President's Girlfriend 07 - What He Did for Love (18 page)

Dutch was surrounded by aides and his national security advisor, but he looked up from the mountain of files before him and acknowledged his son-in-law’s presence.

“Give us a minute guys,” he said to his team, although they knew, like he knew, that he didn’t have even a minute to spare.

“I’ll review the final draft, sir,” his National Security Advisor said to him, “and get with Allison for any rewrites.”

Dutch nodded his head and his NSA, along with the aides, left.  Christian unbuttoned his suit coat and walked up to the desk.

“Have a seat,” Dutch said, dropped his pen, and leaned back.  “How are you, Chris?”

“I’m good, sir,” Christian said as he rubbed down the legs of his pants and sat in front of the desk. He then smoothed his blond hair out of his face.

“So what can I do for you?”

Christian knew Dutch was a busy man, so he got right to it.  “Jade wants to see you, sir,” he said.

Dutch continued to stare at Christian with that silent broodiness Christian knew so well.  But then Dutch exhaled.  “Why would you care what she wants after what she did to you?”

Christian didn’t want to be reminded of her infidelity with Marcus Rance, but he knew it would always be that elephant in any room that included Jade or Jade’s name.  “She cheated on me, and I filed for a divorce because she admitted she didn’t love me.  But that doesn’t mean I no longer care for her.  Because I do.”

Dutch stared at Christian.  He was a young man with a heart of gold.  That was why Dutch loved him.

Christian continued.  “And I think she genuinely wants to have you back in her life again.  I don’t think she ever meant to hurt you.”

“She hurt Gina.  So she hurt me.”

“I understand that, sir.  And I agree with you.  But she doesn’t think she hurt the First Lady.”

“I don’t give a damn what she thinks,” Dutch said snappishly.  “But she did hurt her.”

Christian sighed.  This was not going as he had hoped.  “The thing is, sir, I was wondering if you would be willing to take a moment out of what I know is a very busy schedule, and talk to her.”

Dutch didn’t want to deal with Jade right now.  Not right now.  “We’ll see,” was as far as he was willing to go.

“The thing is, sir,” Christian said again, but this time slowly, carefully, “she’s sitting in the hall right now.”

Dutch frowned.  “Who’s sitting in the hall?  My daughter?”

Christian nodded.  “Yes, sir.”

Dutch felt blindsided, and he didn’t like it.  “You get her out of that hall and take her back to that apartment.  I don’t like the bum-rush, you understand me, Christian?  Don’t you ever pull a stunt like that with me.”

Christian’s heart slammed against his chest.  He stood to his feet.  “Yes, sir,” he said.  “I apologize, sir. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.  I thought that. . .”  But Dutch’s look dissuaded him from further explanation.  “Yes, sir,” he said again, and turned to leave.

Despite his anger, Dutch knew this was a problem he eventually had to face.  “Chris,” he then said, prompting Christian to turn around.  Dutch rubbed his forehead in a kind of distressed surrender.  “Bring her in,” he said.

Christian could see the distress on the president’s face.  And he hated that he was the source of that distress.  Especially with all the stress he was already under.  But he didn’t pretend he wasn’t relieved.  Because he was.  Jade was a lot of things he couldn’t stomach, but she did love her father.

Christian walked out of the office and closed the door.  Jade was seated on a bench outside of the office.  She stood up anxiously.

“No?” she asked.

“Yes,” Christian said, and she ran to him and threw her arms around him. 

He just as immediately threw her arms away from him.  “But he doesn’t like it,” he warned her.  “So don’t go in there making excuses.”

Jade had no intentions of excusing her behavior to anybody.  She knew her father.  His precious Gina was involved, and was, in Jade’s eyes, the reason for their estrangement.  Which meant, she knew, that he was going to be even more unreasonable than he normally was.

“Don’t worry,” she said.  “I’ll be sweet little innocent Jade today.”

Then she smiled again and entered the office, closing the door behind her.  Christian stood in the hall and stared at that closed door.  When he first met Jade and fell in love with her, he knew there was an oddness about her.  But he always assumed it was because of her odd mother and, later, because of the fact that she had been in a very abusive relationship with her former fiancé, Henry Osgood.  But now he wondered if her oddness didn’t border on something else entirely.  But he exhaled, and began walking away.  He could at least take some solace in knowing that, thanks to her own misbehavior, she wasn’t his problem anymore.

