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“Kim, I’m not going!” Rachel said, slamming down the phone and turning Zane Farrell’s résumé facedown on her desk.
“You’ve got to,” her friend insisted. “You were given three case studies, and Zane Farrell is one of them.”
“He’s already making it difficult for me,” she said, exasperated. “This is my first research project for the university. I want to do good, Kim. Why, oh, why did the topic have to be sex?”
“I can’t believe you’re complaining.” Kim stared at her incredulously. “I know five female professors who begged on their knees for this assignment, but you were lucky enough to be chosen by the administration.”
“Lucky?”
“You can’t fool me, Rachel Smith,” Kim said. “I know exactly the reason you’re doing this sexuality study on the nineties single male.”
“Why?”
“Because you want to meet the sexiest, hottest men in Los Angeles, that’s why.”
“Oh, no, definitely not!” She blindly fiddled with the case-study folders on her desk, suddenly aching inside.
Kim studied her. “Rachel, you’ve got to forget what happened with you and Kent. That was two whole years ago.”
“I’m over Kent,” she insisted. “I really am.” And she was. Kent was out of her system for good.
“Then why aren’t you dying to meet a great guy?”
Rachel opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out.
Even though Kim was her best buddy, she’d never told Kim the real reason that Kent had called off their wedding only three days before the ceremony. She was too ashamed and humiliated by what she’d learned about herself.
“I’d better not keep Mr. Farrell waiting.” Rachel quickly grabbed her briefcase. “I don’t want him catching a cold in his cotton briefs.”
After the phone call with Professor Smith, he barreled up the lavender-carpeted steps of the Bel Air mansion three at a time into the master suite.
He yanked off his oil-stained coveralls and work shirt and hurled them through the open master-bathroom door onto the tile floor.
“Man, oh, man, what the hell did I get myself into?” he said out loud in frustration. The professor’s telephone call had totally blown him away.
He grabbed a neatly pressed white shirt and clean jeans and rushed into the bathroom.
As he turned on the shower spray, he replayed her conversation. He couldn’t believe it. A sex study? Jeez! He’d never talked about his sex life with anyone in his entire life.
Sure, he’d kidded around with Professor Smith over the phone about talking sex, but the reality of the idea bashed into his sense of privacy. It was outrageous of her to expect him to answer even one question about how his loins functioned.
Why didn’t he immediately turn down the sex interview with her? He knew why. It was that velvety voice of hers that got to him. She’d sounded slightly unsure and a bit nervous talking to him. And she’d had a fiery reaction to his sense of humor that had instantly appealed to him.
He adjusted the steamy hot water the way he liked and stepped naked under the sizzling spray. He thought his taut muscles would relax under the wet heat. But he was tenser than ever.
Why had he said yes to that sex interview? Had his brain completely collapsed? He couldn’t take part in that study.
How could he let Professor Rachel Smith ask him sex questions? She was expecting to hear the sexual ins and outs of Zane Farrell.
But he had one very monumental problem. He was not Zane Farrell!
Rachel chugged her mint-green Valiant up the winding road of wealthy Bel Air. The Los Angeles September air pushed into her open car window like a gush of ovenburning heat.
She lifted the spaghetti straps of her dress off her burning shoulders. She was hot not only from the dry Santa Ana wind coming from the desert.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the rich timbre of Zane Farrell’s voice over the phone, and the sexy tease of his words. Her sensual reaction to just a phone call with him made her feel even more uneasy about his interview. How could she feel comfortable asking him personal sex questions if she was turned on by him?
As she drove past vast estates of lush green pine trees and walled-in properties, she kept one careful eye on the curvy Bel Air road and glanced at Zane Farrell’s address on her dashboard.
Rachel stopped her Valiant in front of a wrought-iron gate that seemed to tower as high as the wall separating King Kong from the jungle villagers. Out of her driver’s window, she pressed the black buzzer pad, signaling her arrival.
She spotted the eye of a video camera zooming in on her. She impulsively touched her brown bun at the back of her head. She quickly smoothed her damp dress across both thighs to appear university-like. Moving her hands to the steering wheel, she wished she could stop them from trembling as she held on to it.
The iron gate grinded open to welcome her onto Zane Farrell’s estate. She wasn’t afraid of entering the unknown property of this stranger. Before their interviews, all sex-study volunteers were followed up with thorough behindthe-scenes investigations into their character. Zane Farrell had checked out as an honest, law-abiding, very, very rich citizen.
