President's Girlfriend 06 - The Sins of the Fathers (5 page)

“Because he loves you.
 
I just feel it in my
heart.
 
And because Regina Harber doesn’t
tolerate fools easily and she won’t allow any accusation to go unanswered.
 
She’s a fighter, Ma.
 
But she’s a street fighter.
 
She doesn’t know how to finesse it.
 
She always gets embroiled in some scandal or
another, I mean all the time.
 
The woman
can’t help herself.
 
But this will be
different.
 
It’ll go directly to her
character.
 
And Daddy will finally see
her for what she really is and drop her so fast you’ll get whiplash just
watching her fall.”

“Oh,
please,” Sam said, unconvinced.
 
“They
tried all that shit before.
 
Dutch isn’t
going to fall for any of that bash Gina nonsense.
 
He’s not going to believe that his wife is
some drug addicted sex pervert who sneak men into the White House and---”

“And that’s
not what I’m talking about, thank-you very much,” Jade pointed out.
 
“I know he won’t go for that.
 
She won’t be sneaking anybody anywhere.
 
This will be done in broad daylight.
 
That’s the beauty of it.
 
No sneaking at all.
 
In fact,” Jade said with a wry smile, “she
won’t even realize she’s destroying herself until she’s destroyed.
 
That’s the beauty of it, Ma.
 
I did my homework on that sister.
  
I know exactly how to push her buttons.”

“Oh, yeah,
Miss Brilliant with the average IQ.
 
How
do you push her buttons, please tell me that?”

Jade
hesitated.
 
She despised her mother’s
constant put-down of her intellect.
 
No,
she didn’t have the kind of pliable, brilliant mind her mother had.
 
But she was no idiot either.

“Well?” Sam
asked.
 
“How do you push these buttons of
Gina’s?”

Jade smiled,
remembering to not take any of her mother’s constant putdowns personally.
 
Sam was Sam and would always be odd that
way.
 
She learned to live with that sad
fact a long time ago.
 
“I’ll push her
buttons one brother at a time,” she said.

Sam, who was
known for her keen intellect, stared at her daughter.
 
“Marcus Rance?” she asked.
 
“This scheme of yours involves her brother
Marcus Rance?”

Jade was
impressed.
 
“You’re quick,” she
said.
 
“Yes, Ma.
 
He’ll be working with us.”

“But why
would he want to do anything that could hurt his own half-sister?
 
What are you talking about?
 
Gina was the one who busted her butt to get
him out of prison.”

“Daddy got
him out of prison, not her!” Jade said this angrily.
 
She hated when Gina got credit for
anything.
 
“Daddy got him out!
 
He was the one who got that governor to
pardon him or whatever they did for him.
 
It wasn’t Gina!”

“All right,”
Sam said.
 
“It wasn’t Gina, I get
it.
 
Damn.
 
You just need to calm yourself back down
before you make yourself look more foolish than you already look.”

Jade did
manage to calm down.
 
She even smiled her
beautiful, bright white smile.
 
“Marcus
has been staying with me and Christian.
 
Gina wouldn’t let him stay at the White House, you know.”

“That’s not
what I heard.
 
I heard Dutch kicked him
out.”

“Because
Gina made him,” Jade insisted.
 

Sam looked
at her daughter with amazement in her eyes.
 
If Jade believed for a second that anybody
made
Dutch Harber do anything he didn’t want to do, she was more
ignorant than Sam had given her credit for.

“Marcus has
been great,” Jade went on.
 
“He was
really there for me after
my.
. . after what happened
with my baby.”

“After your
miscarriage, Jade,” Sam said pointblank.
 
“Not after what happened to the baby.
 
After your miscarriage.
 
Call it what it is.”

“Ma, okay,”
Jade said irritably.
 
And
then calmed down again.
 
Tried to shield her true emotions again.
 
“All I’m saying is that I can talk to
Marcus.
 
He gets what I’m about better
than anybody else ever could.
 
And guess
what, Ma?
 
Marcus agrees with me.
 
He can’t stand Gina, either.
 
He feels she visited him in prison, not to
help him, but because it wouldn’t look right for the First Lady to ignore her
own brother.
 
She doesn’t care anything
about him.
 
She doesn’t even have time
for him and just tossed him off on me and Christian.
 
But he’ll do anything for me, Ma.
 
And I mean anything,” Jade added with a
cunning grin and sipped her wine.

Sam stared
at her daughter.
 
Was about to go there
with her daughter.
 
But Christian Bale,
Jade’s husband, came over.

“The President’s
almost wrapping it up, ladies,” he informed them with that usual cheerful lilt
in his voice.
 
“He’s going to be so happy
to see you, Miss Redding.”

Jade rolled
her eyes.
 
“Do call her Sam or
mother-in-law or something less formal, Christian, my goodness.
 
Don’t call her
Miss Redding
.
 
She’s not that
old yet.”

Christian
blushed red.
 
Sometimes Jade took him on
such wild rides when he didn’t even know they were going anywhere.
 
“I didn’t mean to imply that she was old.
 
I was just---”

“It’s okay,
Christian,” Sam said.
 
“Don’t pay Jade
and her foolishness any attention.”

