The Love Experiment (Stubborn Hearts 1)

“The woman you fucked up with.”

“That very woman.” Who was grinning at him.

“This is progress. I like it. Key to the side door is under the big flowerpot growing a fine crop of dead twigs. I’ll be over there myself in about fifteen minutes, so don’t get up to anything you wouldn’t want an old priest to see.”

Jack struggled to think what the old priest hadn’t already seen. He found the pot, one of several to fit the description, got the key and opened up.

Derelie stepped inside and twirled around, stirring up dust motes in the weak light from the open door. “This is where you fight?”

It was a large cavernous space once used to house a row of city buses waiting mechanical checks. Now it housed lockers, gym equipment, rubdown tables, and the pit itself.

“I feel like I’m in something out of Fight Club.” That’d been Barney’s inspiration. “Are you really Jackson Haley?”

“One and the same.”

“I’m not sure you are.”

He let her walk away so he could watch her move, but called after her. “What does that mean?”

“It means I think there are two Jack Haleys and the one I took a shower with, ate eggs with, is the whole one.” Her voice had resonance, bouncing off the hard surfaces of the place.

“And the other one?” His sounded bemused.

She turned to face him, let him catch up the distance between them. She’d practically sat in his lap in the car on the way over and he wanted her close again. “He’s a good man, works hard, but he’s got a hole in his soul that needs patching.”

Goddamn experiment. “Enough psychobabble analysis.” He took her hand and led her over to the pit.

“You fight down there?”

The pit bore no resemblance to how it was once used by mechanics. The walls were lined with heavy padding, bright bl

ue in the gloom. He’d left the main lights off and it still managed to look like something greasy and mysterious went on down there.

“Official amateur boxing rules, proper equipment, with the exception of walls for ropes, referees who know their stuff and a manager who doesn’t take any shit from anyone and governs this place like it’s a kingdom. He’s a despot. His name is Barney and you’ll meet him later.”

“Please don’t ever ask me to come watch you get hit. I’d hate that.”

“No spectators. It’s not about that.” It was confession, two men and their failings hashing it out.

“What about women?”

“Twice a month there’s a night for women. Not as many women want to get punched in the face as men. That just proves they’re smarter.” He crowded Derelie into the barricade around the top of the pit with the intention of sampling her lips.

“You’re not just brawling. You wanted me to see this wasn’t totally irresponsible.”

He answered her with a hand to the back of her head and a soft kiss to banish the demons. There were a lot to banish, and it wasn’t until the big overhead lights came on they surfaced.

“There’ll be no kissing in my gym unless it’s at the hand of a glove.”

He pulled away from Derelie but kept her hand. “That cantankerous bastard is Barney.”

Barney tossed and caught an orange. “And who might this be?”

“I’m Derelie Honeywell. You’re the man who let Jack get cut up and bruised.”

“An avenging angel is she, Haley?” That thought had crossed Jack’s mind already today. “He gets himself knocked about. If he trained harder it wouldn’t happen.”

She looked at Barney and then slapped Jack on the arm. “Oh.”