Page 1 of Swan River

Chapter One

Paisley

RUN TO YOU

Performed by Lea Michele

Paisley lifted her head from thekeyboard after she finished the song and was surprised to find the recording studio completely silent. The air held a strange vibration as if the chords were still traveling through the room. A sea of eyes stared at her. Landry’s face came into focus first before Jonas’s gaze caught her attention through the glass. There was a mix of pride and awe in both their expressions, and it filled Paisley’s chest until it almost burst.

They were good. The songs were really, really good.

She felt it all the way down into the depths of her soul. Paisley had been scribbling away on napkins, notebooks, and school papers long before Landry had formed The Painted Daisies with her friends. And even though this was the band’s third album, even though they’d been playing to sold-out stadiums and the music critics had been sending accolades their way, nothing had felt like these songs. Nothing.

Paisley’s gaze shot to where Jonas stood by the mixing console. Her insides leaped, and her pulse thrummed as if Adria was still pounding away on her drums. She wished it was just the two of them?her and Jonas?sitting behind her keys so he could kiss her. So he could wrap his arms around her and prove the truth of her words. That love was the only truly meaningful part of humanity’s existence.

Jonas’s face broke into a huge smile. He shoved a hand through his dark-blond waves, and then, he put his palm to the glass, fingers wide. Her heart squeezed tight with pleasure and joy. It was as if she could feel the pressure of his hand on her chest where it had lain multiple times as he listened to the rhythm of her heartbeat. If there hadn’t been an entire room between them, she would have met his palm with hers and let the emotions of the songs fill the space between them with the sense of coming home.

“Holy shit, Paise!” Landry’s voice broke the quiet that had settled over all of them, drawing Paisley’s eyes back to her sister. Even though she could hear the admiration in Landry’s gritty tone, guilt swarmed through her at the hurt on Landry’s face. Paisley had never finished any of their music on her own before. She’d never gotten all the way to playing them for the band without her sister having had a say in them.

Except…she hadn’t been alone with these songs either. She just hadn’t been with Landry.

“We’ll have to move everything around,” Landry said, tapping the rings on each of her middle fingers together in thought. Her overly round eyes narrowed, and she twisted her long black hair as she considered the handwritten track list scrawled on the whiteboard that she and Brady had been agonizing over.

Fiadh bounced over to Paisley with her dark-red curls spinning about her. She slung her arm around Paisley’s shoulders.

“Little Bit, love sounds good on you!” Fiadh laughed, her amber eyes sparkling. Paisley felt her skin flush as she shot a glance at Jonas in the control room. Relief settled through her when she realized Jonas hadn’t heard. Instead, he was deep in discussion with studio owner?country-rock legend, Brady O’Neil.

“She’s right,” Leya said, finger resting on the cleft in her chin as her brown eyes darted to Landry who was still assessing the album’s tracklist. “These are your best songs yet. You and Landry outdid yourselves.”

Landry whipped around to face them. “I had nothing to do with them. They’re all Paisley.”

Maybe it was just Paisley’s guilty conscience that heard the quiet rebuke in her sister’s tone, but she didn’t think so. Tension had been growing between them ever since they’d arrived in Grand Orchard and Paisley had gone on her first date with Jonas.

Sensing the friction and wanting to soothe it as always, Adria twirled her sticks and climbed out from behind her drums with model-like grace to tuck her arm through Landry’s. Her bright-blue eyes flickered to Paisley with a slight frown, but it was Nikki who actually spoke.

“Love is in the air, Lan. Get ready for a whole slew of new songs.”

Nikki’s tease sent Paisley’s heart into overdrive, and she shot yet another glance toward the glass. Her stomach flipped because it was obvious Jonas had heard this time. His grin grew, and he winked at Paisley?a damn wink that said I told you so. A wink that should have annoyed her but really just made her melt inside until she was nothing more than a boiling pot of desire.

Brady strode into the room, excitement radiating from his face. “Okay, with the first song, I think we should start with just Paisley’s voice. Then, after the second measure, I want Adria to come in on a gentle beat with the tom-toms. Every two measures, we’ll add another instrument. Leya’s sitar, followed by Fiadh’s banjo, then Landry and Nikki on guitar before Paisley finally joins in on the keyboard. Do we want to try it or just start laying tracks?”

It was Fee who laughed and replied, “I think we should try it a few times together before we start recording anything.”

He shrugged, “Sometimes, just going with it is better than anything you could plan.”

While everyone went to grab their instruments, Paisley shot another smile in Jonas’s direction. Landry stepped in front of her, breaking her view.

“Are you really just going to forget everything that happened yesterday?” Landry whispered, her disappointment pounding through each syllable.

Paisley’s heart grew heavy. She hated that being with Jonas was causing a rift between them. Landry was the one person she admired most in this world. The person responsible for everything Paisley was and hoped to become. But she also didn’t understand how Landry could see how happy she was with Jonas and still want her to give him up.

So, instead of replying with words they’d both regret, she turned back to the music and the suggestions Brady had made.

? ? ?

Paisley’s voice was scratchy by the time she came out of the iso booth hours later. She was surprised to find their manager Tommy had been joined by their label owner, Nick Jackson. Nick hadn’t shown up for a recording since their first album, and she wondered what had dragged him all the way from New York City. Whereas Tommy looked like an aging rock star, Nick looked like a banker in a perfectly pressed gray suit with short brown hair that was graying at the temples and a clean-shaven square jaw.

The two men were in deep discussion with Brady about the new songs and the track order. While all the daisies had input, it was Landry who’d always had the innate sense of what it would take to make each song, album, and show a success. The band trusted her final decisions implicitly. She was the fire that fueled them. The force who’d first propelled them into existence and then launched them into worldwide fame once Lost Heart Records had come onboard.

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