Wicked Chemistry Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Blurb

  Note to Readers

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Epilogue

  Also by R.L. Kenderson

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Wicked Chemistry

  by

  R.L. Kenderson

  PUBLISHED BY:

  R.L. Kenderson

  Wicked Chemistry

  Copyright © 2019 by Renae Au and Lara Kennedy

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-7327368-2-5

  Editor: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com

  Cover: R.L. Kenderson, www.rlkenderson.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  I’d always been a good girl.

  Sure, I sped, I’d played hooky from previous jobs, I’d had a drink before I was twenty-one, and there was the one time I’d skipped class my junior year.

  But I’d never been pulled over, fired, arrested, or gotten detention.

  I was a good girl.

  Until I wasn’t.

  I became a bad, bad girl.

  I’d wanted to be a teacher for as long as I could remember, and I thought I’d never do anything to give that up.

  Until I met Mace Wagner.

  The first time I saw him, I thought he was the assistant football coach. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.

  I didn’t know he was my student.

  I didn’t know he would screw my brains out.

  I didn’t know I would fall in love with him.

  I didn’t know I would risk everything to be with him.

  Wicked Chemistry deals with a student-teacher relationship. All individuals are over eighteen and consenting adults.

  This book is a romance for entertainment purposes only. This story is pure fantasy.

  The first time I saw Mace Wagner, he was standing on the sidelines next to Coach Fischer at the first football game of the season.

  I took a seat behind the team’s bench, several rows up on the bleachers, with my friend Becca.

  I had just moved to Texas to teach high school because Becca had gotten me a job alongside her.

  Becca and I’d met our freshman year at college in Nebraska. I’d been raised in South Dakota, and she was from Texas. When we graduated, we both went home to where we’d grown up, but we missed each other like crazy.

  Back in South Dakota, I didn’t have a boyfriend, most of my high school friends had moved away, and I only found a job as a substitute teacher. And, while I loved my parents, when Becca told me about a job opening at her high school, I jumped at the chance. I was only going to be young once and not tied down with a family. Now was the time in my life to explore different things and a different place.

  I had moved into Becca’s rental just shy of a month ago. It was a house, but it was small, and I hoped to move into my own place soon. However, I’d gotten myself temporarily settled, and last week, the teachers had started school. I had met almost all of my new coworkers.

  But the guy standing next to Coach Fischer was unfamiliar. He was tall and broad, bigger than Coach Fischer, and I was immediately drawn to him. He had his hands on his hips, and I couldn’t help but notice a line of text tattooed on the outside of each arm. I wanted to know what it said.

  I could only see his profile, but he looked to be about my age, twenty-five, and he was very into the game. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted something at the players.

  He was wearing very worn jeans and a football jersey that said Wagner on the back. But no pads or helmet.

  I was just about to ask Becca who he was, but she was in the middle of a conversation with the woman next to her. And that was when I realized that this had to be the assistant coach. I had heard the name Connor Wagner said a few times in the halls at work, and since the football jersey displayed the same last name, it had to be him.

  I had heard the other women at work, except for Becca, talk about how good-looking Coach Wagner was, but I was still practically knocked off my seat when he turned around.

  He wasn’t good-looking.

  He was gorgeous.

  A living, breathing Adonis.

  The Urban Dictionary one. The perfect man with a flawless body who made women’s hearts race and gave them butterflies in their stomachs. Not the Greek mythology one, although I was sure Coach Wagner had women fight over him like Persephone and Aphrodite did over Adonis in the stories.

  He had thick dark brown hair that was a little long so that tendrils of it blew across his forehead. His eyes were a vivid blue that I could see, thanks to the blue in the jersey that made them stand out. He was lean in all the right places and big in others.

  I quickly looked away but not before I saw the knowing smirk on his face. I’d been staring. He knew it, and I knew it.

  I willed my face not to turn red and for me to pay attention to Becca’s conversation and forget Coach Wagner.

  We might be grown professionals now, but I’d known guys like him my whole life. He was attractive. I was not. He knew he was attractive, and men who looked like him never went out with girls who looked like me.

  I wouldn’t call myself ugly, but on a scale of one to ten, I was a solid six. Maybe a seven on a good day. But that was my face. My body? Well, that was more down in the four range. I had hips for days and no boobs. I couldn’t be what you would call voluptuous because God had accidentally forgotten to pack the top half of my body. Or maybe he’d put it all in the bottom. I was disproportionate, and it sucked.

