Kicking Dreams Read online

  Kicking Dreams

  L. Duarte

  Contents

  1. Purple

  2. Color Blinded

  3. Sunflower Yellow

  4. Spring Green

  5. Oblique

  6. Grayish

  7. Gray Gray Gray

  8. Sunset Pink

  9. Gray Gray and a Crack of Color

  10. Missing the Colors

  11. Black and White

  12. Wolf Brown

  13. Fading Colors

  14. What’s the Color of my Soul?

  15. Red

  16. Blinding White

  17. What’s the Color of Hope?

  18. Blending Colors

  19. Meteor Showers

  20. Black

  21. When Colors Blur

  22. Oblique

  23. Yellow

  24. Elusive and Infinite Blue

  25. Lilac

  26. Exotic Colors

  27. Tropical Colors on a Summer Evening

  28. The Color of a Dreamy Misty

  29. Colors Can Take Away the Pain

  30. Oblique Colors Are Confusing

  31. The Shade of Water

  32. Pink, Red, Purple. The Colors of Love

  33. Bright Colors

  34. The Color Gold

  35. All the Colors of the Rainbow

  36. Yellow

  37. Dandelion White

  38. Black Thunder

  39. Gray Sits Between Black and White

  40. The Color of Despair

  41. The Color of Fear

  42. Black

  43. An Autumn Day Color

  Copyright ©2018 By L. Duarte

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  License Notes

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  To my husband and children

  1

  Purple

  January 1st 2016

  “What I am proposing is a marriage of convenience,” spoke the stranger sitting next to me.

  “Me? Marry you?” I asked in a rush of confusion.

  “Marriage,” my father repeated the word as if tasting it on his tongue. From behind his desk, his eyes fixed on the man who had earlier identified himself as Aaron Walker.

  “Yes. Marriage. The payment for the bet you’ve lost,” Aaron Walker said, crossing his long legs and reclining back on the seat next to me. “As I recall, you’ve offered your daughter as payment.”

  “What bet?” I asked, my eyes darting between my father and the stranger.

  “Yes. I did.” Dad enunciated each word slowly, his narrowed gaze studied the man across from him. “I’m aware of that. A wedding, however, is not what I had in mind,” Dad said.

  “What exactly did you have in mind?” Aaron Walker asked on a clipped tone.

  “What bet?” I asked again, my voice an unrecognizable high pitch.

  “What would this ‘convenience’ marriage entail?” Dad asked.

  “I haven’t agreed to marry anyone,” I said, shaking my head vehemently.

  “That’s none of your concern, Sullivan,” Aaron replied.

  “And if I refuse to go along with your ridiculous and manipulative charade?” Dad asked with the apparent casualty of someone discussing the weather.

  “Your freedom, Sullivan, it would come to an end,” Walker responded, his voice cold but resonating.

  “I hardly believe this would hold up in court.” Dad leaned back in the old battered leather chair, his skinny and pointy fingers resembling a hawk’s claws pulling hair from his ear.

  “You’re right,” Walker said with a menacing amusement in his voice. “A pathetic case. Plaintiff won a hand of poker. Defendant refuses to pay.”

  “Am I the wager?” I asked. My eyes bouncing from Dad to the man sitting next to me like a ping-pong ball. That’s what they had said before, but I needed to hear it again.

  “No. It would not hold up in court,” Walker agreed pulling a folder from his briefcase. “Therefore, I gathered some interesting data to, uh, let’s say, motivate you to conclude the payment out of the judicial system.” He set the folder of documents on the desktop and shoved it in dad’s direction. The binder slid along the mahogany, landing into Dad’s hand with a muffled thump.

  Dad held the documents up to his nose, his small, round eyes narrowing as his pointing finger sifted through the sheets of papers.

  “Cheap. Unoriginal. Blackmail.” He dropped the folder on the desktop. “You’re worse than your father.” Dad spit.

  “Leave my father out of this.” The stranger’s voice was a low growl. A vein pulsed at his temple.

  “You S.O.B.,” Dad said, using a controlled tone.

  “No, no, no. Let’s, um, let’s go back to the convenience marriage thingy,” I protested.

  “One must lower his standards when dealing with a scam artist,” Walker said.

  Dad tapped an open palm to the documents, the sharp sound startling me.

  “Elaborate on your proposition,” Dad said, leaning forward on the chair, his lips pressed into a thin, ashen line.

  “Simple. Your daughter and I will wed, and all those evidences…” He pointed to the folder and snapped his fingers. “Will—poof—disappear.”

  “And what will be the terms of this wedding? If I agree to it, of course.” Dad’s breath became slow as if he was conserving the air.

