Crader looked at Dutch. After all he’d been through over the past three months, it was amazing, he thought, that he was holding up so well. But he was. More than holding up. He was, from what Crader could see, thriving.
“I don’t know what it is,” Crader said, “but you look younger than you’ve looked in years.” Dutch laughed. “Even after all you’ve been through, instead of aging, you look younger. But leave it to you to have that kind of outcome.”
“Right, yeah,” Gina agreed, smiling. “The rest of us look like death warmed over. But not Dutch.”
“Not you either, Gina,” Crader said as he glanced back at her. “Let’s correct the record here. You’re looking great yourself.”
“I told her,” LaLa said with a smile. “She and Dutch give the rest of us hope.”
“Ah, thanks Loretta,” Dutch said.
Crader looked sidelong at him. “Thanks Loretta? I give you the ultimate compliment and all you do is laugh. LaLa says something nice to you and you give her a personal thank-you.”
Gina and LaLa laughed. Dutch did too. “Loretta’s my girl,” Dutch said imitating Gina. “You know that. She’s my heart.”
“Oh yeah?” Crader asked. “And what am I, a man who you once considered your best friend, supposed to be? Your butt?”
“More like a boil on my butt,” Dutch said, and Gina and LaLa fell against each other in laughter. Crader shook his head and laughed too. It was that kind of wonderful day.
“But it’s all in the attitude,” Dutch continued. “About looking young I mean. It’s all in how you decide to approach it. What happened with Jade was awful, and it was tough. Real tough. But there’s nothing we can do to change it, nothing whatsoever, so we elected to move on.”
“We had to,” Gina agreed.
“Remember when Jade said you got what you deserved after Marcus Rance harmed you, Gina?” Crader asked her.
Gina nodded. How could she forget? “I remember.”
“Well life is a bitch because it seems to me she was the one who got what she deserved. Her and that crazy-ass mama of hers, and of course that worm of worms Max Brennan. And I mean no disrespect, Dutch. I know Jade was your daughter, but---”
“But the truth is the truth,” Dutch said. “You aren’t disrespecting me.”
“Does it still seem like yesterday, though?” Crader asked Dutch. “What happened to Jade?”
“When I can’t help but think about how close it came to happening to Gina, oh yeah. It sometimes seems like an hour ago.”
“I hear you brother,” Crader said. “If Ramsey would not have seen that small suitcase,” Crader added, shaking his head, “it would have been a different story.”
“That’s why I pray,” Gina chimed in. “That was no coincidence that Ramsey saw that smaller bag and put it right back in the larger bag. That was God’s grace.”
“Preach, Gina, preach,” LaLa said with a laugh, causing Gina to laugh too.
“She’s serious, Loretta,” Dutch said. “That woman of mine have me in church every Sunday now.”
Crader smiled. “Really?”
“Really. Every Sunday. And sometimes on Wednesday nights. She’s so grateful to the Lord for looking out for her. I’m grateful to the Lord too. Mightily.”
“But the ideal that Max Brennan would come crawling out of whatever cave he was hiding in,” Crader said, “still bothers me. He was on the FBI’s most wanted list.”
“With his plastic surgery, his weight gain, the way he could afford to fly around on private planes, made it far easier for him to hide in plain sight.”
“According to my Attorney General, Sam and Jade thought they were going to have the same plastic surgery performed on them.”
LaLa looked at her husband. “What do you mean they thought they were going to have the same thing, Cray?” LaLa asked. “It was a fact, wasn’t it?”
“No,” Crader said, glancing back at his wife. “Max planned to fly them to Nebraska all right, but only to kill them once they got there. Then he was going to bury their bodies.”
Gina shook her head. “That man was evil personified. So he was just using Jade and Sam to get to me?”
“Not you, babe,” Dutch said, remembering all he’d been through with Max Brennan. “He was after me. He wanted me to suffer. Harming you, he knew, would do the trick.”
“That’s what I don’t get,” Gina said. “How in the world did Sam of all people hook up with a joker like Max?”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Dutch said. “They both apparently hated my guts.”
“They didn’t exactly love my ass either now Dutch,” Gina said, and the others laughed.
“The point is,” Dutch said, smiling too, “it amounts to the same thing.”
“Ah, how sweet,” LaLa said.
Crader rolled his eyes and looked at his best friend. “You stop that right now, Dutch, I mean it.”