With brown leather briefcase in hand and suddenly dizzy with excitement about her first interview, Rachel eagerly pressed the square-lit doorbell of the double copper front doors.
Just then, the doors flew open like a hurricane wind.
“Well, hello,” said that familiar deep male voice.
“Zane Farrell?” she asked, wonder-struck. She had to blink five times at the six-foot solid frame of the thirtysomething man in front of her.
“You’ve got the right door,” Zane Farrell replied with a smile that sent laugh lines sprouting from the sides of both twinkling eyes. “Have I got the right professor?”
“Wh-why, yes,” she quickly said.
A pair of Pacific Ocean blues gazed down into hers so intensely that her insides melted like butter in the sun. His smile was warm and confident. He had curly black hair that yearned to be twirled around her fingers. And a muscular body under that white shirt and jeans that put her breath on major hold.
When Zane’s twinkling sea-blues glided from her breasts down to her bare legs, she felt her nipples harden against the cotton fabric of her dress at his visual caress. She momentarily fantasized his masculine fingers slipping down her spaghetti straps and crushing her bare breasts with his hands.
Her face flamed at her sensual thoughts. What was with her? She’d barely met the man.
“So you’re here to put my libido under the investigative light, are you?” Zane pondered out loud. He extended a massive hand to her. “I hope I don’t disappoint you.”
“I’m sure you won’t,” she replied, trying to appear totally in control.
But when she slipped her small hand into his large palm, his grip was firm, warm, and she felt a hot electric current slam straight through her body.
She quickly disengaged her hand from his. Why was Zane Farrell having such a powerful effect on her? No man had grabbed her insides that tight—not even Kent.
Zane leaned his strong hands on each side of the door frame only inches from her, only inches from caressing her. She felt compelled to leave that instant.
“I didn’t mean to rush you into this interview,” she told him in an unsteady voice. “We could hold it at a more convenient hour for you.”
“Absolutely not,” he said with welcoming warmth. “I’m looking forward to this.” He released one hand from the door frame and stepped aside for her entry. “Please, come in.”
As Rachel slipped by him, her shoulder brushed against his hard-muscled chest. He smelled of soap and musky after-shave. She wouldn’t stay for long. She definitely couldn’t stay for long.
“Make yourself at home,” he suggested. “The staff’s on vacation, so feel free to roam. I’ll get us something cool to drink.”
Once alone in the kitchen, he frantically searched Mr. Farrell’s refrigerator for a beverage to serve her. The compartment was empty except for a half carton of low-fat milk. Jeez! He was nervous enough trying to make the right Mr. Farrell impression, but milk?
He grabbed for the milk container. How the hell was he going to pull off this sex interview? He had no other choice, did he? He was obligated by a commitment he’d made to the real Zane Farrell—a commitment he couldn’t break.
As he frantically sifted through the unfamiliar kitchen cabinets for glasses, he flashed on Rachel Smith’s inviting brown eyes that had sucked him right in. And her voice rang of honey-sweetness that he found irresistible.
Man, oh, man, he’d better keep himself in check. It wasn’t going to be easy pretending to be someone else with a beautiful woman like the professor about to ask him probing intimate questions. He didn’t feel one iota comfortable about this sex-test business, especially since he had to act as if it was Mr. Farrell’s sexual preferences she was studying, when it would actually be his own!
Rachel set her briefcase down on the oval glass coffee table. She tried to breathe normally again. Zane Farrell was not supposed to be charming, friendly and a hunk! How was she going to ask him personal questions about his sex life when she was fantasizing about being an integral part of it?
She had to get a grip. She was at his mansion purely for academic research. She couldn’t allow her sudden over-whelming attraction to possess her and ruin her first research project for the university.
Rachel walked to the sliding glass door overlooking a sparkling green kidney-shaped swimming pool. Her attention landed on the inviting Jacuzzi beside it.
She had a fleeting image of Zane’s strong nude body pressed snugly against her nakedness as they soaked in the warm, foaming, swishing—
“So, Professor Smith, what do you want to know about my sex life?” Zane’s bass voice sizzled through her like a lit Fourth of July sparkler.
She whirled to find him staring at her with intensely interested eyes. His hands were holding two glasses of milk.
“Milk?” she asked, looking at him sideways, suppressing a grin.
