted to make it work, so we’ll make it work. We’ll summon our best geometrical skills and see what we can do.”

She watched him as he assessed the size and number of the boxes and the dimensions of the shelf. He didn’t say anything, but she could see him doing math in his head.

She’d known him since she was ten. She knew how to read his expressions. He’d always been smart like that, putting pieces together in his mind, figuring out how to solve problems with no-nonsense intelligence.

After a minute, he seemed to come to some sort of conclusion, so she asked, “Do you think they will fit?”

“Yeah. I think so.” He still wasn’t smiling, but he looked both sexy and adorable sitting on the floor of the storeroom with his mussed hair, his five o’clock shadow, and the seriousness of his expression. “We’ll start with all the boxes of this size.”

They worked for several minutes, fitting the boxes in as he suggested, with a few modifications from her so she would be able to see all the boxes without removing some first. When he slid the final box into place, she clapped her hands in victory.

The corner of his mouth turned up as he looked at her.

She suddenly realized she’d made a plan to seduce this man, and it hadn’t crossed her mind since he’d arrived. She’d been too busy thinking he was amazing to remember that she needed to attract him.

She’d always imagined being sexy meant being cool and sophisticated and bold—like Ginny who’d always been able to make men drool by nothing more than a flip of her hair. Carol, on the other hand, was always overflowing with her feelings, always getting too excited about things, always too sincerely earnest to be strategic.

Even now, as her mind raced, searching for something sexy to do or say, she could think of absolutely nothing. She was sitting on the floor, beaming at Patrick, still laughing a little.

His eyes were still resting on her face, looking for the moment like he liked what he saw, so maybe she wasn’t totally blowing it.

“Thank you,” she told him, unable to think of anything strategic so just saying what was on her mind.

“You’re welcome.”

“You didn’t have to waste your time helping me.”

“Helping you isn’t a waste.”

A shiver ran up and down her spine at the texture in his voice. “Remember when I was in tenth grade and you helped me with that stupid geometry game I couldn’t figure out.”

“Yeah. I remember.”

“You were always the only guy who would help me.”

Something changed on his expression, but she didn’t understand what it was. Some of the softness flickered out. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It was. Most guys just ignored me, and the ones who didn’t never seemed to… take me seriously. You always did.” She placed a hand on his arm, wanting to see that warm softness return to his face. “It’s always meant a lot to me.”

He glanced away, looking suddenly uncomfortable. “All I did was help with your homework when you asked.”

“And you think that was nothing to me?”

He cleared his throat.

He’d seemed to have retreated internally and she didn’t know why. She couldn’t help but be disappointed. She wanted him back the way he’d been a few minutes earlier—dry and clever and understated and sweet.

She sighed. “Anyway, thank you for your help making the boxes fit. Do you want something to eat? I’ve still got a couple of cupcakes left.”

He stood up, his expression relaxing, as if whatever had made him uncomfortable was over now. “Sure. Thanks.”

She got him coffee and a cupcake and sat with him at a table in the main room. They talked about work and about their friends and about what was happening in the world.

Carol enjoyed it. But she also missed the something special between them she’d felt on the floor of the storeroom. She’d wondered what had happened to make it disappear the way it had.

***

At nine o’clock on Saturday morning, Patrick was sitting at a table in Tea for Two with his laptop in front of him.

His friends all usually ended up at the shop on Saturday mornings, trickling in whenever they got up and out. Patrick lived in an apartment just a few blocks away, and he was an early riser by nature, so he was usually the first to arrive.

Except Carol, of course. Carol always came in before six so she could start baking.

She’d stuck her head out to say hello to him a while back, but she hadn’t lingered. Since none of his friends were here yet, Patrick was focused on his computer.

He was so absorbed in what he was doing that he didn’t even notice when Emma, Noah, and Ginny came in. They were actually sitting at the table with him when he was finally aware of their presence.

“Do you really work every hour of the day?” Ginny asked rather tartly.

Patrick did work a lot—more than any of his friends. He’d started his own IT company a few years ago, and it had taken off beyond all expectations. He carried his laptop with him everywhere, and in any spare minute, he worked on one project or another. He wasn’t working at the moment, but he also didn’t want the others to know what he was doing. So he just gave a slight sneer and didn’t answer.

Emma leaned over to look at his screen, a move that caused Patrick to act quickly. He was halfway through the profile he was completing and didn’t want to start over, so he couldn’t close the window completely. But he minimized it before she could see what he was doing.

Emma frowned at him. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“If you’re looking at porn at nine thirty on a Saturday morning, I’m going to be very squicked out.” That was Ginny again.

Patrick rolled his eyes. “If I wanted to look at porn, I wouldn’t do it in the middle of a tea shop.”

Ginny and Noah both laughed. They were siblings, and both had green eyes and the same smile. Emma, his own sister, wouldn’t be distracted from her curiosity however. She’d reached over to bring up the browser he’d minimized earlier.

“Hey, stop it.” He tried to swat her hand away. “Am I not allowed to have any privacy?”

“Not from us. You know that.” She stared at the screen to his laptop as the page registered in her mind. “You’re filling out a profile on a dating site?”

Patrick was a bit self-conscious as the three of them all looked at him. None of the others had needed to use a dating site to find someone. But he wasn’t like Ryan and Noah, who both had always had girls hanging all over them. Women didn’t usually go for Patrick, so he had to take some extra steps. “Yes,” he said, meeting his sister’s eyes. “I want to date again. Do you have a problem with that?”