Dutch looked at him. “Stop what?”
“All of that sappy love stuff,” Crader said and everybody laughed. LaLa hit him playfully upside his head.
“No, now, I mean it. I’m not a touchy feely man. I get in enough trouble when La starts comparing me to you. Enough already.”
“All right,” Dutch said. “We get your point.”
Crader smiled, and shook his head. And they all leaned back and enjoyed the calming, sweet ride. Although for Crader, it was all so bittersweet. Because he knew he still had work to do on his marriage. It became crystal clear to him on the day of the explosion.
He was in the Oval Office, on the phone with the Belarus ambassador, when his chief of staff rushed in and told him what had happened. When his staffer said that the ATF Director believed that the bomb was meant for Gina, he and LaLa were aboard the Marine One helicopter, heading for Newark, within minutes. He held LaLa’s hand the entire trip. It could have been Gina, they said. Gina. That was the part that got to Crader.
But it wasn’t just the fact that it could have been Gina. What also got to him was the flip of that coin. What if, he started thinking, it had been LaLa? What if his wife, the mother of his daughter, had been blown to smithereens that day? Crader wouldn’t have been able to handle that kind of news. And that truth, that losing LaLa would cripple him, caused him to take a long hard look at his relationship with her. And that hard look caused him to blink. He couldn’t lose her. Not in a million years could he lose her. But he would lose her, he knew, if he didn’t start treating her right. Which meant, he decided on that fateful day, he’d better start doing everything in his power to keep her.
And later on the yacht, while he and LaLa were lying on their backs in bed in the bowels of the boat, he made it clear to her again. It was nightfall, and it felt so peaceful and magnificent too, that he felt he had to go there. “I’m above all men most richly blessed to have you as my wife, La,” he said to her. Then he turned to her. “I haven’t always remembered that. Lately, hardly ever. But I’ll never forget it again. I promise you. Not ever.”
LaLa looked at him. She’d seen the change in Crader too. Ever since they rushed over to Dutch’s house and eyeballed Gina for themselves, he’d been as close to her as white on rice. He phoned her all times of the day. Even when his schedule was packed solid with Situation Room-type meetings, he still found time to have dinner with her and Nikki nearly every night. She placed her hand on his chin and kissed him. And even though Crader was a man with a sexual appetite as big as his johnny, he didn’t turn it into anything but what it was: a time to reflect, and to hold his wife. Which he did. He pulled her close, and held her all night long.
Dutch, on the other hand, had his johnny so deep inside of Gina that she felt as if it was wedged into her folds. Which was a sensual high for her in and of itself. And the way Dutch was able to allow it to just rest there, throbbing some, but mostly calm, always impressed her.
They were lying down too, only they were in each other’s arms, Gina in front, Dutch behind her, on the window lounger inside th
eir cabin. They were able to watch the calm blue waters around them and reflect on a year that had seen more ups than downs. And although the downs were far more devastating, they chose to reflect on their ups. On the fact that they were free of Washington. On the fact that Harber Industries was now completely relocated and Dutch had more time on his hands. On the fact that BBR was looking to open additional offices that would take a lot of the pressure off of the main office, giving Gina more time on her hands. They planned to travel and see the world. Dutch, Gina, and Walter.
Gina snuggled closer against him. “Thank-you, Dutch,” she eventually said into the silence.
He smiled. She was always thanking him. That was why he loved her so. “For what?” he asked her. He was behind her, holding her against him, but he moved closer still.
“I want to thank-you for being a wonderful, strong, kind man,” Gina said. “For giving me Walter. For giving me your undivided attention every day we’ve been married.”
Dutch kissed her on the side of her face. “It was my pleasure, love,” he said. “Every second I’m with you is my pleasure.”
“We’ve sailed some rough seas, Dutch,” she went on. “From the time your mother didn’t want you to marry me, to all of the allegations and accusations, and the pressures of that fishbowl life in Washington, and then Jade and Sam and Max, we’ve had some terrible times.”
“And DeAndre,” Dutch added, holding her tighter. “Let’s not forget that unfortunate episode.”
“Right. And DeAndre.” Gina paused. “But through it all we’re still here, together, stronger than we’ve ever been.”
And for Dutch, that was the real beauty of it.
