DUTCH AND GINA: AFTER THE FALL (12 page)

When he turned to sit on the sofa, the moment changed. For Liz had opened her robe, revealing her completely naked body, and the robe was now careening down that brown, perfectly toned body of hers in a heap at her bare feet.

Dutch just stood there. Although his penis s ffened in reac on to that beau full body, every other part of his being was repulsed.

He frowned. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked her.

Liz was, at first, unnerved by the negative tone of his voice, but she pressed on. “We’ve wanted this for such a long time, Dutch,” she reminded him.

Dutch let out a harsh exhale. “Is that why you came all this way? To play the whore again?” Now Liz just stood there, amazed that he would call her such a deplorable name. “I’m not a whore,” she insisted. “Don’t you dare call me a whore.”

“Well what do you suggest I call you, Liz?” Dutch asked as he moved toward her. “ Tell me, please, because I’m not quite sure. I have a woman in front of me, naked as a jaybird, and she’s offended that I called her a whore.” A hardness came over Dutch’s usually so eyes. A hardness Liz had never seen before. “Put on your robe,” he ordered.

“You don’t tell me what to do. You know you want this,” she said, looking down her body and then back up into his eyes.

A sadness came into his eyes. “What I want,” he said, trying with the li le energy he s ll had le not to lose his cool, “is my wife. Do you understand that? I don’t want you and my wife. I don’t want some other woman and my wife. Hell, I don’t want a hundred women and my wife. I want my wife and my wife women and my wife. I want my wife and my wife alone. Am I making myself clear, Liz? I don’t want you.”

“But I see how you look at me. And look at that,” she said, mo oning toward his penis. “It’s as hard as a rock. You can’t wait to ram it inside of me, and you know it.”

Dutch stared at her. He knew she played the whore, which was probably the real reason why he never bothered with her sexually. But she’d never come onto him like this, not ever, and their rela onship always remained cordial. Even close. Until now.

He moved past her and headed for the door. Liz, suddenly panicking that she had miscalculated badly, moved in front of him. “Dutch,” she said, grabbing his arm, unable to shield her panic.

“Take your hands off of me.”

“But you don’t have to leave. Look,” she said, grabbing her robe from the floor, “I’ll put it back on.” She began sliding back into it. “It won’t happen again, I promise you. I’m just going through a stressful me, that’s all. You know this isn’t like me. We can s ll remain friends.”

“Not possible.”

“It is possible, Dutch. I need your friendship. What about you and me, Dutch?”

“When you chose to take off your clothes and parade your nakedness in my face, there was no longer a you and me.”

But Liz s ll couldn’t understand his reac on. She never dreamed he’d turn her down so decisively. All those years and she assumed he never went there because she never gave him the green light to go. It didn’t make sense. “I don’t understand,” she said, her face a mask of confusion.

“That’s because you don’t want to understand it.”

“But you stood by me when you found out I had been with Crader. You didn’t call me a whore and cast me aside then.”

“You didn’t know the extent of his rela onship with Loretta. That wasn’t on you, that was on him. But you don’t have that excuse now. You know all about Gina.

And when you chose to go down this road with me, you chose to disrespect her. Now it’s my me to choose because nobody disrespects her.”

He moved to open the door and just leave, but she stopped him again, her panic now pure desperation.

“Dutch, please, I’ll do anything. Please. I’ll do, I’ll give you head.” She a empted to unzip his pants, but he pushed her away from him.

“Get away from me!” he yelled, disgusted by her.

Where was the woman he knew? Where was her easy manner he used to love? Where was her pride for pete’s sake? “What’s wrong with you?” he asked, unable to wrap his brain around this change in her.

She was breathing heavily now, her beauty, it seemed to Dutch, drained out of her. And he opened the door to leave.

“What about the informa on I have?” she asked him in what could only be described as a last ditch effort.

