Angels on Sunset Boulevard Read Online Free

stopping. Maxine would do what she wanted to do. She was that kind of girl. Uncontrollable. It was part of her appeal.
    His stomach did a Montezuma’s Revenge—his favorite roller coaster at Knott’s Berry Farm when hewas a kid. The one that turned you completely upside down.
    â€œBack off!” the guard barked, prodding him with a fat finger to the chest.
    He stepped away from the door—wanting to punch the guard, who was smirking in his face—when the back of his legs collided with something.
    â€œOh, excuse me,” a voice behind him said.
    â€œMy bad,” Nick said, turning to see whose foot he had crushed.
    It was a girl, he saw, in his heartbroken haze. A pretty girl with jet-black hair which fell in a graceful swoop above her shoulders. She was looking at him with catlike green eyes. She was gorgeous, even behind the thick square plastic frames she was wearing. An angel shrouded in black, from her leather jacket to her skinny jeans. He’d seen her before—but where?
    â€œSorry,” Nick said again.
    â€œNo worries.” She smiled.
    When had that become such a popular phrase? Nick knew one Aussie kid at Bennet who said it all the time, but now it seemed everyone said it. It usually bothered him, that slack-casual phrase—but from her it didn’t. She had sounded genuine, not affected and dismissive.
    She held up a backstage pass to the guard and walked easily into the room, leaving Nick alone on the other side of the door, suddenly feeling abandoned by the world.
    Then the houselights dimmed. The crowd started their rhythmic clapping. “Johnny. Johnny. Johnny. Johnny.” The curtain parted. The show was about to start.
    Nick walked blindly back to his seat, groping his way forward in the dark. He did a double take when he arrived at the table.
    Maxine was sitting in the booth. She waved at him with her long fingernails. There was no way she could have made her way back to the table before him, was there? Which meant that wasn’t Maxine he’d seen backstage … that was someone else.
    With a sigh of relief, he slid back into the banquette.
    â€œHey baby, where’d you go?” she purred.
    â€œLooking for you,” he said.
    â€œSilly boy. I was here all along.”

Taj
    SHE’D SEEN THAT BOY BEFORE, SHE THOUGHT. THE dark-haired one who’d bumped into her. It was hard to forget his face; he was that handsome. Not that Taj was interested—he had Westside written all over him, from his black Lacoste shirt to the dark denim jeans and the Tevas. Just another asshole rich kid, although he had seemed polite enough, and sorry that he had stepped on her toe. Ow. She bet he drove a European car, went to some fancy private school, and thought the city of Los Angeles ended at La Cienega—the boulevard of demarcation that no one from Beverly Hills ever dared to cross. Forget him.
    Taj scissored through the maze of bodies pressed against one another backstage. The excitement in the air was so strong it was almost a physical sensation—so many people determined to be part of it, the crowning of a new rock icon. This would be the kind of concert that generations would lie about forever—“I was there the night Johnny rocked the Viper” equal to having been at the Sex Pistols’ first gig at Central Saint Martins or having caught Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival.
    She’d counted thirteen camera crews set up around the stage; a fifty-foot boom hovered above the floodlights. If rock history was going to be written tonight,
Access Hollywood
wasn’t going to miss any of it. The show was even going to be projected on giant video screens on Sunset Boulevard to the throng of adoring fans who hadn’t been able to get tickets.
    â€œPizza?” one of the stagehands offered, motioning to the crafts table.
    â€œSure, why not.” Taj nodded, taking a slice. It was piping hot, and she almost burned the