A Kiss of Color: A BWWM Interracial Romance (Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Bonus Book

  Prologue

  Chapter One: Anticipation

  Chapter Two: Accomplice

  Chapter Three: The Beginning of the End

  Chapter Four: Unexpected Arrival

  Chapter Five: Complications

  Chapter Six: Betrayal

  Chapter Seven: Refusing Goodbye

  Chapter Seven: What Was Lost

  Epilogue

  Publisher's Notes

  A Kiss of Color

  Book 3

  What Was Lost

  By: Cristina Grenier

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  Prologue

  Laying in bed with the thin blanket pulled firmly over her head, a little girl curled into a ball, trying to block out the sounds of wild coupling seeping in through the thin wall behind her headboard. She was ten years old, and the sounds scared her just as much as they kept her from getting any decent amount of rest.

  Grunting, slapping, overt yelling – it was something that she had to deal with more often than not; and Helena tried her best not to imagine what the revolving door of men that came into her mother’s house were doing with her behind closed doors.

  She knew it was none of her business. She was only ten, and whenever she could, she buried herself in her homework, read, or tried to get out with friends. The latter was hard when her mother wanted her at home constantly to cook and clean – to take care of her and the plethora of men she dragged in behind her.

  She made them dinner and cleared away beer bottles, used needles and whatever other mess was lying around – and she also had to be at her mother’s beck and call whenever they finished…what they were doing.

  That was the worst.

  Helena hated to see her mother naked with those men…she always finished tidying up as soon as she could and bolted back to her room before dissolving into tears.

  She missed her Daddy.

  Helena might hardly remember the man, but she remembered enough to know that things hadn’t been like this.

  Closing her eyes tight, she did her best to try and sleep. She knew it would be late – perhaps two or three in the morning, before her mother finished her business, and she would have to be up a few hours after that. She would be exhausted in school all day, only to come home to the same treatment in the evening.

  It would happen over, and over, and over again – until she got a slight reprieve on the weekends, and even then, Helena would just continue to pray for it to stop. None of the men that her mother brought home were good people.

  She might only be ten years old – but that was plenty old enough to know that. Not one of her mother’s boyfriends ever helped them out at home. They didn’t bring food, they didn’t clean up, and they didn’t pay any bills. If anything, they leeched from her mother. They were always asking to borrow what little money she had – and if that wasn’t the case, they usually wanted drugs or simply a place to crash.

  Which only meant more work for Helena.

  She hated this.

  As much as the little girl loved her mother….tried to love her mother… she couldn’t stand the constant stream of men. Bulky, greedy figures who looked at her with beady eyes that made her want to run as far away as she possibly could. And yet, she knew he had to stay.

  Because if she didn’t take care of her mother, who else would?

  Chapter One: Anticipation

  God, she felt like a balloon.

  Lying back on the couch, Helena heaved a sigh as she wiggled her toes. She’d been performing the little trick for the past fifteen minutes, hoping that, magically, it would lead to them wiggling into her line of sight. Obviously, no such thing had happened. Her still very pregnant belly continued to obstruct her view of her feet – and had been, she mused, for the past month.

  Of course, it wasn’t until the past two weeks or so that she’d been able to concentrate on anything but her healing body. She’d been in the hospital for ten days, healing not only physically, but emotionally as well.

  After taking a deep breath, Helena exhaled slowly, resting her palm on the swell of her belly as she remembered the last few months.

  To say they’d been hard would be an understatement. She’d been so unsure of herself…trying to contemplate whether or not she would be a good mother, why she couldn’t provide the man that she loved with the family he wanted, and why her own personal hang-ups constantly impeded her own happiness. She had been alone, but it had been a very different kind of loneliness than what she’d experienced before.

  Knowing just how powerful Xavier’s love was had only helped her feel its acute absence for the short period they’d been apart.

  Five months…Christ, had it really only been five months? For Helena, it had felt like an eternity. Though she’d tried to convince herself that she could live without him, she’d never stopped thinking about him. She saw his face every night in her dreams and every time she imagined him, her body grew hot with desperate longing. Helena had told herself that they were through – that she’d have to move on with only her memories to sustain her.

  And then, something had happened that had unexpectedly brought Xavier back into her life. When the young woman had been on the cusp of revealing to her former lover that he was going to be a father, a crazed coworker had forced his way into his apartment to have his way with her.

  While his way hadn’t been overtly sexual, it had been painful. Elliot Cauldwell had cut her until she’d lost consciousness from blood loss. According to Susan Forge, Helena’s mentor and physician, she’d come to within a hairsbreadth of losing the baby – not to mention her own life.

  The mere memory of the words made the young woman shudder. She didn’t like to recall the night Elliot had taken her. She’d been more frightened than she’d been in her entire life – not only for herself, but for her unborn son. Her crazed assailant had threatened to cut the baby from her belly – held the knife edge against the swell of her stomach – and Helena had prayed for deliverance, even as pain wracked her body.

