#pendreams

A major part of Erica’s background in this verse is the huge change in her life that occurred in her late twenties, which has led to her current financial instability (compared to before), as explained here.  

Erica’s main personal goal at this point in her life is to get her shit together and find some new goals.  Everything she worked for in her 20s---her career, her relationship, her future---went down the drain as her 30s approached.  As a person who needs to have goals to meet, she is determined to set new goals for herself and move on with her life.  

Getting into a relationship is so low on her priorities that it doesn’t even make the list, but Erica is only human and far from dead.  Demetrius is attractive and---more importantly---she finds him attractive (and she’s thought so from the beginning), and considering both their personalities... The flirting was inevitable, really.  

Asking Erica---social, friendly, warm Erica---to not flirt with a charming guy who she spends a lot of time with?  Impossible.  Not going to happen.  Flirting is too much fun for her not to indulge.  

That attraction and flirting lead to Erica developing a crush was somewhat unexpected, mostly because of the curse of “Hera always ignores her feelings until they’re impossible to ignore” which extends to AUs.  She’s still doing her best to ignore her crush on Demetrius, but it’s getting difficult to hide because Erica keeps to the Hera tradition of “physically affectionate during inappropriate circumstances”.  

She !!! doesn’t want to have feelings for Demetrius because they are---honestly---an inconvenience, as he’s her boss and she needs to Get Her Life Together, and she’s still recovering from the end of a 7+ years relationship that ended with infidelity and a cancelled wedding and---  You get the picture, right?  

Liking Demetrius doesn’t fit in her day planner, so she just...  doesn’t acknowledge the fact that sometimes he makes her catch her breath, or that her pulse jumps when he’s near, or that one awful time when she blushed.  Blushing is The Worst.  

Erica doesn’t stop flirting though, because that’s just not how she’s built.  Once she’s decided she likes you---in general, not necessarily due to attraction or crushes---pretending to be aloof or disinterested is a tall order, unless she’s setting up a joke (and even then, there’s something Engaged about her aloofness).