The Love Experiment Read online

  “I’m picking you.”

  Christ, this was payback for pulling Madden up in yesterday’s staff meeting. Jack was about to say so when Potter cut in.

  “It’s, um, it would be better if the couple actually had potential.”

  Madden wagged a fat finger at Potter. “Enemies to friends, you said.”

  Potter scrunched her eyes. “That might’ve been a tiny exaggeration. I was thinking Derelie and Artie Chan.”

  Jack knew Chan, the guy worked the health beat, got halfway to being a doctor before he turned to reporting. Derelie was no doubt one of the newbies specializing in clickbait, with a freshly minted degree and a huge collection of shoes. Regardless, he had no time for fluff pieces. “Sounds about right to me...” What was Potter’s first name again? Why couldn’t it just be Harry? “Potter.”

  “Not to me,” said Madden. He wore the same evil grin he sported when he was forced to account for himself with the Courier’s owner, and it was directed at Jack. Not good. “You want the feature, Shona, you make it work with Delia and Haley.”

  “Derelie,” Potter corrected.

  “No,” Jack said, sliding his phone into his pocket and folding his arms across his chest.

  “Rhymes with merrily,” said Potter.

  It rhymed with zero fucking way.

  “Touchdown,” said Madden. No surprise he’d go for this, it was a score-settler. “Here’s the pitch. The Courier’s own Jackson Haley, Heartbeat of the City, takes part in a love experiment and we all live happily ever after. It’s adorable.” The word adorable simply didn’t belong in the man’s mouth. “Readers will eat it up. What do you think, Shona?”

  Fuck the love experiment. Jack cracked his knuckles, readying to box his way out of this. He was nobody’s happy ending.

  “It’s only, um, isn’t he...” Potter turned from Madden to Jack. “Don’t you prefer, aren’t you—?”

  “What?” Madden barked.

  “Gay?” she said.

  “What?” said Jack. “No.” Where did that come from? A man takes pride in his appearance and he’s gay. Did gay men have a monopoly on a decent haircut and suit-wearing now? If that was the case, then yes, he was gay, the gayest of them all.

  “No?” asked Potter. Could she possibly sound any less convinced?

  “No.” Fuck, he should’ve said yes, that would’ve ended this since they seemed fixed on the idea of a traditional couple for this shit-show.

  “Derelie thought, so I thought. But are you sure, because we could still have you and—”

  “Not that it’s any of your business.” Christ, they’d have him doing this with Artie in a minute. Jesus, he needed a smoke. He’d have to detour by the alley before he hit up his contact about the fraud story.

  Madden clapped his paws. “That’s it then, you have your story, Shona. Samson—I mean, Haley—and Delilah do the love experiment and we’ll make a big splash of it online, lead story, promoted, and it will be good for the clicks. We throw advertising dollars at it too.”

  Jack sighed. He’d get around this by being unavailable. “My investigation and daily deadlines come first.”

  “You’re being a pussy, Haley,” said Spinoza, with undisguised glee.

  He hated that phrase. Jack’s pussy would give Spin a run for his money.

  “It has to be done in the next month,” said Madden.

  “You’re only doing this because of what happened yesterday.”

  Madden slapped his hand over his heart and rearranged his meathead into an expression of hurt. “I’m shocked you’d think I’d be steamed you challenged my authority in public. You’re my star reporter, a living legend. Our readers will want to watch a hard-bitten champion of the fourth estate find true love in a questionnaire with a woman who thought he was gay. Who wouldn’t? It’s genius.”

  “Chan is more interesting than me.”

  “Afraid of a little multiple choice are we, Haley?” said Spin. Dickhead.

  “It’s a little more than a check in a box,” said Potter.

  Madden tapped the tabletop. “And because you’re a good guy, Haley, you get that this paper is struggling, and what makes our owner happy is lots and lots of readers.”

  Jack closed his eyes and blew out an irritated breath. He was caught against the ropes and his opponent was bigger, meaner and paid his wages.

