The Love Experiment

by Paton, Ainslie

  “What’s the matter with you? What are you doing here?” Abruptly he abandoned his hold on the door to scoop a fast-moving mass off the floor.

  She jumped back. “That.” A cat, Jackson Haley was virtually naked and had a huge scruffy cat wriggling under his arm.

  “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.”

  “She knows it too.” Unlike the woman in front of him, who had no idea the effect she had on him. Honeywell’s hand was so close to his pec he could imagine her placing it there, stroking his skin.

  “Here.” He put the cat in her arms, and Honeywell laughed when Martha said, “Foof,” then he snatched up a zippered sweatshirt and shoved his arms into it. He should move things, tidy up, create room for her to sit, but he didn’t want her here.

  He pointed to the messenger bag. “How come you have this?”

  She looked up from Martha, who waved a paw in the air for more pats and said, “Marah, marah.”

  “You were ignoring me.”

  Oh sweetheart, how I tried. “You didn’t read my email.”

  “I read it.” She rubbed her chin on the top of Martha’s head and the cat said, “Yip,” making Honeywell smile. “I didn’t know what you wanted me to do with it.”

  “It was my apology for the way I’ve treated you since the beginning.”

  Martha squirmed. Honeywell looked equally uncomfortable. “That’s all?”

  He’d messed this up. Thought it was obvious. He took Martha out of Honeywell’s arms and put her on the floor. “What did you think?”

  “That it was a test.”

  “Of what?” They watched Martha saunter over to a row of folders on the floor, select one—Sophia Arrugia, head injury—and sit on it. “And what cliché? There was no cliché.”

  “That was just to get your attention.”

  He played with the zipper on the jacket. It only went up part of the way before it jammed—there was too much of his chest on display. He tried to work the snag out, but made it worse. Now it wouldn’t go up or down.

  “You’ve got my attention.” She’d gotten it the first time she’d smack-talked him, called him an asshole, back when he’d thought she was an intern, a cadet, too farm-fresh and pretty to get herself dirty with him.

  “It’s the way you wrote it. First person, feature style. You didn’t use any swear words or long paragraphs or ten dollar words. But you outed yourself. I’m not sure what you wanted me to do with it.”

  “I gave it to you to even things up between us. You were generous in what you told me and I was a—”

  “Superior twerp. I read it. More than once.”

  “I didn’t expect you to do anything with it. I wasn’t sure you’d read it.” That was a lie. He knew she’d read it. He’d written it with an eye to what she might choose to do with it out of spite, knowing he’d have to live with it. “And I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your messages. I was—” he looked at his folder system “—busy.”

  “Is this the Keepsafe story?”

  “This is one hundred and ten cases of fraudu
lently denied claims that we know about so far.” Martha stood, circled, chose another folder, circled and then sat. “Martha is now sitting on the Yang file. Amelia Yang, crashed through an embankment. She broke her jaw, nose, brow and both arms. She lost the sight in one eye. Her insurance claim was rejected.” Honeywell looked at him aghast. “A simple but terrible accident.”

  Many of them were.

  She tapped a file on the ironing board. “Oscar Hernandez, went through his windshield,” he said. She tapped another. “Abdul Yemani, got his hand caught in an extruding machine, lost his fingers.”

  “Is there a file for the Shenkers?”

  He picked up the messenger bag and opened it. The first file he pulled out had Shenker handwritten across it.

  “You know all of these. All one hundred and ten of them.”

  He nodded. “I’m scared to move them. I know that doesn’t make sense.” She was still looking at him as if she suspected he’d lost his mind. “This is what I do.”

  “You’re amazing.”

  Not what he’d expected her to say. The way her voice, breathy with an edge of cheerleader, licked up against his body as if it had a physical presence was unnerving. “Come on, not every room looks like this.”

  He took her through to the kitchen, which he didn’t use as a workspace but wasn’t exactly guest ready. There were dishes soaking in the sink and a full basket of clean washing to put away on a chair. The liniment and tape he’d used to treat his bumps and bruises from the fight were still on the counter. Did the place smell? He didn’t smoke inside, but maybe everything smelled like the cloves he was immune to. He cleared a pile of newspapers and magazines off the other chair for her to sit.

  “It rarely looks much better than this.” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cleaned up. “I don’t invite people around.”

  She looked at the chair and then out toward the front door. “I should go.”

  She should definitely go. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.” He pulled the chair out for her. “You stole my messenger bag.”

  She moved around him to sit. “You want to take me out for a picnic. You want to do the love experiment.”

  “I owe you the love experiment, and not to make me out a hero or anything, Madden wants it.”

  “You really sing the—”

  He clapped his hand over her mouth. “Don’t say it.” Her eyes went wide and under his palm, her lips and cheeks lifted into a smile. He shouldn’t have touched her. He wanted to replace his hand with his lips, wrap his arms around her and keep her hostage.

  He dropped his hand and stepped away. “That damn jingle.” He looked at Martha, who’d sloped into the kitchen to supervise. Any Jackson Haley investigative reporter magic he’d ever had with Honeywell was about as useful as the cold sludge in his sink. “It’s like a groove worn in my head.”

  “It’s about being loved.”

  “It’s about meat.”

  She sat with a laugh, her back to him. “It’s not meat where I come from.”

  “Where do you come from?” He rummaged in the clothes basket, stripped the busted jacket off and put a T-shirt on.

  “Orderly, Illinois. Population ten thousand. Corn country. Home of the white squirrel. That’s where my family is. I’m the youngest of four. Three brothers, all married. I have two nieces and two nephews and I Skype with my dog. Sometimes I’m so homesick I could cry.” She covered her face with her hands. “I shouldn’t have said that. You’ll think I’m a failure.”

