“After those pictures he doesn’t deserve a damn thing.”
“When is he due back in town?” Gina asked as she checked the caller ID. It was the president.
“In a couple days. But I’m thinking about going down there now.”
Gina held up her finger as she answered her phone. “Hi,” she said into the phone.
“Hello there,” Dutch, now in the Oval Office, said. “Max tells me you had to excuse yourself from my historic presser.”
“I saw your opening statement. I’m real happy for you, Dutch. And the hostages of course.”
“Of course. And that press is fickle like you wouldn’t believe. Yesterday I was a bumbling idiot who couldn’t get anything right. Tonight, because those hostages are now safe, I’m a rock star. That’s why I put zero stock in their opinions.”
“I hear that.”
“How’s Loretta?” he asked.
Gina sighed. Looked at her friend, who looked lost, it seemed to her. “Not good,” she said.
“What is it about?” Gina didn’t say anything. “Dempsey?” Dutch asked.
“Bingo,” Gina said. “I think I’m going to stay here tonight, Dutch. You don’t need me for anything, do you?” Gina almost blushed as she listened to his answer. “Other than that,” she said with a smile.
“No, I’m good. I’m going to finish up a few staff briefings and then I’m going to bed.”
“What about our house guests? Don’t forget about them.”
“Max has already notified them that I’ll see them in the morning. Give my love to Loretta. Prayerfully it’ll all work out for her and Demps.”
“Yes,” Gina said. “I sure hope so.”
“Think you need me there with you?”
“No, no, I’m good.” Then Gina smiled. “Christian’s here with me.”
“Oh, well then,” Dutch said with a smile of his own.
“Goodbye, Walter,” Gina said with a grin and hung up before he could yell at her for calling him that name he hated.
“See what I’m talking about?” LaLa said to Gina as she hung up.
Gina, however, was confused. “See what?”
“You and the president. Y’all have a wonderful relationship. The best relationship I’ve ever seen. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for me and Demps.”
“LaLa, stop sounding so fatalistic. All you have so far are a few photos of him with some female. That’s it. They aren’t kissing, they aren’t making love, they’re just laughing and talking.”
“And hugging, don’t forget that.”
“According to this friend of yours they were hugging. But of course she conveniently forgot to snap that telling shot. Are you sure this is a reliable friend?”
“Yes, G, she’s reliable.”
“What’s her name?”
“Ellen Fountroy, and stop acting like some attorney. You can’t explain away the evidence here.”
“Look, La, I’m not saying these pictures aren’t bad. They are. Especially the ones that have him going inside his apartment at night with this woman. But the evidence is just too flimsy for you to be leaping to all kinds of conclusions just yet. You need more information. You need to talk to Demps.”
“So he can deny it?” LaLa asked. “That’s a brilliant plan.”
Christian glanced at LaLa after her snide tone with the First Lady. But Gina didn’t give it a second thought. This was a man LaLa planned to spend the rest of her life with. This was a love thing. And Gina had been around long enough to know that love can make a fool out of the most reasonable of people.
Tears began to appear in LaLa’s eyes. Gina had never seen her friend so unhinged. “I thought he was in Newark on business. I thought he was there juggling family business matters. When he’s there juggling females instead.”
“There’s hardly evidence of all of that, LaLa, let’s not get it twisted.”
“He wasn’t like this when we were still living in Newark,” LaLa said and Gina looked at her. “I never once thought of him as a cheater. But as soon as you made him your deputy press secretary, and he got a taste of power and the big time, everything changed. Now he thinks he’s some mack daddy. Now he thinks he doesn’t need me anymore.”
LaLa began crying seriously and Gina hurried to her side.
“He doesn’t need me anymore, G,” LaLa cried as Gina wrapped her into her arms. “After all these years, he doesn’t need me.”
Gina looked at Christian, who looked as scared and pathetic as LaLa. And then she looked back at LaLa, who looked as if her world had shifted. And the responsibility Gina felt, the burden she bore, was wrenching. When she asked her friends to come and be a part of her White House staff, she never dreamed it would come to this. She remembered LaLa and Demps joking about how they were going to ride into town like conquering heroes and change that place called Washington. When, if truth be told, it was Washington that had managed to change them. And Gina, no matter how hard she tried, just couldn’t divorce herself of some of that blame.
***
The White House residence was pin drop quiet later that night. Dutch was in bed, sound asleep, and Gina was still at LaLa’s, wide awake, listening to her friend recount all of the dreams she had for a long-term relationship that now, the way LaLa saw it anyway, was near its end. She behaved as if she was mourning a death, which caused Gina to have to behave as if she was comforting the bereaved.