  “And you also get that our lifestyle stories bring us lots of lovely readers, and our advertisers like that. And, Jack, if you fuck with Shona or me on this, I’ll spike your next juicy exposé so fast and replace it with, oh, I don’t know, some junior school kid’s discovery of an ancient civilization using only Google and a crushed Oreo. You got me, Haley?”

  “Loud and clear.” Bastard.

  He suffered consecutive back slaps as the room emptied, yeah, yeah, very funny, but he focused on Potter. “Give me this questionnaire. I’ll get it done today.” No time like the present to bury this idea where the sun and a snappy URL would never shine. He’d be so boring they’d spike the story.

  Potter gathered her folder of stuff. “It’s not that kind of a questionnaire.”

  “It’s online?” That made sense. “Okay, email me the link.”

  “It’s not that kind of questionnaire either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a discussion based on a set of questions.”

  Shit. “I can’t do this now?”

  “No, it’ll take a couple of sessions, each addressing ten questions.”

  He did a quick calc. Not multiple choice. A minute a question and that was generous, ten minutes a session. He could knock this out in thirty minutes. No sweat. His phone was going crazy buzzing in his pocket and he had a deadline to meet. He held his hand out. “I got it.”

  “No, Haley, you haven’t got it.”

  “Right, right. Derelie-rhymes-with-merrily has to do it too.” She could come get her own questionnaire.

  “You have to do it with Derelie.”

  Oh hell.

  “You and Derelie have to sit together, face to face, and discuss the questions, all of them, and record your responses and how they make you feel about each other. You need to meet a couple of times, over drinks or dinner. You can expense it.”

  No freaking way. He didn’t have time for that kind of nonsense. “You’re jerking me around.”

  “I’m not.” Potter’s phone rang and she silenced it. “That’s how the experiment works. Plus there’s the eye contact exercise.”

  Fuck that. Thirty minutes, an hour tops, in a bar with a beer and Derelie and he’d have it done. Fact that it’d be next to useless in terms of the happy ending wasn’t his problem. Artie “Heartthrob” Chan was on standby.

  Potter went for the door. “I’ve gotta run. Derelie will fill you in.” She left Jack standing in the empty room.

  He called after her, “Who’s Derelie?” but Potter put her phone to her ear and didn’t respond.

  “I’m Derelie.”

  Huh. Not alone. It was the woman he’d taken for an intern. “You’re Derelie?” This was the woman who thought he was gay, who should’ve fought harder for Artie.

  “I’m Derelie.”

  “You work here?” She didn’t look old enough to drive a car let alone work in a newsroom.

  “Seems that way.”

  “You’re not...” Not quite glossy enough around the hair and lips and the shoes to be one of the women who wrote for the fashion pages and read books with Girl in the title in the breakroom, that’s what’d thrown him off. “Never mind.”

  “Wow, and you’re not Artie Chan.”

  Swipe left, baby. “You thought I was gay. It’s the suits, right?” They were easier, he didn’t have to think about getting dressed in the morning or get changed if he had
to make a sudden appearance on TV.

  “It’s not the suits.”

  “Then what? Heck, forget it.” Enough time wasted on this. “Show me the goddamn questions.”

  Chapter Three

  Jackson Haley sucked. Like big time, sour lemon, jaw aching sucked. And it wasn’t the suits, it was the ego. You could probably see it from space. It’d be this great glowing balloon of overinflated male confidence and starched master of the universe entitlement—with pinstripes.

  Derelie liked him better when he was a headline, a dinkus and a legend she could speculate freely about, not the real thing standing in front of her, mating his eyebrows with annoyance.

  He hadn’t even registered she was in the room, and then that crack about whether she worked here. What did he think she was doing at the editorial meeting, haircuts and shoeshines?

