Deeper Than Love (Brooks Family Book 6)

by Delaney Diamond

  “So he wants the same future that you do? Marriage, children?” The questions were spoken in a mocking tone.

  Nina shifted. “I…”

  “You haven’t discussed the future with him, have you? Yet you’re willing to throw away your future with Andy. And if Reese doesn’t want what you want, are you willing to settle?” Gloria placed her hand over Nina’s. “What do you think your father would say?”

  Nina pulled her hand away. “Don’t bring up my father.”

  “I only did because I know how much you valued his guidance and opinion, and he didn’t approve of Reese. Andy is the kind of man your father would approve of.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. Andy wasn’t completely honest with me, and I’m sure my father would not be pleased with his deception.”

  “Reese is much worse,” Gloria said with much gravity in her voice. “You and Andy can build something together—a business, a family, a legacy. Reese is no good for you.”

  “He loves me.”

  “Love is a fallacy. Passion is fleeting.”

  “Lindsay found love and passion with Malik.”

  “We’ll see how long that relationship lasts,” Gloria said sarcastically. “How do you know he loves you?”

  “He shows me. He told me.”

  “Again? The same way he loved you when he slept with a girl who hates you?”

  “He said he didn’t know.”

  “And you believe him?” Gloria looked and sounded appalled.

  Nina squeezed her hands together in her lap in an effort to maintain control. She would not let her mother’s bitterness stifle her happiness. “Is this why you invited me to brunch? Did Corbin send you here to convince me to ditch Reese and get back together with Andy?” Their meal would be cut short if that was the case.

  “No one sends me to do anything. I’m here because you’re my daughter, and I have very important information for you.”

  “And what information is that?”

  Gloria grimaced. “I hate doing this, but I don’t want you to make a mistake. Take a look at these pictures.” She removed an envelope from her purse and shoved it across the table to Nina.

  Nina stared at it, her body suddenly consumed with fear.

  “Go ahead,” Gloria nudged quietly.

  “What is this?” Her voice shook.

  “Look at them, Nina. Look at the man who you say loves you.”

  Slowly, she lifted her gaze to where her mother sat across the table. “I don’t want to.”

  “You have to. You need to.”

  Gloria waited, and Nina listened to the other diners around her whisper-talking, the clatter of silverware on plates, and the burst of laughter from a group of friends seated near a window. They were happily living their lives, and she wanted to happily live hers, too. But when she opened the envelope, she knew that would change.

  With trembling fingers, she pulled up the tab and slid out the photos. Four total, blown up to eight-by-ten images. One with Reese and a tall Black woman with long, straight hair walking down the street together arm in arm. One with them having drinks at a bar. He was laughing, and the woman had placed her hand on his arm and leaned closer.

  In the third, Reese sat in the back of a car with the same woman straddling him. The last image showed them walking into a hotel, the woman leaning heavily on his arm.

  “There were more, but I think you get the gist from these four. There’s no need for overkill.” Gloria spoke in a quiet voice.

  Disbelief pounded into Nina like an avalanche of rocks, burying her under their weight.

  “Where did you get these? Maybe it’s not him.” Her voice shook with the need for her statement to be true, no matter how ridiculous she sounded.

  “You know that’s him,” her mother said gently.

  Nina shook her head in denial. “It can’t be. When were these taken? Maybe they’re old,” she said, grasping for any possibility that the photos were fake or a misunderstanding. Not Reese. Not after everything they’d shared the past week and a half.

  “They were taken two nights ago and forwarded to me today.”

  Friday night, when he came in late and acted strange.

  Nina looked at her mother, who was a blurry image behind the film of tears that covered her pupils. “This can’t be right.” Her breath hitched, and a tear fell from her eyes. She swiped it away quickly because once they started, she wouldn’t be able to stop.

  “It is right,” Gloria said in the same gentle voice. Her face and body suggested concern, but she’d unleashed such devastating ugliness in the middle of a bright, beautiful day.

  “He wouldn’t,” Nina said brokenly. Her lower lip trembled as tears flooded her cheeks. She didn’t have the energy to wipe them away. “Why did you do this to me?”

  Her mother’s face softened with sympathy. “Because I don’t want to see you get hurt. Because I don’t want you to make a terrible mistake and choose the wrong man. Once I learned you and Andy were taking time away from your relationship, I knew you wouldn’t stay away from Reese for long. I had him followed because I knew eventually he would slip up, and I was right. I’m sorry, honey. I know this isn’t what you wanted to see, but sometimes the truth hurts. Is this the future that you want? Unmarried, no kids, and with your permanent boyfriend sleeping with any woman he wants to behind your back?

  “Remember who he is. This is the man who slept with Kelly one week after he broke up with you and lied about it. And you were pregnant. He wasn’t there to hold your hand. He wasn’t there when my baby girl lay in a hospital bed suffering. Now this. He’s not the man you want him to be.”

  Had he really deceived her? Was everything a lie? Nina couldn’t feel anything. Pain had stripped away all sensation.

  Gloria reached over and squeezed her trembling hand. “He is the same as he’s always been. Honey, I love you, and you deserve so much better than Reese Brooks.”

