In Her Wildest Dreams

by Rochon, Farrah

  He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and lost himself in the coding again, shutting out the rest of the world.

  As his fingers flew across the keyboard, blood rushed to his head. He’d missed this, feeling the adrenalin pumping through his system as he went on a weekend-long coding marathon. He’d earned his credentials as a bona fide computer nerd by spending untold hours writing up programs.

  His stomach growled, demanding sustenance.

  He knew he should probably eat, but stopping to make himself some food would just distract him. Once his mind was in work mode, any stoppage could knock him completely off track. This was crazy. He wasn’t a twenty-something-year-old college student anymore. He needed a break before he completely burned himself out.

  Just as he pushed away from the computer, the solution to a coding problem he’d run up against popped into his head. Gavin turned back to the computer, his fingers racing.

  Two hours later, with his stomach protesting with growls loud enough for his neighbors to probably hear and with blisters on the pads of his fingers, Gavin pushed back from the computer desk and let out a satisfied sigh. He stood on shaky legs. His shoulder muscles screamed from being hunched over for so long.

  He fixed himself a sandwich and, despite everything within him telling him that caffeine was the last thing he needed, a cup of instant coffee. Then he went back to the computer and looked over the lines of code that were indecipherable to the average person, but made perfect sense to him.

  Damn, he’d missed this.

  He hadn’t realized just how much until he’d dived into this program and remembered what it had been like in those early days, before the pressures of running a multimillion dollar company had begun to eat away at his soul.

  He’d tried to tell himself that he was happy at Decadente. And he was. For him, the time he spent in the kitchen, crafting his uniquely exquisite chocolates was as relaxing as getting a massage. It allowed him to explore his creative side, without being under the pressure that had consumed him in those final years as CEO of Technology Concepts. But as he’d typed away, Gavin had discovered something he’d never considered. He was as creative with the computer as he was with chocolates. Not everyone could create what he could with a few keystrokes. He had not given the work the credit it deserved.

  “What in the hell are you gonna do?” Gavin asked aloud.

  He knew he could never give up Decadente. That wasn’t even a question. Opening that business had saved him at a time when his life seemed to be spiraling out of control.

  Not only that. Decadente had given him Erica. He lived for showcasing his chocolate-making talents for her. Gavin couldn’t see her stopping in at an office to watch him write code.

  No, he wasn’t ready to give up the chocolate business just yet, but after what happened with the coupon yesterday, he knew he’d have to step up his game if he wanted Decadente to survive. He’d probably have to spend even more time at the shop.

  Dammit, he knew he shouldn’t have agreed to help Dalton, that after having this taste of working with code again, he would crave it like the drug it was. It was a part of his life that he’d desperately missed. Walking away from it again was going to kill him.

  Gavin cupped the back of his neck and massaged the stiff muscles.

  “What in the hell are you going to do?”

  Unfortunately, he was the only one who could answer that question, and he had no earthly idea what the answer should be.

  Chapter Eight

  Erica danced around in a circle and pumped her fist in the air as she ended the call with the director at the Audubon Zoo. It had taken more effort to secure the zoo than she’d first anticipated, but it was done. Everything else was in place for Mr. Lohman’s Safari-themed Valentine’s Day experience.

  She went back to her desk and pulled up her checklists for the other experiences scheduled. All of the dinner reservations had been made, but she still had to find seven hotel rooms. Erica was still waiting on a call from Beverly Jones at Manor Royale. It was getting down to the wire; if she didn’t get those rooms booked, she would be forced to go with the contingency plan she’d devised.

  She’d spoken to the caretaker at Nottaway Plantation, located an hour west of the city in the small town of Donaldsonville. The caretaker was prepared to rent out the plantation’s entire bed and breakfast to Erica. The only problem was that the higher cost of the rooms, along with getting all of the couples to the plantation in style, would not only eat away all of her profits for Valentine’s Day, but she’d also have to put in additional funds.

