The Love Experiment (Stubborn Hearts 1)

“By clear you mean I’m clear that you kissed me and you liked it, but it was all for the story and it meant nothing to you.”

“Right. It was for the story.”

“But you did like it?”

He made an exasperated gesture with one hand. “It had to be authentic. Move on, Honeywell.”

Authentic my boot. If he’d been acting she’d have to admit she knew nothing about men and their swelling body parts. “I’m checking because I wouldn’t want to get the facts screwed up. Facts are important in reporting. Facts get you to the truth.”

He resettled in his chair, a movement that made her think he might leave. “Never let a fact get in the way of a good story. Quit pushing your luck.”

She’d push it exactly enough to get through this Q&A. She cleared her throat and pretended she had glasses to raise her eyes over. “‘Question one. Given the choice of anyone living or dead, whom would you want as a dinner guest?’ I’m sticking with Jesus and the whole ‘is there really a heaven slash hell’ thing. Also, I want to get a take on the idea of miracles—do they exist, what are the ten best. There’s also sainthood. What’s the ideal way to become a saint?”

“You know you made that sound like clickbait.”

Oh, not good. It was one thing to write list-style stories, she’d had to adjust to that—listicles didn’t feature in the Orderly Daily Mail, unless they were a list of stock and grain prices—but it was another thing entirely to go around talking like them.

“Answer the question, Haley.”

“I don’t do dinner guests. I can’t think of anything worse than having to make conversation with a stranger.”

“That can’t be your answer.” And it sure didn’t explain why he’d invited her to Elaine’s last night.

“Why not?”

“You’re Jackson Haley. You’d want the scoop, the downlow, the exposé. You’d want Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates or that investment guy who plays the ukulele or the Tesla guy who wants to go to space. You can’t dodge the question.”

“I didn’t dodge it. I’ve interviewed those people.” She grunted in annoyance. Of course he had. She should’ve picked dead people. “I didn’t converse with them. I asked questions. They gave answers. They talked. I listened. I gave you an answer. It’s not my fault you don’t like it.”

He was playing with her, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. He’d played with her last night as well and she’d been happy to be his toy, but now she’d happily brain him with her empty cup. “‘Question two. Would you like to be famous? In what way?’”

“What’s question three?”

“What’s wrong with question two?” A bus belching smoke pulled up at the corner with Haley’s face, sans devil’s horns, on its side. No way.

He pointed to the bus. “There you go?”

She wouldn’t have put it past him to sneakily plan that. “But do you like it? I don’t want to be famous, it seems like a lot of trouble.”

“There are worse things.”

She wrote on her pad and recited, “‘Jackson Haley gets a hard-on from having his face plastered on the city’s buses and he likes it. He doesn’t do idle conversation.’” But since he did get scoops, he had to have a talent for asking the right question and hearing what got said between the lines.

She didn’t get a ghost of a grin; she got, “Okay, Jesus Toast, get on with it. This can’t take all morning.”

“Question three, I know this one. You don’t rehearse phone calls and I do. Do you rehearse for your radio and TV spots?”

“I have an idea what I’m going to talk about. I know how I want the segment to go. I don’t practice my speech in front of a mirror, if that’s what this question is getting at.”

The big dinkus didn’t have to rehearse because he was supremely confident and his head was big enough to put on the side of a bus. “‘Question four. What would constitute your perfect day?’”

She gritted her teeth against him saying “not having to do a love experiment” and he said, “Not having to do a love experiment.”

“Oh, puhleeze. I knew you were going to say that.”

“We must be highly compatible then. Hurrah, the experiment works. Can we stop now?”

“No. Because all I have down is that you’re a fame hog who doesn’t like people and is so sure of himself he doesn’t rehearse.”