  Derelie didn’t want to be part of this either. Being the story was different than writing them. A byline, maybe a thumbnail of her face, her own dinkus or digital avatar, was all the fame she was looking for, but Shona hadn’t exactly given her a choice, and despite what Phil had said at the staff meeting about cutbacks meaning cheaper crapper paper, an email had come in talking about buyouts and voluntary layoffs.

  It was better to be volunteered to endure the human headline than to be involuntarily polishing her resume. She tried an ocean breath and lifting her weight from the earth with her armpit chest open to see if that helped. It didn’t.

  “I don’t have the questionnaire.” The world’s least likely romantic lead took his eyes off his cell long enough to blink at the ceiling. “Shona will email us the first part when we’re together.”

  “We’re together now.”

  If she let him intimidate her, she’d fail to get this story. If she failed to get the story, she’d fail to make the rent. If she thought about him in his underwear, he’d be less intimidating. “You’re not taking this seriously.”

  “Good observation, cadet. You were listening in journalism school.”

  Neck to knee underwear made from something ugly and scratchy, like a burlap sugar sack. “I have a name and it’s Derelie.” Ocean breath. Jackson Haley, you are going down; you are not going to frighten me out of my job. “Are you being a jerk because of the gay thing or are you always this way?”

  His expression didn’t change. “I’m always this way. What’s the rest of your name?”

  “Honeywell.”

  “Derelie-verily-sounds-like-merrily Honeywell.” He stuck his hand out. “I’m Jackson Haley and we got off on the wrong foot. Call me Haley.”

  She looked at his outstretched hand suspiciously, took it reluctantly and didn’t wince when he squeezed harder than necessary. He was just a man wearing hideous underwear who smelled like cinnamon. “I’m going to call you Jackson, because that’s friendlier.”

  That got a grimace out of him and his eyes went to his cell screen. “Jack, if you must. Only my mother calls me Jackson about once a year, which is quite enough. You’re right about Chan making better copy. Go tell Potter I’m a mutinous asshole and we’d be a car crash, tell her I’m not cooperating, and ten to one, Chan will be your man.”

  He’d rolled with it when she’d called him a jerk, so she went with “You are a mutinous asshole.” How was it the world housed so many of them? What sin had she committed that meant she had to get experimentally intimate with one? All the yoga calm she stored up was nothing in the face of this man. Her peaceful warrior was bristling, but better to be infuriated than terrified.

  “Start the way you mean to go on, Honeywell,” he said with a wry half smile that indicated his burlap sack underwear was lead-lined and nothing she said would get to him. Good to know.

  “My name is Derelie. I mean to hold on to my job, so I’m big on doing what Shona and Phil say.”

  “Look, they want a solid story, full of pathos and emotion, that feel-good, human connective tissue stuff. They want two colleagues who become friends. They want great lines they can turn into promo. They’ll want photography. They’d marry us off for readership if they could. We all know I want out of this. But Chan—young, pretty, intelligent, witty, knows how to give a heart massage. Chan will make good copy.”

  “At least we agree on that.”

  “We’re done here then. See you ‘round, Honeywell.”

  “We’re not done, Jack.” Shona expected her to get this story done. She’d get it done.

  His cell rang and he answered it. He might look like a gentleman, turn heads when he passed, but he had the same manners as the drug dealer who had a corner outside her shoebox. “Haley. Yeah. No. Can you substantiate that? Okay. Two hours.” He disconnected. “You’re still here.”

  “I work here, remember. I want to keep working here.”

  “So you can write about how teal is the new black.”

  Bastard. “No.” Maybe. That story got a lot of clicks. Not her fault teal was the color of the season and people were interested in that. And she didn’t get to choose her stories; they were assigned to her, like this one.

  “Your last piece was on sexting horror stories.” He shivered in mock horror and she flinched, which made what came out of her mouth embarrassing.

  “You read my pieces?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Clickbait.” He held up his phone. He’d just searched her. “That’s not serious journalism, and while I get it has a place in the infotainment age, it’s not my thing.”

