I’M HERE TO watch her. My closest friends in the world—men I think of more as brothers than friends—have sent me here to find out what I can about the half-sister whose very existence they only learned of a week or so ago.
I’m here to watch her but even if I weren’t, even if that wasn’t the express purpose for my flying from London to San Francisco, I would find it hard not to watch her.
Avery Maxwell is, in a word, mesmerising.
If I didn’t know she was a Hart I’d never have guessed. Where her half-brothers are built like mountains, Avery is diminutive. Petite. She’d be about five and a half feet and her frame is slender, though there’s a strength to her, arms that are elegantly sculpted, eyes that are intelligent and assessing as they scan the crowded bar, lips that—even when they smile—look somehow cynical. That, come to think of it, is a definite Hart trait.
She has dark hair, thick and long; it falls down her back with a hint of wildness and untameability. I reach for my Scotch, cradling the glass for a moment, appreciating the feel of its fine shape in my hands, the elegant cut crystal half filled with amber liquid. She pauses, skimming the bar, and I wonder if she’s meeting someone here. It seems as though she’s looking for someone she recognises. Her eyes glance past me and I stiffen my spine, a hint of adrenaline flooding my system, as though she might—with one look of those dark, almond-shaped eyes—be able to discern my reason for coming to San Fran.
Her mouth forms a hint of a smile and then her eyes skate past me. I release a breath I didn’t realise I was holding and narrow my gaze.
Suddenly, this favour doesn’t feel so onerous—to find out what I can about the missing Hart and report back to her famous brothers. Their need to know what they can about her before working out the best way to make contact with her is completely understandable.
She could be any number of things that would make them want to steer clear. The fact she doesn’t know she’s part of one of the world’s most successful dynasties is odd—but they could use that to their advantage and simply refuse to acknowledge her existence.
I shift a little in my seat, wondering why that idea offends me. It might be my inner British aristocrat—the fact I was born into a family like mine and raised, all my life, to believe in the importance of blood, lineage and birthright—even though on some level I reject that thinking, it’s still a part of who I am.
And she’s a Hart. Their blood runs through her veins—that counts for something.