The Love Experiment (Stubborn Hearts 1)

She looked down at her lap. “If you had a crystal ball, what would you want to know about your future?”

“For farm-fresh, you own some devious, woman.” It was Honeywell’s turn to blush. She had her cell in her lap. “This is a love experiment sneak attack.”

“Oh look, Martha is cleaning herself,” she said, pointing at the cat, who stopped in the act of licking her butt and stared at them. Charming.

“Okay, let’s do it then.” He went back to the stovetop. “If I had a crystal ball, I’d want to know what the world is like when we’ve forgotten the value of looking at things critically. I’d want to know how I’m going to keep making a living.” He waved a plastic stirrer at her. “And you?”

“I’d want to know a whole bunch of silly things like how long Ernest is going to live and how my parents are going to age and whether the farm can remain viable.”

“Nothing silly there.”

“I’d want to know if I fall in love, if I marry, if I have kids.”

“What would make you think you won’t?”

“I’m twenty-eight and I’ve had two steady boyfriends and a couple of lovers, but I’ve never been in love and not everyone gets what they want.” She shrugged. “On the one hand, why should I be so lucky to get what I want? And on the other, I’m not so special that I’m not like most people, and most people do the marriage and kids thing. It’s like yoga, mysterious, unfathomable, but I’m still trying.”

The ten percent of him that wanted to kiss her also wanted to assure her she’d get the lover, the family she wanted and admit that he’d wondered about those things for himself on nights when he wasn’t too tired and days that were made for families—the holidays, the Thanksgivings and Labor Days.

The other ninety percent of him understood he was largely a bystander in his own life. He asked questions and formed opinions on events outside of himself and he liked it that way. He cooked the pasta and tried to remain objectively, professionally distant, which was much harder to do barefoot in his own kitchen with Honeywell’s eyes on him than it was when he was suited up Jackson Haley, a living version of his byline.

“The question you asked me earlier, the one about whether I was doing what I dreamed of doing, what’s your answer to that?” he asked.

“My version of your tank-driving, firefighting, soldier comic book writer was Dr. Doolittle. I wanted to fix animals by whispering to them. I wanted them to follow me around and be the only one who could understand what they said. But I wasn’t a fan of actual sick animals and got bored with cones and bandages and the amount of time it takes to fix bones, so that was a bust. I never seriously considered becoming a vet. I thought I’d like to write stories and here I am doing that. It was the most unlikely thing for a girl from Orderly to want to do.”

He dished the pasta into bowls, hearty servings for both of them, and placed them on the table with a salad that was mostly various types of lettuce and tomato that was past its best. It wasn’t a picnic, but it would do.

“This looks great,” she said with a gorgeous smile that had the impact of an uppercut, and he lost his place in the conversation, returning to his corner and the safety of a question.

“What’s up next?”

“A load of questions I never thought I’d get you to answer.”

“I promise to behave.” If she kept smiling at him he’d likely do anything she asked, except move the one hundred and ten folders—because that would screw with his internal filing system—and touch her again, because that would screw with his animal instincts; that would make him want what he shouldn’t have.

“What’s the greatest accomplishment of your life?”

He grimaced, and that hurt his face. “You go first.”

She delayed by trying the pasta. He’d likely overcooked it, but she tucked in. “So far, it’s moving to the city. I was comfortable in Orderly, but I wasn’t going to learn anything new, meet anyone new, and I wanted more.” She pointed her fork at him. “Quit stalling.”

“Being able to help people who’ve been wronged get justice, or at the bare minimum have their stories heard.”

“I thought you’d say having your own dinkus.”

“You like to live dangerously.”

She looked at her plate. “Only with you, apparently.”

Shit. Not convenient he felt the same about living dangerously with her? He should take Honeywell’s plate away and bundle her out the door immediately with a stern warning to lose his address. “You got another question for me?”

“Do you still call me Honeywell in your head?”

He stalled with a mouthful. She was Honeywell because that’s what he did. He used surnames. It kept things professional. He used her surname because it was supposed to stop him from thinking about her as a person he might care about more than he should. He’d had to scrub her surname from last night’s email and replace it with her first.

“Do you have a problem with that?”

“No, Jack. I only wondered.”