Dutch and Gina: The Power of Love (4 page)

Loretta “LaLa” King was seated at the large window inside the main house when she saw Dutch throw Gina into the water.
 
She nearly jumped from her chair when she saw it, causing Little Walt, who was in her arms, his big hazel eyes as wide as quarters, to jump too.
 
Crader McKenzie was standing at the same window talking on the cell phone, but his mind was more on his conversation than on what Dutch was doing to Gina.
 
Yet LaLa was mesmerized by it.
 
She even glanced at Crader, to see if he saw it too, but Crader was too busy on the phone yelling at one of his staffers.
 

LaLa looked back at the couple in the water.
  
She knew Gina had been learning how to swim.
 
She also knew that the president had spent many of his free hours teaching her in the White House pool.
 
But Gina kept saying she wasn’t quite ready yet; that she still had those butterflies in the pit of her stomach whenever she was around a large body of water.
 
Yet the president just tossed her in as if she was a long-time pro.
 

It wasn’t until Gina resurfaced and began swimming, with the president in close pursuit, did LaLa settle back down.
 
Gina was her best friend, a one-of-a-kind wonderful lady who took her into her heart as if they were blood sisters, and LaLa would be crestfallen if anything ever happened to her.
 

“Did you see that?” LaLa asked Crader as soon as he ended his phone call.

“Did I see what?” Crader asked, his piercing blue eyes looking down LaLa’s curvaceous body and then out of the window.
 
“What did I miss?”

“The president threw Gina in the water, forcing her to swim.”

“Really?” Crader said with a smile.
 
“So what happened?
 
Did she sink or did she swim?”

LaLa hesitated.
 
“She swam, actually.”

Crader nodded.
 
“Dutch knew what he was doing.
 
He knows how to handle Gina.”

“Yeah, but the way he just tossed her in was scary,” LaLa said and looked at Little Walt.
 
“It was scary, wasn’t it, baby?
 
The way daddy tossed mommy into that water?”

Little Walt smiled a big, toothless grin and nodded his gorgeous head the way LaLa was nodding hers.
 
This baby boy, with his large hazel eyes, and syrupy oak-brown skin, and soft head of thick, curly hair, was going to be a lady killer.
 
LaLa could see it already.

“Speaking of water,” Crader said as he leaned his athletic body against the windowpane, his eyes staring into hers, “the president’s numbers are no longer underwater for the first time in over a year.”

LaLa looked at him.
 
“It sounds great, but what does that mean exactly?”

Crader caught himself.
 
He had to remember that although LaLa was the First Lady’s assistant, she was as new to politics as Gina was.
 
“It means the president is polling well.
 
When he’s underwater, his approval rating is lower than his disapproval rating.
 
A month ago his approval was at 42 percent, his disapproval was right around 50 percent.
 
Now his approval is 54 percent and his disapproval is around forty.
 
He’s no longer underwater.”

“That’s great news, Cray.
 
He could use some good news.
 
Especially since this is the last day of our vacation and we’ll all be heading back to DC tomorrow.”

“The president won’t.
 
He’s got those fundraisers in California for Senate Democrats, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right.”

“And then we have to head to that economic forum in Seattle.
 
You and the First Lady will head back to DC, but Dutch and I will be out and about.”

“Must be nice,” LaLa said as she grabbed Little Walt’s tiny fingers just as he attempted to unbutton her blouse.
 
Crader looked down at that blouse, and at those sizeable breasts behind that blouse, and then he looked into LaLa’s big
 
eyes.
 
LaLa was already staring into his.

“You look pretty today,” he said when he realized his blunder.
 
But he liked the way her white silk blouse crisscrossed over those big breasts and provided a nice contrast against her brown skin.
  
“You’ve lost a pound or two, haven’t you?”

She hesitated.
 
He really was a torturer.
 
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve lost a pound or two or ten.”

Crader stood erect.
 
“Ten?
 
You’ve lost ten pounds?”

“Yup.”

Crader hated that he wasn’t more attentive to her.
 
He just hated it.

“Not that you’d notice,” LaLa added sadly.

“I’m sorry about that, La,” he said.
 
“I always have things going on, you know, and I can’t seem to pay much attention.”

The president had fifty times more “things” going on than Crader McKenzie, LaLa thought, but yet the president always noticed the least things about Gina.
 
He even noticed when LaLa was losing weight.
 

“Alright, Loretta, slow your roll,” Dutch had jokingly said to her.
 
“We don’t want you disappearing on us.”

But that was the difference, LaLa thought, between Dutch and Crader.
 
Crader talked a good game.
 
Dutch lived the game.

