Dutch and Gina: The Power of Love (35 page)

Robert’s pain felt as if he had been shot, stabbed and then strangled.
 
“Yes,” he said, but just barely.

And Dutch left the Rand estate.
 
He left it with that same heavy heart he had arrived with.
 
He leaned his head back as the helicopter moved up then down, buckled, and then smoothly flew away.
 
Everything he did to them tonight, he knew they deserved.
 
But that wasn’t the issue.
 
He had no problem whatsoever with what he did. It was the aftereffects that bothered him. Because every time he was forced to utilize such unsavory methods to kill the cancer threatening to destroy the people he loved, a part of himself, a significant part, always died too.

 
It was a little after eight a.m. when he arrived back at the White House.
 
He entered the bedroom, took a quick but needful shower, and crawled into bed behind his sleeping wife.
 
It wasn’t until she felt the troubling of the bedsprings did Gina even open her eyes.
 
By the time she fully registered that it was Dutch just coming to bed, he had already moved in behind her, lifted her gown, and pressed his naked body against her now naked backside.

“You’re back,” she said, still mostly asleep.

“Yes,” Dutch said, hoping to get a few hours of sleep himself.
 
“I’m back.”

“Little Walt missed you at dinner last night.”

Dutch smiled.
 
“I know.
 
I peeped in at him before I showered.”

“He’s still sleep?”

“Yup.
 
He’s picking up mommy’s habits of sleeping to ten every morning.”

Gina smiled weakly.
 
“Not every morning.”

The thought of Gina against him, and her sweet scent after all of the ugliness he had to endure all night long it seemed, began to make him heady.
 
“I miss you,” he said heartfelt.

“I miss you, too,” Gina said, her backside snuggling closer against his front.

“Where did you go?”

“Here and there,” Dutch said.
 
He began rubbing his penis against her ass.
 
He needed to feel that normalcy of Gina’s comfort again.

“Here and there?” she said.
 
“What does that mean?
 
Here and there.
 
And everywhere?”

Dutch slipped his penis between her legs. “Yes,” he said.
 
“Everywhere.”

When Gina felt his penis against her, she moaned.
 
“Aren’t you too tired for that?”

“Too tired to fuck you?” Dutch asked, slipping his penis into the entry of her vagina, prepping her.
 
“That day will never come.”

“I’m glad you’re home anyway,” she said, enjoying the prep.

“You’ll never know how glad I am,” he said.

“Dutch?”

“Yes?”

“Do I have to worry about those photographs anymore?”

Dutch closed his eyes.
 
Opened them again.
 
“No,” he said firmly.

“Forever?”

“Forever,” he said and he could prep no longer.
 
He slid his penis inside of her, sighing as the feel of her folds clenched around him.
 

Gina smiled and sighed too.
 
“I knew you’d take care of me,” she said.
 
And he smiled too.
 
He wasn’t at all sure if she meant the photos, or what he was doing to her right now.

But as peaceful as their morning began, by noon it was a raucous day.
 
It all stared right at noon with the announced resignation of Jed Brightman, Speaker of the House of Representatives, an announcement that rocked the Capitol.
 
Speculation ran wild, with almost all of it focusing on the Speaker’s well known penchant for the ladies.
 
His wife finally had had enough, was the conventional wisdom, and planned to expose him if he didn’t step down.
 
Or maybe there was some female blackmailing him, was the nonconventional wisdom.
 
He denied both, and spent all afternoon spinning that denial, but it didn’t matter in the end.
 
He was out as Speaker, out of Congress, and they all waited for the next big news.

That next big news came at 2pm in the Rose Garden.
 
Gina, LaLa, and Christian were assembled in the Roosevelt Room watching the news on television.
 
Gina hadn’t seen Dutch after he had made love to her and fell asleep, and she had gotten up, showered, and went to begin her scheduled meetings. Until just a few minutes ago, when Allison Shearer informed her that the vice president was about to make an announcement and the president would be with him.

After the Speaker’s abrupt announcement, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know what Shelly was about to do.
 
Dutch had been gone all night, and Gina was certain that his rendezvous had everything to do with the Speaker’s resignation, and now with Shelly’s sudden need to make an announcement himself.
 

“I’ll be very brief,” Shelly began, and Gina and LaLa were glued to the screen.
 
