In Her Wildest Dreams by Farrah Rochon

concerned, but she knew exactly what to do with Gavin.
    She was ready to make that man hers.   
    Gavin was right; the two of them becoming more than just friends was inevitable. The flirting, the highly-charged sexual chemistry that hummed around them, even when they were being playful; it was a recipe for desire.
    As Erica looked at Gavin’s unbelievably handsome profile, his question kept swirling around in her head.
    What was she so afraid of?
    The list could drag on for miles, but at the very top of it was the one thing that seemed to stall her every time she even thought about truly opening herself up to someone: heartbreak.
    She’d witnessed the evidence of a broken heart too many times, had seen the battle scars her mother had suffered after opening her heart to man after man, only to have it crushed. And those were just the fly-by-night guys who breezed in and out of her life. Erica knew that her mother’s heartache would have been so much more devastating if it had come at the hands of someone she’d truly cared about, the way Erica cared about Gavin. She was so, so afraid of losing him.
    But she was ready to say to hell with those fears. This man meant more to her than just about anybody in the world. If there was ever a person she could trust with her heart, Erica knew it was Gavin. 
    He turned and spotted her.
    Erica waved and started for the table. He rose as she approached and held out her seat for her.
    “Sorry I’m late,” she greeted him. “I was on a call with a client.”
    “Glad to hear that. I was afraid you were standing me up.”
    “I wouldn’t do that to you, Gavin.”
    “Yeah, well, after my ultimatum the other day, I wasn’t so sure.” He glanced over at her, a chastised expression on his face. “I did come on pretty strong.”
    “Because you had to,” she said. “You knew I wouldn’t relent any other way.”
    Gavin sat up straighter, his forehead dipping in a quizzical frown. “So, what are you saying, Erica?”
    She placed both palms on the table. “I’m saying that maybe this should be more than just a dry run.”
    His brows spiked as a cautiously optimistic grin broke out across his face. Erica couldn’t help but return it.
    “I guess you can say it’s the equivalent of asking you out on a date while we’re already on one,” she said.
    “If we were on a real date, I would be paying,” he said.
    “Actually, The Hawthorn Group is paying. They’re going to reimburse me for everything we spend tonight.”
    “Then I say we really live it up,” Gavin said with a sly grin. 
    “Maybe I should call Hilton Banks and make sure their offer to reimburse me still applies even if I don’t take them up on the franchise offer.”
    “So you still haven’t decided anything?”
    “You know I’d tell you before I told anyone else,” she said. She shook her head. “I just don’t know what to do, Gavin. And every hour the decision gets more and more complicated. Take, for instance, what happened to me today.”
    Just then the manager of the tea room came over and introduced herself. She explained the full treatment Erica and Gavin were about experience. Erica had only used the Windsor Court’s tea room once and remembered that her client had been blown away by the service. She passed the comment along to the manager, who beamed at the praise.
    Small sandwiches and an array of delicate desserts were brought to the table, and the first pot, a fragrant tea called Flowering Jasmine, was served.
    Gavin added two packets of sweetener to her tea.
    Erica smiled.
    “What?” he asked.
    “I find it cute that you know how I like my tea and just assume that I’d want you to fix it for me.”
    “Haven’t you noticed that I fix your coffee or tea whenever we’re out? I’m used to taking care of you.”
    “You do such a fine job of it,” Erica commented.
    The edges of his mouth tipped up in a wicked grin, and Erica knew whatever left his mouth would have her red as a