Once again, her words didn’t seem to affect him in the least. “Are you done now?”
Letting a heavy breath out through her nose, Nina nodded. “Yes.”
“I disagree that the kiss should not have happened. I’m not sorry that it did. It made me realize that you still have feelings for me and that maybe we should try again.”
“That is absolutely not what the kiss meant,” Nina said in a firm voice.
“That kiss told me everything I needed to know.”
“It was a mistake.”
“Not to me. I want us to start again. You and me, start over.”
His words were tempting—oh, so tempting. But not only was he too late, she had no intention of risking her heart to him again.
“That’s not possible,” Nina said.
“I know it’ll take time for you to trust me, but I’m willing to do whatever it takes to show you we belong together.”
Nina shook her head vehemently. “We’re not getting back together, Reese.”
“You’re upset, and you think you can’t trust me. But if you give me a chance, you’ll see that I’ve changed. I was nineteen. I broke up with you because I wasn’t the right man for you then. I was immature and getting into all kinds of stupid shenanigans that didn’t matter but seemed important at the time.”
“More important than me,” Nina said with a trace of bitterness.
His eyes didn’t leave hers. “You deserved better. A good man.”
She should tell him now. “You’re right, and I found him while traveling.”
His eyebrows snapped together in surprise. They stared at each other in the ensuing silence.
“What do you mean, you found him?”
“You and I aren’t getting back together, because I’m seeing someone, and it’s serious.”
Chapter 4
Had he heard her correctly?
“What do you mean you’re seeing someone? You were single when you left. You were supposed to be helping people on your trip, not finding a man!”
She appeared startled by his angry outburst. To his own ears, he sounded ridiculous, but he couldn’t compute what the hell she’d just told him. Nothing she said made sense.
“I have a right to date, and I can’t help what happened.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
“Who is this guy?”
“Coincidentally, he’s from the Atlanta area. His name is Andy von Trapp. His family—”
“Hold up, Andy von Trapp? His parents run Von Trapp & Morrison, Inc.? That little weasel?” He remembered Andy from their prep school days. They attended the same academy.
Her eyes widened. “Don’t call him that.”
“He’s a slimeball.”
“You’re out of line. He’s my boyfriend.”
She looked genuinely upset, but he didn’t give a shit. She could do way better than that dude.
“Back in prep school, we called him Saint Andy because he never did anything wrong and always did whatever his parents told him. He’s a goddamn goody-two-shoes.”
While Reese and his friends were smoking cigarettes in the bathroom and skipping school in new sports cars they were too young to appreciate, Saint Andy stayed out of trouble and at the end of the day obediently climbed into the chauffeur-driven car that took him to and from school.
“So, he behaved himself and acted like a decent human being, but that was a problem for you and your crew.” Nina propped her hands on her hips.
When she put it that way, he really sounded terrible, but Andy was one of his least favorite people.
“He ratted us out senior year by telling the headmaster that we did the senior prank.”
Reese had hacked into the school’s server and uploaded a short porno clip. The five-minute video had interrupted the headmaster’s weekly announcements, broadcasted on flat screens in all the classrooms. Their IT specialist had to shut down the entire network to stop the explicit video from playing.
Reese and his two friends had almost gotten suspended, but his mother stepped in and fixed the problem. To this day, he wasn’t sure what she did, but he figured she’d thrown money at the problem to make it go away.
“He’s the one who told on you?” Nina asked.
“Yeah. Your boyfriend,” Reese said snidely.
Her delicate jaw tightened. “You’ve convinced me even more that I’ve made the right decision. He was a good student who grew into a good man.”
Reese chuckled and shook his head. “How’d you meet the saint?”
“Stop calling him that.”
“Why? He’s such a good man.”
“Why can’t you—”
A knock sounded on the door, and they both swung their heads in that direction.
“That’s my dinner.”
He watched Nina walk to the door, his gaze tracing the roundness of her ass and the way the T-shirt fit snug around her torso.
He was anxious to touch her, taste her, savor her lips again. But how the hell was he supposed to win her back with Andy von Trapp’s cockblocking ass in the way?
The hotel employee brought in the food on a dome-covered tray that he placed on the dining table near the window.
“Thank you.” Nina pulled a few bills from her purse and handed them to the young man.
His eyes widened. “Thank you,” he said gratefully before hurrying out.
“How did you two meet?” Reese asked again as soon as they were alone again.
Nina let out an exaggerated sigh. “We met on an organic farm in New Zealand. Naturally, I couldn’t believe I was halfway around the world and met someone I was familiar with from the States. I didn’t know him, but I was familiar with his family name. We got along well and learned we had a lot in common—from food preferences to favorite color. It was as if…I don’t know, like we were destined to be together.”
That hurt. She didn’t have to say that.
“What was he doing in New Zealand?”
“The same thing I was. Traveling and kinda finding himself before he had to get more involved with the family business. His mother gave him time to do whatever he wanted before he had to come back and start at Von Trapp & Morrison. So for more than a year, he joined me on my travels.”
