Intimate Equations

Copyright © 2012 by Emily
Caro

All rights reserved. No
part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or
mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain
other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests,
write [email protected]

2012 Anara Press

Prologue

  Jules felt Sam’s heat
and weight on her. He brushed his face against her neck – she heard his breath
fast and hot on her skin as he pushed her to the floor.

  “Jules, I won’t go
another day without you. I can’t live like this. You don’t understand what you
mean to me and nothing else matters.” Thunder rattled the building and shook
the doors to the elevator.  A woman screamed on the floor below them.

  Jules tried to steady
her thoughts. The place was in absolute darkness except for the tiny emergency
light blinking on the console. All she could feel was Sam pressing himself onto
her. He had surprised her and in an instant all the emotions guilt and fear
were gone. Sam held her in a steel embrace but his lips were soft and warm on
her bare skin as he kissed every inch of neck and shoulders. Despite her best
efforts she could not control the desire rising between her legs. He was going
to take her right here.

   He sensed her response as
he positioned himself against her thigh. In that moment he was at once hard and
large. She felt her heart jump in her chest as he removed her panties. Already,
in the few seconds of their contact the electricity in her body buzzed at his
touch. All Jules could do was surrender to him. There was nowhere else to go.

Chapter One: Associate
Professor

Jules remembered why she loved this place as she opened
the front door. The immediate scent of blooming hyacinths near the porch met
her as the door swung wide into a bright, spring morning. The sunshine was
enough to stop her right there to seek a quiet moment in her favorite chair on
the porch. But, she couldn't do that. No sitting and contemplating the
sweetness of spring for Jules.

I still have ten exams in modern physics to
go over before class at 11:00. Okay, focus - you can do this.

The sun seemed so bright after the many months of gray
winter that Jules turned her head aside to adjust her eyes. She double-checked
her netbook case to make sure she had all she needed for the day - something
she had already done about three times. Jules had spent months job hunting
before her hire as an associate professor at the State Technical College and
she was meticulous in her morning preparations for class.

“I might be a little OCD,”
she
mused as
she locked the front door.

She turned to examine her varnish job on the heavy oak
door which had been her project over the weekend. It looked good considering
she'd never before refinished anything.

Taking care of the place was a lot of work but Jules
felt up to the challenge – most of the time.

Ya' think maybe I should have invested in a
condo instead? Especially after last week's challenge which took most of Saturday
afternoon - removing a nest of squirrels from the chimney.

Her seventy-five year old neighbor next door had helped
with the squirrels. The huge responsibility of the house and grounds notwithstanding,
this old stone, two-story house had captured her heart so what could she do?
She surrendered and signed the mortgage papers to write the next twenty some
years of her life away.

My God, what have I done?

She brushed her shoulder length hair aside and turned
to look at her home. Jules scrutinized the intricate, ninety-year old structure
for inevitable decay. She turned to step into her car.

And the lawn! It is turning into a jungle!
I'll add to that list – a very long list.

Jules tossed her case onto the passenger's seat of her
blue Toyota and started the engine. The drive to campus was easy and
unobstructed on this fine morning. It seemed all the commuters were taking
their time on their drive to work. They knew once inside they would be captives
until lunchtime while the beautiful spring day slipped away during the working
hours.

Jules pulled into her parking spot and paused again to
savor the warmth of the sun before heading into the Rutherford Science
building.

Tomorrow, I am so riding my bike.

As Jules headed toward the main entrance to Rutherford
the door was snapped open with some force by a tall, muscular Latino man about
her age with a frown on his face. Jules pulled out of the way and let him pass.
She wondered if he was angry with someone. His eyes sparked like they were on
fire. He turned back and looked at her as if meaning to speak, but Jules was so
disturbed by his penetrating gaze that she turned on her heel and headed inside
while the dark, young man watched her retreat.

She headed for her office, unlocked it and entered. She
shut the door before any of the secretaries could strike up meaningless
conversation with her. Jules had way too much to do in the next two hours to
get caught in mindless drivel.

Letting go a sigh, Jules pulled the exam papers out of
her case and started up the laptop. Her mind wandered back to the odd encounter
with the tall man at the front entrance. He looked familiar but she couldn't
quite place his face. Jules snapped out of it as she realized her focus had
been diverted from her task at hand. She pulled her brain back to the papers.
These need to be finished before class. The current semester was challenging since
modern physics was only offered one semester every other year. Only the best
and the brightest managed to secure placement in the class after struggling
through all the prerequisites. Students had a long wait to acquire placement so
the expectations were high. Jules had never taught this particular class and
the head of her department cautioned her when he assigned it to her.

“No doubt, you will have at least one student who
challenges you as a teacher. With this challenge comes learning for both student
and you. Welcome the challenge with an open mind.”