Back in the Oval Office, Dutch’s heart squeezed in pain when Jade walked through that door.  It had been over a month since he last saw her or spoke to her, but not a day went by when he didn’t think about her. 

And how grandly she betrayed his love.

He motioned for her to have a seat in front of the desk. 

“Thanks,” she said with a sweet smile that didn’t reach her eyes.  She sat down. 

She stared at him as he then stood up and walked around his desk.  Because his suit coat was off, she could see his muscular biceps and thighs, and how flat his stomach remained even at his age.  And his face still remained the most beautiful face she’d ever seen.  She was still proud that he was her father.

Dutch, however, held a different emotion as he took a seat next to her chair.  He missed her, but her part in Gina’s pain still hurt him to his core.

“Thanks for agreeing to see me, Daddy,” she said in an upbeat tone, as if there were no chasm between them at all. 

Dutch crossed his legs.  It was that lack of acceptance she was already displaying that made him feel as if this “meeting” was going to be a total waste of time.  “What is it that you want, Jade?” he asked her.

Jade’s heart squeezed with disappointment.  He didn’t even try to smile and be friendly with her.  But she didn’t let his mood dampen hers.  “I wanted to see you, and just talk to you.  I wanted to find out why you won’t take my phone calls anymore.”

“Jade, you know exactly why we have these problems.”

“I was in shock, Daddy!  I didn’t just stand there without warning her the way she said I did.  I was still in shock.  How can you hold that against me when I was in shock and didn’t know what to do?”

“Were you in shock when you phoned and begged me to come and see about you?  Were you in shock when you knew Rance was setting that trap for me that my wife walked into?”

“I didn’t know, Daddy!” she said honestly.  “He made me call you. He forced me at gunpoint!  I would never let anything happen to you.  That’s why I fought with all I had to break myself free.  That’s why I ran up those stairs to warn you.”

“And when you ran up those stairs and saw that it wasn’t me, but Gina, then what, Jade?  Did you decide you didn’t need to warn her?  You wouldn’t let anything happen to me, but since it wasn’t me but was my wife, did you decide that you didn’t care either way?”

“That’s not true!” Jade insisted.  “Of course I cared.  I know how much you like her.”

Dutch looked at his daughter incredulously.  “You know how much I
like
her?  Are you fucking serious?  That’s my wife!  I
love
her.  If something happens to her, it happens to me.”

“That’s what I meant.  You love her,” Jade said with bitterness in her voice.  “You can’t love both of us so you had to choose.  And you picked her.  I’m your daughter, I’m your flesh and blood, but you picked her.  I know exactly what you’re saying, Daddy.”

Dutch shook his head.  “You don’t know a
got
damn thing, Jade.  Because if you did you wouldn’t be comparing my relationship to Gina with you.  My relationship with my wife has nothing to do with you!”

“Okay, okay,” she said snappishly.  “I didn’t come here to fight with you.  You can blame me for everything if you want to.  I don’t care.  I just want your forgiveness.  I just want to be a part of your family again.  Are you going to forgive me, Daddy?”

Dutch stared at her.  That pitiful look was all over her beautiful brown face, and he realized at that moment that he pitied his own daughter.  Perhaps even more than he loved her. 

He exhaled.  “You’re asking the wrong person,” he said.  “You need to ask for Gina’s forgiveness.”

That Gina
, Jade inwardly raged.  Why did it always come down to that doggone Gina!  But as quickly as her bitterness showed, her smile erased it.  “I’ll go see her and apologize then.”

“You won’t go anywhere near her.  I’ll talk to her, and if she wants to meet with you I’ll set it up.”

He could tell Jade was impatient with the progress, but he couldn’t help that.

“Okay,” she said, although her face said something entirely different.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Gina’s eyes remained closed as Dutch eased his penis inside of her. 

“Umm,” she hummed and relaxed her body even more when she felt his penetration.  She loved waking up this way, and Dutch loved waking her up this way.  He, in fact, was waking her up this way far more often than usual.