  But the good thing about being twenty-five and not fifteen was that I didn’t care so much anymore. Back then, I’d dreamed of getting myself breast implants while I starved myself and exercised until I passed out. These days, I still worked out but only to stay healthy. I’d come to terms with my huge hips and little pooch of a belly. If I wanted to eat cake, I was going to, damn it. I also knew there was much more to someone t
han what they looked like.

  Yet, every once in a while, on nights like this, I was reminded that a guy like him wouldn’t date a girl like me. And that was okay. Really. I swear.

  But, as a woman who was five feet ten inches, I was a sucker for tall men. When only fourteen and a half percent of men were six feet and over and barely four percent were over six-two, it was hard not to be attracted to someone I literally looked up to. I’d dated guys my height and some even a couple of inches shorter, but towering men were my kryptonite.

  Let’s face it; I was attracted to the guy.

  And, because of this, I took one more glance at his left ring finger. While I’d heard the other teachers talk, no one had ever mentioned if Coach Wagner was single or taken.

  His hand was bare, but when I let my gaze travel up his body, his eyes were on mine. There was a little bit of laughter in them as he shook his head. He scanned me once before he raised an eyebrow and turned back to the game.

  Caught again, but this time, I did turn red. Because I knew that look. He’d assessed me and found me lacking.

  Story of my life.

  What was different about this story was that I wasn’t attracted to the high school’s assistant football coach. I wasn’t attracted to a coworker, a fellow teacher.

  I was attracted to one of the high school’s football players, one of my students.

  “Eden Margaret Fijalkowski, hurry your butt up. We don’t want to be late on the first day of school. It’s really hard to reprimand the kids for being tardy when the teacher is, too.”

  I rushed out of Becca’s spare bedroom, slipping my last earring in my ear. “I’m coming; I’m coming.”

  Becca looked up from her phone and whistled, her greens sparkling with laughter.

  “I’m wearing black slacks and a red blouse. Not exactly runway material.”

  “Well, I’ve always thought you looked good in red. Are you trying to impress someone?” she teased.

  She had no idea that I’d been staring at Assistant Coach Wagner on Friday night. She’d been talking to others, and after the game had ended, it had never come up. She was just teasing me because that was what Becca did.

  “Only everyone,” I told her. “But not with my looks. I’m going to impress them with my spectacular teaching skills,” I joked.

  It was true. While Coach Wagner had caught my attention and I was attracted to him, he would never look twice at me. I wasn’t disillusioned that he would ask me out on a date.

  I really did want to show everyone I was a good teacher. Not only did I want to pull my own weight at my new job, but I also really liked teaching. I loved filling my students’ heads with new knowledge, and I loved it when they showed interests in the things I’d taught them. I also knew that students liking a teacher made work more enjoyable.

  Becca picked up her purse and opened the door to the garage. “You’re going to do great.”

  Becca drove us to work, and we made small talk on the way.

  When we got to the parking lot, it was already half-full, and Becca whipped into a parking spot. She shut off the engine and turned to me.

  “Uh-oh. You look serious.”

  She smiled, but her face was still somber underneath. “I don’t want to worry you.”

  My eyes widened, and my heart beat a little bit faster. “Too late.”

  “It’s really not that big of a deal.”

  I raised my brow in doubt.

  “We went to school together for six years, and I sometimes forget that you didn’t grow up around here. People always joke that Texas takes football very seriously. I thought it was an exaggeration until I left the state for college. But I realized that you were kind of bored at the football game on Friday.”

  I winced. “I still don’t get what makes everyone so crazy about it,” I whispered even though we were the only ones in the car.

  I thought the whole town had been at the game on Friday. You would have thought we were at an NFL game instead of a high school one by some of the fans’ reactions.

  She smiled. “I know.” She pointed a finger at me. “Don’t tell anyone that either. It stays between us.”

  “Is that really what you wanted to tell me?”

  She shook her head. “That’s just part of it.” Her smile fell. “I wanted to warn you about the football players.”

  This sounded ominous.

  “I’m not saying you can’t call them out when they do something wrong or that you can’t punish them. But make sure that nothing you do gets in the way of them playing. Like detention. It interferes with practice after school.”

  “So, I’m just supposed to ignore bad behavior?”

  “No,” she said, drawing out the word. “But you need to be careful. If you assigned detention, the coaches and parents would be pissed. And, if we lost a game after that, the whole town would blame you.”

  I laughed.

  “I’m not joking,” she said with a straight face.

