Table of Contents
Title Page
Bonus Book
Prologue
Chapter One: At Odds
Chapter Two: Secrets
Chapter Three: Compatibility
Chapter Four: Release
Chapter Five: All That Matters
Epilogue
About the Author
Publisher's Notes
A Kiss of Color
Book 1
All That Matters
By: Cristina Grenier
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Prologue
Eight Years Prior
She was miserable.
Starving, cold, tired…and her cheek still burned from where her mother had struck her just hours before. When she remembered the way she’d left, tears rose to Helena’s eyes. All she wanted – all she had ever wanted – was her mother’s love. Instead, for as long as she could remember, the woman had ridiculed and abused her.
Of course, she’d fought Helena’s father for custody. When her parents had divorced, she’d been just seven years old, and all Helena had known was that she wanted the fighting to stop. Her parents had screamed at each other more often then they’d been cordial, and their encounters usually ended in her mother threatening to kill her father. Janette Freeman, was fond of wielding kitchen knives with malicious intentions she never followed through on – but the idea that she would resort to such actions to intimidate had been bad enough.
Helena recalled little else beyond the fighting. As a small child, she’d tried to shut it out as much as she possibly could. What she did remember was that her father had fought for her. He’d threatened to steal Helena away if her mother kept her, but ultimately, something had changed his mind. After an ugly divorce, he had eventually just walked away, his visitation rights next to nothing.
Helena had grown into adolescence under her mother’s very volatile thumb. She’d started cooking meals for Janette when she was only nine years old at her mother’s insistence. She’d attested that Helena needed to start pulling her weight, but the real reason soon became apparent when, more often than not, the little girl returned home from school to find her mother enveloped in a haze of drugs and alcohol.
Janette had threatened her. Had beat her and demeaned her until it was all she could do just to leave her room, she was so frightened. Of course, all that had changed once Helena had gotten her first job. She’d sworn that she would start saving to leave her mother’s house as soon as she was able and at the age of fourteen, she started working at a fast food restaurant a few blocks from her house.
Of course, the horror didn’t end. It was interspersed with periods of saccharine sweetness – when, for a while, the young woman had thought that her mother loved her…that she had finally learned to care. The truth of the matter was that Janette had wanted her daughter’s paychecks. Nothing else. The moment she’d wheedled one or two hundred dollars from Helena, her behavior returned to normal. That was: name calling, screaming, and a slew of physical blows that drove Helena from the house – and to the hospital – more than her fair share of times.
Yet, somehow, she kept coming back. She hoped that, one day, her mother would realize the error of her ways. That she would realize that she only had one opportunity with her only daughter, and that she would become close with the woman who had called her a mistake – an ungrateful leech.
Of course, there had been no powerful transformation. Instead, things had just gotten worse and worse, finally culminating in Helena’s refusal to give her mother any more money to fuel her addiction. The result had been Janette kicking her from the house – hurling boxes of her daughter’s things from the window and screaming obscenities that would have soured even the most seasoned soldier.
And now, here she was.
Helena stood on the threshold of her father’s downtown apartment. She could count on one hand the number of times she had seen the man over the past eight years. Her mother had attested her hate for her ex-husband enough that mentioning his name in her household was tantamount to a curse. Helena had been so wrapped up in trying to win her mother’s love that she’d all but forgotten about the father who’d fought tooth and nail for her before all but disappearing from her life.
But now, she had nowhere else to turn.
She rubbed eyes swollen from crying as clear as she could, feeling somewhat out of place in the upscale apartment complex that hosted her father’s address. She hadn’t been to his house since her parents had split, but she got the vague sense that he’d done well for himself. Janette was under the impression that her ex-husband thought that he was better than where he’d come from. Both she and he had grown up in a poorer part of town – they had come from families that could hardly string two pennies together.
Helena was young, but she knew that wasn’t the lift she wanted to herself. Scraping coins from the bottom of the jar just so that her family could eat. Living in a neighborhood where she felt unsafe walking to and from school every day. For her entire life, she’d been surrounded by such blatant lack of ambition that here, now, she found herself ill at-ease with the thought that people could achieve so much more than she had.
The luxury of a gated apartment community where people didn’t roam the streets and drugs weren’t hawked on corners was both strange and exciting. But before she could even contemplate things, she had to face a man who was now a complete stranger to her.
Taking a deep breath, Helena raised her hand, hesitating only slightly before knocking on the door.
Long minutes passed without an answer and her stomach began to churn with unease. It was late, she knew, and the man was probably asleep. She would have to go slinking back to her mother, begging for forgiveness for crimes she didn’t commit, and return to a life laden with heartache.
All at once, the light above her clicked on, there came the sound of a bolt being unlocked. Helena’s heart skipped a beat as the door swung open, revealing a tall, broad figure, and a face that was all at once familiar and strange.
