Deceit and Devotion
Page 1
Essence bestselling author RM Johnson returns with the hotly anticipated follow-up to The Million Dollar Demise. It’s his most dramatic—and passionate—installment yet.
Praise for RM Johnson and his bestselling Harris Family and Million Dollar series:
“RM Johnson explores the most significant issues in our society today with a respect, a poignancy, a knowledge that make him, undoubtedly, the writer for the new millennium.” —E. LYNN HARRIS
“The Harris Family is real life with a touch of magic. It’s a tightly knitted story of men, family, and the distance they must bridge to keep them together.” —BLACK ISSUES BOOK REVIEW
“Johnson juggles his multiple plot lines deftly, and his lean, no-frills style keeps the action moving … This novel—a Waiting to Exhale for men—seems ripe for filming.” —THE WASHINGTON POST
“From cover to cover, RM Johnson’s writing is powerful and bold. He deals with issues in prose that evokes all of the senses. His writing is from the heart, thought-provoking, and life-changing: he moves the reader from the first word.” —ERIC JEROME DICKEY
Delving into the depths of treachery and affection, RM Johnson returns with another thrilling drama.
Johnson will pull you in from the outset. When Nate Kenny convinces Daphanie Coleman to sign over custody of her newborn baby to the father, his ex-wife, Monica, vows to help the young woman. But Monica is still recovering from a gunshot to the head that put her in a coma. Daphanie hires Austin Harris to help win her baby back, but divorced and lonely, Austin falls for Monica and tries to pull her into a relationship—one she is reluctant to start.
Meanwhile, Caleb Harris, Austin’s brother, must pay back a loan shark to save his family from home eviction. But debt isn’t his only problem—his son has fallen deeper and deeper into crime. And as Daphanie struggles to win back her child, she must decide whether or not she will live by the rules of a man she despises in order to stay in her child’s life.
This electrifying novel features the unforgettable Harris brothers, the major players of Johnson’s Million Dollar series, in a gripping new drama of passion and revenge. Deceit and Devotion—a rich tapestry of family, love, and loyalty—is not to be missed.
© M. PATTERSON.
RM JOHNSON is the author of eleven novels, including bestsellers The Harris Family and The Million Dollar Divorce. He holds MFA in Creative Writing from Chicago State University. He currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Visit him at www.rmnovels.com.
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• THE SOURCE FOR READING GROUPS •
JACKET DESIGN BY DAVID TER-AVANESYAN
JACKET PHOTOGRAPHS BY BARRY DAVID MARCUS
COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
The Million Dollar Demise
The Million Dollar Deception
Why Men Fear Marriage
Do You Take This Woman?
The Million Dollar Divorce
Dating Games
Love Frustration
The Harris Family
Father Found
The Harris Men
Stacie & Cole
No One in the World (with E. Lynn Harris)
Simon & Schuster
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by R. Marcus Johnson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition February 2012
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Designed by Jill Putorti
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN: 978-1-4391-8057-0
ISBN: 978-1-4391-8059-4 (ebook)
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
About the Author
1
Monica sat at the bar of a darkened nightclub. The man standing beside her was leaning over, whispering into her ear, as he had been doing for the last hour.
He laughed to himself at something he said. Monica didn’t hear it; the techno music in the club was blasting too loud. She threw her head back, laughed with him anyway.
He waved down the bartender and ordered Monica a fourth vodka tonic without asking her if she wanted it.
His left hand was on her bare thigh, just above her knee. Her skirt hiked itself up to just inches below her crotch. Monica was too drunk and too numb to care. No one noticed how the man was touching her anyway. The place was too crowded.
Monica stole a look at herself in the mirror behind the shelves of bottles lining the bar. Her makeup was heavy over her light brown skin. Her eyeliner was dark, her lipstick bright red. Her hair was cropped short, but it had finally grown long enough to cover the surgical scar, where the bullet fragments had been removed from her skull.
