The Love Experiment (Stubborn Hearts 1)

“It’s a tough question. I used to play this game with a friend called Would You Rather. Would you rather lose a leg or an arm, or would you rather live on an island all alone without power or running water, or in a luxury hotel but be bedridden with an incurable disease.”

“Did you not have cable and video games in this fresh smelling, growing things place where you grew up?”

“Of course I did. Didn’t you ever play made-up games?”

“Only as an adult and only ones not suitable for discussing with a colleague or the paper’s readers. Answer the question.”

“I’d rather keep my mind.”

“I want to be dead before I’m ninety.”

“That’s not the question.”

“That’s my answer.”

When progress bit its own ragged tail, it hurt, and to think they had to do this twice more before she could write the final story. “‘Question seven. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?’”

It was too easy, it was a closed question, he’d say no. Note to whoever wrote this, closed questions were junk.

He said, “No. And you’re planning on dying in your sleep at a ripe old age, in the great family tradition.”

Industrial espionage grade listening. She’d said that to him on the street last night. “Was that a cliché?”

He dismissed that with a quirk of his head. “Question eight. I can smell the end of this, it’s sweet, a rush.”

“Don’t mock me. And this is only part one.”

He closed his eyes, and slumped back in his chair. “Dear God.”

“‘Question eight. Name three things we appear to have in common.’”

He snapped them out. “Profession, place of employment, this ridiculous experiment.”

That about covered it. How the heck was she going to write this up? “You’re not being helpful.”

“Cute that you actually thought I might be.”

How could he kiss so warmly but be so stubbornly difficult to get along with? “Curmudgeon,” she muttered. Not a word she’d use to describe anyone else she’d ever met.

“Never use a ten dollar word where a two dollar one will do, Honeywell.”

The only good thing about last night’s ravishing was that Jackson Dinkus Haley no longer intimidated her. He exasperated her, but he’d groaned into her skin and he’d cradled her head and he’d chased her tongue, and some of his forbidding nature, his aloof dominance, had dissolved in her mouth at about the same time as bruises from his fingers blossomed on her thigh. She was free to imagine him wearing standard tighty whities.

“Why did you agree to come?” She swept her arm out to indicate her notebook, the café.

“You guilted me into it.”

And now she wasn’t proud of it. “Guilted isn’t a word.”

“Language is a living thing. Did you have any trouble understanding what I meant?”

Ignoring that. “Question nine.” It was a disastrous question. “‘For what in your life do you feel the most grateful?’” He’d say for the fact this questionnaire is nearly done. “I’m grateful for the chance to be in the city.”

He eyed her speculatively. “What went wrong with your hometown life?”

“That’s not one of the questions?”

“No, but I’m interested. You left the sun and the birds and the bees for concrete and steel, swapped stars for neon for a reason.”