  Chapter 27

  With the phone against his ear, Reese hopped out of his Mercedes and rounded the front.

  “Reese, I can’t tell you enough how truly sorry I am. I’m so embarrassed,” Chelsea said.

  Reese took the ticket from the valet and entered The Winthrop Hotel. “Chelsea, I already told you it’s fine. Quit apologizing. You’d been drinking, and in a bad place because of your breakup, so I’m not holding what happened Friday night against you.”

  “You should.”

  “I know you didn’t mean any harm.”

  Misery leaked through the phone line with an exaggerated sigh from Chelsea. “You’re too kind. The next time we get together, drinks are on me.”

  “Only if you behave.”

  She laughed. “Yes, and you can bring your girlfriend, that lucky bitch, to make sure I’m on my best behavior.”

  Reese nodded to several people in the elevator as he stepped on. “Her name is Nina, and if you’re good, one day I’ll let you meet her.”

  “Deal. Thank you for being such a sweetheart and not hating me for throwing myself, and the contents of my stomach, at you.”

  “Stop beating yourself up. We’ll talk again soon.”

  They said goodbye to each other and hung up.

  When the elevator doors opened, Reese stepped aside, and several people left. He migrated to the back and rested his head against the wall. After playing football in the park, he and his friends went out for drinks and talked trash to each other over appetizers.

  On the way back from the pub, Chelsea called to apologize for throwing herself at him when they went to get drinks last Friday night. Despite their history, she had taken him by surprise with her aggressive behavior, but he recognized her actions were a cry for help because of the breakup. Their conversation had lasted longer than anticipated at the bar, but he could tell she had needed an ear.

  Reese checked his phone as he stepped off the elevator on Nina’s floor. He called earlier, but she never answered, and she hadn’t responded to his text. He wondered if she was stil
l with her mother.

  He removed the key card from his wallet and stuck it in the door, turned the handle, and pushed. The door remained closed. Frowning, he examined the card to make sure he had pulled out the correct one. He re-inserted it into the slot and held it there a little longer. The lock whirred and clicked, but the light never changed from red to green.

  “What the heck?” he muttered.

  He wiped the magnetic strip in his T-shirt, probably not a good idea because the shirt was dirty and sweaty from playing football. He tried the door again. This time when it didn’t open, he swore softly and headed back down the hallway toward the elevator. He rode to the first floor and went to the front desk, where he explained the situation and showed the clerk the card and his identification.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Brooks. One moment, please,” she said with an apologetic smile. She punched a few keys, and then her forehead creased into a frown.

  “What’s the matter?” Reese started getting irritated. Whatever the malfunction with their system, he wanted it corrected right away so he could get upstairs and take a shower and change out of these clothes.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Brooks, but your key hasn’t malfunctioned. It was deactivated, and we have a note here from Ms. Winthrop asking for a call should you come to the front desk.” With an embarrassed smile, she picked up the phone and dialed.

  What the heck is going on? Why would Nina authorize deactivating his key card?

  The woman behind the counter extended the phone. “She wants to talk to you.”

  Reese accepted the receiver and turned his back to the Winthrop employee. He lowered his voice. “Babe, what’s going on? You deactivated my card?”

  “We need to talk.” Her voice didn’t contain any emotion, and alarm bells went off in his head.

  “Where are you?” Reese asked.

  “I’m upstairs.”

  “I was just up there trying to get in.”

  “I didn’t hear you. You can come back up, and I’ll let you in.”

  “Nina, what’s going on?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here.” She hung up, and Reese stared at the receiver. Shaking out of his daze, he said, “Thank you,” and handed back the phone to the woman behind the counter.

  He made the return trip to Nina’s apartment, and this time when he arrived, he knocked on the door.

  Several seconds later, it opened, and Nina stood before him with her hair in another cute twist out, a black shirt, and dark denim trousers. Reese entered cautiously, suspecting an ambush and completely in the dark about the reason.

  They stood in the small space in front of the stairs. “What’s wrong, Nina?”

  “Let’s talk in the living room.”

  He followed her up the stairs. He had anticipated the evening going a lot differently, figuring after a shower and a change of clothes, they would chill on the sofa and watch a movie before going to bed. But something was very wrong, and there would be no chilling or movie-watching tonight. Of that, he was certain.

  Nina walked into the middle of the living room and stood beside the coffee table between the two sofas. “Can you explain these?”

  His heart sank when he saw the photos. They were all of him and Chelsea. He picked up a picture that showed Chelsea straddling him in the back seat of the car he hired to take her back to the hotel. Every image looked damning, efficiently misrepresenting the nature of their contact.

  “Nothing to say about photos that indicate you were nowhere near Ella’s house on Friday night?” Nina asked. She spoke in a robotic voice, eyes devoid of emotion.

  “Where did you get these? Were you having me followed?” He couldn’t believe Nina would do something so sneaky.

  “Not me. My mother.” No warmth or welcome in her face or body, and her cold rejection chilled him to the bone.

