President's Girlfriend 07 - What He Did for Love (11 page)

Lenora exhaled.  She used to know him well.  “How have you been?” she asked him.

He was hoping for at least a smile from her pretty brown face, but all he got was that serious, no nonsense,
no-time-for-anybody’s-bullshit
look she was known for.  When she was climbing that ladder of success, and fucking Dutch with every rung she climbed, she smiled relentlessly at him. 
Get in with Max
, the old saying used to go,
and you’re in with Dutch
.  But that was a long time ago. 

“It’s been a different world for me,” he said.  “I won’t pretend that it hasn’t.  But I’m getting by.”

She nodded.  “Good,” she said.  The idea that a once-powerful man like Max Brennan was merely getting by was a cautionary tale in and of itself.  But he was always so protective of Dutch.  Overly so, if you asked Lenora.

“So what can I do for you, Max? I have a meeting I can’t miss.”

“Nor would I want you to miss it.  But if you could just give me a minute of your time.”

“We can meet later,” she replied as she pressed her keypad that unlocked her car door.

“No,” Max quickly said.  He had to get her attention now, before she met with Dutch.  “Not later.  I need that minute now.”

Lenora stared at him.  Something was up.  She looked around, as others in her apartment building were coming and going to their respective cars.  She motioned for Max to get inside of her front passenger seat, while she got in behind the wheel.

She sat her coffee in the holder, tossed her briefcase in the backseat, and turned to Max.  “You have a minute and a minute only, Max,” she said.  “I have a meeting I have to attend.  For real.”

“Understood,” Max said.  Then he looked at her, ready to lay it all on the line.  “As you and the entire world now knows, Dutch is resigning the presidency.”

Max waited, as if Lenora would speak to that.

“Keep going,” was all she would say.

“I assume you’re aware that he’s at their family compound in Newark.”

“Yes, I know.”

Max looked at her.  “He didn’t call and tell you?”

“I’m the chief financial officer of his company.  His holdings are in a blind trust.  If I did have conversations with him, I wouldn’t be telling you about them.  You know the rules.”

“Yeah, but rules can be broken and bent anyway a powerful man like Dutch chooses to break and bend them.”

“If he had no integrity, yes, that’s true.  But Dutch has integrity, and you know it, Max.”

Max looked at her.  She was always such a cheerleader for Dutch.  That man, in her eyes, could do no wrong.  But she didn’t know the half of it. 

“Anyway,” he said, “he’s not in Washington right now.  He’s with his wife.  He’s got that fool Crader running the country.”

“Go on, Max.  What do you want?”

“While the president is otherwise distracted, I need your help.”

Lenora looked at him suspiciously.  “What kind of help?” 

“I need you,” Max said steadily, “to destroy Dutch Harber for me.”

Lenora thought she had misheard him. “What?” she asked, unable to conceal her disbelief.  “What did you just say?”

“I said I need you to destroy Dutch.”

Lenora stared at him with a look so serious Max wondered if he was out of his mind even going there with her.  “Let me get this straight,” she said.  “You want me to help you destroy Dutch Harber?  Is that what you’re asking me?  You want me to destroy the one man who has been there for me, time and time again, when none of these other big companies would give a black female executive like me even a peep at the top positions in their companies?  But Dutch not only hired me but he made me his CFO, the number two person in his entire company.  And you want me to destroy the man who put me on top?  The man who has been nothing but good and kind and decent to me ever since I met him?”

Max nodded his head.  “That’s exactly what I want,” he said bluntly.

“You’re out of your fucking mind,” Lenora said even blunter.  “You have lost every inch of your ability to reason if you think for a second that I would betray Dutch Harber.  I am who I am today, career-wise, because of Dutch!”  Then she frowned.  “What’s wrong with you, Max?”

“What’s wrong with me?” Max asked with bitterness in his voice.  “After what Dutch did to me, how can you ask me such a question?  Dutch destroyed me, Lee.  He destroyed me!”

“After all of those lies you told on his wife he was right to destroy you.  I heard he kicked your ass, too, which is also what he should have done.”

“I was railroaded.”

