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parents’ house, where she was staying for the week, she struggled to get Jaxon out of her mind. She hated the fact that he still had such an effect on her.

    Of course she’d been brokenhearted when Jaxon had left for Los Angeles, leaving her behind in Connecticut to finish high school. She’d spent the first part of her senior year holed up in her room, making mix tapes of sad music by the kind of artists who sang about lost loves and missed chances. But when she graduated and headed off to Boston and the hallowed halls of Harvard University, she’d thought for certain that she’d forget about him.
    She knew in her heart that Jaxon was all wrong for her. After all, she was Anna Webb, good girl, smart, straight-A student. Jaxon Hale was rough and tumble, the kind of guy who was fun to kiss, but not the kind you ended up spending your life with. He exuded sexuality, and every time Anna had been with him, it was all she could do not to let him take off all her clothes and finish what he would so expertly start.
    But Anna was a good girl, and she’d followed the path her parents had laid out for her. Harvard, then an MBA from Yale, then a post in London at a top financial firm where she worked hard and made an obscene amount of money.

    There had been men of course. Anna had lost her virginity her sophomore year of college, a little behind by anyone’s standards, but it was with a boy she’d been dating for four months. Anna thought that was a respectable amount of time to be dating someone before you gave him your virginity. The sex had been fine. Nothing spectacular, but not one of those horror stories women liked to tell about their first time, either.

    There had been a couple of long term relationships, a few relationships that had lasted for a few months, and dozens of first dates. And, always, no matter what, there had been thoughts of Jaxon.

    Thanks to the internet, it had been relatively easy to keep tabs on him. Anna know that he’d graduated from UCLA, that he’d opened his own real estate development company, that he’d started buying properties, rehabbing them himself and selling them.

    He had become something of a legend in Los Angeles, from what she could tell.
    This rough-looking man whose estimated net worth was a few million dollars, who never shied away from a fight with an inspector or a city councilmen, or even another real estate developer.
    Jaxon refused to give interviews, and therefore the Los Angeles press had seemed to become somewhat obsessed with him. They wrote about him with a kind of semi-reverent slant, while somehow being able to convey their annoyance with the fact that he refused to be interviewed.

    He had no facebook page. No twitter. His company had a website, but even then there had been no picture of him.

    From what Anna could tell, Jaxon liked to be behind the scenes, doing the work, but not wanting or taking credit.

    It was a sharp contrast to Anna’s own career. From the time she’d been born, her parents had encouraged her to take credit for her accomplishments. Winning the second grade spelling bee. Getting a perfect score on the eighth grade math aptitude test.
    Becoming valedictorian. Getting a 4.0 in college. Landing the job at Burns and Wildman.

    Each milestone was celebrated and bragged about to her parents’ friends, neighbors, and relatives. Successes were something to put out in the open and be proud of, at least until the next goal was set.

    Anna pulled her car into the driveway and cut the engine. Her parents weren’t home. They’d been here last night when Anna had arrived, had picked her up at the airport and whisked her off for a nice dinner at her favorite restaurant. This morning the three of them had eaten breakfast together. Her mother had prepared a feast of boysenberry pancakes with real maple syrup, cut organic honeydew, and cup after cup of expensive, fresh ground French roast.

    But tonight her parents had plans with friends of theirs, the