When Isaiah Graves’ eyes fixed on the face of his only daughter, they widened in shock. For a moment, the two stared at one another, silence hovering between them. In those few seconds, Helena felt a rush of emotion so powerful that it almost choked her. Her heart filled and her face tightened as she felt tears she had just dashed away return with full force.
She tried to form words – but what could she say? How could she tell him of the years of suffering she had endured at the hand of a woman who would never validate her existence? Who would never love her?
She opened her mouth to try to speak, but sobs stifled her words. She closed her eyes, her entire form trembling with grief. “Dad….Dad…” She could do nothing but cry. As much as she’d promised herself she would show him only her strong side, it was all she could do not to fall apart. “Daddy.”
“Helena.” He took her in from head to toe. Helena knew he would see her ill-fitting, ragged clothes, her unkempt hair and her tear-streaked face as things that couldn’t fit into his upper class lifestyle; That the man standing there in his clean, comfortable pajamas in his cavernous home would reject her and everything she was, just because she belonged to a woman who detested him for so long. With a low whimper, she stepped back, preparing to flee – only to have her shoulders taken in a warm, firm grip. The young woman raised her gaze once more, and her heart broke when she found that she wasn’t the only one crying. “Helena. Come in here.” Her father drew her into his warm embr
ace, and it was the sweetest thing she had ever known.
“You’ve come home.”
Chapter One: At Odds
Present Day
Xavier was bored.
It was often the case when he had to sit through long HTML programming classes. He’d enrolled in Antioch University for their coveted IT graduate program, only to find that most of what they taught, he already knew. Sitting in class, he’d discovered, was a complete waste of time. He’d found that even skipping through most of his required coursework to start advanced material wasn’t even enough to stimulate his mind.
He supposed it was really no skin off his back. His parents had agreed to his choice of university because Antioch was a big name – an easily recognizable name. It wasn’t Ivy League, but then, Xavier had always been against Ivy League schools. Both of his parents had attended them, and, at one point, had been insistent on his following in their footsteps.
Unfortunately, all the money in the world wouldn’t convince their son that he needed to be a doctor or a lawyer. Xavier didn’t care so much about money as he did about following his passions – something that made him a bit of an anathema in a family that fairly dripped old money. His older sister was practically running a firm upstate, his youngest sister was a cello prodigy at Julliard, and he…he liked to tinker with machines and build programs that he knew would change the world.
It was a shame that no one else but him seemed to believe in his ambitions – least of all his parents who refused the mere idea of funding the IT start-up that was his dream. It was strange that they refused to give him a fifty thousand dollar investment for his business but would pay a hundred thousand dollars to send him to school. More outlandish, perhaps, was the idea that they wouldn’t let him accept merit or academic scholarships.
They wanted everyone to know that they were paying for the most expensive school, and the most private apartment. Nothing but the best for a Thompson. The mere thought made him roll his eyes.
“Is there a problem, Mr. Thompson?”
Great. The last thing he needed right now was his uptight coding instructor taking offense to something that had nothing to do with her. Straightening in his seat, Xavier cleared his throat before casting the sour-looking woman his most brilliant smile. “Nothing at all, Professor. My apologies.”
While the gesture usually worked on freshman newly arrived on campus and most of his underclassmen, Professor Lachey appeared far from pleased. Merely scowling at him, she continued with her lecture as the other students in the classroom furiously scribbled down notes. She was, of course, going over a concept that Xavier had grasped when he was eleven years old, so soon, he was spacing out again.
One more year.
He had one more obligatory year of courses before he finished graduate school and could begin looking for funding for his IT company. He had no doubt that his parents would try to steer him in a direction more conducive to promoting their illustrious family name, but in the twelve months before that happened, he planned to put a number of measures in place.
Measures that might just help him raise the money he needed for the startup himself. The thought made him smile – and for a bit of show, he even pretended to take notes on his pinch-faced professor’s lecture. At least for the last five minutes. When the class was over, his was the first one out the door.
It wasn’t that Lachey was a bad programmer. Quite the contrary, actually. She was pretty decent - second in the department. But when it came to speed and accuracy, Xavier found few that matched himself. Of course, he didn’t actually need to be good at programming. His family name could hypothetically carry him through any degree that he wanted. His father was a trustee on the University board – he’d bought in as soon as Xavier had been accepted.
But if there was one thing that Xavier was sick of, it was being lauded, idolized and adored when he had done absolutely nothing. Sure, there were people in his family that were genuinely talented. Certainly, his grandfather had been a pioneer in the clean energy business, and had made his first million by the time he was twenty five. But, unlike the rest of his family, Xavier didn’t necessarily see being nationally recognizable as anything convenient.