“Oh, Max, please.  You met with those Republicans and schemed and connived and claimed the First Lady was a drug addict who slept around on the president, oh don’t even try it, Max.  You went to town on that lady.  And now you’re complaining because Dutch threw you out of his White House?  Are you serious?”

“You don’t know the whole story.  You don’t know how much of my life I devoted to Dutch. I loved him!”

“He loved you, too, or you probably would have been dead after all of those stunts you pulled.  Come on, now.  You was coughing up some serious dirt and now you’re upset that it blew back in your face?  Spare me, Max.”

“You don’t know the whole story,” Max said again, “and I’m going to leave it at that.  But I’ve got to pay him back, and I need you to do it for me.”

Lenora stared at him.  “What’s happened to you?” she asked him with all sincerity.  “What kind of little, insignificant, bitter man you’ve become?”

“Are you going to help me, Lee?”

“No.  Hell, no.  I don’t play those underhanded games you play.  Dutch has been good to me.  And I plan to keep his trust.  Now get out before I call the cops on your ass.”

Max looked at her.  She used to be in awe of him.  Now she was threatening to kick him out of her car.  “So it’s like that, hun?” he asked her.

“It’s exactly like that,” she willingly answered him.

Max smiled that reptilian smile she remembered well.  “Well,” he said, “it’s also like this.”  He handed her a folder and then looked out of her car window as residents hurried to their respective cars inside the parking garage.

When Lenora looked inside of the folder, and her expression began to change, it was only then did Max look at her.  And he smiled again.  She looked at him with alarm.

“Oh, yes,” he said with great satisfaction, “I did my homework.”

“How did you get this?”

“That’s my business.  Your business is doing exactly what I tell you to do, or everything you see there will be exposed.”  He stared at her.  “Everything, Lee.”

Lee’s heart was pounding through her chest.  “But nobody knew . . .” She couldn’t continue.

But Max could.  “About you and your little brother and your father?  Nobody knew?  Somebody always knows, Lee.  You should know that by now.  I remember attending all of those dinner parties with you and Dutch.  I remember how you loved to tell how you never really had a father because he just walked away from the family one night and never even tried to get back in touch.  You had no idea, you used to declare, what happened to him.  But that’s not quite right.  Is it, Lenora?  You know exactly what happened to him.  You and your brother especially knows.  Only your kid brother couldn’t live with that knowledge, could he?   But you not only lived with it, but you thrived on it.  Repeating your little sad story about your deadbeat dad over and over again.”

Then Max’s look turned dead serious.  “Oh, yes, Lenora Perry, you will help me destroy Dutch.  And you know why you shall willingly help me?  Because you either help me destroy Dutch, or I will destroy you.”

Lenora felt as if her world had just shifted.  She stared into Max’s dark eyes, looking for some humanity there, but found emptiness. 

Max, in fact, laughed.  “Imagine if Dutch got a load of that,” he said with a grin, his finger pointing at the folder she held.  “If he found out, do you seriously think you’ll remain in his good graces?  You said yourself that he’s a man of great integrity, just Mister Wonderful Perfection in your eyes.  A man like that couldn’t, in good conscience, keep a lowlife like you anywhere near him.  And he won’t, Lee.  Trust me on that.  He won’t.  I was his best friend, and look what he did to me.” 

Max ended his diatribe with great bitterness in his voice.  And Lee knew, based on the evidence in that folder alone, that this man was not to be trifled with.  He was out for revenge, big time, whether she came along or not.

“What do you want, Max?” was all she could manage to ask him.

Max had a ready answer.  “I want Dutch to lose his money, his woman, and the peaceful life he thinks he’s going to have after he resigns the presidency.  I want him to see what it’s like to lose it all.  I want him to beg for the bottom when he’s through sinking.  I want him destroyed.  And you, his sweet little protégé, is going to be the Judas, or the Brutus, who makes it so.”

Lenora could barely contain her rage at this monster she used to respect.  But her rage was nothing compared to the fear of exposure Max had just revealed to her.

CHAPTER NINE

In the gym on the south end of the Harber estate, it was a hard workout.  One of the strongest Dutch had had in months.  And Christian, to his pleasant surprise, was able to hang almost to the end.  Almost.  He gave up, after two long hours, and made his way to the bench.  He grabbed one of the bottled waters that sat in a bucket of ice on the side table, and sat down.  He immediately began to slouch he was so drained.  But by the time Dutch joined him on the bench, dripping wet in his shorts and sweatshirt, Christian was renewed.