This challenge so far, Jules had not encountered. But
the semester was young and many of the students were still trying to adjust to
the heavy demands of the bi-weekly physics labs coupled with the extensive
reading she assigned them.

Best to keep the students swamped until
June.
Somewhere inside she felt a bit guilty for laying on
such heavy course-work.

It was not that long ago that she was a struggling
student herself. As she dived into reading the exams her eyes found one
particular equation on a paper which left her puzzled.

Why would this student try to solve the
problem like this?
She looked back to the front of the paper
to check the name.

“
Sam Lopez. hmm, strange
.”
She couldn't recall this student's face for some reason, although she'd made
great effort to match everyone's name with their face in class. There were
about 45 in this class so she might have mixed this student up with someone
else.

Jules shook her head. At any rate, she reasoned, Mr. Lopez's
solution was a curious if not a creative insight into the equation. She worked
through his steps and it all fit. The answer was correct when calculating the
orbital mechanics problem she had presented in the exam. But why go to that
length to solve it when he could have used the basic, standard solution Newton
subscribed? She scribbled a few comments with her red pen in the margin of
Sam's paper and moved on.

"
Please come see me about this problem."
she
wrote
, "I'd like to know why you chose this solution.
" A
harmless request scribbled in the margin of an exam paper, but the wisdom of
which she would question later.

*****

Sam finished mowing a swath of lawn and checked his
watch. If he got in the truck now and headed for campus he might just make it
to modern physics in time. He parked the mower near his client's fence and
headed for the street brushing off dust and grass as he walked to the truck. He
glanced up in the apple tree above the sidewalk to admire a bright yellow
Goldfinch singing his heart out on a branch.

Hope you find your lady, buddy
. He
pushed down the clutch and started the truck, shoving it into first all in one,
fluid motion, pulling out onto the street.

The sky was a brilliant blue unlike what he'd seen for
a long while and he'd rather just stay outside but he wanted to find out how
he'd done on the modern physics exam he'd taken last week. He was unable to
attend many of the lectures but he read all the materials in the evenings after
he finished work or borrowed notes from other students in the class. He'd
waited more than two years to take this class and only managed to get in by
sweet-talking one of the registrars into letting him take it pass/fail.

“Please, it's not like I'm going to be a burden to the
professor, or anything,” he'd told the lady at the scheduling desk. So, he
showed up for the 11:00 when he could seating himself in the back and leaving
well before any of the other students had even closed their laptops.

Jules usually climbed the two flights of stairs to the
small lecture hall where she taught modern physics, but today she took the
staff elevator to the third floor. She was a little late having just finished
grading the rest of the exams. Her TA had dropped off his portion of the graded
exams at 10:00 and she had wanted to skim over those before she handed them
back. It was already a bit after 11 when she entered the classroom. She greeted
the class, most of who were already seated and organizing their notes or Facebooking
until the actual lecture began. With a nod to the few students who looked up as
she entered, Jules headed for her spot at the lecture podium.

 “
Good morning! I hope all of you have
recovered after the grueling, yet thrilling time we had together on Friday!”
Jules grinned at her class.

A few students shook their heads and groaned. “I have
the finished exams here if you'd like to come up and get your folders.” Everyone
had an individual folder with their name on it to secure privacy and belay
cheating. As the students filed up one by one to retrieve their exams Jules lay
aside the folder with Sam Lopez so she could take special note of the name and
the face. When all the students had taken their exams back to their seats his
folder and another still lay on the table.

“
Okay, Sam Lopez? Are you here? And Sandy
Dumontier? Anyone know about these people? A few students shook their heads and
one called out: “Sandy's grandmother died so she had to fly home to the
funeral.”

“
I see.” Jules paused here to scrutinize the
classroom just in case she had missed someone walking down to pick up the
folder she had left lying on the table.

“
So, let us begin today with a review of one
or two problems on the test which for some of you,” Jules paused for effect “might
have been a wee bit troublesome.”

There were more groans from the classroom. Jules turned
to the whiteboard and began writing down the equations. With her back turned
she didn't notice Sam entering in by the upper lecture room door which also
served as an exit. Sam settled into a back seat unnoticed while the student
next to him wrinkled her nose at him and glanced down at his dirty, oil-covered
hands.

He mouthed: “Sorry…” to her perfect little face and
flashed a smile she couldn't refuse. Turning his attention to the front of the
lecture hall he didn't notice his seat partner's face turn pink. Even under all
the grime, Sam couldn't hide that he was a handsome man and very fit due to the
fact that he spent most of his time working outdoors.

The professor worked through a number of steps on the
exam which Sam absorbed with all eyes and ears since he never took notes during
lectures. He either understood it or he didn't. If the math didn't make sense
now he could always figure it out in the evening, after his jobs were done for
the day.