The Sex Test. Patty Salier

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СКАЧАТЬ angrily pushed down the accelerator for a sharp curve. His tires made a screech as if in protest to who he really was.

      Why did Mr. Farrell have to volunteer for that sex study, anyway? Johnny had no idea what the man’s sexual attitudes were. He certainly didn’t want to make him sound like a fizzled dud in bed. Yet, he couldn’t portray him as a worldly stud, either. He had to find an acceptable sexual image for the man.

      Because Johnny owed Mr. Farrell. He owed him big-time. If it wasn’t for Mr. Farrell, Johnny would have remained a runaway teenager on the streets of Los Angeles and maybe ended up with a nowhere life.

      It was Mr. Farrell, through his chauffeur, George, who found him on the streets and placed him in a private group home for teens. It was Mr. Farrell who had George enroll Johnny in an auto mechanic’s course to professionally learn the kind of work Johnny felt natural doing.

      It was Mr. Farrell who had put up the money for a loan for the automotive repair shop that Johnny had dreamed of owning, though Johnny had fought the idea the whole way. He wasn’t one to take from anybody, especially someone like Mr. Farrell, whom he’d never even met.

      When Johnny requested to meet Mr. Farrell face-to-face, George had immediately told him no. He said Mr. Farrell avoided direct contact with everyone. He refused all social invitations. He lived in total isolation. He never left the grounds of his huge mansion except when he traveled alone. And he would only communicate with Johnny through George.

      Johnny tried to figure the man out. He couldn’t understand why an eccentric person like Mr. Farrell would shed such kindness upon him. When he asked George, he learned that Mr. Farrell’s only son had had a bad drug problem, and one night during a drug deal, he was fatally shot in the head. His son’s brutal death had devastated Mr. Farrell. Divorced and alone, Mr. Farrell had spotted Johnny as a runaway teen, and George said that Mr. Farrell wanted to give to Johnny what he’d neglected to give his own son.

      Johnny vowed to pay back Mr. Farrell every cent and more. Unbeknownst to Mr. Farrell, Johnny even kept a secret bank account with hard-earned money he was saving to pay back his benefactor for every favor Mr. Farrell had ever done for him. Yes, Johnny owed Mr. Farrell, and he’d never let the man down, not ever.

      So when Mr. Farrell asked him over the phone to housesit while he went on a relaxing worldwide tour, Johnny immediately said yes. And when Mr. Farrell indicated that he’d also given his entire personal staff a vacation but didn’t want any corporate competitors to know he was gone, Johnny said he’d make sure even the president didn’t know he was away.

      But Mr. Farrell had another idea. He asked that Johnny “be him” during any unfinished business he’d forgotten before leaving the country. Even though Johnny wasn’t sure if he could pull it off, he didn’t hesitate to accept Mr. Farrell’s request. Especially when Mr. Farrell told Johnny that he considered him “family” and trusted him implicitly to make all the right business decisions for him.

      Johnny steered his pickup into the small parking lot of his shop. His chest expanded with pride as his sign came into view, Johnny’s Foreign Automotive Repairs. He loved the black grease of that place, the oil smell, the grime. It was his business, his power in the world.

      “Yo, Johnny baby!” called out Tito, his South American mechanic. Tito ran toward Johnny with a face smeared with car oil.

      “Tito, any problems while I was gone?” Johnny asked as he turned off his engine. Loyal Tito had been with him from the start.

      “You just missed a call from Mr. Farrell,” Tito told him with a Spanish accent.

      “Man, oh, man, where the hell’s my luck?” Johnny bellowed, running frustrated fingers through his curly hair. “I’ve got to talk to him. He’s got me involved in a sex study.” Johnny gave Tito a quick rundown on the university project.

      “Maybe you should not have made that promise to Mr. Farrell,” Tito remarked.

      “Tito, I had to—”

      “But you have never met the man, Johnny,” Tito cut in. “Sure, he helped you in life, but why has he not allowed you to see him? He either talks to you on the phone or through George. He does his business on a computer notebook, cellular phone or through his communications people. Nobody knows who the man is.”

      “I know him, Tito,” Johnny said without a doubt in his head. “He’s a private man. He has no wife and no kids to depend on. And he asked me to do him a big favor. And I’m going to do it, Tito, no matter what.” “But how can you, Johnny, when you are not him?” Tito shook his head with confusion.

      “I can do it, Tito,” Johnny said. “Mr. Farrell’s never revealed his age to anyone. Nobody’s ever seen his face—”

      “Someone will discover you are not Mr. Farrell,” Tito cut in. “Somebody you do not want to find out.”

      Johnny immediately thought of Professor Rachel Smith. She was the only one he was worried about. He didn’t like pretending with her. He felt a connection with her, an inner link he’d never felt with any woman before. That’s why he was so frustrated that he’d missed Mr. Farrell’s phone call. He had to talk to him about that sex test.

      

      Rachel quickened her towel strokes as she dried the dinner dishes in Kim’s kitchen. “Kim, I’m taking Zane Farrell’s name off the sex-study list.”

      “You can’t do that, Rachel,” Kim said, rushing from the sink to clean up her two-year-old daughter, Stacy’s, spilled milk on the floor.

      A waterfall of tears started streaming down Stacy’s chubby cheeks at her mistake. Rachel ran over and lifted the little girl out of the high chair into her arms to soothe her.

      “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, СКАЧАТЬ