Her girlfriends said her hair looked cute. They said they wished they had the courage to cut theirs all off. It wasn’t courage that had Monica walking around like this. It was the fact that someone had tried to kill her.
“Here you go, baby,” the man said. He was tall, with chiseled facial features and broad shoulders. Good-looking in a very generic way. “Drink up.”
Monica did what she was told. Her head spun more. She smiled. As she looked into the man’s eyes, he smiled back mischievously.
Yes, he was good-looking, but it wouldn’t have mattered what he looked like. Monica had thrown on a tight, low-cut, button-front dress and planted herself on this stool knowing some fool would approach her, start buying her drinks, and give her the attention she needed.
“How you feel?” the man asked. He had told her his name a few times. Monica didn’t remember it.
“I’m ready to go.”
“Let me walk you to your car.”
“Sure,” Monica said, standing on wobbly heels.
Outside, the parking lot was quiet but packed bumper-to-bumper tight. Monica leaned against her Jaguar, the man’s body pressed against hers.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“Thank you.”
He leaned in, attempting to kiss her.
“Don’t kiss me,” Monica said, turning away, allowing him to suckle her neck.
She felt one of his hands on her breast. She didn’t push him away. He quickly undid two of her buttons, and his hand was down inside the cup of her bra, pinching her nipple.
“I’m dizzy,” Monica said.
“Let me get you inside the car.”
Monica allowed herself to be lowered into the Jaguar. She heard him close the door for her and caught a glimpse of the man hurrying around the front of the car. The passenger side door opened and closed. Before Monica knew it, both her breasts were bared, the man holding them, sucking voraciously.
Monica heard him moving about the small interior, felt his hands move all about her body. She did not look at him. Her head was tilted back, eyes closed.
She felt his warm hands on her bare thighs. She felt his lips kiss her knees. She heard him gasp when he spread her legs.
Monica smiled a bit, knowing it was the shock of discovering she wore no panties.
“I want to taste you,” she heard the man say.
“Go ’head,” Monica heard herself say back.
She felt his hot, wet tongue between her legs, and now Monica’s eyes were open. The dizziness seemed to disappear. She looked down at the top of the man’s head. He was working hard, trying to impress her.
Monica moaned, not because what he was doing felt good, but because she wanted it to, needed it to. She wanted to feel something, but she couldn’t.
She moaned again. “Oh, baby. It’s so good. It’s so, damn good!” She pretended. She grabbed the back of his head with both hands, pressed his face deeper into her. “Tell me you love it.”
“I love it,” the man said, raising his head slightly, just to be heard.
Monica dropped her head back again, staring at the ceiling of her car. She thought about her failed marriage to Nate, about the failed relationship with Lewis that had followed, then the failed attempt at the reconciliation of her marriage. She told herself not to go there, not again, but she could not stop herself. She thought about how no one loved her, how no one wanted her, and she felt herself descending into the place that oftentimes had her crying when she was alone.
“Tell me you love me,” Monica said, ashamed, but needing to hear the words from someone, even a total stranger.
She felt the man’s head stop for a moment.
“Tell me you love me!”
“I love you,” said the man’s muffled voice.
“Tell me you need me!”
“I need you,” he said, still licking and lapping so much that saliva was dripping down Monica’s inner thigh onto her leather seat.
She tried to stop the tears but they kept coming down her face.
The man raised his head, staring at Monica as though she were insane. “Are you crying?”
She wiped at her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “No.”
“You are.”
“I need for you to go,” Monica said, regaining her senses and sliding up in her seat.
“But, baby. We were just—”
“I’m not your fucking baby, and I said I need you to get out!” Monica screamed.
The man blinked. “Fine, crazy bitch. But don’t you—”
“Just get the fuck out!”
The man obeyed, climbing out of the car, slamming the door hard behind him.
Monica didn’t watch as the man walked back around the front of her car, glaring at her hatefully, flipping her the bird through the windshield.
She lowered her face into her hands and continued to cry.
2
It had been months now since Nate told Monica that he was leaving her for Daphanie.