  It was a price she couldn’t afford to pay, but one she couldn’t afford not to pay, either. Not being able to fulfill half of the experiences she’d booked could ruin her business.

  “But this is going to put you in the poor house,” Erica said as she scanned over the email from the plantation caretaker, outlining the cost.

  What was she thinking? She was already in the poor house. This would put her under it!

  These were the kind of problems that would end if she agreed to The Hawthorn Group’s deal. Such troubles would certainly arise again, but it would be up to the individual franchise owners to deal with them. She could just sit back and watch those nice, fat checks roll in. If the checks were fat enough, she could eventually get over the fact that they wanted to take away the one thing that made her company unique.

  Unease twisted in Erica’s gut.

  She’d gone into business for herself so that others couldn’t dictate what she could and couldn’t do, but that was exactly what was happening.

  She’d emailed Sheena Henderson, sharing her concerns about The Hawthorn Group’s plan to turn Your Wildest Dreams into a run-of-the-mill packaged event-planning outfit. The woman claimed to understand Erica’s apprehension, but quickly pointed out how time intensive the company’s current model was and how difficult it would be to turn a profit.

  As if Erica needed to have that pointed out to her. All she had to do was look at her bank statement to see how difficult it was to turn a profit.

  She pulled up the list of pros and cons she’d constructed, but clicked the program close before reading over the words. She didn’t need to read over them; she’d memorized the list.

  What in the world was she going to do?

  It was time for her to stop bandying about questions and start thinking of answers.

  Erica checked the clock on the computer. She was scheduled to meet Gavin in less than an hour to start their dry run of the fantasy experience she’d put together for the people at The Hawthorn Group, who would be here in a few days. And Valentine’s Day was just over a week away. She didn’t have time to sit here twiddling her thumbs, hoping some fairy godmother would come down and figure this out for her.

  A decision had to be made, and she was the only one who could make it.

  ***

  Erica arrived at the tea room of the Windsor Court Hotel twenty minutes later than she’d planned. Five friends who were celebrating their seventieth birthdays together had asked her about creating a special Your Wildest Dreams experience for them. She and Gavin were going to check out the tea service first, before officially starting their run-through of The Hawthorn Group’s experience.

  Erica spotted Gavin at a table in the center of the opulent tea room. She stopped for a moment, completely caught off-guard by the picture he made. He was dressed in a suit, the fine wool molding to his muscular shoulders as if tailor-made.

  Of course his suits were tailor-made. Gavin probably had dozens of tailor-made suits left over from his days as a big-time executive at Technology Concepts. She rarely saw that side of him. One didn’t make chocolates dressed in a coat and tie. Although, from what she was staring at right now, Erica wouldn’t mind if he did so every now and then.

  When he’d texted, asking her whether she still wanted him to help her with Your Wildest Dreams’ fantasy night for The Hawthorn Group, Erica hadn’t even hesitated. She may not know what
to do as far as the franchising deal was 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 beet.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet, sweetheart.” He leaned over and whispered. “If I could, I’d show you just how well I could take care of you right now.”

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t heard such salacious talk from Gavin, but his sexually-charged teasing took on entirely new meaning now that she’d decided to allow their relationship to cross the friendship boundary.

  “You were telling me about the call you just had with a client,” Gavin said, as if he hadn’t just propositioned her in the middle of the Windsor Court Tea Room.

  She pulled in a shaky breath. She was in such trouble when it came to this man.

  “Okay,” she started. “I told you that I was forced to put up a disclaimer on my Website that I can’t take on any more Valentine’s Day experiences, right?”

  Gavin nodded.

  “Despite that, I kept getting emails and voice messages from this one woman, insisting that she speak with me.”

  “Let me guess. She is desperate for you to put together the ultimate Valentine’s Day gift for her husband and refuses to take no for an answer?”

  “Not quite,” Erica said, biting into a feather-light cream puff. She moaned and held the pastry out to Gavin. “Try this. It’s amazing,” she said.