But Dutch kept walking anyway. She may have had some very valuable informa on. Informa on he absolutely needed to have. But nothing, not even her intel, would be worth the price she wanted him to pay.

He kept walking. He didn’t look back.

He took the elevator to the top floor, leaning against the sha to avoid collapsing, secret service agents moving over in case he did. But it wasn’t the physical exhaus on they thought it was. It was emo onal.

Purely emotional. And he could hardly bear it.

Once on the top floor he entered his suite to the sound of silence. There was no longer aides clu ering sound of silence. There was no longer aides clu ering his room on their cell phones and Blackberries, or raucous protestors on television screens spewing obsceni es for all the world to hear, or even the craziness of the day where audacious world leaders out-muscled each other to be heard in a mee ng, chaired by him, that yielded absolutely no results.

There was now only silence. He just stood there, momentarily, determined to get Liz out of his mind, and then headed for the Nursery to relieve LaLa and Crader.

He expected to find Li le Walt asleep with either LaLa or Crader, or both, in the chair beside the crib.

And although he found Walter blissfully asleep, there was no sign of his two friends. Which was odd if it was anything. He knew neither one of them would leave his child in this hotel suite alone. Then he thought again, praying that it was so, and hurried to the bedroom.

A trail of Gina’s discarded clothing greeted him, and the sound of water running in the adjacent bathroom’s shower stall, as soon as he entered the bedroom. And just like that all of his troubles, all of those mee ngs yet to a end, and that sad scene with Liz, all evaporated into thin air. And he smiled a smile that cut deep into his heart for the first me since his arrival in Europe, and all he wanted now was to feel that familiar body in his arms.

In the shower, Gina leaned her head back as the water careened down her neck and body and drained away the remains of the day. It had been a nightmare in Texas. The judge was so inflammatory in his rhetoric, so quick to assume Marcus Rance’s guilt, that no ma er what Roman said, no ma er what compelling evidence he presented, it con nually felt as if he was reasoning with a brick wall. And then she arrived to tes fy, which quickly turned a sparely a ended hearing into a media event, with news outlets converging at the courthouse and changing that once staid symbol of justice into a building under siege.

Marcus looked even frailer than he looked when she last saw him in prison. He sat at the Defense table in that courtroom wearing a suit Dutch had purchased for him. With his thick eyeglasses and calm demeanor, he looked more like a bookworm, it seemed to Gina, one of the a orneys even, than the sadis c killer the State was making him out to be.

And the prosecu on didn’t let up. They reminded the judge of every bad thing Marcus had ever done, from his juvenile record to his days as a drug dealer, to his ull mate convic on in that drive by shoo ng. No way, they declared, should a menace to society like this brother be granted anything remotely resembling a second bite at the apple of jus ce. In fact, they argued, his sentence should have never been commuted to life last year in the first place, and he should have remained on Death Row. A new trial, they concluded, would make a mockery out of the judicial system.

By the me Gina was allowed to speak and Roman had given his rebu all arguments, it was already a done deal. No new trial, the judge ordered gleefully, and denied the petition.

Gina closed her eyes. Her brother had been a bad man, she knew it was true. Anybody who would sell drugs and aid in the devasta on of so many lives deserved harshness. But as a former trial lawyer herself, she couldn’t see for a moment how that evidence could lead them to conclude he was guilty of this par cular crime, which, she thought, was the point. They weren’t there to crucify him for past sins, just this sin, but that didn’t seem to be the tenor of the hearing at all. In the guise of the present sin, they got him for the past.

him for the past.

When she heard slight but definite movement entering the bathroom, she quickly opened the shower stall. And there was Dutch, his suit coat, shirt and e off, unbuckling his pants.

She relaxed. “Hey,” she said. “You look awful.” He stared at her, at the way her body seemed to slump, at the storminess within her bewildered eyes.

“You don’t look too fantastic yourself.” She watched him as he unzipped his pants and stepped out of them, his briefs’ following, his rod s ff and hard. But sex was the last thing on her mind.

