I woke up alone in Paisley’s bed. My heart lurching, I jumped out of bed and threw my jeans on.

A glance at the bathroom showed it was empty, and another one out the window showed that it was barely dawn. Cursing myself for sleeping so heavily, I raced down the stairs. The tinkle of piano keys met my ears and I slid to a stop on the polished wood, turning on a dime.

“No, that’s not it,” I heard her murmur.

The piano sang again, and her voice mingled with it. The song was hauntingly lonely, and my heart just about broke. Creeping slowly, I pushed the door open. Paisley sat at the piano, awash in the orange light of dawn, singing with every fiber of her being. Any suspicions I’d ever had of auto-tuning were dismissed. She sang like an angel, her voice reaching for the stars.

Drawn almost hypnotically to her song, I moved through the room. My wicker chair sat where it had lived since I moved it there the first day, waiting for me. She didn’t seem to notice as I sat down and kicked my feet up, enthralled with her. Her voice and fingers wove a masterpiece before my eyes, ripping my heart out and tearing it to shreds in the most beautiful possible way.

As her song came to a close, I sighed, nearer to tears than I’d ever been after listening to music. She turned to me with a soft, dreamy smile.

“What did you think?” she asked.

“It’s so sad,” I choked. “It’s beautiful.”

“I’m glad,” she sighed, running her fingers over the keys. “It needs to be sad.”

“Why?”

“To write the story,” she said, a small smile flirting with her lips. “The whole album is a story. It came to me last night… This morning, I guess. I woke up with the whole thing in my head, and… Oh, Tyler, I think it’s going to be the best thing I’ve ever done.”

“I know it will be,” I told her fervently. “It’s going to be the greatest thing anyone has ever heard.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said with a little laugh. “It might not hold a candle to Pink Lemonade, but it’s a similar idea. Oh… Do you think that’ll seem like a rip-off?” Her brow crinkled, and I watched her genius idea crash and burn in her eyes.

“No,” I said firmly, moving across the room to sit beside her on the bench. “Not unless you lift parts of her songs, get the same video director, or use her lyrics.”

“Oh good,” she sighed, leaning her head on my shoulder. “It’s so good, I’m terrified to screw it up.”

“You won’t,” I told her. “It’s impossible. Nobody can do this but you, and you can’t screw it up because it’s all you. Um… I mean, since it’s your masterpiece, there’s nobody who can do it better, so there’s no way you can mess it up. Make sense?”

“Perfect sense,” she laughed. “Get back over there, I just figured out how to make the next song work.”

“You got it, darlin’.” I kissed her head and retreated to my chair to watch my beautiful sorceress weave her magic.

The next song began with a hard-hitting beat, the kind that startled you out of your stupor. Her words told a gripping story about love gone wrong, twisted into something dark and brutal. As I listened, I began to hear the real story unfold beneath the metaphor; the story of her kidnapping. Her fear and rage came across clearly, told from the perspective of a spurned woman with murder on her mind.

As the song thundered to a close I leapt to my feet, applauding as if I had a whole stadium of people behind me, backing me up.

“God almighty, woman; you can write!”

She threw her head back and laughed with delight. “I’m so glad you think so! For a minute there, I thought I’d completely lost my touch.” She turned her indigo eyes up at me through her thick lashes as a blush kissed her cheeks. “Frankly, I don’t know if I’d have found myself again without you.”

“Oh hush,” I told her with a grin. “You didn’t need me. You just needed a little stirring up, is all.”

“Well you stirred me like a paint pot,” she said, returning my grin. “Matter of fact, this whole album is dedicated to you.”

“Won’t that get the tabloids talking?” I asked, suddenly worried about the reputation I had been so ready to destroy.

“Aw, they’re already talking,” she said, brushing it off. “It’s not like I’m going to tuck you away in a closet somewhere. I’ll be on your arm at every party and awards ceremony. They’ll see you. They might as well know who you are.”

“Fair enough,” I said, dropping a kiss on her chocolaty curls. “What do you say to breakfast?”

“I say feed me, I’m starved.” She turned her head up to me, meeting my lips with hers.

There was nothing more comfortable than cooking with her. We settled into an easy rhythm; flapjacks and eggs with sausage came together quickly, and before long we were at the kitchen table, looking out the French doors at the rising sun.

“You said your album was going to be a story?” I prompted.

“Oh! Yeah. Okay, so it begins when I moved here. I felt like everybody’s eyes were on me, and I had nothing to show them. Like a tumbler in a circus act who’s forgotten how to flip. The metaphors get a little stretched in that song, because that’s how I felt.”

“I don’t think I heard that one.”

