Flirting 101

Mavis Schuyler sat in the local coffee shop thinking about her favorite topic: herself. Life hadn't been going well for her lately. Nothing too horrendous--she was still incredibly wealthy and still fairly gorgeous, but her love life was in a very deep and quite narrow rut. It had been over a year since her husband died, about half a year since she broke up with the yummy but penniless police officer, Peter. And now there was Vlad. Vlad was handsome and he was smart but he simply wasn't, well, rich enough for Mavis. She'd done the low rent thing when she dated Peter and it hadn't worked. Of course, she reflected, the fact that he'd had a pregnant wife at the same time they had been dating hadn't exactly been a plus.

But those men were all in the past. Spring was coming and Mavis wanted to welcome it with a new man at her side. Someone tall, good looking and incredibly comfortable. Someone like...Bernard Morton.

She sipped her chocolate raspberry  caramel coffee, her perfectly made up lips curling over the too sweet taste. Bernard Morton fit every point on her list: tall, handsome, rich and about to be oh-so-much richer once he started marketing Fat Off. Once his fat removal product hit the shelves, Bernard was going to make Warren Buffet look positively middle-class.

So. She had the perfect Husband Number Two in her cross hairs. All she needed to do was get him to ask her out even one time and she knew that he'd fall madly in love with her. That was a given. Men always fell in love with Mavis. It was a gift or a curse--depending on the man and her mood. If she felt like charming some poor schnook, he might as well forget it. When she turned up her personality, Mavis could charm the birds right out of the trees. She was sure that if she wanted to she could teach classes on flirting. Flirting 101. The only problem with that would be that all of her students would fall in love with her too and Mavis wasn't at all sure if she could handle that kind of attention. There were just so many hours in the day, after all.

Mavis sighed happily. She felt like charming Bernard Morton.

"Would you like another Chocolate Raspberry Caramel Delight, ma'am?" The perky barista chirped.

"I think I would," Mavis replied. She was going to need the caffeine and the sugar rush to make sure that she was at the very top of her game while she mapped out her game plan.

The barista brought Mavis her cup of coffee. "These are great for making those bags under your eyes vanish," the girl said. "They really wake you up, you know?"

Accepting the coffee, Mavis glared. "No, I don't know since I don't have any bags under my eyes."

The barista laughed, neatly cancelling any hope she'd had of receiving a tip from Mavis. "Yeah, right. And my   other job is running Kutrate Kemicals."

Silently, Mavis began to drink her coffee. Honestly, didn't young people have any kind of respect these days?