In the past, before Ryan Baxter entered her life, she spent at least an hour working before she allowed herself the perk of checking E-mails. The self-imposed rule had served to boost her productivity considerably, especially when the temptation to “just read a few E-mails” generally gave way to hours lost in following the links to sites or chatting with friends on Instant Messenger. “C’mon, hurry up,” she said under her breath as she waited for her slow-as-Austin-traffic laptop to pull up her E-mail program and chug through the process of downloading new mail. While she waited she glanced at the corner of her desk where a thick stack of papers awaited her attention. At the top of the stack was her rough outline of the Heavenly Beans story along with notes she’d added last night after a lengthy E-mail from Ryan. Ryan. Had it been just a week since she said good-bye to him at the airport? Since then she’d traded at least a dozen E-mails with him, most on the topic of Heavenly Beans and Casa de Dios.
