Robert chuckled.
Dutch, however, just sat there.
Upstairs, Gina was in the bedroom dressing Little Walt into the cutest bunny-covered outfit, when LaLa knocked once and came on in. Gina looked at her friend approvingly. She was dressed, not in shorts and a sleeveless blouse the way Gina was dressed, but in a sleek blue dress that highlighted her nice curves beautifully. Her hair was long and thick and was in a kind of up-do French roll at the top and a drape-down underthrow in the back. She looked young and sexy and vibrant. Gina nodded. Looked at Walt.
“Look at Auntie LaLa, Little Walt,” she said to her vivacious baby. “Now that’s what I call a good looking woman!”
The baby grinned, hit his mother on the nose.
“That’s right, Little Walt,” LaLa said with a smile as she took a seat in the chair next to the bed. “Fight for Auntie LaLa.”
“So what’s the occasion?” Gina asked her friend.
“It’s our last night here. I wanted to go out in style.”
Gina continued to look at her friend as she dressed her son. She knew her too well. “I don’t even know if he’s married, La,” she said.
LaLa frowned. “Who?”
“Robert Rand.”
LaLa blushed. Then she sighed. “Am I that obvious?”
“I know your ass, so yeah, you are to me. But I don’t know him like that.”
“But what do you know about him?” LaLa asked. She was crazy to think that she could hide any of her feelings from Gina, anyway.
“I know his name is Robert Rand. I know he’s very rich. I know he and Dutch go back quite a few years. And Dutch likes him, which means he can’t be all bad.”
“But you think he’s bad?”
“I’ve only met the man a few times, but my impression is that he’s . . . I don’t know. He’s okay.”
“But there’s something about him you don’t like?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t know him like that and he and Dutch aren’t exactly close or anything. He just comes across to me as more than his skinning and grinning lets on. Like he’s a control freak or something. Really alpha-male or something.”
“And that’s a problem?” LaLa asked. “I love alpha-males. Heck, you do too. Dutch is the alpha-male of alpha-males.”
“But Robert seems different. He’s cheerful, yes, but there’s something tough about him too. Really tough. I mean Stone Age tough. But I don’t know, I may be wrong.”
LaLa nodded, tickled Little Walt. It was a pipedream anyway. She so wanted it to be true, that here, on this private, romantic island she could have finally found her own paradise in the form of a good, honest man. But now, according to Gina, he may very well be a good, honest cave man. Which was just great, LaLa thought. And then she thought again, more sadly, that maybe, just maybe, love was not in the cards for her.
Gina could see the disappointment in her friend’s eyes. “What about Crader?” she asked her.
LaLa shook her head. “Why are you always singing that man’s praises?”
“Because I know a good man when I see one. And yes, Crader has his faults,” Gina admitted, “but he’s a good man, La.”
“He’s a womanizer. A player. He’s the absolute last kind of man I need.”
“I know,” Gina said. “But those are usually the ones we end up with.”
The door to the bedroom opened and Jade smiled when she realized it was her father walking in.
“Hi,” she said as she looked back down at the text message she was typing on her cell phone. She was lying across the bed, in a pair of shorts and a jersey, and although her small, pregnancy bump was showing, she looked much younger than her twenty-three years. Dutch sat on the bed beside her.
“Sit up and put that away,” he ordered.
“In a minute,” she said, as she continued texting the last of her message. When she glanced back up, however, and saw that Dutch was looking at her in that cool but chilling, I know you aren’t telling me to wait stare of his, she immediately stopped what she was doing, and sat up.
“So what’s up?” she asked as she sat beside him and wrapped her arms around his.
“What’s up with you?”
“Nothing much.” Then she looked at her father. “Mom called me.”
“Good.”
“Really? You don’t mind?”
“Of course not.”
“Even though she didn’t come to my wedding? Even though she wanted me to marry Henry?”