Nate lamented the decision, but he had no choice. Always wanting his own child, Nate did what had to be done.
On her hospital bed, only days after waking from a coma, Nate told Monica, in essence, that he was leaving her because she could not give him the child that Daphanie could.
Shortly thereafter, Nate found out that Daphanie was lying. The baby she was pregnant with was not his but the child of a married man she used to date, named Trevor.
Now in his mansion, the lights dim around him, Nate lowered himself into a leather chair and took a sip of the brandy he had poured moments ago. It was almost nine at night. Nathaniel, his adopted son, who had just made five years old last week, had been put to bed by Nate’s new nanny, Mrs. Langford, leaving Nate free to torture himself with the horrible state of things.
Daphanie had lied to him about the baby he was once sure was his. That hadn’t sat well with Nate, so he had gone after her for revenge.
He had accomplished what he had set out to do, causing the woman, he was sure, a pain she would never recover from. But now Nate wondered, what good did that do him? What if he had ignored the rumor that the baby was not his? He would’ve married Daphanie, and the little baby boy would’ve been there in the house with the two of them now. Nate wouldn’t be alone, trying to raise his five-year-old son by himself.
Or maybe he should’ve just ignored the knowledge of Daphanie’s pregnancy altogether. At the time, he was back with his ex-wife. He loved Monica, she loved him. She had already moved back in. They most likely would’ve been married again shortly after, but … Nate downed the rest of the brandy.
He grabbed his cell phone from the end table, dialed a number.
“Trevor,” Nate said. “How are you? Is it too late to come by?”
The little boy was beautiful, Nate thought, as he leaned over the crib and softly touched the infant’s fat cheek. This was the boy that would’ve been his, if Nate hadn’t called Daphanie back after dumping her for lying to him about the child. When he did call, he did some lying himself, said he would marry her and they would start a family of their own, only if she signed over full custody of her baby to Trevor, the biological father. She did. Nate left her standing at the altar of a huge wedding they had planned, and that’s how he ended up here.
Nate leaned into the crib and kissed the baby good night.<
br />
When he made his way downstairs, Trevor was there in the living room, pouring a couple of drinks. He was a tall, brown-skinned man. He and Nate resembled each other, both well built, both clean shaven with close-cut black, wavy hair. Trevor was a banker. Recently divorced from his wife after she found out about the baby he fathered with Daphanie, but he was doing well for himself, living in the nice new home he had bought.
Trevor held out a glass to Nate. “You okay?”
Nate took the glass—two fingers’ worth of scotch—swallowed it down, gave it back to Trevor for a refill. “Thinking if I played things the wrong way, that’s all.”
Refilling the glass and handing it back, Trevor said, “You can’t do that. Whether it was the wrong way or not, what’s done is done.” Trevor sat, inviting Nate to do the same. “For the record, I believe it was the right way.”
Nate sat. “Your son is beautiful. He’s going to be a fine boy.”
“He wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. Are you wishing you hadn’t done anything? That you could have married Daphanie, been a family?”
“No,” Nate said, sincerely now.
“It was wrong of her, lying to both of us like that.”
Nate took a sip of his drink. “I know. I’ve gotten her back for that, but I think I paid a bigger price. I loved Monica. We were together again, and I traded that for a woman I did not love and a child that wasn’t mine, even though Monica and I already had Nathaniel. I’ve lost all of that, and even after everything I’ve already done, I want Daphanie to pay more. I want to hurt her more.”
“So what are you going to do, Nate?”
Nate dug his thumb and forefinger into the inner corners of his eyes and squeezed. “Nothing,” he finally said. “I should be done with the plotting, the deception and revenge. Look where it’s gotten me. I’m alone and my son and I are missing Monica.”
“Well, go tell her that, and win her back.”
Nate gave what had been said a moment of thought. In the past he had begged Monica for forgiveness countless times, and somehow she had always found it within herself to give it to him. This time was different. “No. She already told me we were done. I can’t blame her.”