  He shouldn’t want to pull her into his arms and make a new home for her. “I sign up over and over again to let men hit me so I can hit them back because I have trouble dealing with my life.”

  She looked up. “Oh.”

  “Which one of us is handling things better?”

  “When you put it like that, coming from a town called Orderly and Skyping Ernest doesn’t make me sound like such a loser.”

  “I’ve never been homesick, but I don’t think that makes you a failure.” That was probably a lie too. He’d never had a stable home to be homesick for, and what was missing a grandfather who’d been out of his life for a decade plus, if not homesickness.

  “I’m not sure about yoga. I’m no good at it. I hate the whole spirituality through contortion thing. Last night my teacher said, ‘Smile inwardly.’ What can that possibly mean?”

  He knew exactly what it meant. It had nothing to do with yoga. It meant you were utterly delighted with someone and terrifically confused by the phenomenon. That your insides lit up, your blood thrummed and your heart tripped and you felt lighter and smarter and better than you had a natural right to feel, but you couldn’t afford to show any of that turmoil to the woman with incredible pale eyes who was sometimes homesick sitting opposite you in your untidy kitchen. All you could do was smile inwardly.

  “I hate wieners,” he said.

  She closed her eyes when she laughed. She was beautiful. She wasn’t glossy like most of the women he knew. She wasn’t suited up for success like Berkelow or styled to perfection like Potter. She wore color instead of black. She stood out as different and he loved that. Her hair didn’t want to be sleek, her freckles showed. Her ears were unadorned and there was no other jewelry. He didn’t care that she wore an aligner, but he knew she didn’t want others to be aware of it and that she didn’t wear it now for that reason.

  “Why don’t you quit yoga?”

  “I don’t like to quit. And it’s good for me. Why don’t you quit letting men hit you?”

  “I don’t like to quit, and it’s good for me.”

  Her eyebrows danced up and down. “How is it good for you? You split your...” She pointed at his head. “And you’re badly bruised. Also, you are something without a shirt on, Jack Haley. You have ripples. Why are you single?”

  He pointed into the other room, hoped his stubble hid the heat in his face. “I’m busy.”

  “That’s not a reason.”

  “Martha gets jealous.”

  Honeywell’s expression shifted from stern to charmed. “I made you blush.”

  He was a thirty-six-year-old man who had his own column, regular radio and TV appearances, social media feeds that trended and his face plastered all over public transit, and he had no cool with this woman, none at all. “Why are you single?”

  “I haven’t met anyone here yet. It’s not easy being new. Everyone I’ve met socially is a couple already or not my type, or a girl, and kissing girls is not my thing. I think Spinoza almost asked me out.”

  “You think? It’s not like he’s a subtle guy. Don’t go out with Spinoza.”

  “Why not? Is he married?”

  All that light and heat inside him screamed “go out with me,” until he refocused on why that was a bad idea. They were colleagues, strangers. They’d done a portion of an intimacy experiment and mostly been at odds with each other, which was entirely his fault. He didn’t want to go out with her, he didn’t want to go out with anyone. He wanted to have sex with her. Starting tonight and not letting up till Monday morning when they both had to be at work again. It’d been a while and everything about her stirred him up.

  He wanted to take her apart slowly and bring her home loud. Except that was one of the worst ideas he’d ever had. It was throwing open the door and letting complication have a party in his life and he hated parties, he always left early.

  “He’s not married.” He’s not right for you. “He’d put you to sleep with sports trivia.”

  “And you wouldn’t put me to sleep with insurance fraud case studies?”

  He’d trade her a story for the revelation of a body part. A victim’s name for a kiss, and he wouldn’t let her sleep until they were both sated. Fuuuck. He had to shut that down. “Can I get you a drink?”

  He poured juice and t
hen realized he should send her home or feed her. “Do you eat pasta?” If he was lucky she’d say she was on a diet and didn’t eat carbs.

  “I love pasta.”

  “I’m no gourmet, but it’ll be edible if you’d like to stay.” Ninety percent of him hoped she’d leave. The other ten was hand-feeding her ravioli and licking the taste of Prego from her lips.

  She tapped her feet on the floor, a little dance. “I’d love to stay.”

  He should’ve let Martha escape, snatched that bag out of Honeywell’s hands and slammed the door on her. Instead he let the stagnant water out of the sink and rewashed the dishes, opened a bottle of wine, set the table, and filled Martha’s bowl, all the while wondering who he was when he was with Derelie Honeywell and not trying to avoid the pleasure of it.

  “Did you want to be a boxer when you were a kid?” she asked, as he salted the pot of water on the burner.

  “Did you want to be a ballerina?”

  She snorted.

  Oh hell. “I’m sorry. I’ve spent my life being the one who asks the questions. It’s a reflex.” The reflex of a sexist asshole, or a guy who felt like he had something to prove. “I promise to pull my punches. No, I wanted to be a soldier who drove a tank, fought fires and wrote comic books.”

  “Does that mean you can draw?”

  “I thought I could. By the time I was about ten I wanted to be a reporter like Pops. My parents wanted me to go into medicine and they’ve never forgiven me for not making the most of my brain.”

  “So professionally you’re living your dream?”

  He nodded. “I’m not sure how long it’s going to last. True investigative reporting is expensive because it’s time consuming, and we’re in the age where crowdsourcing on Twitter and Facebook is considered an investigation, where pop culture is more important than hard news and actual facts no longer matter. We even have the issue of fake news, alternative facts. Reporters like me are fast becoming extinct.”