Marcus was. Tears appeared in her eyes.

When Dutch saw that she was emo onal, and it wasn’t a happy emo on, he kicked his pants and briefs away, tossed his shirt and e over his head, and hurried to the stall. He stepped in, and pulled her into his arms.

“ They denied the pe

on,” she said as she laid her

head on his bare chest.

Dutch held her ghtly against him, the water now drenching them both. The outcome, he knew, given Marcus’s past, given Texas, was probably a forgone conclusion all along. But Gina was always so optimistic. She s ll believed in jus ce and righteousness and the good old American way. She still believed that, given the chance, human beings would behave with humanity and civility. Dutch had long since dispelled that myth.

He wanted to ask her so many ques ons, he even wanted to get that judge’s name and use his unmatched authority to prove to him who really had the power. But he’d been in poli cs long enough to know be er than to intervene in any way that could be construed, at most, as a cons tu onal breach and, at least, as meddling in the jus ce system. So he didn’t say a word. He just held her.

It wasn’t un ll a er they had showered, dried off, and were both in bed did he allow his penis to slide inside of her. It had been itching to do just that from the moment he saw her standing in that shower stall, naked and beau ful, but so unlike herself that he knew immediately that it had all gone wrong. Now she seemed be er and reassured, knowing that she did all she could do, and Roman did all that he could do, but Marcus’ past had finally caught up with him and, unfortunately, he was now reaping what he had sown.

“Roman says he’s going to keep looking for new evidence and file again,” she said as Dutch slid inside of her in slow, gentle glides, not to climax her, but to wet her well enough to take in what he knew was going to soon be a completely engorged penis.

“It had be er be explosive,” he replied, “a proverbial smoking gun, to get those folks in that part of the country to even consider granting any new trial.”

“I know. He knows it too.” Gina exhaled, more as her body began to relax under the tutelage of Dutch’s penis. “He’ll keep me posted.” Then she looked into his eyes. They were both lying on their side, both facing each other. “How did your meetings go?”

“A total waste,” Dutch replied. “Instead of trying to solve the problems, everybody’s positioning themselves for public opinion polls back in their respec ve countries.”

“Even in the face of what’s happening in Greece and Spain?”

“Even in the face of that level of collapse, yes.

They’ll come around and we’ll get it resolved, but the theatrics is what drives me insane.”

Gina touched his handsome face. “Don’t let those people get to you, Dutch. Just ignore the background noise.”

noise.”

He nodded. “I plan to. And then, a er that craziness, I come to the hotel to find that Liz is in town.”

Gina stared at him. “Liz Sinclair?”

“Yes.”

“What on earth did she want?”

“To fuck me apparently.”

Gina knew Dutch was good in bed, and would have been worth the trip, but Liz didn’t know that. At least she didn’t think she knew it.

“She came all this way for sex?” she asked him.

“She came as a Greek bearing gifts.”

“Come again?”

“Wes Logan--”

“Who’s Wes Logan?”

“He’s Jed Brightman’s chief of staff and one of Liz’s confidants. He sent a note sta ng that Liz was his guest in town and had some intel for me. So I went to her hotel room. We hugged, greeted each other, it seemed as it always was with the two of us. Un ll I turned around and there she was, naked as a newborn babe, anxious to get my rod up her ass.” Gina’s heart dropped. She was convinced that Liz was just the p of the iceberg. So many women had to have wanted her husband. He was one of those “chick magnet” kind of guys. But she was equally convinced that they weren’t ge ng him. Not if she had anything to say about it, and she did.

“It’s the same thing she did to Crader,” Gina said, remembering how Crader caved. She stared at Dutch.

Dutch was nodding. “Yes,” he said. “I remember.

She even offered to suck my dick too.”

Gina was wai ng to hear the but. She knew there had to be a but.

“But?” she asked, when he didn’t say it himself.

