“Hey, little one, sometimes I’m a gooky mess, too.” Rachel wiggled her finger into Stacy’s tummy to make her giggle. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, little one.” A warm feeling of family enveloped her.
“Stacy would be lost without her second mommy,” Kim said with a wink.
Rachel set a now-contented Stacy back in her high chair. She gently kissed Stacy’s cheek, but inside, she felt in turmoil. All because of Zane Farrell.
Warmth enveloped her just thinking about his twinkling sea-blue eyes. How he’d sensed the pain inside her when he’d asked her whether sex with a man made her forget who she was. How he’d quickly changed the subject to protect her feelings, even though he didn’t understand what they were.
She remembered how her breasts ached to be caressed by him when he’d lifted her in his strong arms in his gym to stop her from falling. And how she’d never wanted him to let go. No, she couldn’t go back there, not ever.
“What do you mean, I can’t eliminate Farrell from the study?” Rachel prompted. “He’s not right for the research. We’ll find another entrepreneur for the upper-crust category.”
“No, we won’t,” her friend said firmly. “Unless you want to buck heads with Chancellor Zilford.”
“The chancellor?” A ripple of nervousness flitted through her. More than anything, she wanted to impress the head of the university with her first research assignment.
“When Chancellor Zilford heard that Zane Farrell had volunteered for the study, he gave his hundred-percent approval to the project.”
“Why?” She suddenly felt Kim’s delicious chicken-cutlet dinner nauseatingly rise in her throat.
“Before you came to the university, Zane Farrell donated three million for a new building on campus. The chancellor plans to name the structure Farrell Hall. I don’t think he would appreciate learning you scratched Mr. Farrell’s name from the research list.”
“But I can’t work with him,” she protested, feeling helpless. “He’s a thick-headed, overgrown—”
“Are you talking about me?” asked Kim’s husband, Charlie, as he sauntered into the kitchen munching on a fireengine-red apple.
“Maybe we are, handsome,” Kim teased as she lifted Stacy out of her high chair, patted the little girl’s cute behind and sent her off to the living room to play.
Charlie slipped his arms around his wife’s waist and planted a deep kiss on her mouth.
“Am I impossible now?” he murmured against Kim’s ear.
Rachel felt an ache in her heart and turned back to drying the dishes. She both admired and envied Kim’s marriage of six years. She knew a forever-love like theirs could never happen to her. Not after the catastrophe that had occurred between her and Kent two years ago.
Her eyes blurred as the nightmare evening flashed into her mind. Three days before their wedding, she and Kent were kissing on his apartment sofa. She’d known him since junior high and had never gone out with any other man.
But on that fateful night as Rachel pressed her eager body to his and parted her lips against his mouth, Kent abruptly pulled away. He got off the sofa and paced the floor, avoiding her confused eyes.
“Kent, what’s wrong?” she asked. “What did I do?”
Then Kent let loose in a way that would mar her life from that moment on.
“Do you know why we’ve never had intercourse together?” he blasted.
“Because we want to wait for our wedding night,” she replied, feeling a chill as an ice wall grew between them.
“No!” he blurted out. “It’s because I don’t want to make love to you, Rachel.” His face twisted in agony, looking shocked by his own admission.
“Wh-what do you mean?” she stammered, clutching the neckline of her blouse together, as if to shield her exposed heart from him.
“You’re always thinking about sex,” he said tightly. “You’re always touching me. Always so easily aroused. With your heavy breathing and excessive bodily reactions, you’re downright intimidating.”
“Kent, don’t say that,” she cried out. He was tearing apart her soul.
“You make me feel sexually inadequate,” he railed. “No man will ever be able to satisfy you, Rachel. No man.” In Kim’s kitchen, Rachel flopped down on a chair at the table. She was still reeling from Kent’s accusations. Two whole years wasn’t enough time for her to recover from his verbal attack on her sexuality. From that moment on, she’d closed herself off from all sexual feeling, all sexual fantasies and any deep emotional affinity she could ever share with a man. Until Zane Farrell.
That’s why she couldn’t see Zane again. He’d unlocked her Pandora’s box. He’d touched the most bruised and vulnerable spot of her entire being. He’d connected with her heart.
Kim gave Charlie another peck on the lips. “Now get out of here, Charlie Woods.” She playfully pushed him into the living room to his daughter and then turned to Rachel.
“Take my advice,” Kim urged. “If you want to stay in good with the chancellor, you better give Zane Farrell one more chance.”
“Kim, I can’t,” she said in a desperate tone. “Will you take over his interviews for me?”
“I wish I could,” Kim replied. “But my schedule’s horribly tight right now. Rachel, I don’t understand. Why are you so anxious to get rid of Farrell?”
“The man’s totally impossible,” she said, avoiding Kim’s eyes.
She could feel Kim studying her in that close-girlfriend way of hers. “Rachel, are you attracted’to him?”
“Definitely not!” she denied. Her friend’s knowing hazel eyes were still on her. “Okay, okay, the man is sort of sexy.”
“Sort of?”
“He’s a major turn-on.”
“And you want to give him up?”
“I don’t need a member of the male population in my life right now, Kim.”
“What are you afraid of, Rachel?” Kim asked with concern. “It’s still Kent, isn’t it?”
“No!” she insisted, unable to summon the courage to tell her friend the horror of shame she felt about her sexual self.
“Please, Kim, will you take the Zane Farrell case study from me?” she begged. “I still have the accountant and orthopedic surgeon to interview. No one will even notice.”
Kim was silent as she poured them both a cup of herbal tea. “As soon as my schedule frees up, I’ll take Farrell from you. Can you hold out until then?”
“You promise?” Rachel asked, praying she really would.
“Promise.”
Rachel hugged her. “I owe you, buddy.”
All day at his car-repair shop, that university sex study Mr. Farrell had volunteered for was busting Johnny’s brains. He dreaded telling Mr. Farrell that he’d totally messed up the interview. But he was going to admit it, nonetheless.
“Tito, did Mr. Farrell say when he’d call me back?” Johnny asked as he handed a customer her car key after completing her repairs.
“Mr. Farrell said he was going to Taiwan,” Tito responded.
“Did he leave a phone number where I can reach him?”
“No number,