  “After our marriage, our assets will become community property. In this case, I’ll become the administrator of all her estates.”

  “Well, that’s going to be my role,” Dad said. As per Dad, my maternal grandparents had written the testament in a way that at the age of eighteen, I would no longer be required to use the executor of the inheritance they left me.

  “Yes. Which brings us to this predicament.” Walker rested his elbows on the armrest, and clasped his fingers in front of him. “You and her executor stole, laundered, and committed many accounts of fraud along the several years since her grandparents died.”

  “Dad? What is he saying?” I asked only to be ignored. Again.

  “I need time. Time to think about it.” Dad’s fingers went to his ear, and he pulled hairs as one would pull weeds from a garden.

  “Nah.” Walker tsked his tongue. “I am afraid I can’t give you time. You see, from where I’m standing, either option will give me great pleasure. You go to jail. Or I marry your daughter. Either way is fine with me.”

  “Dad, you can’t possibly consider this.” I scoot to the edge of the chair. “Hear me out. I’ll never press charges against you. It’s my estate. I can tell the judge that I let you make whatever choices you made.”

  “Shut up, Evangeline,” Dad snapped wi
thout looking at me.

  “No. I won’t.” My fingers gripped the edge of the desk, my knuckles turning white. “Dad, please. You can’t possibly be considering this.”

  Dad turned to me, his face impassive. “Shut. Up.”

  Walker’s body tensed next to me.

  I shot a glance at him. The muscles on his face seemed ready to snap, his jaws clenched, and a small vein protruded on his forehead. My lack of cooperation was upsetting them both.

  “Unfortunately for you, Evangeline, it doesn’t work that way.” Aaron Walker turned to face me for the first time since we started the meeting. “Nothing you say in a court of law will exempt your father from the crimes he committed when he stole from your estate.” His cold gaze met mine. And though his eyes were frosty cold, I felt a wave of heat creeping along my neck.

  The reality and the likely outcome of the situation sobered me further. Helplessness washed over me with the force of a wave after a tsunami. I sagged back against the chair.

  “I guess I don’t have an alternative,” Dad said.

  He didn’t have an alternative? Heck, I didn’t have an alternative.

  “That’s settled. We’ll wed on the fourth,” said the stranger in front of me.

  I examined him again, studying the color of his soul. My secret superpower was to be able to see the color of people’s souls. Every person emanated an aura in the form of colors. In the case of the man sitting next to me, swirls of purple undulated around him like a flag in the wind. Purple was a color of power. However, it was not as revealing as many other colors. Power revealed little about a person. It could be used for bad or good; a choice made by the master of the soul.

  “In three days?” My heart stumbled and floundered at the idea of marrying the strange man I had met less than a half hour prior.

  “Yes.” Aaron Walker’s deep voice was calm, menacing. However, it obviously issued a challenge for me to disagree or defy him.

  The muffled rattling of his elegant fingers drumming on the wooden armrest distracted me.

  I snapped out of it, returning to the issue at hand. The imminence of his words wrapped around my mind like barbed wire.

  “But, um, today is the first,” I protested, biting my lower lip to stop it from trembling. Contrary to his stern voice, mine sounded weak, uncertain and feeble.

  It was a surreal scenario. The date was the first of January—three days before I turned eighteen. But the incredibly worthy piece of information was: it was the 21st century.

  Yet, there I sat, in a room that gave the keen sense of the Victorian-style era. And, like a plausible Victorian era maiden, I had my eyes down and hands folded over my lap, calmly talking over tea about my arranged marriage. Well in truth, I was not calm. I was in the verge of puking, but they didn’t need to know that.

  The scenario was not at all what I had cultivated on my youthful dreams.

  Prior to that conversation, going back to when I paired my dolls and walked them down an imaginary aisle, I had a dream.

  It was a dream that lacked ambition or sophistication. Nonetheless, it was my dream. All I had desired. It included what our ancestors solemnly referred to as the “pursuit of happiness,” a simple concept that they granted enough importance as to be included in our constitution.

  I dreamed of love, laughter, freshly baked biscuits, and a porch wrapping around the house.

  I pictured myself with one foot on the floor, lazily propelling a wicker swing, and inhaling the sweet scent of petunias cascading in a festival of colors from hanged pots.

  In that dream I would have borne my lovely husband two—okay, maybe five children.

  In the evenings, my husband and I would watch the sun setting behind the mountains, listening to the giggling sound of our children as they caught fireflies.

  “Is there a problem?” My supposed betrothed asked, snatching me out of the reverie while kicking all my dreams.

  “How does this even work? We can’t just get married like that. Don’t we need a license or something?”