Christian,
however, couldn’t help but pay her attention.
 
She was his wife.
  
And he loved
her.
 
“She’s okay,” he said to his
mother-in-law.

Sam stared
at him.
 
He was in his mid-twenties, but
looked even younger.
 
His blond hair was
stacked high on his round head, and his blue eyes were big and milky.
 
And this kid was supposed to tame Jade?
 
Sam wanted to laugh at such a ludicrous
proposition.

“You really
ought to sit down,” Christian suggested to his wife.
 
“The doctor said you shouldn’t overexert
yourself.”

Jade,
however, would have none of it.
 
“How is
standing up an overexertion, Christian, will you tell me that, please?”

“The doctor
said you shouldn’t overdo it.”

“He said
that
two weeks ago.
 
I
had a bad cold, Christian, that’s all.
 
That’s over and done with.
 
I can
do backflips now as far as that doctor is concerned.
 
Geez.”

Christian
didn’t argue with her.
 
The president had
already told him that loving a woman like Jade wasn’t going to be a
cakewalk.
 
Christian understood
that.
 
But that didn’t make it any
easier.

A tall young
man with a buzz cut approached the threesome.
 
“Excuse me, Miss Redding, but the president will see you now.”

“Thanks,
Rick,” Christian said to the young man, and the young man nodded at Christian.

“Right this
way, ma’am,” the young man said, and Sam began to follow him.
 
Jade, however, began to follow them.
 
But Christian pulled her back.

“Maybe your
mom should speak to the president alone,” he suggested.

Jade,
however, looked at him as if he was crazy.
 
Because she just knew he was out of his natural mind if he though she
wasn’t going to include herself in this meeting.
 
She broke away from his grasp, and followed
her mother.

They walked
into a private room, off from the reception area, where Dutch was standing
alone.
 
He was looking out of the window,
his hands in his pants pockets,
his
back to the
entrance.
 

“Miss
Redding is here, Mr. President,” young Rick said, bowed, and left.

Sam and Jade
stood before Dutch.
 
When he turned
around, and saw Sam in her form-fitting, sequined dress, a kind of aqua-blue
that highlighted her beautiful eyes and dark, velvety-smooth skin, his throat
caught.
 
She’d always been a looker, he
thought.
 
But right now she was simply
stunning.

She smiled
when he turned around.
 
“Hello, Rookie,”
she said in that deadpan way of hers that made Dutch snort.
 
Rookie was her nickname for him when they
were both students at Harvard.

He went to
her.
 

There was a
momentary awkwardness, where neither knew quite what to do, but then Dutch
reached over and gave her a hug.
 
Sam
closed her eyes when he touched her, but fought hard not to show her feelings.

Dutch wasn’t
quite so successful in shielding his.
 
She not only looked great, he thought has he hugged her, she smelled
great, too.
 
And as they began to part he
gave her a peck on the cheek.
 

“You look
fabulous,” he said to her, admiring her fine physique.
 
Jade smiled at the way Dutch perused her
mother’s body.

“Thank-you,”
Sam said.
 
She was unaccustomed to
compliments, and still didn’t quite know how to accept them.

“Would you
care for something to drink?”

“You too,”
Sam said.
 

There was a
slight hesitation, as Dutch wasn’t sure if he missed something.
 
“Pardon me?” he asked her.

“No, I was,
I was going to say that you look wonderful too.
 
Or fabulous as the actual term was.
 
You too, that’s what I was saying in
reference to what you had said about me.
 
That I looked fabulous.
 
I was . . . .”

Jade rolled
her eyes.
 
Her mother really was a band
of one.

“Well,
thank-you, Sam,” Dutch said, not at all taken aback by her differentness.
 
“Would you care for something to drink?”

“No, no, I’m
good.
 
I’m fine.”

Dutch
offered her a seat, and he sat down in the flanking chair.
 
Jade sat on the arm of the chair, beside her
father.
 
Dutch crossed his legs, staring
at Sam.
 
Sam crossed her legs, staring at
him.

“So,” Dutch
said, unbuttoning his suit coat, “our daughter here says you wanted to see me.”

“Yes.
 
Yes, I did.”
 
He seemed to become more attractive with age, Sam thought, as she sat
there.
 
And the way it felt to be in his
arms.
 
She felt so safe there.
 
The idea that she let a guy like this get
away from her when he was obviously infatuated with her all those years ago
made her angry with herself.
 
But she was
such a different person then.

Dutch waited
for her to tell him why she wanted to see him.
 
When she didn’t say anything, Jade did.

“Go on and
tell him,” she said.

Sam
exhaled.
 
“I wanted to let you know that
I was thinking about staying, that is, Jade and Christian have offered to let
me stay with them in Washington for a little while.
 
Until I can work some
things out.”
 
Sam said this and
stared at Dutch, to gauge his reaction.
 
Dutch didn’t immediately respond.

Jade,
surprised by this, looked at him.

“I wanted to
know how you felt about that,” Sam said.

“I don’t
think it’s a good idea,” Dutch said honestly.

Jade was
surprised by his reaction.
 
“Why wouldn’t
it be a good idea, Daddy?”