  “Why was Gloria having me followed?” he demanded. Nina’s mother had never liked him, unfairly extending her disdain and anger about what his uncle had done to her, to his entire family.

  “Obviously, she had good reason,” Nina said.

  “I know how these photos look, but they don’t tell the whole story.”

  Nina folded her arms over her chest. “And what exactly is the whole story, Reese?”

  He clearly had some work to do. If the roles were reversed, he would also have a hard time believing those photos represented a big misunderstanding.

  “First of all, the photos are misleading. Chelsea was drunk, and all I did was make sure she got back to her hotel safely. That’s it.”

  “Why a hotel?”

  “She just moved here from New York.”

  “Who is she, and what is she to you? I’ve never heard you mention her name.”

  “I met her since you’ve been overseas. We met at Lindsay’s book launch in New York a while back. She’s a friend. I was simply helping her,” Reese insisted.

  “Only a friend? You haven’t slept with her?”

  He wanted to lie. He desperately wanted to lie, and somewhat dig out of the hole that had opened unexpectedly.

  “Have you slept with her?” Nina demanded, the anger in her voice marred by hurt.

  “Yes,” Reese answered.

  “When?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Tell me when,” she insisted. The fierce expression on her face left no room for dodging her questions.

  “The last time was the weekend you returned to town. She was one of the women I spent the night with at the Ritz.”

  Nina laughed mirthlessly and propped her hands on her hips. “I see. One of the women. Okay, so, you were helping your buddy, your pal, someone who you’ve slept with as recently as three months ago, get back to her hotel because she was drunk. Do I have that right? Were you helping her in the back seat of the car, too, while she was on top of you? By the way, that looks very familiar. You do your best work in the back seat of cars.”

  “Stop it,” Reese said, his voice a low snarl. “She was drunk and got a little handsy, but nothing happened between us.”

  “And still you went upstairs with her.”

  “To make sure she got back to her room safely. It was the decent thing to do.”

  “What a Good Samaritan you are,” Nina said derisively.

  “Nothing happened!”

  “If nothing happened, why didn’t you tell me about her instead of lying to me?”

  “I didn’t lie…”

  She arched a brow when his words trailed off. “Is it coming back to you now? The same night you saw Chelsea was the same night you told me you went to Ella’s, and you came back late and went right into the shower. I asked you about your visit to Ella when you came in. I asked about the wet spot on your pants.”

  Reese wasn’t guilty of wrongdoing, but sweat trickled down his spine. “I went right into the shower because she’d thrown up on me.”

  Chelsea threw up on him in the car. After putting her to bed, he cleaned as much of the vomit off his slacks as he could and then left, anxious to get home and out of the filthy clothes.

  “Did you at any point go over to Ella’s on Friday night?”

  This couldn’t be happening. He’d spent the past week and a half thoroughly enjoying the woman he loved, living a dream, and now everything was falling apart. “The answer is complicated and can’t be answered with a simple yes or no.”

  “Did you, or did you not spend the evening with your nieces getting sweaty because you were playing with them and their dog?” She spoke louder, in a voice filled with accusation.

  “I have a good reason for doing what I did.”

  “Did you, or did you not lie to me about where you were going and what you did?”

  Reese swallowed hard and realized that the surprise proposal he had been planning would have to be squashed in favor of the truth, or there would be no proposal—surprise or otherwise.

  “You’re right, I didn’t go to Ella’s house, but what you see in those pictures isn’t the whole story. You
want to know what I was doing Friday night? I went to get you an engagement ring. It was going to be a surprise.”

  “So, I’m supposed to believe you went to buy an engagement ring and then hooked up with Chelsea right after?”

  “I didn’t hook up with Chelsea,” Reese grated. “We ran into each other outside of the jewelry store. If your mother was having me followed, then they must have captured where I went before that photo with Chelsea and me on the sidewalk. I was at Klopard Jewelers.”

  “If that’s the case, where’s the ring?” She mocked him by looking around the room as if the ring would suddenly appear on a side table or under some other piece of furniture. “Where is it?”

  His jaw clenched in frustration. “I’m having it designed.”

  “Ohhhh, it’s being designed so you can’t show me the ring you went to purchase for my engagement, on the night you said you went to Ella’s house, but got caught making out with a woman named Chelsea in the back of a car. Did I get all of that right?”

  “I’m not lying!” Reese yelled.

  “I don’t believe you!” Nina yelled back. “Why did I bother to try with you? I should have known we wouldn’t last. We’re no good together.”

  “That’s not true. We have been good together for the past ten days.”

  “And now our time is up. I want you to go. Get out of my house!” She shook with rage.

  “I’m not going anywhere. Not until we get this straightened out.”

  “There is nothing to get straightened out. You and I are finished.”

  “Like hell we are. I know you love me, and I love you, and you know I love you. I told you. I’ve shown you.”

  “You know who has shown me that he loves me? Andy.” She shot his name at Reese like an armor-piercing bullet.

  His neck muscles tightened. “Don’t mention him in the middle of this goddamn conversation.”

  “Why not? You might as well know the truth.”

  “What truth, Nina?”