Falling for her Brother's Best Friend

“I’ve got a plan,” Emma Stevenson announced, bringing a plate of Russian teacakes over to the small table next to the window where her two best friends were sitting with a pot of tea and three pretty teacups on matching saucers.

Carol rolled her big gray eyes. “Seriously? We’ve been working on plans for eighteen months now. If we add any more plans to the mix, the whole enterprise is going to implode from the weight of our brilliance.”

Virginia, called Ginny by everyone since she was two years old, chuckled as she leaned back in her chair. “I don’t think she was talking about Tea for Two plans.”

A couple of years ago, Carol had come up with the idea of opening a tearoom in downtown Blacksburg, the town in the mountains of southwest Virginia where the three of them had lived all their lives. Carol had been making pastries and serving drinks in a coffee shop since high school, and Ginny had been working at a marketing firm in Roanoke but hated the commute, so they’d combined their skill sets to make the tearoom happen.

Emma already had a full-time job doing the finances for her brother’s IT company, and she wasn’t about to bail on him, but she’d helped them put together the business plan and had set up the accounting system since neither Ginny nor Carol were numbers oriented.

The three girls had become friends when they were ten, thrown together because their older brothers were best friends and so their parents thought they should be too. Back then—and still today—they had little in common in terms of character traits. Carol was the dreamy, creative one. Ginny was the confident, flirty one. And Emma…

Emma was the boring, brainy one.

They’d never stopped being best friends though, and Emma assumed they never would.

“What was the plan then?” Carol asked, her eyes still wide. She was pretty in a soft, curvy way with long reddish hair and eyes like melting silver.

“The plan is for me personally,” Emma announced, taking a sip of the tea Ginny had just poured for her. As the liquid hit her tongue, she was immediately distracted. “Wow! What kind of tea is this?”

Carol looked pleased and slightly guilty. “Just some new loose leaf I got in this morning. First flush Darjeeling.”

Ginny had been taking a sip too, but at this she gave a jerk and almost spit it out. “What? And you’re serving it to us?”

“We have to try it out before we sell it.”

Ginny made another face, but that didn’t stop her from taking another sip. “If we keep drinking the expensive stuff on our tea breaks, we’re going to go broke before we even open.”

Emma laughed, used to her friends’ occasional disagreements about the shop. “One pot isn’t going to break you, as long as it doesn’t become a habit. This is really good.”

“It is good,” Ginny agreed. “No wonder it costs so much.” Then she put down her cup and focused on Emma. “So tell us what this personal plan of yours is.”

“Oh,” Emma said, clearing her throat. “I’ve been thinking a lot and came up with this plan. To avoid any more Dex-debacles.”

“You can avoid Dex-debacles by not dating any more jackasses,” Ginny said.

A month ago, Emma had gone through three painful, angst-ridden weeks of breaking up with a guy named Dex. She’d believed they were exclusive after dating for four months but had started to suspect they weren’t, and he’d strung her along with a lot of lies until Ginny had gone on a spying mission and taken pictures of him with another woman’s tongue in his mouth.

Emma still cringed at the humiliation of it.

“I know that,” she said. The tearoom wasn’t going to open for two more weeks, so they were completely alone in the shop. There was no risk of anyone else overhearing. “But my problem is I’m incapable of spotting the jackasses. In fact, they’re all I seem to be attracted to. So that’s where my plan comes in.”

“I can’t wait to hear this,” Ginny muttered dryly. She was tall and slim and very blond—the most traditionally pretty of the three of them.

“Shh.” Carol gave Ginny a poke. “Let her tell us before you get snarky.”

Emma cleared her throat. “I’m going on a Man-Fast.”

Both Carol and Ginny were silent for a moment. Then Ginny asked, “Can I get snarky now?”

“You can mock if you want, but I’m serious about this,” Emma replied, trying not to giggle at her friends’ stunned expressions. “It’s exactly what I need. For six months, I’m fasting from men. I’m not going to date them or dream about them or think about falling in love. It’s going to be a complete fast—just to clear my mind and give me a better perspective on what I want.”

“Most people call that a break,” Carol said softly.

“A break isn’t strong enough. It has to be a complete fast. I’m tired of only dating losers.”

“So find a nice guy to date instead,” Carol replied. Ever since childhood, she’d firmly believed that there was one nice guy intended for each of them. They only had to wait, and he would appear. Carol had never once wavered from that belief.

“I’m not attracted to nice guys! I’m only attracted to assholes. Think about it. There was Dex, and before that there was Larry the married liar, and before that there was Jackson who did nothing but boss me around, and before that there was Mark who only wanted open relationships.”

“Mark wasn’t really an asshole,” Ginny put in. “He was honest about what he believed in. He just wasn’t right for you.”

“That’s not the point. The point is I’m not attracted to the guys who are right for me.”