The Love Experiment Read online

  If you’re brave enough to try it—good luck.

  It might not lead to love, but there are worse ways to get to know someone.

  Set One

  Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

  Would you like to be famous? In what way?

  Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?

  What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?

  When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

  If you were able to live to the age of ninety and retain either the mind or body of a thirty-year-old for the last sixty years of your life, which would you want?

  Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?

  Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.

  For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

  If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?

  Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.

  If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

  Set Two

  If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?

  Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?

  What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?

  What do you value most in a friendship?

  What is your most treasured memory?

  What is your most terrible memory?

  If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?

  What does friendship mean to you?

  What roles do love and affection play in your life?

  Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.

  How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?

  How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

  Set Three

  Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling...”

  Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share...”

  If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.

  Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.

  Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.

  When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

  Tell your partner something that you like about them already.

  What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

  If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

  Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?

  Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?

  Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

  If you’d like to find out more about the thirty-six questions you can read The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0146167297234003

  Now Available from Carina Press and Ainslie Paton

  A master jewel thief meets his match in a daring romance of love and larceny.

  Read on for an excerpt from HOODWINKED HEARTS

  Gorgeous. Cleve Jones toggled the control and adjusted the camera hidden in Greville’s Auction House eleven thousand miles away in Geneva. From his villa in Ubud on the island of Bali, he now had a clearer view of the hunk of rock known as the Sweet Celestia, and it was an even more brilliant stone than he’d been led to expect.

  It would make a fine asset to his patron’s collection of priceless possessions, and in another few hours, when this publicity circus event shut down and the auction house was closed for the night, it would be his. And very shortly after that, there’d be a large sum of money that would more than cover the expense of this heist, deposited in an untraceable Cayman Islands bank account that Cleve just so happened to have the unique iris recognition for.

  All that and he’d not bothered to put on a shirt, or shoes.

  Funny how these things worked out.

  Professor Donald Harp had always said Cleve had the talent to become the kind of man who didn’t roll out of bed in the morning for less than a few multi-million, but Cleve had never quite believed it.

  He was a kid from nowhere with nothing but a gift for persuasion, who’d bluffed his way into Harvard by impersonating a member of a distant branch of the famous Kennedy family. He’d surprised himself by getting as far as Professor Harp’s Ancient History class and was happily soaking up the privileged Ivy League atmosphere and the flirty smiles of the gold class babes while he waited for his fake tuition payment to start stinking, and the moment where he’d go from living in his car to hoping it would start so he could make a clean getaway.

  The professor had sniffed him out quicker than he could say Alexander the Great loved his horse Bucephalus, and instead of turning him over to the authorities—and a no doubt shamefully long stint in an incarceration facility not of his choosing—had offered Cleve a deal.

  The professor was in need of an apprentice, and since Cleve was in need of a regular diet that didn’t come from dumpster diving, a roof over his head, and a way to channel his talent for deception that ensured he stayed on the right side of a jail cell, they shook on it.

  He’d always thought the trade-off of security for nefarious deeds would eventually lead to a Greek tragedy. He was no student of history, but he listened to police scanners and read court transcripts and true crime novels, and happy endings were a myth.

  He’d been right, but not in the way he’d imagined.

  And now, ten years after the death of his mentor, that made him a man who genuinely didn’t bother getting out of bed for less than a few million, except for the odd occasion when the temptation to stay between the sheets was worth its own weight in another kind of gold, the kind shaped like a desirable woman.

  It’d been an annoyingly long time since he’d forgotten about work and spent the day in bed.

  “Oi, she’s a bit of all right.”

  It was a shame Brandon Bartley hadn’t decided on a lie in. It was a shame Brandon Bartley was a thing in Cleve’s life at all.

  “Sweet Celestia is the largest vivid pink diamond in the world—she is more than a bit of all right.”

  It was a shame Brandon Bartley was still breathing. The man has shown such promise as a thief, but turned out he was just a common garden-variety bagman, useful for collecting the rent as it were. Not at all what Cleve was looking for, because Cleve was looking for a partner to share the load, to go for even bigger paydays, in exactly the same way the professor chose him.

  The problem was he was simply awful at picking the right accomplices. Brandon was his fourth not-rotten-enough-in-the-right-way apple.

  “Hah, not the rock, mate.” Brandon tipped his chin at the screen. “The dolly bird.”

  Cleve had been aware of the movement in the room on scree
n. The photographer’s assistants bustling about while the gum-chewing photographer herself barked orders, the furniture being moved in, the PR flak furiously typing on his cell, and the girl.