“You’ve been involved with him for over a year?” Reese asked, incredulous.
“Yes,” Nina replied in a small voice.
“You sure know how to keep a secret.”
That explained the sharp drop-off in communication. He sent messages through her sister, Lindsay, but Nina’s responses were rare, and their conversations often cut short. He thought she might have still been upset about the kiss, but the reason was much worse than he’d expected. There was another man in the picture.
She had the grace to look shamefaced and stared down at her feet.
“Von Trapp & Morrison will soon start building resorts, won’t they?” Reese asked.
“Yes. They’re expanding and setting up an office in New York.”
“Isn’t that nice. Both of you have an interest in the hotel business. Sounds like a match made in heaven.”
Nina leveled a stare at him. “Before Andy’s mother died, she wanted to expand into resorts and set up an office in New York. He’s carrying on her dream.”
“His mother died?”
He hadn’t heard, but he and Andy didn’t run in the same circles now that they were out of school. They’d never run in the same circles when they were in school. Reese had been pretty popular as a wide receiver on the football team, and though he hadn’t been good enough to play college ball, he’d been a minor celebrity.
Andy had been quieter, but Reese had always gotten the impression that Andy thought Reese and his friends were beneath him. They never spoke much, but Andy’s disdain could be felt from across the room whenever they were in the same vicinity. As if the mere fact that he was not in the limelight made him better than Reese and his friends.
“She passed away
six months ago. Look, I think you should go. You’re not going to get the answers you came here for.”
“We’ve known each other since senior year. You can’t just throw away eleven years of knowing each other.”
“I’m not throwing away anything. Friendship is on the table, Reese. That’s the only thing I can offer you, the same as always.”
He didn’t want friendship. He wanted her as his woman. He wanted the right to pull that T-shirt over her head and peel those little gray shorts off her hips and reacquaint himself with every inch of her body—so much fuller and riper than when they’d first met as teens. Yet she’d basically told him that even though she was back in the city, he couldn’t touch her.
He’d never expected this turn of events, and he needed time to regroup and reassess the situation. “I’ll leave you alone with your dinner.” He headed to the door.
Nina swung toward him as he passed. “Reese, did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
He slammed the door on his way out.
Reese slammed the door at his apartment.
He’d slammed Nina’s door. Slammed his car door. Now this door.
“Fuuuuuck!” he yelled. Frustration ate him alive every time he thought about Nina with Andy.
His housekeeper, Javier, appeared in the foyer. The older man raised an eyebrow at him. “Bad day?”
“Sorry about that. I thought you’d already left,” Reese muttered, moving past him.
Usually, Javier went grocery-shopping on Friday mornings and prepared a couple of meals to get Reese through the weekend until he returned on Monday.
“I’m on my way out. Running a little late today, but dinner is finished and warming in the oven. Do you need anything else before I leave?”
Reese paused on the way back to his bedroom. “No. See you next week.”
He used to share a house with his brother, but around the same time Stephan moved his now wife, Roselle, into that house, Reese moved here to give them privacy and finally have his own place.
In the center of the living room, a handmade table made of dark wood that his designer had imported from Costa Rica, sat on a brown and cream area rug, and a seven-shelf gray storage unit across from the single gray L-shaped couched was backlit and contained books, photos, and other items of sentimental value. With gray walls and hardwood floors, the room would be dark if not for the glass wall with open curtains that let in plenty of natural light. However, he kept his bedroom—decorated in similar colors—dark with black-out curtains set to open on a timer during the week to gently wake him up with sunlight instead of the jarring sound of an alarm clock.
In the dressing room, he tossed his shirt in the hamper and then went into the bedroom. Sinking on the edge of the king-size bed, he rested his elbows on his knees and stared at the original Jacob Lawrence painting hanging on the wall.
He mulled Nina’s reaction to his words and came to the conclusion that he had been too eager. He’d been fully ready to make a full-court press back into her life when she returned, but that was not to be, and all because of Andy.
He had to recalibrate. Slow down. Adjust the rate at which he came at Nina before he scared her off completely.
Some people might call him calculating, but he didn’t like acting on emotion. Reason and logic were his preferred bedfellows. Logical. Methodical.
Yes, he’d messed up years ago, but he and Nina belonged together. He wanted her, and he was going to get her. When they had been a couple, she’d been into him. Really into him, with feelings as deep and as bottomless as the ocean. He knew because she’d said those exact words to him.
They spent the better part of their senior year together and remained a couple during their first two semesters of college. But they attended universities in different cities, and the temptation to hook up with other women was great. While his boys were having the time of their lives with pretty coeds they’d met at parties or elsewhere on campus, he had to be satisfied with phone sex from his girlfriend hundreds of miles away. It was tough, and her conversations about marriage and kids only fueled his unrest.