“She wanted you to marry Henry before she realized the kind of man Henry really was. She’s still your mother, Jade.”
“But she’s such an oddball.”
“I know. But I don’t want you forgetting about her. In her own way she loves you dearly. Don’t neglect her just because you have me in your life now.”
“But she held me from you. She knew all along you were my father. Why didn’t she tell me?”
Dutch crossed his legs, put his arm around his daughter. “She was under tremendous pressure. From my mother when my mother was alive, and from my mother’s friends in high places. She was terrified you would be taken from her. She did the best she could.”
Jade leaned against her father. “I’m just glad I have you.”
Dutch kissed her on the head and crossed his bare legs. And for a few moments they just sat there quietly, father and daughter.
“Anyway,” Jade said when she realized she still had a text message to finish. “What’s going on?”
“Perhaps you can answer that question for me.”
She looked at him, puzzled. And then it clicked. “You mean Christian? Christian talked to you, didn’t he?”
Dutch didn’t respond.
“He is such a . . . He thinks he’s my father. He thinks he’s you, Daddy, I declare he does. He thinks he can just tell me what to do and I’m supposed to be the good little wifey and do it.”
“He doesn’t think it’s a good time for you to go back to work.”
“But that’s not for him to say. That’s for me to say.”
“That’s for both of you to say,” Dutch corrected her.
She looked at her father. “So you agree with him?”
“It’s of no consequence whether I agree with him or not. You need to communicate with him, Jade. He’s your husband.”
“Oh, and he’s supposed to have me under his thumb, is that it?” Then she frowned. “I went through that with my mother and with Henry. I don’t want to go through that anymore.”
Dutch remembered Jade’s ex-boyfriend, Dr. Henry Osgood, well, and his own confrontation with the brutal young doctor. A young doctor who, after that confrontation, ended up in a wheelchair for life. “Christian is nothing like either one of them,” Dutch said. “He’s a man. And you have to let a man be a man.”
“But I want to go back to work, Daddy! I don’t want to be some brainless female living for the sake of her man. I want a full life.”
“He doesn’t mind if you work, Jade. But not right now when you have a baby on the way and a father still president of this country.”
“So you do agree with him?”
Sometimes Dutch wanted to throttle his daughter. He stood up. “Stop battling your own husband,” he said to her. “He loves you and he’s looking out for your best interest.” Then he exhaled. “Nobody will respect a puppet, Jade.”
“I don’t treat him like my puppet.”
“Stop trying to pull his strings,” Dutch added, ignoring her denial.
Jade knew exactly what her father meant. Christian was young, but she knew, deep down, that he was only trying to do what was best for his family. “Yes, Daddy,” she said.
Dutch made his way to the door. Remembered something more, and turned back around. “And Jade?” he said, causing her to look at him. “Don’t you ever speak disrespectfully about my wife again. Do we understand each other?”
“Your wife? What did I say about your wife?”
Dutch didn’t respond. He jus
t stared at her. And his stare said it all.
“But I never said anything disrespectful,” Jade tried to clarify, and then realized she wasn’t about to pull any wool over Dutch Harber’s eyes.
She exhaled. “Yes, sir,” she said. “I was just playing anyway.”
“Find someone else to play with,” Dutch suggested.
Jade was okay with Gina, and found her to be cool. But my goodness, she thought, her father behaved as if Gina Harber was the best thing since slice bread. But Jade wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t about to argue with him about it.
“Yes, sir,” she reluctantly said. And Dutch, satisfied, left the room.
By the time he made it back to the patio, Gina, LaLa, and Little Walt had made it outside too, with Robert just being introduced to LaLa.
“Well hello, Miss Loretta King, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said as he stood up and kissed her hand.
Crader and Christian were seated on the patio too, and Crader stood to give LaLa his seat. But Robert beat him to it.
“Please, take mine,” he said with a smile so charming LaLa couldn’t help but smile too.
“Thank-you,” she said as she moved to sit down.