  “Later today your father will accompany us to the city hall for the license. The seventy-two hour waiting period should be enough time for any preparation.”

  I squared my shoulders, lifted my chin, gathered all my courage, and said. “Well, before I agree to anything, I have a request.”

  “Do you now?” Aaron’s golden-brown eyes darkened a shade but if he was surprised, he hid it well.

  Without a care in the world, he crossed his long legs, sipped his black coffee and stared at me with unflinching eyes.

  Oh boy. His overbearing presence had my thinking slowed down to a snail pace. His body took too much space in the room. It emanated a masculinity and fierceness that stirred unbidden feelings low in my belly. As a result I felt intimidated.

  “Proceed,” he said, waving an impatient hand.

  However, his eyes held a hint of amusement as if he had noticed my admiration of his male attributes.

  “Yes—” I said, wetting my lips. My already flushed face going beet red.

  Before I completed the sentence, my father interrupted.

  “This is not the time, nor are we in any condition to be making demands, Evangeline.”

  “It’s not a demand.” I filled my lungs with air and my mind with courage. “As I said, it’s a request.” I turned my body so I was fully facing the man to whom I was, as of twenty minutes prior, betrothed.

  The smell of sandalwood and oak moss emanating from him hit my nostrils. Oh, it was delicious, and heady, and distracting.

  I cleared my throat hoping to empty my hazed thoughts as I continued, “I want to stipulate a date allowing me to ask for a dissolution of our marriage should, uh, we fail to make each other happy.” I pressed my lips together and held my breath.

  “You want to enter this marriage with an expiration date,” he concluded.

  “Well, yeah.” I nodded. “I want to keep my options open. In the case we don’t come to appreciate each other’s company. I don’t want to be condemned to a lifetime of misery, nor do I want you sending my father to jail, if at a later date, I ask you for a divorce. It’s a fair compromise.”

  I was bluffing. The man by my side examined me with shrewd eyes. He knew he had won this battle whether he agreed to my terms or not.

  “And if I don’t concede to your…request?”

  “Then,” I said as I raised my head forging a bravery I was far from feeling. “I’ll require more time to think about your proposal.” I only hoped I had a solid poker face.

  “And how long do you suppose this trial should last?”

  “Let’s say, uh, five years.”

  “And you suppose we add it as a clause to our marriage contract?”

  “No, your word will suffice.” Not that I had any reason whatsoever to take him at his word.

  “You have my word.”

  I churned his words in my mind. He had just granted my request, reduced my sentence to five years instead of life without the possibility of parole.

  My gaze found his stare. The glint in his shredded eyes told me he had known I was bluffing.

  It intrigued me as to why he had agreed. He had the upper hand, and he knew it. Oh well, perhaps he didn’t want to be bound to someone like me for the rest of his days.

  Of one thing I was sure, he had a great deal to gain from the union. My inheritance was not something to sneeze at. However, I was sure he had an ulterior motive beyond my endowment.

  Aaron Walker was no gold-digger. He was a billionaire in his own right.

  Well, whatever the reason he had, it mattered little to me. My only desire at that moment was to free my father from his threats.

  He had enough evidence to send my dad to jail for a few decades.

  Since it had been decreed I was to wed him, I allowed my eyes to unabashedly roam over the body of my future husband.

  He was all muscles, strength, and length—irrevocably handsome.

  His apparel was composed of an impecc
able three-piece suit, as black as his hair and his mood.

  After the extensive examination, my eyes settled on his. For a brief moment, I saw a hint of curiosity as his stare sustained mine.

  Resisting the urge to look away, I maintained eye contact. His eyes, set under thick and luscious brows, were luminous like warm honey dripping from a honeycomb. They examined me like I was an insect under a microscope.

  His presence was magnetic and held a mystery I found myself itching to unveil.

  Though it was not the intimidating aura floating around him, nor his undeniable beauty that appealed to me the most. Of all his attributes, what spiked my interest was the scar on his right cheek. It was almost unnoticeable. At the same time, it beckoned me to it. It added a hint of vulnerability to him.

  Obviously, we stood over two different platforms. To him, our agreement equaled a business transaction, a debt collection. To me, well, I was yet to decide what it was to me. One thing was certain; I despised the idea of marrying him, but for some reason unbeknownst to me, I hadn’t found in myself the drive to despise him.

  Aaron was more than the persona he presented himself to be. That I knew for sure. Even though I didn’t know him from Adam, something about the color of his soul spoke to mine beyond what words can communicate. It was as if I had known him from somewhere but couldn’t remember.

  He conducted himself with the prowess that seven years ago—when he was twenty-five—had ranked him number one on a Forbes list of the nation’s richest men under the age of thirty.