The Love Experiment (Stubborn Hearts 1)

If this wasn’t a new dress kind of place, she’d ask for a piece of bread to soak up the rest of the yum sauce on her plate.

Jack laughed. “Touché, Honeywell. I wouldn’t talk to me either.”

She looked up; he was focused on her with those dark blue, glass-barricaded eyes. He’d asked a question. She’d read that clove cigarettes could numb your tongue, but—Jackson Haley, living dinkus, had asked her a question. “Do you really want to know?”

“Y

ou’ve already worked out I’m no good with chitchat. I’m interested.”

It wasn’t flattering. So why was there an odd flutter in her chest? Too weird. “Words matter. Maybe now more than ever. All we’ve got to influence people with is words. They’re still powerful, they still make a difference.”

Oh God, now her face got hot. She sounded like a naïve college kid, high on her own self-importance.

“Go on.”

She looked at her plate. “I know the traditional newspaper business is dying, but journalism isn’t, and it’s not all listicles and celebrity updates, it can’t be. I want to learn everything I can about being a reporter, about using words to influence people, so I have options in the future.” She lifted her eyes to his face, better to know if he was going to mock her before he did it. “I know to you that will sound lacking in ambition, but I come from a town where there’s very little choice about what work you do, and if you want to do anything important, you have to wait till the person already doing it dies or moves away. This is my chance to build a career with work I enjoy and I’m not going to mess it up.”

He sipped his water—no wine for them—but kept his eyes on her. “They’re teaching computers how to do what we do.”

She’d read about it. Computer programs that could create written content, could write entire books made from popular tropes and plotlines.

“Terrifies me,” he said. “The Courier is already using computer-generated content in business and sports.”

“My parents thought I was making a bad decision moving here, taking this job. Thought it was too risky, that I should try for something safer.” But she’d already had years of safe decisions and they’d led to stagnation professionally and a string of relationships so lacking in spark it was no wonder she lusted after a man-bun and got tense around the human headline.

“Hard to know what would be safe from change.”

The family farm was safe. It was three generations of corn, and a life of juggling a bank overdraft. “If I have to go home, I want to know I tried to make the most of my life.”

Jack was silent, probably stunned by her lack of sophistication. His study of her was unnerving. She flapped a hand at him. “What?”

“If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?”

Hah, so he’d read the questions. That was number twelve. “You really want to know?”

“Entirely for my own amusement.”

“Does it hurt?” She smoothed her own eyebrow.

He scrunched his face. “I’ve had a headache for two days. You’re stalling.”

“I’d like to feel like I’m worthy. Like I’m tough enough to make it on my own. Like no one can stop me, get in my way. I want to feel powerful and in control and in charge of my own destiny.” She wanted to be professionally as tough and skilled as Jack.

“And you don’t feel like that now?”

She felt small and confused and uncertain. She’d never felt less like she fitted in or more lost and lonely. Her chest felt tight. She shook her head.

He raised his glass to her. “Could’ve fooled me, Honeywell.”

Chapter Eight

Jack had lost count of the number of times he’d upset this woman. He’d tried to make conversation, even used a question from the ridiculous experiment, and managed to do it again. Ordering dessert wasn’t going to make things right, but it gave him something to do while Honeywell composed herself like he’d had to after she’d pulled that stunt kissing him and he’d made the whole thing one hundred times more awkward by kissing her back.

Jesus Christ. He’d kissed her lips. Maybe worse, he’d had a death grip on her thigh that would probably bruise, all four fingers rucking her dress between her legs. He didn’t know how to bring that up, to apologize, without making things even more impossible.

And now she sat across from him thinking she wasn’t worthy, and everything he’d shown her to date reinforced that view. He was a useless human being. If he could wake up tomorrow having gained any one new skill—question twelve—it would be the ability to consider the feelings of others before he opened his mouth.

She ordered the chocolate spaghetti with strawberries and green tea. He chose the North Carolina pecan cake and coffee. When the plates arrived they both coveted each other’s order more and swapped.