  My laughter quickly died, and I swallowed. “Maybe I’ll just come to you before I assign any punishment.”

  Becca smiled. “Good idea.” She opened her door. “And don’t hand out too much homework. It can’t get in the way of football, and you don’t want to fail a football player either.”

  I opened my own door. “Are you serious?”

  “As a heart attack.”

  Once in the building, we headed to our respective classrooms. My room was in an adjacent hallway from Becca’s. She taught civics, social studies, government, and history. I taught science—biology, chemistry, and physics.

  Her classroom had individual desks and carpet. My classroom had science desks with black tops, which sat two students to each table, and linoleum on the floor in case something was spilled during a lab experiment.

  Her room was prettier, but mine was more fun.

  Even though I’d been coming to work for the last two weeks, I still went through everything in my classroom. I wanted it to be perfect. This was the first time I had my own room and wasn’t teaching in someone else’s class. These were going to be my students, and they would be learning my lessons.

  Butterflies took up residence in my belly, but it was an exciting feeling. I couldn’t wait to meet my students.

  I went to the whiteboard and wrote my name on it. Ms. Fijalkowski. And underneath I wrote, Call me Ms. F. Fijalkowski was just way too hard of a last name to spell or pronounce. Someday, I hoped to get married to someone with the last name Smith or Jones. The kind of name you never had to spell out for anyone or hear someone try to figure out how to say.

  I was taking a visual inventory of my supplies when I heard my phone buzz on my desk.

  Becca: Quick, come to the teachers’ lounge. You have to come and meet Connor Wagner.

  I smiled at my friend’s excitement even if I didn’t really understand it because she’d never chimed in when others talked about how good-looking he was.

  She must not have realized I’d already seen Assistant Coach Wagner at the game. Although I supposed it wasn’t the same as meeting him. It was going to be a little embarrassing, coming face-to-face with him after he’d caught me staring, but I was a big girl. I would look him in the eye and let him know, Yes, I was staring at you on Friday night, but you don’t have to worry because I will not be hitting on you.

  Me: I’ll be right there.

  I left my classroom, but I didn’t rush. I was going to be embarrassed when I met my colleague, but in a few days, the feeling would pass. He was probably used to women checking him out.

  I passed students in the hall as they headed to their lockers to start their first day, and I wondered if I would be teaching any of them.

  As I neared the lounge, I could hear voices. I recognized Becca’s, and there was also a nice baritone to be heard. When I rounded the corner, Becca was in profile, grinning up at the dark-haired, tall man who had his back to me. He was leaning down toward my brunette friend. I wouldn’t be surprised if Connor Wagner was r
omantically interested in her. Becca was short, thin, and pretty, and to top it off, she was a great person.

  For a split second, a rush of envy went through me but only for a moment. It was not as though I wanted him for myself. I just wanted someone to show interest in me like he was showing in Becca. It had been a long time since I had chemistry with someone or a man showed such interest in me. Too long. And I was jealous of the situation more than the man himself.

  Becca noticed me in the doorway and smiled. “Come in here.”

  I took a step in as Connor began to turn around.

  I steeled my shoulders, waiting for the embarrassment to hit me when his bright blue eyes recognized me from Friday’s crowd.

  Except the eyes that met mine were as brown as my own. And the face staring back at me was one I’d never seen before.

  “Connor, this is my friend Eden. She’s the new science teacher.”

  “Hey, Eden. It’s nice to have you here. Ever since Mrs. Thomas retired in the middle of the school year last year, we’ve been scrambling to cover her classes. Myself included.” He leaned forward. “And I’m a math teacher.”

  This guy was certainly as handsome as the rumors had said he was, but he wasn’t the guy I’d seen at the game. At least, I didn’t think he was. I didn’t think I’d imagined the piercing blue eyes, and Connor didn’t seem to recognize me either. Yet I could swear they had a few similar features, including the brown hair and height. I didn’t understand what was going on.

  Becca nudged me, and I realized that I had just been standing there. Connor Wagner probably thought I was spacey when, really, I was just confused.

  “Um … yeah, I’m glad I can help out.”

  “Eden’s only been substitute teaching until now,” Becca volunteered for me.

  I shook off the rest of my confusion. Obviously, now was not the time to figure out who I’d made stupid goo-goo eyes to at the game despite the horrible conclusion creeping into the back of my thoughts.

  I smiled the best I could. “Becca’s right. I’ve only been substitute teaching until now. I’m excited to start a ‘real job,’” I said, doing finger quotes.

  “You’re from South Dakota, right?”