The Love Experiment (Stubborn Hearts 1)

“I need to think about it.” It’s what a rational, sensible adult who grew up in a town called Orderly would say. This was all so new and fast.

Jack rescued the groceries, and she said, “Yes.”

He double-blinked. “Yes?”

Adrenaline-fueled enthusiasm deserted her in one wild drop, but it was still, yes. “I need to sit down.” She planted herself on his couch. She was in love with Jack. She’d been in love with him since question seventeen when he talked about his granddad. It’s just that she hadn’t known what to call this feeling that made her want to cleave to his side.

“What if it wears off?” she said. “This fizzy thing I feel about you.”

“It’s not wearing off for a long time. Not for me.” He sat beside her, but was astute enough not to touch her. If he touched her she might cry. “Because it’s strong. Because you showed me what was missing in my life by filling it. Because everything I am is richer for being with you.”

Pretty words. Easy to say for someone who made a life working with them.

“I’ve had a shitty week, Derelie. My Keepsafe story is falling apart. It’s hundreds and hundreds of hours of work, thousands of dollars invested by the Courier in time and other costs. A week like this, I’d have been living at the church, taking any fight Barney would let me have, begging every favor to get in the pit. But I knew you were here waiting for me, and the last thing I wanted to do was feel pain.”

What he’d done was wrap her in his arms and ask about her day, to tease her about her morning hair and strategize about their staggered arrival at the office.

“It’s still yes, the biggest, loudest yes, but my head is spinning.”

He took her hand and brought it to his chest. “There’s no hurry. We’re not on a deadline. I wanted you to know where I was with this. No second-guessing. I want to be with you.”

She turned her body into his, still a puppy wanting to sniff him all over, wriggle into his hands, to revel in this moment. “When did you know you loved me?” She rubbed her hands over his shoulders, slid her knee over his thighs and watched his eyes behind his frames go bright.

“You knocked me sideways the day we met.” When he’d thought she was a cub reporter on an internship. “You sassed the heck out of me and I didn’t expect it. Kept thinking about you.” Was it any one answer to any one question or the way she still sassed him? He took his glasses off and set them aside, dragged her closer, a hand on her thigh, an arm around her back, interlocking them. “But I knew I was in deep with you—” he kissed the side of her mouth “—when you changed the kitty litter when I was off chasing bad guys.”

“Ahh.”

He took the rest of that complaint by kissing it away and weathering the thump she aimed at his chest without flinching. He kissed her so well, so intently, mounting a thorough investigation of her mouth that she climbed over him, and humor turned to need and need to hands under clothing, and it was some time later they were interrupted by Martha, squeaky dragon between her teeth, jumping onto the arm of the couch.

Jack took Martha’s dragon and tossed it into the bedroom. He didn’t look at the cat as she tore after it, he held Derelie tight to him

. “I don’t know when I fell in love with you. You crept up on me, but I know that’s what I’m feeling and it just gets better, because you feel it too.”

She could forgive him for the kitty litter quip after that. “What about at work?” It was difficult pretending Jack didn’t mean more to her than a colleague. “Phil told me not to fuck anyone.” Artie was anyone. “Or to keep it a secret if I did.”

Martha was back with the dragon. Jack threw it again. “We don’t owe the Courier our private lives.”

She stared after Martha, the cat who played fetch. “I don’t want to give Phil any extra reason to think I can’t do my job.”

“He doesn’t think that.”

She sighed. It sure felt like it. He’d either shot down or been uninspired about every story she’d proposed in the editorial meetings.

Martha was back with the toy. Jack ignored her, though from the couch arm she batted at his arm. “Madden is a smart man. He didn’t promote you because he thought you’d fail. I don’t think you’ll fail. You’re the only one of us who’s worried about that.”

“You’re biased.” Surprisingly, delightfully one eyed about her.

“No bias in journalism.” Jack mock threw Martha’s dragon, but she was too clever to chase nothing, one up on Ernest and something Derelie still had to learn. “Once upon a time, at least.” He threw the dragon for real and Martha chased it all the harder for having been denied, fur padded feet sliding on the hardwood, tail pointing straight up with a curl at the tip.

“Have you ever been in love before?” That should’ve been an experiment question. The toy had gotten wedged between Jack’s dresser and the wall and Martha was having trouble reaching it, trying one paw then the other, different angles of attack, flattening herself out on the floor.

“Only with ideas. You?”

It was a good answer. “If I’d have known you would want to be with me, I’d have been obsessed with you.” As obsessed as a cat with a squeaky toy.

“You should call home while I’m in the mood to let you.”

“Let me?”