“Since it’s our last night here,” Crader said, still taking peeps at her chest, his penis beginning to react to the revealed cleavage, “why don’t we go out and paint the town?”

There was a time when painting the town with Crader McKenzie would have been dreamlike to LaLa.
 
Now it just felt burdensome.
 
“Didn’t you paint it last night?” she asked him.

“Me?
 
No.
 
Why would you say that?”

“I went to your cottage, to see if I could interest you in a card game, but you weren’t there.”

Crader hesitated.
 
He wasn’t getting any breaks.
 
He was considered a great man in many circles, but he somehow never seemed able to get it together with LaLa.
 
“Oh, right,” he said, attempting to minimize it.
 
“I went out for an hour or two.”

More like all night, LaLa knew, but didn’t say.
 
She was done with lying awake at night wondering what Crader or any other man was up to.
 
“Ah, that’s lovely,” she said instead, looking at Dutch and Gina in the water.
 
“Look how the president is holding Gina from behind.”

Crader looked, and then snorted.
 
“That’s not all he’s holding,” he said.

LaLa frowned.
 
“What’s that supposed to mean, Cray?”

“Look at them.
 
He’s holding her all right, but with one hand.”

LaLa continued to look at the couple. “So?”

“So where’s his other hand, La?
 
And why is Gina leaning back into him as if she was all into him?”

“Maybe because she is all into him.”

“Yeah, in more ways than one.”

Dutch and Gina were too far away for LaLa to see the motions of the president’s arm to be as certain as Crader that some kinkiness was going on, but she looked away anyway.
 
If two people ever deserved a little privacy, it was those two.

“Anyway,” she said, standing to her feet.
 
“It’s Little Walt’s nap time.”

“I understand.”

LaLa looked at Crader.
 
“You understand?
 
What is that supposed to mean?”
 

“It means every time the conversation shifts to matters of sex, you flee the scene.”

LaLa frowned.
 
“I flee the scene?
 
That’s nonsense, Crader!
 
I’m not fleeing any scene.”

“Okay,” Crader said, a bemused look on his face.
 

“I’m not fleeing any scene.”

“I said okay,” Crader said with a smile.
 
He knew he had pushed her button, but it couldn’t be helped.
 
LaLa was as much in denial about her messed up love life as he was about his messed up life period.
 
They both, he felt, could use some therapy.
 
Sexual
therapy, if you asked him.
 
Because the truth was, Crader hadn’t touched another woman since he messed up with Liz Sinclair and caused the end of his budding affair with LaLa, and he would bet his mansion in Florida that LaLa hadn’t touched any other man.
 

“I’m not running away from anything,” LaLa explained.
 
“I just thought we should let the president and the First Lady have some privacy.”

“And I agree with you.”

“That’s not the same thing as fleeing any scene.”

Crader stared at her.
 
At her smooth, chocolate brown skin; at her big, almond eyes; at the way she held her head high, and always did, even in the midst of her heartbreaks.
 
He would give anything in this world to change that night when he hooked up with Liz.
 
Anything at all.
 
Sometimes he wondered if he did it on purpose.
 
If she was getting too close and he had to push her way.
 
He was a former United States Senator, the president’s current chief of staff, a very wealthy and powerful man in his own right.
 
But he never wanted anything more than he wanted LaLa.
   

 
“My kingdom for a horse,” he said quietly as he stared at her.

LaLa stared at him.
 
She knew the reference.
 
She knew he was quoting Shakespeare’s
Richard the Third
where Richard was trapped during battle and couldn’t get out of harm’s way because his horse had been killed.
 
It was only then that Richard realized the life-or-death importance of something he had taken for granted.
 
‘A horse, a horse,’ Richard had proclaimed, ‘my kingdom for a horse.’

LaLa understood the reference, but she wanted to hear it from Crader.
 
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked him.

“I’ll give anything to turn back the hands of time, La,” Crader said heartfelt.
 
“
Any
thing.”

LaLa didn’t respond. Sometimes Crader made her feel so foolish, as if she was out of her mind to not give a kind, great looking, powerful man like him another chance.
 
Sometimes she even wondered if she was making the biggest mistake of her life.
 
But other times, like at Jade and Christian’s wedding when he flirted with every pretty girl in sight, she knew she wasn’t foolish at all.
 
“I’m not into Shakespeare,” she said dismissively.

Crader felt the dismissiveness in her tone, but he couldn’t give up now.
 
“But will you go out with me tonight?” he asked.
 

“Little Walt’s dozing,” she said, noticing the baby.
 
“It’s his nap time.”

“Will you, La?
 
Please
?”
 

It felt like begging, but Crader didn’t care.
 
He had fucked up royally and he knew it.
 
The least he could do was beg.