Back at the White House, Victoria and Caroline were also wide awake, comforting each other with their plots and schemes. Then eventually, when Victoria decided the time was right, Caroline made her way from Victoria’s room and carefully opened the door and entered Dutch’s.
As she moved across the floor, removed her robe and got in bed with the president, her heart was ramming against her chest. But Victoria was right. Once he got a load of her body again, he wouldn’t know what hit him. The key for her was to make certain, when he woke up, that he was already inside of her.
He was lying on his back and she had just pulled his penis out of his boxer short’s opening, the side of it making her wet already, as she slid her naked body on top of him. By the time his sleepy eyes began to open, she had already commandeered his lips and was kissing him, French style.
Dutch, at first, returned her kiss, thinking, in the fog of Caroline’s seduction, that it was Gina he was holding and kissing. He even began to moan, as his penis began to expand in her hand. But then he suddenly, just as she had his cock and was moving it toward her vagina, stopped. He stopped all movement.
Caroline thought it was the fact that his penis was between her legs and ready for entry that stopped him cold. But it wasn’t her point of entry that had stopped him. It was her perfume. Perfume, Dutch suddenly realized, that wasn’t his wife’s.
His eyes flew open. When he realized that it was Caroline, not Gina, on top of him, he literally threw her off the bed, her bare backside dropping hard onto the floor. He immediately pressed his alarm button and jumped out of bed, his penis dangling out of his boxer’s like some long, stiff rod. He quickly pushed it back in. But when he saw that it was Caroline pushing away from him, sliding on her butt across the floor as if she was the one under assault, his sleepy brain still couldn’t quite comprehend the scene.
Victoria, who had been looking out of the cracked door of her bedroom, was horrified to see Secret Service agents materialize, seemingly out of nowhere, and hurry to the president’s bedroom. She hurried there too. And there she saw Caroline, being lifted from the floor by an agent with a woman’s robe being thrown around her, and her son, standing there, tying his own robe.
“What’s happening here?” Victoria asked, moving further into the room. “Caroline, what’s happened to you?”
Caroline was so distraught, so embarrassed, so everything that she could do nothing but cover her mouth, cry and point. Victoria looked at her son.
“Dutch,” she said in her best voice of censure, “you should be ashamed of yourself!”
At first Dutch was certain he didn’t hear her correctly. There was no way his mother, his own flesh and blood, was suggesting that he had orchestrated this get together. But then he realized what was happening. Caroline had gotten in his bed stark naked while he was fast asleep. Had kissed him, had fondled his penis to excitement proportions. And he was supposed to kiss his marriage, his love for Gina goodbye, just to get another taste of her?
These people crazy, he said inwardly, remembering a line Gina enjoyed using.
“Get out,” he said out loud.
“Get out?” his mother repeated, showing pure umbrage. “How dare you throw her out? You’re the one who attacked her!”
“I attacked her?” Dutch said. “Is this my room, or hers?”
Victoria had no ready answer for that one, and Dutch repeated his command. “Get out,” he said again. “I want you and Caroline to get your things and get out of this house right now.”
The secret service immediately began to enforce the president’s order. Victoria, however, continued to take umbrage. “You’re throwing me out?” she kept asking, astounded. “You can’t throw me out!”
“Watch me, Mother,” Dutch said. Then said to the agents who may have been reticent about touching his mother: “Get her out of this house and get her out now.”
Caroline was still too embarrassed to fight his expulsion so she said nothing as she was grabbed by both arms and taken out of the room. Victoria, however, fought tooth and nail. It became so disturbing that she had to be manhandled, pulled out of the room as if she was a common intruder. And the entire time, as she was literally being dragged out, her small but feisty body fighting against every pull, she couldn’t stop staring in disbelief at that good-for-nothing son of hers.
But she could save her shock. Just as Dutch, when his own mother came out publically against his marriage to Gina, had to save his.
When they were all gone, the woman he used to love and the mother he never knew, he slammed his bedroom door, sat on his bed, and got Gina on the phone.
FIFTEEN
By the following morning, LaLa had decided to go to Newark and “reclaim her man,” as she put it, although Gina strongly advised against it, but LaLa had a one-track mind by that point. So Gina and Christian left, and both were now back at the White House. Although she had wanted to see Dutch before his day began, to eyeball him for herself and make sure he was really okay after that craziness he had to endure last night, he was already in a meeting in the Cabinet Room and therefore could not be disturbed. But when she finally did arrive at her East Wing office, a man she hadn’t seen in over four years was waiting on her.