“Daddy!” Little Walt yelled in his barely translatable dialect when he saw his father walk out onto the patio. He reached out his small arms toward Dutch and Dutch gladly grabbed him up into his big arms.
“Hello there Champ,” Dutch said as he bounced his son. “You’ve been behaving yourself?”
“Daddy,” Little Walt said again, squeezing Dutch’s bottom lip.
“That boy is getting heavier by the minute,” Gina said with a smile. “And you lift him up as if he were a feather.”
“Ah, you’re just a weakling,” Dutch said to Gina as he put Walt down and motioned for Gina to stand up. Walt immediately began strutting around in his still shaky walk, as Dutch sat down and sat Gina onto his lap. Little Walt grinned and began pointing when his mother sat down on his father’s lap. Then Little Walt lost his balance and fell back onto his romp. His stunned hazel eyes looked up at his parents to see if he should cry or not. When they smiled and made no effort to come and get him, he grinned, rolled onto his side, and then stood back up.
Crader and Christian, who sat in the chairs across from the First Couple, sat down too. Robert remained standing and leaned against one of the patio posts. One of the president’s female staffers, a tall, pretty blonde, came over and asked if Little Walt could play Frisbee with her and the other White House aides.
“Sure,” Gina said. “Just be careful with him.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the trusted staffer said as she gathered Walt in her arms and headed back out onto the beach.
The backdrop of that beach and the beautiful blue sunset and the winds whipping and twirling the palm trees made for an enchanting scene, LaLa noticed. She also noticed that Robert Rand was staring at her.
“I don’t mean to stare,” Robert said when he realized his error. “But you look remarkably familiar.”
He had what sounded like something of a British accent, which surprised and pleased LaLa. “It’s probably Phaedra,” she said self-assuredly.
Robert was dumbstruck. “Fade Dra? What’s a Fade Dra?”
“She’s that character from the Real Housewives of Atlanta. The lawyer.”
“And funeral home director, don’t forget that,” Gina said with a smile.
“You saw that episode too, girl?” LaLa said. “I laughed so hard I cried.”
“I’m sorry,” Robert said, “but I am at a total and complete lost. The Real Housewives of Atlanta? As opposed to what? The fake housewives?”
LaLa and Gina laughed. Crader sat humorless. Dutch stared at Crader.
“I guess so,” LaLa said. “But, no, they’re real as opposed to the Desperate Housewives.”
“I never watched the Desperate Housewives,” Gina said.
“Me neither, girl,” LaLa agreed. “But I may look familiar to you,” she said to Robert, “because many people say I favor Phaedra from that show.”
“The Desperate Housewives?” Robert asked.
“No, the Real Housewives.”
“Oh, of course,” Robert said. “How could I not remember the real ones as opposed to the desperate ones?” Then he looked at LaLa sideways. “You sure you ladies weren’t upstairs taking a few sips on the Cognac before you came down here?”
Both LaLa and Gina laughed. What a fun guy, LaLa thought.
“LaLa doesn’t touch the stuff anymore,” Crader said humorless.
Robert looked at him. “LaLa? I feel a complete idiot tonight because I don’t know what a LaLa is either!”
LaLa laughed. “That’s my nickname.”
“Ah!” he said in that drawn-out way of his. “LaLa instead of Loretta. My. What do you prefer?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Then Loretta it shall remain,” Robert said as the chef’s staff came over and took the drink orders for Gina (gin and tonic) and LaLa (orange juice).
“What made you give up the drink?” Robert asked, his eyes staring deeply into hers. “Couldn’t hold your liquor?”
“I could hold mines, yours, and some others besides,” she said to Robert’s laugher. “I’ve been working out lately and trying to get my body in shape.”
“Get your body in shape?” Robert asked as if he was floored. “But oh, my dear, why would you want to tamper with perfection?”
Crader moved around in his chair. Get a load of this guy, he wanted to scream.