“Did you do it?”

“Do what? Fuck her ass? I told her to kiss my ass,” Dutch said and Gina smiled. Dutch, however, wasn’t smiling, and she noticed that he wasn’t.

She looked at him with that loving, earnest stare of hers he loved. “You really like Liz, don’t you?”

“I loved her. I cherished her friendship.”

“You have a lot of great quali es,” she said, as she began to pay more a en on to his teasing penis. “But some mes you can be a lousy judge of character.

Especially with females. For real, though.” Dutch disagreed. “I give people a chance to prove me wrong. I knew Liz was a woman who loved to fuck.

That was probably the real reason why I never fell in bed with her myself, because she loved it too much and I knew I couldn’t have that par cular quality in any woman of mine. But I knew her. I was the male version of her back in the day, remember? Crader’s the male version of her to this day. All three of us were cut from the same cloth. And I couldn’t in good conscience condemn Liz for her moral lapses, but reward Crader by making him my new chief of staff. Besides, she didn’t know Crader was trying to be with LaLa.”

“But that wasn’t the case tonight,” Gina said. “She knew all about me.”

“And that was the point I made. When she decided that she wanted to parade her wares in front of me, when she knew what it would do to you if I were to go down that road, was the end of the line far as I’m concerned. It’s over.”

Gina knew he meant it too. She’d never met a man who could be as loyal to his friends the way Dutch was. It was some mes inexplicable how loyal he could be. But as soon as one of those friends crossed him, he could be as cold and heartless in his treatment of those former friends as anybody she’d ever known.

those former friends as anybody she’d ever known.

“
Oooh
,” Gina said, closing her eyes, as Dutch began to find his groove and turned his probing penis into a massaging grind machine inside of her.

“Feels good?” he asked her, looking at her.

“And how,” she replied, her eyes still closed.

It was feeling good to Dutch, too, so much so that he knew he had to act now. “Get on your stomach, babe,” he said in a low, hall ng voice, as his erec on was literally growing inside of her. “I want to fuck you from the back.”

Gina, anxious herself to be fucked from the back, did as he ordered. And he didn’t waste me. He slid inside of her wetness with a hard thrust and then lay his body on top of hers.

And he began his sliding out, all the way to the tip of her vagina, and then sliding back in with the kind of intense caress that only he knew how to give to her.

He hit her g-spot seemingly every me, and her red, weary body came to life under the control of his knowing rod. He held onto the sides of her head as he fucked her, as his bu ocks moved with a steadily increasing rhythm, as he kissed her neck and her beau full back and turned his thrusts into a pounding that made both their bodies constrict in feelings of pure pleasure. There was no other woman alive that ever made him feel that way Gina made him feel. This was his woman. His one and only. And with every thrust, with every pound, with every saturated thrashing of her compliant body, he was making her understand, beyond a shadow of any doubt, just how much she belonged to him. And he belonged to her.

The next morning, however, Liz Sinclair was back on her game, asking for a meeting with Dutch.

It was a busy start to the day in the presiden all suite and quickly became as raucous as it had been quiet when Dutch arrived back late last night. Now it was burs ng with ac vity again. All of his staff had assembled, going over the day’s i nerary, taking their cues from Crader, making certain that every note the president hit on this world stage was the right one.

Crader, in fact, had become so busy with staff issues that he hadn’t even had a chance to say good morning to LaLa. It was a er midnight when Gina arrived at the hotel and they turned the baby over to her, and he and LaLa had gone to LaLa’s hotel room.

A er sharing a glass of sherry and talking about the tight security all over town, LaLa stood up.

“We’d be er call it a night, bud,” she’d said. “Gina and President Harber have air ght schedules tomorrow. And it starts early tomorrow morning.” Crader sat his drink on the side table and stood too.

Moved up to her and placed his hands on the side of her arms. “You must be exhausted,” he said.