He got into his rhythm almost immediately, as his strokes hit a slow, sensual stride.  She felt the fullness of him in a way that caused her entire body to feel every push across her ridges, and then every pull back, and then that sweet friction that made her body ache with passion.  It wasn’t just a dick moving in and out of her, it was Dutch’s dick.  And the fact that it was Dutch’s dick made every movement, every stroke, feel every bit as intense and emphatic as it possibly could. 

And he kept on gyrating her.  He thrashed her longer than most men could ever dream of maintaining.  He had such a way of staying aroused and keeping her constantly on the verge of an organism that it amazed her.  He grunted and groaned as he fucked her, and was breathing almost unhealthily hard, but he still knew how to withhold his release.

But Gina’s control was another story.  Because when he reached his hand under her gown and began caressing her breast and her nipple as he fucked her, that verge of release tipped over.  And she came.  Sweet and intense.  She drew her knees up to her belly and leaned her body back against Dutch’s hard frame, as he wouldn’t ease up on her.  He continued to thrash her as she came.  He continued to thrash her as she cried out in a joyous climax.  And with that final cry she clamped down hard on his penis.

Too hard.

Which only meant that his time was near, too.

Ultimately, he came.  He came in a release that caused him to lean against Gina and strain it out.  His veins showed as he came. 

When the last drop drained, and the pulsating within his penis began to ebb, he slumped against her.  He still had his hands beneath her gown, holding her tightly against his own naked form.  It was the kind of release he needed now more than ever.  It was the kind of
stop the world, I want to get off
fuck that made him realize just how fortunate he truly was. 

Then he kissed the source of his fortune on her neck, and moved onto his back.  Gina smiled and turned her body toward him.  She sat up on one elbow and placed the other hand on his gorgeously toned stomach.  He was still breathing hard.

“I’m becoming your morning workout,” she said.

“I don’t exactly do this every morning.  Every other morning, but not every morning.”  They both laughed.

Gina began rubbing her dark hand across his tanned stomach.  “I’ve been thinking about what you said last night,” she said.

“About Jade?”

Gina nodded.  “Yep.”  Then she looked at him.

He could see that apprehension in her pretty eyes.  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he said.

“But we can’t keep ignoring her, either.  She’s your daughter.”

Dutch looked away from her.  “Yes, I’m aware of that.”

“I still see her standing there, staring at me, and not saying anything.”

Dutch’s heart began to pound.  He turned to her, and began rubbing her arm.

“If only she would have warned me, or told me to duck, or just yelled something, then maybe I would have stood a chance.  But she didn’t say a word.”

Dutch stared at her, as the terror of that day grabbed him again too.

“But,” Gina said, trying with all she had to remain strong, “she’s your daughter.  No matter what, and at the end of the day, she’s your daughter.”  She said this and looked at him.  “And I want you to have a relationship with your child.  That’s why I have to hear her out.  I have to face her again.”

Dutch squeezed her arm.  “Are you sure?”

Gina nodded.  “I’m sure.”

“I’ll be right there beside you.”

But Gina shook her head.  “No, Dutch.  I have to face this alone.”

“Alone?  Are you. . . There is no way I’m letting you go anywhere near her alone.”

“Yes, Dutch.  It’s something I have to do.  I have to face her for myself, by myself, and within myself.  She and I, face to face again.”  A plea was in her eyes.  “I have to do it alone, Dutch.  I have to.”

 Dutch didn’t like it, and Gina had no illusions about that, but he placed his arms around her and pulled her to him all the same.  Just the thought of his wife in a room with Jade again, and all the awful memories it would force her to relive, was almost too much for him to bear.  But she was right.  Facing her fear was a battle she had to fight alone.

Christian walked slowly along the corridors of the West Wing with a lumbering gait.  Many of the younger female aides in the administration spoke to him cheerfully as he passed, with more than a few commenting on his gorgeous blond hair, or deep blue eyes, or nice, firm body.  But Christian wasn’t interested.  His reputation for ignoring the younger ladies became so pronounced until many started joking that females his age were too young for him.  “He likes them old and black,” a few even dared to suggest.

In truth, Christian liked LaLa.  Period.  She was black, and she was older than him, but those weren’t the reasons at all.  He liked her heart, and her devotion, and the way she looked, and the way she felt in his arms, and the way she smiled.  But he also knew an inconvenient truth: he liked the one woman he could not have.