LaLa saw Crader’s reaction out of the corner of her eye, but ignored him. “Thank-you,” she said to Robert. “But I’ll never claim perfection.”
Robert smiled, looked down at the way her colorful dress made her sweet as chocolate skin pop. He was going to enjoy fucking her, he thought, if it came to that. She was going to be his ticket to the most bodacious power play this country had ever known. And Dutch Harber didn’t have a clue. That, for Robert, was the beauty of it. He was beyond thrilled when Jed Brightman approached him with the idea. A chance to bring Dutch Harber down? Hell yeah he was in. Not because he disliked Dutch. He actually was rather fond of the man. But he stood in his way to the power he craved. Pure and simple. So Jed didn’t have to ask him twice. He was all in. And so far, he thought, as he continued to smile at LaLa, as he continued to tell jokes and behave as if he was the most harmless creature ever created, their plan was all coming together beautifully.
Like a charm.
Later that night, after the cookout was over and everybody, including Little Walt, had retired to their respective rooms, Dutch was in bed sucking Gina’s bare breasts until they were almost sore. He kissed and he sucked and he licked as the breasts remained taut and hard. She was on her back and he was beside her, and both were so relaxed that they felt almost serene.
And as he kissed her, as he moved from her breasts back up to her lips back down to her breasts, he slid his fingers into her vagina to prep her for what he knew was going to be a long and torrent lovemaking session. This was their last night in the Virgin Islands and he desperately wanted this night to be a night they would remember for a very long time.
Gina wanted the same thing, too, as her small hand wrapped itself around his ever-expanding penis and began to massage it. And he responded in kind, flicking her clit and rubbing her folds and kissing her breasts with a passion that was already verging on frenetic.
Gina lifted her small, soft body against Dutch’s rock hard nakedness as he took her breasts in full into his mouth and pushed his fingers so far inside of her that she twisted in delight. When she started talking, when her sweet breathe whispered how he knew how to do her, he removed his mouth from her breasts and captured her lips in a kiss that caused both of them to release the other’s sex organs and embrace in a tight, searing embrace. This was the woman he loved, and this was the man she loved, and it changed a mere sexual encounter into something so heady, so charged, so intense that they found themselves unable t
o break away to come up for air.
And Dutch didn’t just stop at her mouth and breasts. He opened her legs wider and moved in between them, and started kissing and licking and tasting her down there. Gina felt the sensation of his tongue, of his hands squeezing her buttocks as he lifted her closer to his mouth, and she moved up and down in a dazzling delight that caused her to thrust her hips so high up that Dutch’s control broke.
He slammed her back down and moved like a panther on top of her, sliding his penis so deep down into her womanhood that Gina felt as if she had been filled to the brim from his entry alone. And his masterful gyrations began, slow and prodding at first, as he rocked her into a rhythm of love and feelings that took her mind, heart, and body to a very special place. His erection expanded inside of her, and the larger he became the more of that wonderful friction she felt.
“Oh, baby,” Dutch kept saying, “you know how to fuck me!”
And he kept saying it to her as her hips gyrated with his rhythm and made his penis pulsate deep within her saturation. He kissed her on her mouth as his erection continued to consume every inch of her womanhood, leaving no air pockets, no chance of even an additional finger penetration. He kept kissing her and grinding her and holding her so tightly he felt as if he had her welded to him. And all he could think about was that this was Gina he was fucking; this was the one woman who made him feel so virile, so sensual, so in love.
And he couldn’t stop his gyrations. He thrust into her and thrust into her. He held onto her as if she was a life raft that would overturn and drown him if he let go. It wasn’t the anticipation of the final climax that kept them on edge, but the love itself. The intense feelings their love generated with every thrust, with every gyration, and, when the feelings became unbearably tense, with every pound.
He started pounding her.
It was sex and lust rolled up into an electric, passionate love.
Dutch and Gina: The Power of Love Page 4