  “Asshole.” He let loose a deep chuckle, and for some reason that sound, rather than what she’d just unthinkingly said, made her face get hot. He might be an asshole, but he wasn’t pretending to be anything else. “I can’t go to Shona and tell her I couldn’t get you to play ball.”

  “Why not? It’ll be entirely accurate. That’s a positive trait in serious reporting, Honeywell.”

  “Derelie, my name is Derelie.” And did he call me Clickbait?

  “Rhymes with merrily. What kind of a name is that anyway?”

  “The one my mother gave me. It does the job of, you know, identifying me.”

  “From all the other Derelies.”

  She sighed. “Yes, Jack, from all the other Derelies. I can’t go to Shona and admit failure.”

  “You can—no one is expecting me to cooperate.”

  “Surprise them.”

  He muttered the word, “Rookie,” to his cell screen.

  “I’m not a rookie. I’m not a cadet. I banked four years of reporting experience before I got this job.”

  “In your hometown farm news sheet.”

  How did he know that? Fricking Google. She’d written a lot of stories about livestock, and bake sales. She’d had the Little League coach on speed dial. “That’s not the point. You think I’m frivolous. It’s not like reporting jobs are fresh for the picking. I took what I could get.”

  “I thought you were too young to be paid to work here, Honeywell. And other than that first impression, I haven’t spared two brain cells on you.”

  He was unreal. “I bet your dinkus brings all the girls to the yard.”

  Up went his brows till they rode above the frame of his glasses. “Now now, you don’t want to stoop to my gutter low standards. But interesting to note you’ve moved on from gay.”

  No self-respecting gay man would wear neck-to-knee, lead-lined burlap. And yes, she did want to roll in the gutter with him, if that was the only way to get him to take her seriously. “Spin is right, you’re scared of a little questionnaire and some eye contact.”

  He hit her with a blue blaze of hot as hell eye contact that turned the ligaments in her legs to mush. Oh shit. He was a big city reporting god with his own dinkus and she was a small-town mouse clickbait rookie. But that was okay, she didn’t need her legs to go anywhere at this precise moment, she just needed not to not fa
ll over and not fail on what would be her first web-print crossover lead story.

  “I want to keep my job.”

  “No one is going to fire you because I screwed with you.”

  With, he’d said with. That wasn’t a proposition. No need to wander on down to HR where voluntary redundancy was the new teal. “They won’t fire you.”

  “Not my job to make you feel secure, honey.”

  “Honeywell.” She shook her head. “I mean Derelie. You’re such an ass.”

  “We established that in the lede. Go get Chan. He’s Prince Charming, more your type.”

  “How would you know what my type was?”

  He touched the side of his nose in a gesture of “I know what I’m talking about” and then said dryly, “It’s a vague guess, based on the supposition that you thought I was gay and asked for Chan in the first place.”

  He had her beat. She let go a distressed sigh and flapped her hands. “How did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Become formidable. You’re not that old.”

  “Compared to you, I’m ancient.”

  “I’m twenty-eight and you’re, what?” He wasn’t going to answer unless she baited the hook with a tire. “Forty?”

  “Are you trying to questionnaire me by stealth?”

  She grunted. Hadn’t thought of that. A missed opportunity. “No, I’m just trying not to lose my job before I’ve learned everything I can from it. You could teach me.” The things she could learn from Jackson Haley would accelerate her competence-building to the nth degree. If she could stand to hang around him. It was a bold ask, and she held her breath waiting for his answer.

  “I think you’ve got a better bead on the season’s top colors and the ten best sleep hacks than me, Clickbait.”

  “You know what I mean.” It was worth a try. “And don’t call me Clickbait.”

  “I know you’re trying your hardest to get me to play nice.”

  “But you never do, right? Phil is putting you in your place.” She dropped her eyes to the carpet. Sassing Jack in the gutter wasn’t winning her any points, and she was out of tactics. “Wow, I’ve had some bad dates, but I don’t think I’ve ever been set up as anyone’s punishment.”