Dutch and Gina: The Power of Love (7 page)

Christian nodded.
 
“I’m looking out for Jade.
 
But she doesn’t want to hear anything I have to say about it.
 
It’s like she doesn’t think it should concern me.
 
I even told her she should do like your wife does, sir, that she should be more like the First Lady.
 
I told her you don’t allow Mrs. Harber to run around town working on somebody’s job, and Mrs. Harber used to be a lawyer!”

Dutch wanted to smile at the way Christian said the word
lawyer
, but he didn’t.
 
The young man was too distressed.

“But even when I brought that up,” Christian said with a frown on his face, “she didn’t want to hear that, either.
 
She just got disrespectful.”

“Disrespectful to you?”

“To your wife, sir.
 
She said all Gina, and that’s how she refers to the First Lady, sir, she said all Gina was good for was going to ribbon cutting ceremonies and ghetto soup kitchens.
 
She said you’ve got the First Lady right under your thumb, but she wasn’t going out like that.
 
That’s the way she put it, sir, that she wasn’t going out like that.
 
Going out like what?
 
What kind of language is that?”

 
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 just 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.”