Crader was on his cell phone handling some business with the deputy chief of staff, but was only mildly distracted.
 
Christian was watching too, but he was mainly texting Jade.
 
They were becoming quite close, like kids really, and Gina was pleased because Dutch was pleased, although Jade still had a lot to learn.
 
But at least they were trying, she felt.

Shelly’s wife Erin was standing to the right of him, and Dutch was standing to the left.
 
For a man who had gotten only a few hours’ sleep, Gina noticed, Dutch looked good.
 
He wore a soft periwinkle blue double breasted suit, matching shoes, and a sharp gray and blue tie.
 
The only reason she knew he was tired at all was because he wasn’t standing in his usual confident, almost spread-eagle stance.
  
 
He, instead, had one hand in his pant pocket and was leaned more on one foot than both equally.
 
It was a difference that was so minor it would easily go unnoticed.
 
But Gina noticed it.

“I have been privileged to serve my country for many decades,” Shelly began what he had promised to be a brief speech, but what had turned into a nearly ten minute rambling.
 
But Dutch, to his credit, Gina thought, allowed him to have his say.
 
And then Shelly finally made it official:

“It is with great but necessary pain that I have submitted my resignation as your vice president, and the president has accepted it.”

The shock in the room was electrifying.
 
First Christian stopped texting, and then, on hearing what the VP had to say, began texting furiously.
 
Crader had already been told, and therefore did not kill his cell phone call.
 
But LaLa was stunned.

“First the Speaker, and now the Vice President,” she said.
 
“What’s going on here?”

“A good old fashioned Washington housecleaning,” Gina said.
 
“And it’s about time.”

“I agree,” LaLa said. “Both of them were shady as hell.”

Then Dutch took to the podium and spend a few moments congratulating Shelly on his “decades” of service, as Shelly had called it in his own prepared remarks.
 
Then Dutch said something that would make the vice president’s announcement seem like a partly-cloudy weather forecast.

“I want to announce my intention to submit in nomination as my new vice president,” Dutch said, “the former senator from the great state of Florida, Crader McKenzie.”

And with those simple words, the world changed.

Gina stood to her feet, a smile of amazement on her face. Christian stood too, a smile of amazement on his face.
 
Crader killed his call, an amazing smile already on his face.
 
He, after all, already had been told.

And LaLa.
 

Everybody looked at LaLa.
 

But she had already passed out.

EPILOGUE

LaLa stood in front of the tall mirror and watched as her stylist placed the white bridal veil on her head.
 
Gina and Jade were standing behind her, looking too.

“You look beautiful, Miss King,” Jade said, staring at the blushing bride.

“Thank-you, sweetie pie,” LaLa said, staring at her own reflection.

“The Vice President is going to be blown away,” Gina said.
 

LaLa shook her head.
 
“I never would have dreamed it, G,” she said, and Gina took her hand.
 
“Remember when we were struggling, trying to keep the doors of Block by Block Raiders open?”

“I remember it, girl.
 
I remember it well.”

“And now you’re First Lady of the United States and I’m . . .”

“And you’re about to become the wife of the Vice President of the United States.”

“Um, um, um,” LaLa said, shaking her head. “Don’t tell me God ain’t good.”

“Amen!”

“Don’t tell me dreams don’t come true.
 
I would have never dreamed,” LaLa started, but the tears began to come again.

“Oh, La, you’re going to look like Rocky by the time of the ceremony!
 
You have got to stop crying.”
 
Tears appeared in Gina’s eyes too.

“I know,” LaLa said, wiping her tears away.
 
“I’m awful. I know.”

“You aren’t awful, Miss King,” Jade said.
 
“You’re just happy.”

The door opened and one of Gina’s assistants came in.
 
“Excuse me, Mrs. Harber, but somebody is here to see you, ma’am.”

“To see me?” Gina asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It better not be the vice president.”

“Oh, no ma’am, I wouldn’t dare.”

Gina smiled.
 
“All right, then, send them in.”

The assistant left.

“I wouldn’t put it past Crader to want to get an early peep.”

LaLa laughed, thinking about that night he did get a peep, right there in the White House Residence of all places.
 
And it was that peep that made them unable to stop taking peeps of each other ever since.