  His eyes trained on her, he leaned over and took a bite of the pastry, his tongue licking cream from her fingers. Something stirred in Erica’s belly as his wet tongue swirled around her thumb.

  “Sweet,” he said.

  She stared at Gavin’s mouth, completely hypnotized.

  “Erica?” he called.

  Without thinking, Erica licked her fingers, tasting Gavin on her skin. Her entire body tingled at his flavor, and her nipples started to perk up beneath her bra.

  She picked up her tea and took a much too healthy sip. She started to cough, and Gavin quickly poured water from the silver pitcher. Erica gulped down half the glass of water in one swallow.

  She shook her head. “Sorry. Where was I?”

  A smile broke out over Gavin’s face. “This is going to be so much easier than I thought.”

  Oh, God. He was right. All it would take was another of his kisses and she would cave like an undercooked soufflé.

  Erica didn’t want to think about how deep her blush had grown. The heat burning her cheeks would probably scorch her fingers.

  “You were talking about the new client,” Gavin prompted.

  “Oh. Yes. Uh, anyway, the woman tells me that her husband, who often travels out of town on business, won’t be home for Valentine’s Day, so she wants to put together an experience for the week after Valentine’s Day.”

  “That’s perfect,” he said. “The Valentine’s Day rush will be over. You shouldn’t have a problem fitting her into your schedule.”

  “Having the time to put the experience together is not the problem,” Erica said. “The problem is that the woman’s name is Amelia Aristophonicholi, and her husband’s name is Steven.”

  A questioning line formed between his eyebrows.

  “I am putting together a Valentine’s Day experience for Steven Aristophonicholi and his girlfriend, Rebecca.”

  “Oh, shit.” Gavin laughed.

  “It’s not funny,” Erica admonished, though she couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped. “This is serious, Gavin.”

  “I know. Sounds as if my man Steven is spreading himself pretty thin.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have to tell her.”

  He sat back and raised his hands. “Whoa, Erica. You don’t want to get involved, believe me.”

  “But how can I not? If I don’t tell the wife, then I absolutely have to say something to the husband.”

  “No, you don’t,” Gavin said. “It’s none of your business. And who’s to say this Steven Aristophonicholi is even the woman’s husband. Maybe she’s
married to another Steven Aristophonicholi.”

  Erica gave him a look that said get real.

  “Fine,” Gavin conceded. “The chances that they are not husband and wife are pretty slim, but it still doesn’t mean you should get involved. That’s not included in Your Wildest Dreams’ list of services.”

  “Gavin, I’m meeting with the husband tomorrow. Am I really expected to sit across the table from him and not tell him that his wife just called to set up an experience? He’ll know that I knew about it.”

  “I guess this makes a case for the choose-from-the-menu approach The Hawthorn Group wants to take, doesn’t it?”

  Erica shook her head. “Not at all. In fact, I see the complete opposite. What if the husband really was out of town for Valentine’s Day and decided to set up an experience for his girlfriend the week after? And here, his wife spends several thousand dollars on an experience and schedules it for the same day?”

  “Then the husband gets what’s coming to him,” Gavin said.

  “And the wife gets hurt and humiliated.”

  “Hurt and humiliation is in store for her, no matter what,” he returned. “Remember, I know of what I speak.”

  Her chest tightened with sympathy.

  “Don’t look at me with pity, Erica,” Gavin warned. He took a sip of water. “I got enough of that from the people at my firm before I left.”

  She tilted her head to the side and studied him. “Is that why you really left?” she asked. “I know you said that you didn’t want to work for the company that bought you out, but your partner stayed on, didn’t he? Did your decision have more to do with not wanting to face the stares from the people at the company who knew what Whitney had done? It must have been so hard for you.”

  “My fiancée was sleeping with the man who forced me to give up the company I’d built. Of course it was hard to swallow.”

  “And the fact that she chose him of all people was like rubbing salt in the wound,” Erica concluded.

  “Whitney Parker never does anything half-assed,” Gavin said. “If she’s going to screw you over, better be prepared to get good and screwed.”