She shook her head. “I finished putting it together before the sun came up. Well, not finished, but I’m satisfied with the raw material. After that, I tell the story of how I met you. I’m still working on that one, but the theme is going to be a thief in the night.”

“Oh,” I said, chagrined.

She laughed and reached across the table to squeeze my hand. “Don’t take it so hard, it’s a happy song. Hot and sweaty and sexy, but also happy.”

“Hot, sweaty, sexy… I like where this is going,” I said with a suggestive grin.

“Yeah, yeah,” she laughed. “You’ll like some of the other songs, too. Like ‘Staircase.’”

I raised my brows and shot a glance through the walls at the staircase where I had first tasted her. Paisley blushed and grinned, nodding a confirmation. I cleared my throat, shifting in my chair against the sudden erection pressing against my zipper. I regretted dressing so hastily that morning.

“What comes next?” I asked, hoping it would be her in my lap.

“Oh,” she said, her eyes darting defensively away. “Next is a heartbroken song of betrayal.”

My heart sank, and my uncomfortable issue resolved itself. Deflated, I turned my attention to my breakfast. “I’m sorry,” I said, but it came out sounding like an accusation.

“Don’t be,” she replied coolly. “The story would be incomplete without it. The next couple of songs wouldn’t mean nearly as much.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Like… ‘As Long as I’m Good for You’ and ‘Car Crash Tango.’” Her wicked smile and glittering eyes made me wonder if she was joking, and I shot her a suspicious glance.

“I’ll play them for you when we’re done eating,” she laughed. “As much of them as I have, anyway. They still need a lot of work. Most of these songs do, really; I still have to play around with the arrangements and everything. Then I have to get it approved, then wait for someone else to play around with the music, then I have to approve the rearrangements, then Jude has to approve the final product…”

“Okay, okay,” I laughed. “So ‘done’ is only ‘done for now’ until it’s all the way done, right?”

“Right,” she said, biting into a sausage with a grin.

“That’s a lot more work than I imagined.”

A hint of concern crossed her face. “Too much?”

“For who? Me? Nah, darlin’, I just sit there and watch you work and make sure nobody tries to steal you. I can do that all day.”

She chewed her lip, apprehension all over her face. I waited patiently, completely at a loss. What was she afraid of?

“Okay, here’s the thing,” she said quickly, curling her legs up onto the chair. “The guys who have been legitimately interested in me—and not my money or fame—all had the same problem with the relationship.”

“What was that?” I asked, only marginally curious.

“That I worked too much,” she said in a burst of air. “That I get caught up in my work and am absent for days at a time. I mean, I wasn’t living with any of them, but sometimes it doesn’t matter. And on tour, I get super stressed out and sucked into my own universe.”

“Okay,” I said with a shrug. “You’re an obsessive artist. It’s why your stuff is so good. I can’t promise that I’ll never get annoyed about it, but I’m chill. As long as you come up for air once in a while, it’s all good.”

“We’ll see,” she said, unconvinced.

I chuckled, shaking my head. “I thought I was the one who had to win you back, darlin’. Why are you turning it around on yourself?”

She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. “I guess I try to kill things before they kill me sometimes,” she said quietly.

“You think I’ll kill you?”

She looked up at me, and the raw vulnerability in her eyes just about killed me where I sat. I moved around the table, lifted her up, and settled her on my lap.

Wrapping my arms around her, I kissed her cheek, then her neck, then her nose, finally coming to a stop at her mouth. I tasted her slowly, pouring my feelings into every touch. She relaxed, turning into me, raking her fingers through my hair.

When she released me, I looked up into her eyes. “I won’t leave unless you really, really want me to. I won’t run from your genius. And I’m not after your money, outside my own salary. That’s still a thing, right?”

She laughed, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “Yes, that’s still a thing,” she said, nuzzling my nose. “You’ll have all the money you need if you ever want to escape.”

“That’s not what I want it for,” I chuckled, kissing her cheek. “My lease ends this month, and I’m not going to renew it if I don’t need to. So pretty much everything you pay me is going to be extra. So…”

“So?”

“So I’m going to send most of it to Billy,” I said, frowning past her out the window. “I sent his wife my last check anonymously. I heard through some mutual friends that she was about to get evicted when she got it. Billy’s out of the ICU now, but he’s still in the hospital. Bills racking up. So as long as you pay me, I can pay my debts.”

She cradled my head close to her breast and kissed my hair. “You’re so good,” she sighed.

“Nah.” I shrugged. “Just can’t leave things like that. It’ll screw with my self-esteem.”

She laughed and kissed me hard enough to knock the chair over. Within moments, we were christening the kitchen floor with our dirty, messy, giddy affection.