  And deliverance had come – in the form of her incensed ex-lover.

  Though now, Helena realized, even if they had been separated, they had never truly been apart. This would be the second time that Xavier had saved her life in the past five years from simple intuition. It wasn’t necessarily that Helena believed in the supernatural, fate, or anything like that – but something drew him to her whenever she was in need.

  Even as happy as Helena was that Xavier had found her when she was at Elliot’s mercy, when she found out what he’d done to save her life, she flew off the handle in a wild rage. Had the man complete and total disregard for his own life? Elliot had been armed with a switchblade as long as her forearm, and Xavier had just attempted to jump him! The former military man had at least two or three inches and seventy pounds on him. What if something had gone wrong? One stumble – one misstep…and she could have lost him forever.

  The mere notion brought tears to Helena’s eyes. It had been hard enough spending five months without Xavier…but a lifetime? Raising a child that she was sure would have his father’s eyes? That would devastate her.

  But, Xavier was alive and well, she reminded herself, while Elliot was in a jail cell awaiting trial for stalking and attempted manslaughter. Her lover hadn’t even given a second thought to giving his life up to protect her own – something she knew wouldn’t have happened if they’d been well and truly done.
/>   To see his face before any other when she’d woken…to hear the pain in his voice when he told her how dark his life had been without her…Helena had never imagined he might want her back after the callous words she’d said to him. But, in their time apart, the young woman had come to realize the irrationality of her previous notions.

  She would never be a mother. She would ruin any child that she raised…those had been the core ideas planted in her head by her own upbringing – by the way her mother had raised her. While the life inside her had grown, Helena had come to realize that it was impossible not to love her son – to want to hold and protect him above all else. She would never, ever do anything to hurt her child – and that realization helped to dispel her prior fears.

  Certainly, she was still worried about becoming a mother. But now, she knew that nervousness to be normal. It didn’t make her want Xavier’s child any less.

  Xavier…

  Leaning forward as best she could, the young woman gazed over the partition and into the kitchen, where her lover was making their dinner – and by making dinner, he was heating up left-overs from the night before. The programmer had long attested to her that he couldn’t cook to save his life – and after sampling some of his fare, Helena definitely believed him. Besides, her man didn’t need to cook to show his prowess.

  He was extremely good at a plethora of other things.

  Helena scooted down to the end of the sofa to get a better look at the man in the kitchen. Xavier had just finished a workout in the home gym he’d put together in the basement and the thin cotton t-shirt he wore clung to the glorious, lean muscles of his torso. Sweatpants slung low on his hips revealed just a scant inch or so of the pale V leading down to the substantial package at the crux of his legs. His hair was pulled up into a loose knot at the base of his neck, and his glasses were as absent as the alluring scruff on his jaw was present. The man had taken the past two weeks off work in order to help her get through her recovery, and it filled Helena’s heart to know that no one but her saw him like this.

  Casual…disheveled and undeniably sexy. It wasn’t that she didn’t like seeing the man in suits and button-ups. If anything else, she appreciated his calm, authoritative appeal almost as much as she liked watching him like this.

  But here, with her, he was utterly and completely relaxed. It was almost, she realized, as if she’d never left…even though she knew things between them were different now.

  They were going to be parents. Where, months ago, the issue had divided them without contest, now they looked forward to a bright future. Helena was beginning to get into the idea of holding a soft, warm child to her breast and watching it grow – just as she was finally coming to terms with the idea that she could make the family that she had always wanted.

  Just like Xavier.

  She understood now that she could not allow Janette Freeman to be the one who shaped her ideas about motherhood. Nor, indeed, could she let Xavier’s parents and their ridiculous opinions of her derail the enthusiasm she had for rearing her own child. No, all that mattered was herself, her lover, and the product of that love.

  “Here you are, hon.”

  Xavier set a plate of leftover paella in front of her, along with a glass of her favorite juice. As hungry as she was, Helena couldn’t decide which to salivate over more – her lover or her dinner. Just seeing the man standing over her, his tall, lean form rippling with strength, made her want to take him to bed.

  There wasn’t much these days that didn’t inspire Helena’s lust for her programmer CEO boyfriend. Whether it was pregnancy or her newfound confidence in herself, she couldn’t get enough of him…and there was rarely a time when he wasn’t willing to indulge her every sexual whim.

  “Helena, don’t look at me like that.”

  Except, however, when he was trying to get her to eat.

  The young woman batted her eyelashes innocently. “Like what?”

  The dark-haired man chuckled lowly, extending a fork to her as he sank down onto the plush leather cushion beside her. “As if you’d rather be eating me than your dinner.”