Roman stood to his feet when Gina entered the waiting area. His heart leaped with joy when he saw her again, just as it had when he had gotten her call asking for his help. She was the one that got away, that was for sure, but that was old news now. Right now he only prayed that President Harber was good to her, and that she was finding some enjoyment in her new fishbowl life.
“Hello, Wilkie,” Gina said as they hugged. Roman found himself moved by her old nickname. Nobody called him that, but her.
“How are you, kid?” he asked as their hug ended and Gina stepped back. She still had that fresh, wonderful scent, still had that buoyancy he used to love about her. Still, he thought, as he glanced down, had that curvaceous, luscious bod.
“I’m good,” looking at his perfectly tailored Armani suit. “What about you?”
“Fantastic.”
Gina smiled. That was always his line. He’d be near death and still claim he was fantastic. “Come on back,” she said and escorted him into her office. They took a seat on the office couch.
“So,” he said, rubbing his big hands together, “I see our breakup didn’t leave you too distraught. You’ve managed to do a thing or two since we last met. Got married, became First Lady of the United States of America.”
Gina laughed. “Your career hasn’t exactly been stagnant either, now, let’s keep it real. Especially not in the female department.”
Roman grinned, showing his perfect white teeth that was always so alluring to Gina against his dark-chocolaty black skin, and threw his hands up. “I plead the Fifth,” he jokingly said.
“But seriously, Wilkie, I’m so glad you could make it. As I told you over the phone, I’ve been an attorney long enough to know all about those I’m innocent stories inmates love to tell. Hardly ever believe any of them, to tell you the truth. But for some reason, and maybe it as simple as the fact that we’re flesh and blood, I believed Marcus Rance.”
Roman nodded, sat his briefcase on the table in front of them. “You had good reason to believe him.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Roman said as he opened his briefcase. “There are loads of problems with his case. And I mean truckloads, Gina. This brother was so railroaded that I’m amazed the judge himself didn’t criticize that jury verdict. I couldn’t believe they could have come up with a guilty verdict on this case, I declare I couldn’t.”
“It’s that open and shut?”
“Well . . . yes and no. The evidence is compelling, yes, but it’s not like there’s this DNA that we can point to and eliminate him as even a suspect, no. I mean, the crime was a drive-by shooting and the shots were fired from his car which, on its face, sounds very incriminating.”
“Yes, it does,” Gina said with a frown.
“But everything he said to you, about the job, about the stolen car, everything is true. But the witnesses his defense team called, and I mean every one of those suckers, were fatally flawed. Just horrible people. Crooks and criminals the lot of them. But,” Roman continued, moving toward the edge of his seat, “they’re consistent. Liars never are. They never, during that entire trial and even after the trial, changed their stories.”
“But all the jury saw was the baggage.”
“Exactly.”
Gina stared at her friend. “Can you help him, Wilkie?”
Roman stared back, his heart sinking with the pain of what could have been if only he had realized what a diamond he had; if only he hadn’t been so bent on playing the field, on bedding any woman he wanted. Now he was ready to settle down himself, to find him a woman of his own, to give up the game forever. But he was a long way from this point when he had Regina. “I’ll help him,” he said, “but only because you’ve asked me to. That brother has been an embarrassment to our race, hear what I’m saying? A disgrace! He turned it around, at least he claims he did, but that still doesn’t mean he wasn’t a terror before he turned it around.”
“I hear you, Wilkie.”
“But for you, I’ll help. Because you know I’ll do anything for you.”
Gina nodded, because, back in the day, he would have. He just couldn’t seem to be faithful to her, which kind of sealed their fate as a couple. “Thanks,” she said. “Now show me what you’ve got.”
Roman smiled as he pulled papers from his briefcase and laid them out on the table. He used to show her what he had every night; used to show it to her repeatedly. And he missed that. He missed the way she made him feel. He missed her honesty and integrity. He missed her, yes, he’d admit it. He missed her deeply.
But they didn’t call him a lawyer’s lawyer for nothing. He got down to the business at hand.
***
Dutch and Max left the Cabinet Room after a contentious meeting with the principals about the hit on Gina’s convoy, and headed for Gina’s office on the East Wing. But the topic of conversation wasn’t the convoy hit, or the hostages’ success, or Roman Wilkes and their Marcus Rance problem. They were discussing that craziness the night before.
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