  “‘Ard up like you bin, gov, fought you’d be all ova vat.”

  Cleve took a deep breath, thought happy thoughts, like not dropping his aitches, and the deep tissue massage he’d have after he knew Sweet Celestia was his. Like hoping Brandon got another job offer.

  Of course he was aware of the girl. He hadn’t had the delicious feel of a girl’s skin under his hands for months, and that girl was more than a dolly bird; she was genuinely beautiful, slender and steely strong like a ballerina, with clouds of almost-white hair and Elizabeth Taylor eyes.

  But she also wasn’t much more than a walking manicure. Her job was to hold Sweet Celestia in her buffed and polished hands, adding warmth to cold perfection while the stone was captured in digital glory.

  The girl, whose name was Melody Solo, wasn’t famous. She’d had all the usual physical attributes: height, slim form, barely enough curves to count, and a symmetrical face, as well as the relevant career milestones—beauty pageant, catalog, catwalk, magazine fashion layout—to her name. But she’d been chosen for this job because she was no doubt cheap and available and looked a lot like the famous model she was replacing at the last moment.

  It was Cleve’s job to know these things, just like he knew the photographer’s assistant with the ginger hair was having an affair with the PR flack, and the dresser, Katerina, was soon to launch her own label, and the guard with the cauliflower ears liked to bake, so yes, he’d noticed the girl, and she was indeed a bit of all right.

  Given the chance, he’d stay in bed for her.

  But she was eleven thousand miles away and within the next hour would be irrelevant.

  She was also silly as a box full of kittens. She tittered, she fluttered her lashes, she had trouble walking in the jewel-encrusted shoes she wore. He might wrinkle a sheet for her because he was, after all, hard up, but he would most definitely kick her out of bed in the morning. He had no tolerance for silly—tried it, not to his taste. He’d apparently been ruined for silly for all time by the professor’s daughter.

  On the screen, Annie swallowed her gum and the redhead positioned Melody on the chaise lounge as if she was a bendable Barbie.

  The professor’s daughter was two years younger than him, sixteen going on juvenile delinquent when they met. Half her hair was dyed burnt orange and the other half of her head was shaved and later adorned with a tattoo of two crossed bones. It was a joke, skull and crossbones, and Cleve had loved her for that alone. She had a pierced tongue, a savage wit, a healthy disrespect for authority, and her favorite shoes were steel-capped boots. She’d been expelled from more schools than Cleve had bothered to bluff his way into, and she was the hottest, wildest, smartest woman he’d ever kissed.

  The professor forbade him to talk to her. “It’s very simple. If you speak to her, I will turn you in. If you touch her, you die,” he’d said, with the same student-friendly tone he used to say, “Of course you can have an extension on that paper.”

  A decade later Cleve had never quite recovered from his first love. Neither the high of risking his life to fall in love with her, nor the devastating low of losing her, raising the earth to find her, and coming up with nothing but empty whispers. She was a ghost, but the memory of her magnificence had stayed with him.

  When a score went bad, you cleaned up, covered your tracks and moved on. He’d never quite been able to move on from Aria Harp and doubted he ever would.

  Don’t miss HOODWINKED HEARTS by Ainslie Paton.

  Available now wherever Carina Press ebooks are sold.

  www.CarinaPress.com

  Copyright © 2017 by Ainslie Paton

  Acknowledgments

  To the BTA crew. We did it again. Thank you, as always.

  Also available from Ainslie Paton

  Hoodwinked Hearts

  Grease Monkey Jive

  Getting Real

  Detained

  Floored

  Hooked on a Feeling

  Insecure

  Incapable

  Inconsolable

  White Balance

  Unsuitable

  Offensive Behavior

  Damaged Goods

  Sold Short

  Shotgun Wedding

  About the Author

  Ainslie Paton always wanted to write stories to make people smile, but the need to eat, accumulate books, and have bedclothes to read under was ever present. She sold out, and worked as a flack, a suit, and a creative, impersonating business leaders, rabble-rousers and politicians, and making words happen for companies, governments, causes, conditions, high-profile CEOs, low-profile celebs, and the occasional misguided royal.

  She still does that. She also writes for love, and so she can buy shoes and the good cat food.

  More here: www.ainsliepaton.com.au and on Twitter @AinsliePaton.

  Introducing the Carina Press Romance Promise!

