Is Brooke Ayers a Deadbeat Dad?

ABCNews.com:

Vicki Gunvalson is probably best known as the only original housewife still standing on Bravo's "The Real Housewives of Orange County." Recently on the show, the divorced businesswoman has fallen for a 45-year-old businessman from Mississippi named Brooks Ayers. Ayers has been described as a deadbeat dad on the show, a label which he and Gunvalson often deny, but now a former girlfriend says she has the proof. 

"He has not supported his child," Nicolette Catanzarite told "20/20." "He bailed on the hospital bill, the pediatrician bill, and left me with all of it." 

A 41-year-old model and hair salon owner from Indianapolis, Catanzarite is the mother of Ayers' 3-year-old son. But she didn't always have such choice words for Ayers. When she first met him, he swept her off her feet. 

"I met Brooks in 2007 in Atlanta on a golf trip and he just kind of was a Southern charmer without a doubt," Catanzarite said. "He just always said the right things at the right time." 

Catanzarite said Ayers treated her like a princess -- opening doors, wining and dining her, and giving her a promise ring. 


"He did mention that he was going through a divorce and that he was legally separated and that he had three children," Catanzarite said. "It wasn't appropriate that he would ask me to marry him while he was still married so he gave me a promise ring." 

Catanzarite said Ayers seemed so up front about his life that she never doubted anything he told her.
"I just believed everything that he said," says Catanzarite. 

Ayers told Catanzarite, who was a divorced mother of four, that he wanted a fresh start…and this time without children. She says he explained to her that he had had a vasectomy. 

"It made him sad that he could never, if we were ever to get married, be able to have a baby together," she said. "I bought it hook, line and sinker." 

When Catanzarite found out she was pregnant a few months in to the relationship she was surprised, but assumed his vasectomy didn't take and this was a sign. 

"I was like, this is gonna be the best kid in the world," Catanzarite said, thinking that she would be with Ayers for the rest of her life. "I just couldn't wait to have him and really always thought that this was such a blessing." 

Looking back Catanzarite says the vasectomy was the first of his many lies. Shortly after their son was born she says she noticed Ayers' behavior was becoming erratic and things quickly went downhill. 

"Within two or three weeks I started seeing kind of a different behavior from him," Catanzarite said. "He was obsessive, angry, moody and controlling with me. It was very strange." 

Let's keep it real, after the brutal way Vicki treated ex-husband Donn throughout their marriage, karma would truly be a bitch if all this stuff about Brooke turns out to be true and she ends up on the hook for some of that child support.

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