President's Girlfriend 06 - The Sins of the Fathers (4 page)

“Where’s
Dutch?”

“Crader,
what is it?”

“Where’s the
president?”

“Crader,
tell me something!”

“Where’s the
fucking president!” Crader screamed in his well-known bombastic style, his hand
slamming onto his desk.
 
He looked up at
Allison.
 
She was offended, but she was
also accustomed to Crader’s hard edge.
 

“He’s still
in Helsinki, at the summit,” she reminded him.
 
“He’s not due back to the States until late tonight, as soon as the last
of those meetings are over.
 
You know his
schedule, Cray.
 
Now what is it?”

Crader still
sat there, staring at that picture.
 
He
knew he had to calm back down.
 
But if it were true . . .

“I need more
information,” he started mumbling.

“More
information about what?” a now worried Allison wanted to know.

But Allison
didn’t exist right now for Crader.
 
“I
need to be certain,” he continued to mumble, looking around the room.
 
“I can’t just go running to the president
half-cock like this, not until I’m certain.
 
But how can I be certain?” he asked with a distressed look on his
face.
 
“Who would even send this to me?
 
Who would even know . . .
”
  

And then it
hit him like a ton of bricks.
 
He looked
up at Allison, although he didn’t even notice her there.
 
“Max,” he said.
 
“Max Brennan.”

“What about
Max?” Allison asked.

“Max?”
Crader said as if it was a question.

“What about
Max?”

“How could
Max know . . .
 
He was there twelve years
ago, but not. . .
 
Why would he?”

“Why would
he what, Crader?
 
What about Max?”

But Crader
was already looking away from Allison and at the possibilities that Max
Brennan, the president’s former chief of staff, a man who’d already betrayed
the president’s trust royally, could be up to some new shit now.
 
And then, as soon as he thought about Max, he
realized the bigger problem.
 
He realized
what
Elvelyn’s death
meant.
 
What Jim Rosenthal’s death
meant.
 

He rose to
his feet so fast that his chair fell backwards.

“Miss
Shearer,” he said to Allison with a look of undeniable seriousness on his face,
“you never received this clipping.
 
Do
you understand me?”

Allison
frowned.
 
“What is it, Cray?”

“Miss
Shearer,” Crader said again, clutching the desk, “you never saw this clipping,
do you understand me?
 
You don’t know
anything about this clipping.
 
If you
receive any more you are to turn them over to me and me alone.
 
Not my staff.
 
Not your staff.
 
But me and me alone.
 
Without hesitation.
 
Without question.
 
Do
I make myself clear?”

Allison was
floored.
 
She’d been in Washington long
enough to know that when the Vice President of the United States tells you to
keep your mouth shut, you had better keep your mouth shut.

Allison was
also no fool.
 
Dutch would kick her out
on her rear if she didn’t do exactly what Crader was ordering her to do right
now.

“Yes, sir,”
she said to the VP.
 
“You’ve made
yourself perfectly clear.”

Crader
exhaled.
 
He knew he could rely on
Ally.
 
“That’ll be all,” he said to her,
attempting to remain upright although he felt like collapsing.
 
Allison could see his distress too, and she
knew, in time, she’d be in the loop on just what was going on here.
 
But not now.
 
She left.

Crader sat
his chair back up and sunk down into it.
  
He needed more information.
 
He
had to know for certain.
 
She could have
been blowing smoke up his ass when she came to him last year.
 
This clipping could have nothing to do with
that.
 

Or everything to do with that.

But before
he uttered a word of this to Dutch, he had to be certain.

CHAPTER TWO

“It’s now or
never,” Jade said to her mother as they stood in the back of the large
reception room in Helsinki, Finland.
 
They watched Dutch Harber meet and greet wealthy Europeans who seemed
enthralled with the handsome American president.
 
It was Jade’s first time at an event like
this with her father, and she marveled at how he knew how to work it.
 
He seemed to just love it, she felt, when she
was certain nobody could truly love this.
 

But he acted
as if he was pleased to meet every new face in the reception line.
 
And he enjoyed them with style, too, Jade
thought with a smile, as he stood there in his elegant black suit that looked as
if it had been stitched onto his tall, muscular body.
 
His wavy black hair was slicked back off of
his smooth, tanned forehead, revealing those gorgeous green eyes that were
always so sharply focused they looked like glass.
 
He was smiling, shaking every hand, giving
successful but otherwise regular people the opportunity to hobnob with the
President of the United States.
 
And Jade
was once again proud that this man, Walter “Dutch” Harber, was her father.
 

But she was
also restless.
 
Because
of her mother.
 
Because she still
had to convince her mother that if she wanted Dutch, if she wanted to make him
a part of their family and not Gina’s, she had to be willing to fight the fight
of her life to get him.

Her mother,
however, wasn’t the kind of woman who understood these things.
 
And it was driving Jade nuts.

