North Hangar Avenue: A Meet Cute Contemporary Romantic Comedy (The Sisters of Larkford Hall Book 3) by Hazel Hatman

Author:Hazel Hatman [Hatman, Hazel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2025-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

Sabotage

The bus has a roof to keep the sun off but no side windows. With a sinking heart, Anna realises the seats are in pairs and the bus is almost full. A group of German tourists are already seated in the rear. A large family of Texans occupy the front. James and Bella take a pair of seats in the middle, leaving the last pair of seats for Anna and John. With an obvious lack of chivalry, John takes the outside. Anna almost chuckles. She will have to lean past John’s massive frame in order to see anything. Her expectations of the tour are already low. She revises them further downwards.

When they’re safely seated, the tour guide greets them. Anna’s prospects of enjoyment hit rock bottom when the guide announces they are on the Celebrity Home Tour. A quick whizz around the key sights was fine if frustrating, as there would be no chance to explore further, but gawking at the homes of film and television stars wasn’t on Anna’s hit list. Having been raised in a five-hundred-year-old, stately home, Anna is no stranger to fine art and large houses. Many of her friends also live in homes designed by world-famous architects. But James was not to know that, as Anna had been careful not to mention her privileged upbringing at work. And, she suspects, he chose the tour to please Bella, not her.

As the bus pulls away from the kerb into the ever slow-moving Los Angeles traffic, the drawbacks of the open sides become immediately apparent. The traffic noise is overwhelming, the heat from a thousand engines adds to the already furnace -like warmth of the day to make the exhaust fumes nauseating. But as the bus eventually climbs into the Hollywood Hills, some of the discomfort falls away. The noise lessens, a cooling breeze picks up, and the trip becomes almost pleasant – if Anna could forget about the companion beside her. John produces a pair of sunglasses and slides them on his face, hiding his eyes. Then he turns his head very deliberately to look away.

They wind through the Hollywood Hills as the guide talks through the real estate. Anna struggles to see anything remarkable about the homes. Most of the modern ones look like the collection of boxes stuck together so beloved by contemporary architects the world over. Many of the older ones look like the mock Tudor or mock Georgian houses found on most executive estates. More often than not, the house is not visible, hidden behind fences and high hedges, and the tour group is merely staring at the gate. But Anna’s cynical take is not shared by the occupants of the bus. There are soft wows of awe and thrilled muttered echoes of the guide’s words.

To Anna, what is jaw-dropping is the three-metre-high security fencing topped with barbed wire needed to keep intruders out. She can’t imagine having to live that way, like a prisoner who’s chosen to live in jail. She thinks

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