The Love Experiment (Stubborn Hearts 1)

“If she gets out, she’ll end up on a neighbor’s bed.”

“That’s yours?” It didn’t seem possible he’d own a cat, or look so out of office attractive. He had the kind of muscles that bugled, that whole ripple thing from his chest to his...gulp, eyes up. He had purple bruises on his side and a black eye, a cut over his nose and his brow was taped again.

“Her name is Martha. What are you doing here?”

Martha’s front paws paddled, and she said, “Marah.”

“What happened to you?” Derelie gestured at Jack’s face. “You didn’t answer my messages.”

Jack repositioned Martha in his arms. Marmalade, black and white. She was the biggest cat Derelie had ever seen. Mane like a lion, paws like a dog, green eyes that sized her up and knew her for the stalker she was.

“You’re in my building because I didn’t answer your messages?” Jack’s voice was low and amused. She thrust the messenger bag at him and he said, “You deliver mail in your spare time?”

“No, it’s. Yes. No. There was a cliché. You’re a crazy cat person.” She shook the bag. She needed him to take the bag, because in all likelihood she was in possession of stolen property, because she certainly wasn’t in possession of her wits. “This is yours.”

He hip-checked the door to push it open and stepped aside. “You’d better come in.”

She stood on the doorstep and looked past the near-naked, battered, bruised, cat-cradling man into his apartment. Most of what she could see was desk and couch. The couch was being used as a filing system. As was a good deal of the floor. The desk had two screens, two keyboards and was littered with office type junk. There was an ironing board, also being used as a work surface, a small chewed blue mouse dangling from it by a string, and a television, on a news channel with the sound down. Suit-wearing, pristine-cubicle-dwelling Jackson Haley couldn’t possibly live here in this mess.

“This is where you live?”

“No, this is where I stash my kidnap victims.”

After what she’d learned today about the wiener-jingle-singing, not-afraid-to-out-himself-as-a-jerk, wanted-to-take-her-on-a-picnic, positively-hunky-without-a-shirt, cat-owning Jackson Haley, that didn’t sound too far-fetched.

Chapter Fourteen

Maybe it was Martha. Was Honeywell scared of cats? That might explain why she stood on Jack’s doorstep with her mouth open but no sound coming out. It failed to explain what she was doing here with his messenger bag in the first place.

“She won’t bite.”

“You have a cat.”

“If it helps, think of her as a dog.”

“I can come in?”

He couldn’t open the door wider. He couldn’t hold Martha, the door and the messenger bag at the same time. Martha was a two-arms kind of cat when she wanted out. “You can throw the bag in here if you’d prefer. Try not to knock anything over.”

Honeywell stepped inside and he closed the door. “Do you want me to put Martha in another room?”

She took in the space he used as an extension of his newsroom office. “Do they all look like this?”

“If I’d known you were coming I’d have moved.”

“Oh.” She laughed, showing signs of life again. “Why Martha?”

“For Martha Gellhorn. One of our greatest war correspondents. Covered every international conflict from the Spanish Civil War to the invasion of Panama. That’s sixty years of reporting. Pops had a huge crush on her.”

“She married Hemingway and kicked him to the curb.” Honeywell struck a pose. “Gellhorn said, ‘Why should I be a footnote to somebody else’s life?’” She put the bag on the ironing board and gestured to Martha. “I always like that line. I have a hound called Ernest.”

He’d thought about this woman half the night. He’d traded punches for penance for the way he’d treated her. Then he’d sent her his act of contrition in the hope it would make a difference, and now she stood in the middle of his organized chaos like a shaft of unexpected sunlight, wearing a green dress that made her eyes look stormy, reaching her arms out to him. She not only knew about Martha Gellhorn, she’d named her dog after Hemingway. Honeywell was nobody’s footnote. She was a front-page headline all on her own.

For a moment he forgot he was holding Martha. He remembered the taste of Honeywell’s lips, the little sounds she’d made as she’d kissed him back.

What the hell is she doing here? He took a couple of steps toward her and flipped Martha so he held her on her back with her feet up and her furry belly exposed and her tail flopped over his arm. Martha said, “Merrow,” and Honeywell laughed because it sounded so much like hello. She put her hand to Martha’s broad head and scratched between her ears. The cat’s purr kicked up between them.

“She’s lovely.”