He didn’t want to coast on someone else’s expectations, and while he’d never been ungrateful for what he had, he wanted to make his own name – leave his own mark. Unluckily for him, it would take a lot more than sheer ambition to break free of the Thompson name. He’d been at Antioch for a year, and just now, he was beginning to be recognized not because of who his parents and grandparents were, but for his own talents. Xavier’s undergraduate years had been fraught with both professors and students wanting to be his best friend – paying him favors he didn’t deserve and genuinely treating him like some kind of pseudo-celebrity.
His own identity was liberating. It was a small triumph that left him feeling utterly elated. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t Garret Thompson’s son, or Reginald Thompson’s grandson. He was just Xavier. It was nice to know that he could make it on his own steam – both in his academic and social life.
Xavier couldn’t lie. When he’d first arrived at college, he’d thrown his name around almost recklessly, gaining entry to every party and free drinks at every bar. It wasn’t until people started asking him for things in return –expecting boons from him that he didn’t necessarily owe them –that he realized that it wasn’t him that people liked.
That women liked.
As he headed towards the library, the young man frowned. How many women had he fallen head over heels for only to realize that they only saw dollar signs when they looked at him? Of course, as a freshman he’d been young and naïve, susceptible to the wiles of many a college co-ed offering him a post-party tumble. Women were his weakness. Both of his sisters attested that his heart was large when it came to the fairer sex. He tended to trust too easily, and fall too quickly – which, Brandy, the eldest, was very happy to remind him he certainly didn’t need to do.
As many times as she’d explained to Xavier that he was literally the definition of what women wanted in a man, he tended to ignore her. His sister could be very material, and she changed men like she changed outfits. What Xavier was seeking – unlike most men his age – was commitment; and he honestly could give two flying fucks about his looks if they didn’t help him in that department.
Sure, he was tall. Most people never realized how tall because he was usually sitting in front of a computer, but his long form topped out at a few inches over six feet. As he stepped in front of the mirrored exterior of the library, Xavier examined his reflection critically. He wore a gray sweater over a black button up and dark wash jeans – his usual uniform. Blue eyes were framed by dark rimmed glasses and a few days-worth of dark stubble spread over his sharp chin and high cheeks. His mouth, Brandy had informed him, was criminally full – even if he didn’t understand how, and genes had given him a head of dark mahogany curls that were cropped just above his ears.
He supposed that, in reality, he wasn’t the typical nerd. He always knew when it was time to take a break from his programming and hit the gym. In fact, when he hit a roadblock in his business plan, or couldn’t crack a specific code, it was to the gym he turned first. He couldn’t take out his frustration on volatile technology, but he could take it out by pushing his body to the limit – to exhausting himself to the point where his anger dissipated and he could begin anew.
As a result of this little quirk in his personality, he wasn’t as skinny as his fellow programmers – even if his skin was just as pale from lack of sun. His broad shoulders filled out the clothes that he wore, and he sometimes had trouble finding shirts that would fit comfortably over his biceps.
Xavier supposed that he was decent looking enough. He never had any shortage of girls chasing after him – though they did it for all the wrong reasons. As his more bookish friends attested: he was a god among nerds.
He was sure his sister would take that statement and run – which
was exactly why he’d never told her about it. As close as he and Brandy were, she could be a bit overbearing at times.
With a sigh, Xavier headed into the library, making a beeline for the gleaming Apple desktops that lined the back walls. He had been doing a bit of freelance coding in a bid to raise money for his startup, and it was better that he didn’t do it on his personal computer. God knew what his parents would think if they discovered that he was putting skills they disliked to good use.
The very thought made the young man smile. Said thought, however, enveloped him so completely that he ran straight into someone emerging from the catalogued rows. To his horror, books and papers immediately flew everywhere and the young woman he’d collided with gave a low cry of dismay.
Embarrassed, Xavier immediately dropped to his knees to begin gathering up the items that he’d spilled. “I’m so sorry.” His words were earnest as he stacked several print outs on top of a number of books. “I didn’t see you.”
“God.” The girl answered in a long suffering voice, kneeling next to him as she sifted through the papers that littered the floor. “I just collated these…I’m going to have to go through them all over again.” She looked up to meet his gaze, and Xavier’s stomach did a strange little number that left him feeling hot and cold at the same time. His breath was stolen from him, and for what seemed like the better part of an eternity, all he could do was stare. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I’m just a little….stressed right now.”
He hardly registered what she was saying.
The woman before him had to be a freshman – and he said so not because she appeared particularly young, but because he hadn’t seen her before. Xavier was sure of it. If he’d ever caught even a glimpse of her, he would have remembered. Her skin was the color of coffee with cream – milk chocolate – smooth and unmarred by a single scar. The color contrasted sharply with uniquely colored gray eyes that peeked out at him from beneath a fall of straight, glossy black hair that fell just past her shoulders. Her mouth was small and pert, her lips lush and full – and her body.
A Kiss of Color: A BWWM Interracial Romance (Book 1) Page 1