  “I would.” She admitted blatantly, frowning almost petulantly before taking the offered fork and beginning to scoot closer to the coffee table. Xavier gently wrapped an arm around her, helping her move forward so she could lean against him – which, to say the least, didn’t do much for her raging libido.

  The man was all hard angles and smelled of sweat and masculinity. The more carnal part of Helena’s brain whispered to her to just jump him – he wouldn’t refuse once she’d gotten his clothes off.

  “After dinner, honey.” Xavier winked at her, cupping her chin to place a brief, indulgent kiss on her lips. “I’m not complaining about how much you want me…just reminding you that you need to eat to keep your strength up…and his.” He rubbed a large hand over the swell of Helena’s abdomen and the young woman’s burgeoning lust quickly faded behind a haze of affection.

  She never could have imagined how much she’d missed in her pregnancy, not having Xavier by her side. The feeling she got whenever he stroked over her stomach, leaned down to kiss her and whisper to the baby, or lay his head against her at night to marvel at the child they’d created was incomparable. Though Helena would never have robbed him of his child, she realized she had robbed herself by refusing to speak with him for so long.

  Now, she only had one month of pregnancy left, but she knew that she wanted Xavier to be present for every moment of it.

  Resting her hand atop his, Helena smiled, raising her chin slightly to kiss him again, this time softer, lingering for almost a full minute. When she finally pulled away from him, the man made a low sound of complaint that had her smiling in triumph. “Still want to eat first?” Her voice was low and husky.

  Xavier sighed, brushing his lips across her forehead a moment before taking her plate to set on the table before them. Helena squealed in surprise, the sound turning to a delighted laugh as Xavier hefted her into his arms – pregnant belly and all, to carry her towards the bedroom. “You’re going to eat.” He assured her as he lay her gently down on the bed, covering her smaller form with his own as he gazed down at her. Helena shivered at his wicked, adoring smile. “Right after I do.”

  A low moan of anticipation left her at his words, and as his mouth covered her own, Helena wondered how she could ever have doubted her desperate love for this man.

  **

  He wanted her to marry him.

  Xavier gazed down at the woman sleeping peacefully beside him, his heart swelling with affection. She made the cutest little faces when she slept and always cuddled closer the moment he attempted to move away.

  Not that he was very prone to that – not after being almost half a year without her. Xavier wanted to be as close to his lover as it was humanly possible to be, every second of every day. Knowing that he would have to go back to work soon was a curse, and he counted down the days almost petulantly.

  He would never be separated from her again – of that he would make certain.

  Frowning deeply, the CEO ran his finger over one of many scabbed cuts that covered Helena’s arms and legs. Every time he thought of Elliot Cauldwell, he wanted to ring the bastard’s neck. How dare he touch Helena. How dare he hurt her.

  The man had a known history of violence, which made Xavier confront Susan at her office in his anger. The Doctor had, of course, apologized – and so had the school. While the institution was exactly that, and Xavier didn’t know how remorseful they could be, Doctor Forge’s grief was evident in every glance she’d payed Helena in her hospital bed.

  Xavier knew that he wasn’t helping her guilt by accusing her, but he’d been scared out of his wits. He’d never seen so much blood in his life – and the prospect of losing the woman he loved and his unborn child was enough to steal the breath from his lungs and make his heart race.

  He’d been so close…so very close.

  If it hadn’t been for Brandy calling him…

/>   Xavier took a steadying breath, stroking hair gently from his lover’s brow. He may have come close, but Helena was still with him. Still breathing – still living, by his side. In a matter of weeks, they’d be parents. He would have a son.

  He intended to ask Helena to be his for the rest of their lives well before that.

  Xavier’s desire came not from some hackneyed idea that men and women should be married before having children or protecting Helena’s propriety. They’d been together for close to six years. And he had loved her, perhaps, even longer than that.

  It was far past time to put a ring on her finger.

  The only reason he’d ever hesitated was because he knew how she felt about her work. Helena wanted to have her MD well in hand before making any big changes in her life. Of course, having a baby hadn’t been in their plans either, but after a little soul-searching, both of them were in a better place than they’d been before.

  And Xavier thought Helena might be much more receptive to the idea of marriage before she finished her MD than she was a year ago.

  He wouldn’t push her. That was never his aim. The wedding itself would probably come after she completed her schooling, but engagement was another matter entirely. He’d already bought the ring – something discreet and small but beautifully cut. Definitely Helena’s style more than any large and gaudy bauble.

  Xavier was literally chomping at the bit to ask her to be his wife…but he knew it wasn’t as simple as that.

  He had to have a plan.

  For all his life, he’d wanted the family his parents had never provided for him – but he’d known that in order to have that family, he’d have to be able to support them.

  The recent merger that his company had gone through more than assured that. In his short three years in business, Xavier had far eclipsed his parents fortune and now had a sizeable one himself. He would be able to ensure that he raised his son properly, lavished him with affection, and put his family first.