He stood up.  “Care to go another round, sir?” he asked Dutch.

Dutch chuckled and took a seat on the bench.  The arrogance of youth, he thought.  This kid had been resting and lounging around for the last thirty minutes, while Dutch was still working his ass off.  And now he was gaming to go another round?  Dutch could have told him a thing or two, but didn’t bother.

He, instead, grabbed the towel off of the back of the bench, wiped his drenched face, and then grabbed a bottled water.  As Dutch drank nearly half the water with one long gulp, Christian sat back down.  Dutch sat down, too.

After a few moments of nothing being said, he finally looked at the president.  “I guess you’re pretty disappointed in me,” he said.

“And Loretta.  Yes, I am.”

“But it wasn’t her, sir,” Christian was quick to point out.  “It was all on me.  She didn’t do anything wrong.  I was the one who blew it.  I forced her.”

Dutch looked at Christian.  “You forced her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you telling me that you raped Loretta?”

“Oh, no, sir, I don’t mean . . . What I mean is, I went to her house.  I knew she was upset after finding out that Crader had a child with another woman, and I was upset after finding out that Jade was fooling around with Marcus, and I went there looking for comfort, sir.”

“So you comforted each other?”

Christian swallowed hard.  “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Your marriage was in ruin so you decided to go over there and ruin hers, too?”

Christian was appalled.  “It wasn’t like that at all.”

“It’s never like that at all, Chris.  That’s the problem.  Nobody goes into an affair to hurt somebody, but it always hurts somebody.  That’s the problem, son.”

“But who did it hurt?”  Christian wanted to know.  “Jade and Crader?  After what they did?”

“So you and Loretta were perfectly within your rights to fuck each other because Jade had fucked Marcus and Crader had fucked around too?  Is that what you’re telling me, Christian?  Is that your morality test now? Do it to them if they do it to you?”

“No, sir.  That’s not right, either.”

“Well at least you understand that.”

“I do,” Christian said with a frown. 

Dutch wiped his face again with more than a little frustration and took another gulp of water.  Why did otherwise strong, intelligent men constantly run to him with these issues of the heart as if he knew the answers?  He had no magic answers.  He was no saint, either. 

But in Christian’s worried blue eyes Dutch was as close to a saint as he’d ever known.  He looked at Dutch, a sense of foreboding all over his cherubim face.

“Have you heard from LaLa at all, sir?” he asked him.  “I wanted to call and make sure she was okay, but. . . I didn’t think it would be appropriate.”

At least that much of his judgment was still intact, Dutch thought.  “She called my wife late last night,” he said.

Christian couldn’t shield his interest.  “Is she alright?”

“Gina didn’t say that she wasn’t.”

Christian nodded.  “Good.  I was worried all night.”  Then Christian continued to look at Dutch, as he fought to find the right words to say. 

Dutch looked at him.  “What is it?”

“Did you, I mean, have you ever been in love with someone, sir?”

Dutch smiled.  Was he nuts?  Had he ever been in love?  “Say what?” Dutch asked him.

“I mean, have you ever been in love with someone outside of your marriage?”

Dutch’s smile slowly evaporated. 
Oh, that
, he thought.  “What are you trying to say, Chris?”

Christian should have known the president wasn’t about to get that personal with him, but he desperately needed him to.  Dutch, he felt, was the only person he could talk to about this.  Dutch loved LaLa, too. 

But Christian knew he just had to say what was on his heart.  There was no other way around it.  “The thing is, sir,” he said cautiously, “I love, LaLa.  Very much.  I still want her, and I can’t help it.  I still want her badly.  Is that so wrong?”

“Is it wrong to want another man’s wife?” Dutch asked him.  He was looking as if he was certain Christian knew better than that.  “What do you think?” he added.

Christian sighed frustratingly.  “It’s wrong,” he admitted.

“And don’t you ever forget that,” Dutch warned him.  “Don’t you ever want something so badly that you force yourself to forget that.”