She was so sure about what she wanted and had her future all planned. While the furthest in the future he’d thought about was jumping in the shower and jerking off until he could see her again. Rather than cheat, the summer before their sophomore year, he told her he wanted to break things off. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The following week, he and a bunch of friends flew to the Hamptons. While there, a girl he barely knew but who had made several passes at him—Kelly Strong—arrived at the beach, too.
If he’d known what was to come, he wouldn’t have done what he did when Kelly showed up at his door. To this day, his biggest regret was opening that damn door.
She was gorgeous and sexy and looked him up and down with a seductive smile. “Hi, Reese.”
“What are you doing here?”
She shrugged. “Just being neighborly. Mind if I come in?”
Horny from a night of flirting back and forth at the fire on the beach, that was all it took for him to widen the door and let her in. He was back to doing as he pleased, being a playboy.
Two days later, he returned to Atlanta, and Nina showed up unexpectedly when he had a few friends over for a party while his mother was out of town. The minute he saw her, he recognized the grave mistake he’d made. He let his hormones make a decision that solely belonged to his heart and head. He realized he had a great relationship, someone who cared about him, checked up on him, and, in general, looked out for him. He decided they could work through the distance.
Then Kelly showed up, and the bomb dropped. Kelly and Nina were enemies, and within one hour of Kelly’s arrival, she told Nina everything, and apparently in vivid detail.
Nina confronted him in his bedroom, and that’s when his sentence without her began. The begging, the pleading, the fight that ensued had torn him apart from the inside out. He’d done everything to hold onto her, including deny that anything happened with Kelly and finally ended by forcing himself on top of Nina on the bed so she couldn’t get away.
“Get off of me!” Nina screamed.
“No!”
Reese buried his face in her neck. She refused to touch him in any way, laying her hands flat on the bed, as if he was tainted.
“Get off me, Reese, please. Leave me alone,” Nina said, her voice thickened by tears.
“Not until you forgive me. I didn’t know.”
“Never.”
“I messed up. She doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“I don’t mean anything to you. It’s only been one damn week.”
“You’re my everything.” He whispered the words into her neck.
“I don’t believe you.” Tears streamed down the sides of her face and pooled on his temple.
They stayed that way for an eternity until he realized that not only was his temple wet but so was her neck. Not from her tears. But from his.
He sniffed and lifted his head to look down into her eyes. “I’m sorry, Nina.”
She kept her gaze on the ceiling. “Get up.”
He rolled off her into a sitting position and dragged a palm down his face to erase the evidence of his weakness. He reached for her with the other hand, but she jerked away.
“You will never touch me again.” She left him on the bed and fled the house.
She refused to see him or talk to him, and it took more than a year to maneuver his way back into her life. He’d hated himself every single day back then. Hated himself for hurting her and destroying the realest, purest relationship he had.
Over the years, he watched from the sidelines as other men took his place in her life. That was its own special kind of torment. But being without her would have been worse.
When she kissed him on the anniversary of her father’s passing, opportunity struck with the speed and heat of lightning. The door cracked open. He’d fully intended to kick it all the way in, but not long after, Nina lef
t the country.
At this point, he should leave well enough alone and accept that he really and truly missed his chance. After all, she just told him she was involved with another man—in a serious relationship. But he couldn’t get that kiss off his mind. He couldn’t accept that it was a fluke, ensconced in the past, never to be repeated. He couldn’t accept that all that was left between them was mere friendship. Not when he sensed she still had feelings for him.
Nah, friendship was wholly and unequivocally off the table.
He lost Nina by his own actions and intended to win her back the same way. No way could he leave her alone.
He wouldn’t be Reese Brooks if he did.
Chapter 5
She was a vision in the satin bridesmaid’s dress. There were two other bridesmaids, but Nina outshined them both. Her chestnut skin brightened the champagne color, instead of the other way around. The plunging neckline and spaghetti straps presented her breasts as a feast for the eyes. Reese licked his lips. He’d hardly looked at anyone else since he escorted her down the aisle.
Andy hadn’t attended Lindsay and Malik’s wedding, and he wasn’t at the reception, either. Good. Reese didn’t know how he’d react when he saw him, and at least today he’d have unrestricted time with Nina. At the moment, he hung back and let people who didn’t know she was back in the country or hadn’t seen her before today spend time with her.
He ambled over to where his cousin Ivy and older sister Ella were standing and whispering. Ivy’s husband, Lucas, was on the other side of the ballroom. Lucas had developed a close relationship with Lindsay, mentoring her and introducing her to his literary agent. She gave him much of the credit for her success.
Ivy smiled as Reese approached. Tall and statuesque, she was his deceased uncle’s only daughter. She worked with her four brothers at Johnson Enterprises in Seattle and oversaw the restaurant part of the business, Ivy’s, a fine-dining restaurant, and The Brew Pub, a casual dining establishment.
Reese slipped between both women and gave her a hug. This was the first time he’d had a chance to speak to her today.
Deeper Than Love (Brooks Family Book 6) Page 3