He kissed his wife again on the side of her gorgeous brown face. Then he kissed her yet again. And although they were in a place of complete relaxation, and had every intention to do nothing more than lay there and enjoy the water view, his dick began to throb. It was too relaxed. And then it began to move. And before Dutch realized it, he was gyrating Gina so hard, and so passionately, that their couch-bed began to shake.
“They can hear us, Dutch,” Gina said in a lowered tone.
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m not hitting you that hard,” Dutch replied. At least not yet, he added, to himself. “They can’t hear a thing.”
And he pulled Gina closer, moved into her deeper, and continued to rock the boat.
Crader heard the rocking as he held LaLa.
LaLa heard it too. She smiled. “Dutch is at it again,” she said.
“Yup,” Crader said. “You’d think they were teenagers the way they can’t get enough of each other.”
“And who on the face of this earth,” LaLa said, “would want to be a teenager?”
The rocking increased even more, and they started hearing flesh on flesh slapping sounds. Dutch was pounding her now.
Crader looked at LaLa. “I do,” he admitted.
LaLa inwardly smiled, she knew what he meant. “You do what?” she asked him.
“I want to be a teenager. Desperately.”
LaLa grinned. “You know what? Suddenly my teen years don’t seem so horrible either.”
Crader laughed. “Come here you,” he said, and then quickly, as if he was a very well-practiced man, dropped her drawers.
The next day, exactly as Dutch and Crader had orchestrated it, in the middle of the Mediterranean sea, President and First Lady McKenzie, and Former President and First Lady Harber, vowed their love to each other all over again.
The children were now on board, with Christian and all of the respective assistants and other staffers, and they were all blown away by the ceremony. They weren’t told that it was going to take place, to avoid any leaking, until they came on board. LaLa and Gina were also blown away. They didn’t find out until literally a few minutes before the others.
Crader was first. He stood before the minister and took LaLa’s hand. LaLa was all teeth, smiling so much that Gina feared she would burst out in laughter at any moment. But she held it together. Crader certainly did.
“I recommit my life, my love, and my happiness to you,” he said. “And I recommit it forevermore.”
Then LaLa repeated those same few, simple words. And then they kissed each other as a token of that commitment.
Dutch took Gina’s hand. They were next. “I recommit,” Dutch started, as it was according to script, but Gina placed her fingers on his lips. And shook her head.
“No, baby,” she said. “You don’t have to recommit anything to me. You’ve always been committed to me. From the moment you said you loved me, and asked me to be your wife, to this very day, you have given your everything to me. So no. This is not a recommitment ceremony for us. It’s a continuation ceremony. Because if you continue treating me the way you’ve been treating me all the years we’ve been together, then you will have given this woman the greatest life I could have ever dreamed of having.”
Tears were in Dutch’s eyes as he swept her into his arms, holding her tightly. And now Crader was crying, LaLa was balling, the assistants all were crying, and even the minister had to wipe away a tear or two.
But Little Walt wasn’t having it.
“Stop crying,” he urged his parents, tugging on his father’s tuxedo.
“Stop crying,” he begged his crying aunt and uncle.
“Stop crying everybody,” he insisted. “It’s taking too long when you cry. You have to stop crying. You’re cutting into my playing time!”
And as soon as Dutch and Gina, and LaLa and Crader heard such an astute explanation as to why they need to get this darn ceremony over with, their tears turned to laughter. And they couldn’t stop laughing. It was as if Little Walt summed it up perfectly. Jade and Sam and Max and every foe they faced tried to cut into their playing time. They tried to kill their joy, and Gina’s life while they were at it, but it all backfired in a mushroom cloud of their own making. And instead of breaking the joy, their actions made it more vivid. Like living color. Like having Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s all rolled into one.
Dutch lifted Walter with one arm and placed his other arm around Gina. “Now that we have our happy back,” he said, “let’s keep it.”
Gina looked at her son, and looked at her husband. She looked at her best friend and her best friend’s husband.
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s keep it.”
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Table of Contents
DUTCH AND GINA:THE SINS OF THE FATHERSDUTCH AND GINA:WHAT HE DID FOR LOVETHE MOB BOSS SERIES
ADDITIONAL BESTSELLINGINTERRACIAL ROMANCEFROM MALLORY MONROE:DANIEL’G GIRL:ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN
ROMANTIC FICTIONFROMAWARD-WINNINGANDBESTSELLING AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
EPILOGUE
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