LaLa agreed. “I am,” she said. “I feel as if I’ve been up two days straight, when I haven’t, but this me change is weird.”

“What you need,” he said, massaging her arms, “is a little relaxation.”

“What I need is a good night’s sleep. I’m going straight to bed.”

Crader stared her dead in the eyes. He wanted no misunderstanding. “I want very much to go to bed with you,” he said. The last me he had been primed and ready to make love to her, she couldn’t go through with it. Now he was nearing desperation.

LaLa, however, was shaking her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Cray.”

It was the answer he dreaded hearing. “Why not?” he asked, a slight plea in his voice.

“I have to know first that you’re not just a er a good

“I have to know first that you’re not just a er a good time. I have to know that our rela onship is built on more than that.”

“It is, La.”

“I don’t know that yet.”

“You do know it,” Crader said, his need to make love to her causing him to become slightly impa ent. “I’m not after your body, all right?”

“How do I know that?”

“Because I just told you I wasn’t.”

“You told me you wanted to make our rela onship work, too, but as soon as a pre er face came along you forgot all about our relationship.”

“It wasn’t like that, La.”

“It was exactly like that,” LaLa said.

Crader understood, but that didn’t negate his growing resentment of her steadfastness. He rubbed her arms a moment longer, and then a empted to smile. “I’d be er let you get some sleep then,” he said. “Good night.”

And he was gone.

Now, this morning, he was walking into the Nursery thrilled to see her wonderful face again.

“Good morning,” he said, walking toward her. She and Walt were seated on a blanket with Li le Walt playing with his toys. “Hey, Dutch, Junior,” Crader added to the baby, with a smile. The baby smiled and then fell on his side. LaLa helped him back up.

Crader knelt down to LaLa. “You okay?” he asked her.

“I am, yes,” she replied. Their eyes met, and he leaned over and kissed her on her mouth. The kiss lingered, and they both parted slowly.

Crader missed her terribly. All through the night he couldn’t stop thinking about her and how sorry he was that he had blown his chance with her. He s ll stood a chance with her, he understood that, but it would never be as perfect as it could have been had he kept his business in his pants where it belonged.

A knock came on the opened door and Allison stepped inside. “Excuse me, guys,” she said, and both Crader and LaLa looked at her. “Liz Sinclair is here to see the president, Cray.”

Crader frowned. “I thought you said he went to see her last night?”

“He did,” Allison said.

Crader exhaled, looked at LaLa again. “I’ll be back,” he said and left the Nursery.

As soon as Crader entered the president’s bedroom and informed him of Liz’s request, the president, who was seated at the dressing table slipping into his shoes, shook his head. “No,” he said.

“Yes,” Gina said, who was also seated at the dressing table. Her daily makeup was being applied by her beauty care assistant and she was turned toward the mirror observing the progress. Whereas Dutch, seated on the edge of the same bench, had his back to the mirror.

He looked at Gina. “Why would I want to meet with that bitch?” he asked her.

Crader almost smiled. Liz had apparently done something to disappoint the big man. About time.

Gina, however, was looking at the big picture.

“What if she has news about Jed Brightman and Shelly Pra and whatever they’re up to? You said yourself they think they have the goods on you.” Dutch smiled at Gina’s phrasing. But then he thought about what she had said. He stood up. “Put on your clothes,” he said. “I want you with me.” Then he turned to Crader. “Clear the suite,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Crader replied and left the room.

“Yes, sir,” Crader replied and left the room.

By the me Gina was dressed and she and Dutch were entering the living area, the once bustling hotel suite was now cleared of aides and staffers. Liz Sinclair was the lone person in the room, seated like a sophis cated lady in a business suit. She even stood when she saw the president, revealing legs far longer and shapelier than Gina’s.

“What do you want?” Dutch asked her without any pretense at niceties.

Liz hated what had happened last night, and had wanted to explain herself to him. With Gina injec ng herself into this mee ng, however, it seemed highly unlikely that she would ever get the chance.