  The Carina Press team all have one thing in common: we are romance readers with a longtime love of the genre. And we know what readers are looking for in a romance: a guarantee of a happily-ever-after (HEA) or happy-for-now (HFN). With that in mind, we’re initiating the Carina Press Romance Promise. When you see a book tagged with these words in our cover copy/book description, we’re making you, the reader, a very important promise:

  This book contains a romance central to the plot and ends in an HEA or HFN.

  Simple, right? But so important, we know!

  Look for the Carina Press Romance Promise and one-click with confidence that we understand what’s at the heart of the romance genre!

  Look for this line in Carina Press book descriptions:

  One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!

  Find out more at CarinaPress.com/RomancePromise.

  Find out more at CarinaPress.com.

  Add these contemporary romance series to your to-read list!

  The Men of Haven series by Rhenna Morgan

  ROUGH & TUMBLE

  A self-made man with his fingers in a variety of successful businesses, Jace Kennedy lives for the challenge and he always gets what he wants. From the start, he sees Vivienne Moore’s hidden wild side and knows she’s his perfect match, if only he can break it free. He’s proud of who he is and where he came from, and he’ll be damned if he lets Vivienne go before showing her the safest place of all is in the arms of a dangerous man.

  “Gritty, raw, and a side dose of sweet lovin’. ROUGH & TUMBLE by Rhenna Morgan will warm your heart and melt your panties.”

  —#1 New York Times bestselling author Audrey Carlan (Calendar Girl series)

  “A must-read!”

  —RT Book Reviews, 5 stars, Top Pick!

  WILD & SWEET

  Zeke Dugan is not a man who walks the straight and narrow. He may have sworn an oath as a trauma doc, but he has zero problem leveraging his medical skills outside a hospital if it means giving the Brotherhood—the group of men he calls family—an advantage. Blood before business. All that changes when shy Gabrielle stumbles into his life and ignites his protective instincts.

  CLAIM & PROTECT

  Trevor Raines lives on the edge of legal. A good guy doing bad things to save lives, the only rules he follows are the Brotherhood’s, and there’s nothing in the world that will change that. That is, until Natalie Jordan walks into his life. She’s a woman with a plan, and the plan doesn’t include a man with secrets, no matter how kind—or intoxicating—he is. Trevor has no interest in settling down, but there’s something entirely too appealing about the woman he can’t stay away from.

  The Lon
don Celebrities series by Lucy Parker

  ACT LIKE IT

  Richard Troy used to be the hottest actor in London, but the only thing firing up lately is his temper. We all love to love a bad boy, but Richard’s antics have made him Public Enemy Number One, breaking the hearts of fans across the city. Have the tides turned? Has English rose Lainie Graham made him into a new man?

  PRETTY FACE

  It’s not actress Lily Lamprey’s fault that she’s all curves and has the kind of voice that can fog up a camera lens. She wants to prove where her real talents lie—and that’s not on a casting couch, thank you. When she hears esteemed director Luc Savage is renovating a legendary West End theater for a lofty new production, she knows it could be her chance—if only Luc wasn’t so dictatorial, so bad-tempered...and so incredibly sexy.

  The Hot in the City series by Jules Court

  HOT IN THE CITY

  The first-time Detective Brian MacGregor met Priya Shah, he was bleeding. He didn’t expect to feel a gut punch of lust for the beautiful ER doc. And even if the hot ginger cop seems like the perfect solution to Priya’s summer dry spell, they both have more important things to worry about. Like finding Priya’s cousin before the murderer does. They just need to keep their hands off each other until then.

  ENTICING THE ENEMY

  Undercover cop Daniel Cruz never dreamed he’d see sexy lawyer Erin Rafferty ever again. She’s just the shot of adrenaline he needs after being lost and alone for too long in a job that’s beginning to get the best of him. However, getting the cautious Erin to trust in something more than a series of hot trysts isn’t easy. And with a new case threatening to put them right back where they started, this time their future together could be on trial, too.

  TEASE ME TONIGHT

  Firefighter Will MacGregor is tired of being branded not boyfriend material. It seems he’s been on the to-do-once list of every woman in Boston. Elizabeth Owen has played it safe for the past decade: raising her younger sister and working as an ER nurse. But with her thirtieth birthday looming and little sis off to college, she’s ready to let her freak flag fly. As her and Will’s brief encounters become progressively steamier, she starts to like what lies beneath Will’s gorgeous surface...a lot. And Will is more convinced than ever they’re meant to be together—for real.