“I need to revitalize my body for your sex test,” he said, almost as if he was slightly embarrassed.
That little-boy quality captured her. But she couldn’t help being very, very aware of him as a full-grown man. Without thinking, her eyes wandered down his very vitalized muscular frame. Her gaze stopped dead center on his tight jeans that accentuated his generously manly bulge. She quickly diverted her focus to the masterpiece paintings on the wall.
Why, oh, why, hadn’t she fought harder against participating in this sex research project? It wasn’t for her, oh no, not for her.
“We don’t have to jump right into the interview,” she quickly told him.
“From your phone call, I got the idea you want some major erotic details,” he began. “Like the way I—”
“Before we get into any specifics,” she conveniently cut in, “I’d like to get a solid sense of your male identity.” Her fingers were trembling as she searched through her briefcase for his résumé. “I believe you received your master’s degree from—”
“Harvard,” he filled in.
She finally found his résumé and frowned. “But your curriculum vitae lists Yale University.”
“Right, right,” he said. “I always get those two places mixed up.”
“Really?” she asked. “I thought a semi-genius like you would hold your university affiliations in high regard.”
“Nah,” he said. “I tend to file away my past and concentrate on current pertinent data. Like, for instance, your being here with me to examine my sexual need for the female species.”
“Ahh—why don’t you show me your house?” she suggested, avoiding his twinkling direct gaze. That’s it, she told herself. Keep the conversation safe, neutral, and on more wholesome topics.
But how long could she delay her sexy questions?
Zane studied her for a long moment. “Maybe I’m dead wrong,” he began, “but am I making you nervous, Professor Smith? Because if I am—”
“No, no, I’m fine,” she insisted. “I have no problem with—”
“Asking what turns me on in bed?” he boldly finished. His eyes were playing with her, teasing her, daring her.
Why, he was definitely getting pleasure from her uncomfortableness!
“I knew this would happen,” she blurted out, shoving his résumé back into her briefcase.
“What?”
“Men don’t take the university sex study very seriously,” she went on, unable to control herself the way Kim had advised. “One anonymous male wrote on his volunteer form that he made love one hundred times a day, eight days a week. By any chance, was that you?”
She was not going to let this man with the soaring IQ challenge her ability to competently complete her first interview.
Zane’s grin came slow and easy. “Sex can make a man say wild things,” he said. “Like when I have sex with a woman, she can make me forget where I am, what day it is, or even who I am. Does sex with a man do that to you, Professor?”
“Me?” she asked, taken aback. “I—I—” How could she tell him that sensual pleasure was like a fever to her—hot and dangerous. And that it was sex that had destroyed her future marriage to Kent.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Zane quickly added. “You don’t have to answer.” There was a sudden caring in his voice that she couldn’t help noticing. “How about I give you a tour of the house?”
“Sure,” she said, relieved. Though she couldn’t completely figure him out, for that second, Zane had somehow tuned into a painfully vulnerable place in her that no one had ever been aware of but her.
She felt a sudden closeness to him that she hadn’t felt with a man in a very long time.
Zane led her through a long Mexican-tiled hallway. She heard his footsteps echo beside hers as though they strolled through a huge cathedral.
“Do you live here all alone?” she heard herself ask. That question was not a requirement on her study list. “I mean—this place is so huge.”
“It’s just me,” he replied. “What about you? Do you live by yourself, Rachel?”
Hearing his deep-toned masculine voice utter her first name sent a warmth of intimacy through her. Suddenly he stopped walking and leaned against the hallway wall, watching her with greater interest than that of an ordinary interviewee. Was he thinking of asking her out? She caught herself secretly hoping he was.
She immediately straightened her spine and tightened her grip on her briefcase. What was she thinking? She was a professor on an interview. She couldn’t let herself get personal with him.
“Actually, my non-professional life is irrelevant to the study,” she told him.
His eyes held hers. “Maybe to the study, but not to me.”
She nervously bit her bottom lip. At that moment, she yearned to share with him whatever he wanted to know about her, things she’d never told anyone else. Somehow, she felt that maybe he’d understand. But she knew her job didn’t permit it.
She cleared her throat. “I don’t see how my living condition affects this research study.”
“It’s very simple,” he explained. “You want me to get relaxed enough to reveal myself to you, right?”
“Yes,” she hesitantly replied, wondering what he was leading up to.
“How can I?” He leaned a little closer to her. “I need to get to know you better, don’t I?”