“Good morning,” she said to the president, a emp ng to smile off her embarrassment of the night before, a emp ng to behave as if they were s ll on speaking terms.

“ Tell me what you want before I toss you out of here,” Dutch said to her, making certain just how undeniably the terms had changed.

Liz had decided to get on with it too. She did have what was le of her pride to think about, a er all.

“ The Speaker and the Vice President have discovered a woman from your past,” she said bluntly.

Gina braced herself, wondering what woman could they have cooked up this me. Dutch stared at Liz, wondering if this was another one of her games.

“What woman?” he asked her.

“Samantha Redding,” Liz said and looked intensely at Dutch for his reaction. He revealed nothing.

It was Gina who asked the follow-up ques on.

“What about her?” she asked.

Liz, however, kept her eyes on Dutch. “ They know about your daughter,” she said to him.

Gina’s heart pounded. She glanced at Dutch, but Dutch con nued to stare at Liz as if he was researching the Rolodex of his mind for some sort of informa on.

She looked again at Liz. “What . . . daughter? Dutch doesn’t have a daughter.”

“Actually, he does,” Liz said as if it pleased her to prove that wife of his wrong. “ They’re wai ng for the DNA confirma on before they go public, but they’re already certain. She’s said to be the spi ng image of Dutch. The black version of him, is how they put it.” Gina dared not look at Dutch, not with Liz standing there so gleefully, but she did place her hand in his.

Liz no ced the gesture and felt disheartened. But she kept going. “According to Wes Logan they’re going to play up the deadbeat dad angle for all its worth, saying how you knew about your daughter all along but abandoned her and her mother to fend for themselves.

They’re also going to play up the fact that she’s a black girl and ques on, politely mind you, why it is that you have all of these black children running around.” Gina frowned. “All of what black children?”

“Well, Li le Walt, for one, and now this girl.

Although she’s hardly a girl. She’s twenty-three years old.”

Gina s ll refused to look at Dutch, or to ques on him. She refused to give Liz even that satisfaction.

Liz, realizing it too, went on. “ Then they’re going to sit back and let the public’s outrage do their dirty work.

Ar cles of impeachment could be dra ed within days a er they receive that DNA confirma on and have their big reveal, and Wes says they’re certain, given the way they plan to play this up, that the public will demand impeachment.” Liz handed Dutch an envelope. “Wes thought you might like her address,” she said, “to somehow blunt the blow.”

Dutch looked at the envelope, but didn’t open it. Liz could just feel the angst all over him, and she so could just feel the angst all over him, and she so wanted to comfort him.

“How did they get her DNA?” Gina asked. “Is she and her mother cooperating with them?”

“No. Neither one of them are. Wes said their people followed her, kept a glass she was drinking from or something like that, but she nor her mother knows anything about it. Even the DNA test is completely under the radar and they will deny any and all if their shit hits the fan.”

Then she looked at Dutch, a plea in her eyes.

“Dutch, I just want to tell you that I--” she started, but Gina would not allow her to finish.

“Is there anything else Wes Logan told you to tell us?” she asked her.

Liz looked at Gina and suddenly that syrupy sweet personality of hers was gone. She stared daggers at Gina. “No, that was all,” she said.

“Then goodbye,” Gina said.

Liz literally looked her up and down in disgust. She looked at Dutch, as if somehow he would give her a lifeline, but Dutch wasn’t thinking about her. He walked away, toward the window of the penthouse suite.

Liz, knowing defeat when she saw it, turned to leave.

“And Liz,” Gina said, promp ng the older woman to turn around. “If I wasn’t First Lady and we weren’t here in Europe, I would have tore into your ass as soon as Dutch told me what you attempted to do.” Liz looked quickly at Dutch, horrified that he would have told Gina, or anyone, about what happened last night. Dutch, however, was lost in his own horror to so much as turn around and acknowledge her pain.