Denouement

For a moment time stood still.

She sensed something gathering other than the wind, but she was an expert at ignoring her feelings, particularly the shivery ones Grandma called premonitions.

Disillusionment shaded the afternoon darker gray. She turned away from her reflection in a storefront window and sighed. It was just another day, like every other day she’d wasted on hope and dreams. At the corner of Sunset and Vine, Monica Joye gave up on the City of Angels. She opened her hand and gazed at an AT&T calling card. It really sucked when a famous actress couldn't pay her cell phone bill.

E.T. phone home. Everyone back home thought Ellen Tracy—the name on the card and on her birth certificate—looked like Marilyn Monroe. Somehow Hollywood had failed to catch the resemblance. Tomorrow, Ellen would be on an east-bound plane. Goodbye tears glided down her cheeks.

"Not going to cry," she gritted out, pouted her lips and tossed her hair.

Today, her last in L.A., she'd be Monica Joye.

"Why are you crying?" His voice was as compelling as a half-remembered song, comforting as Sunday dinner. It was music and sunlight.

Smiling, Ellen whirled to see who'd dared to break the Stranger's Code of Silence that Hollywood obeyed. Her eyes widened, jaw dropping. Massive wings arched behind the most beautiful man she'd ever seen. Rich russet hair spilled over broad shoulders and naked chest. The silky garment wrapping slim hips invited the gaze to muscled calves and even his feet, bare to a wintry chill, were beautiful. Snow-white feathers trailed the dirty sidewalk.

This story is available at Coffee Time Romance as a free read:  http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/FreeReads/DenouementbyLindaNightingale.html

Visit me at http://www.lindanightingale.com/ for a free read--Vampire Hunt, which stars Morgan D'Arcy, a British lord, a concert pianist and... a vampire.