He did want to date, but the need had become more pressing lately since his thoughts had been drifting in wrong directions more and more often.

“Of course not. But if you want to date, why not ask out girls you already know?”

“Like who exactly? I don’t know any available women. I work with three women, and one is my sister, and two are married. Where exactly are all these girls I’m supposed to ask out?”

He saw Ginny and Emma exchange a glance, and then Emma’s eyes strayed over to the door to the kitchen.

He stiffened his spine as he realized what they were thinking. “Don’t even start with that. Just because Noah and Ryan poached from their friends’ little sisters, doesn’t mean I’m going to do it too. If you’re having ridiculous fantasies of some silly triple wedding, you can forget about it. It’s never going to happen. And what kind of friends are you if you want poor Carol to get stuck with me, just to close this crazy loop you’ve got going?”

He hadn’t meant to say quite that much, but the hints and looks he’d caught over the past few months, ever since Ginny and Ryan had gotten together, leaving only him and Carol left of the six of them, had really bothered him.

As if sweet, gorgeous Carol would ever want someone like him.

A few days ago in the storeroom, he’d come to the unavoidable realization that, if he didn’t take some real steps to distract himself, he was going to act on the feelings he couldn’t help but have.

The others at the table looked a bit taken aback by his indignant retort, and Patrick suddenly wished he hadn’t said so much.

“What do you mean she’d get stuck with you?” Emma asked, her eyebrows drawing together in a clear sign of concern.

“Nothing,” he mumbled. “Just don’t you dare try to fix us up. Promise me you won’t do anything stupid like that.”

Emma hesitated but then met his eyes. “I promise I won’t do anything stupid.”

Patrick wasn’t particularly reassured at his sister’s words. He moved his laptop back in front of him and started typing again.

“What kind of woman are you looking for?” Ginny asked, clearly trying to sound casual and break the tension of the moment before.

“I don’t know. But I figure it’s worth a try.”

“What’s worth a try?” The voice surprised him since he’d been so focused on his computer he hadn’t seen Carol come out from the kitchen.

She was flushed and tousled and had a dusting of flour on her neck. Her top was cut lower than usual, showing more cleavage than Patrick was comfortable with, and her reddish-brown hair was all falling out of a clip that wasn’t nearly up to the job of holding back so much thick hair. She always got hot and messy when she was baking, but the end result made her look like she’d just rolled out of bed after having some very good sex.

Patrick swallowed hard and looked away quickly.

He couldn’t let himself think about Carol and sex in the same moment.

That would be a huge mistake.

“Patrick is going to join a dating site,” Emma explained almost gently.

Patrick tried to keep looking at his screen, but he couldn’t resist a quick glance at Carol to see her reaction.

Her eyes were focused on him, but he couldn’t read her expression. He wondered if she thought he was a loser who couldn’t find a date any other way. He’d had a girlfriend for a year in high school and another girlfriend all through college. Then he’d dated a woman a couple of years ago for almost a year. That was it—his whole history with women.

Three of them.

“Oh,” Carol said.

“It’s not that strange,” Patrick mumbled, wishing he’d managed to keep this a secret from his friends. “People do it all the time.”

“Of course they do,” Emma said quickly. “It’s not strange at all. We just didn’t know you were looking for someone.”

“Well, I wasn’t before. But I’ve been thinking about it. The rest of you are all hooking up.”

“I’m not,” Carol said. “I haven’t had a date in ages.”

“Maybe you should do the dating site too, Carol,” Ginny suggested. “That might be fun.”

Patrick didn’t like the idea of Carol joining the dating site. Who knew how many creeps she’d get paired up with. He could hardly say such a thing however.

“Maybe I will,” she murmured. Then she got up from the table. “The cinnamon rolls are running low. I’ve got to go make some more.”

Patrick watched as she left until his eyes drifted down to the lush curve of her hips. Then he wised up and looked away.

Something had seemed off about her, but he didn’t know what it was.

He hoped she hadn’t been serious about the dating site. He could just imagine how annoying it would be to see her hooking up with a bunch of assholes, none of whom would come close to deserving her.

***

Ten minutes later, Carol was rolling out dough in the kitchen, trying not to think about Patrick dating someone else.

He hadn’t seemed interested in dating for a while. He was always so focused on work, and he wasn’t the kind of guy who had casual flings, which most of the sites these days seem to be set up for.

If he started dating someone at this point, he’d probably end up marrying her.

The idea made Carol want to cry.

“Hey,” Ginny said, suddenly beside her. “Are you all right?”

Carol blinked, still rolling dough as if her life depended on it. “Of course.”

“He’s just joining the site. It doesn’t mean he’s going to be dating someone else.”

“He probably will be though.”

“But it won’t necessarily mean anything.”

“I know. It’s not a big deal. I always knew he didn’t think about me that way.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing that he’s starting to think about having a serious relationship. At least we know he’s thinking in that direction.”

Carol forced a smile. “Sure.”

“Damn it,” Ginny muttered, clearly seeing that Carol was upset. “Why does he have to be so clueless?”

Carol couldn’t help but chuckle. “He wouldn’t be Patrick if he weren’t completely clueless.”

Laughing too, Ginny said, “Well, I don’t think it’s hopeless.”

“Oh, I know it’s not hopeless. I’m not giving up. It’s a roadblock but not an insurmountable one. I still want to go through with our plan. Clueless or not, I’m going to seduce him if it’s the last thing I do.”

Ginny squeezed her arm. “Good girl.” Then she leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “Just don’t tell Emma you used the word seduce.”