“Ma, did you
hear me?” Jade said stridently, although she was still staring at her
father.
 
“It’s now or never.
 
If you don’t make up your mind that you’re
willing to fight for him, you won’t get him.
 
You don’t know Gina like I know her.
 
She’s something else.
 
She won’t
give him up without a fight.”

Samantha
“Sam” Redding sipped from her glass of wine and continued to stare her big,
almond eyes at Dutch.
 
And on some level
she resented him.
 
He swooped into their
lives, with all of his power and money and charm, and charmed their daughter
away from her.
 
Not to mention how he
destroyed Henry Osgood, the only man who could handle Jade, in the process.
 
That boy, whom Sam once had dreams of
marrying Jade, was in a wheelchair now, thanks to what Dutch had done to him.

Now she was
all alone and their daughter was nothing more than a bitch on two legs that Sam
could barely stomach.
 
It was as if Jade
left their home in South Carolina and became a drug addict.
 
Only her drug of choice was her own
father.
 
And Sam blamed Dutch Harber for
this crazy turn their daughter had made.
 
It certainly wasn’t her fault.
 
She had Jade under complete control and on the right path, before he
came along.
 

“Ma!”
Jade
said yet again, this time looking at her mother.
 
Her mother was a black beauty to her, with
that dark, velvety smooth skin, that perfect petite body, and brains out of
this world.
 
She was, if you asked Jade,
the total package.
 
But she wasn’t a
flirt.

“Ma,” Jade
said, “
are
you listening to me?”

“Yes, I’m
listening,” Sam said.
 
“But once again
your air-head has rendered you clueless.”

This hurt
Jade to her heart, as her mother’s sharp tongue always did.
 
But she continued to smile anyway.
 
“I know what I’m talking about,” she replied.

“It is a
fact that you do not,” Sam said caustically.
 
“Because if you did know what you were talking about,
you wouldn’t be talking about Gina giving up Dutch.
 
It’s not about Gina giving up Dutch, that’s
what you don’t seem to grasp.
 
It’s never
been about that.
 
It’s about
Dutch
giving up
Gina
.
 
Will
he
give
her
up, that’s the real
question.
 
And based on all I’ve read about that couple,
I don’t see it.
 
He’ll do anything for
that woman.
 
You saw him when he went
before Congress that time to defend her supposedly good name.
 
Oh, my goodness, that man was so angry it was
scary.
 
He loves Gina.”

“No, he
doesn’t!” Jade insisted.
 
“That’s what
people don’t understand.
 
He tolerates
Gina.
 
Because she’s his wife, and she
represents him, he stands by her.
 
But if
somebody like you were to get his attention, somebody with brains and who looks
way better than Gina on your worse day, he’d dump that bitch like a bad
habit.
 
I declare he will, Ma.
 
I know he will!
 
He’ll realize why he loved you in the first
place and come back to you.”

“There was
no love in the first place,” Sam made clear.
 
“How many times do I have to tell you that?
 
There was no love involved.
 
Just sex.
 
We met in college, had one night of sex, I
got pregnant with you and disappeared.
 
End of story.”
 

Only it
wasn’t the end for Jade.
 
It was just the
beginning.
 
Because
Dutch Harber belonged to her and her mother.
 
Period.
 
Nobody else.
 
Gina and that question-asking, annoying-ass
baby of hers be damned, as far as Jade was concerned.

“He’s yours
for the taking,” Jade finally said.
 
“You
just don’t realize it.”

Sam sipped
from her glass of wine and continued to watch Dutch work the room.
 
He certainly would be the grand prize in any
contest.
 
That was for damn sure.
 
From his tall, athletic body, to his rakish
smile and boyish good looks, she was still kicking herself for not seeing what
a prized catch he was all those years ago.
 

But she was
such an oddball then.
 
She didn’t want
any man in her life, let alone some hunky rich white boy like Dutch
Harber.
 
But she was so much older now,
and wiser, and, if truth be told, much lonelier.
 
So much lonelier.
 
When she was young, being alone was a badge
of honor to her.
 
She loved being all by
herself.
 
Now it just reminded her of all
she didn’t have.

But what
Jade was talking about, with all of the game-playing and seductive tricks, she
wasn’t feeling, either.
 
Because she knew
what it took to get Dutch
Harber,
and it wasn’t going
to involve playing games.
 
He was too
smart for that.
 
Her best chance of
having him again, not to mention his untold millions of dollars that she
desperately needed, was to know his weakness.
 
He was a softie when it came to Jade.
 
All of those years where he wasn’t a part of Jade’s life, the guilt of
it, necessitated that.
 
Therefore, to get
him back, all she felt she had to do was to keep Jade under her thumb.
 
Which, even dumb Jade
didn’t realize, was exactly what she planned to do.
 
It was exactly why she came to Helsinki to
begin with.

“I just
don’t see it,” she said to her insistent daughter.
  
“Why would he suddenly leave his wife and
young son for me?”