President's Girlfriend 06 - The Sins of the Fathers (3 page)

“Baby doll,”
Walt said, staring at Nicole.

“Yes, she
is,” Crader said.
  
“She’s my baby
doll.”
 
Then he thought about it.
 
“What a great nickname for her, La.
 
Baby doll.
 
Let’s call her Doll.”

LaLa shook
her head.
 
This had to be the tenth
“nickname” Crader had suggested.
 
“We’ll
see, dear,” she said.

“But
really,” he said as the double doors to the sitting room opened, “I think it’s
a great nickname.
 
And we can always give
Little Walt credit for being the one to come up with it.
 
It’ll be marvelous conversation piece when he
and Nicole are playmates together.”

LaLa
laughed.
  
Crader and
this baby.
 
There couldn’t
possibly be a more attentive father.
 
“We’ll see,” she said again.

Jeffrey, the
usher, complete with white gloves, stepped inside.
  
“Excuse me, Mr. Vice President, but you have
a visitor, sir.”

“A visitor?
 
Who?”

“The
President’s chief of staff wishes to see you.”

“Allison
Shearer?” LaLa asked.
 
“She could have
come to the parlor.
 
I haven’t had a
chance to congratulate her on her promotion anyway.
 
Bring her here, Jeffrey.”

“It was
suggested, madam,” Jeffrey said, “but she prefers his office.
 
It’s a matter, she says, of some privacy.”

Crader
really didn’t want to leave his wife and son.
 
Not even for a second.
 
But duty
called.
 
“I’d better see what she wants,”
he said as he stood up and then sat Walt in the chair.
 
“You hold it down for me, big man,” he said
to the little boy.

Walt
frowned, unable to make out exactly what Crader meant.
 
How do you hold down a chair?
 
He wasn’t quite sure.
 
But he began pressing his body down into that
chair
just the same.

When Crader
and Jeffrey left the room, Gina looked at LaLa.
 
“He looks so nervous, La,” she said with a smile.

“He is.
 
The baby was two months premature, I had eclampsia
during the delivery,
he’s
still haunted by all of
that.
 
I think he’s still a little
traumatized.”

“
My oh
my.
 
He is going
to spoil you and that baby rotten.”

LaLa
smiled.
 
“He’s doing that already.
 
He rarely goes over to his office at the White
House anymore.
 
I can’t get rid of him.”

Gina
laughed.
 
“I never would have thought in
a million years that Crader McKenzie would ever settle down and become husband
and father the way he has.”
 

“Yes,” LaLa
agreed.
 
Then a look came over her.
 
It was subtle, but Gina caught it.
 

“What’s
wrong, La?”

LaLa
hesitated.
 
“It’s probably nothing.”

“What is
it?”

She
hesitated again.
 
“He still. . . He still
has it in him.”
 
She said this and looked
at Gina, to see if she understood.

Gina
understood.
 
She had married a world
renowned playboy herself.
 
“And how do
you know this?” she asked her best friend.

“I see the
way he looks at those attractive women on his staff.
 
And I don’t mean a casual glance,
either.
 
Sometimes he looks as if he’s
undressing those women with his eyes, G.”

“Knowing
Crader, he probably is.”

“Gina!”
 
LaLa said.
 
“How can you say that?
 
He’s my
husband.
 
You don’t hear me badmouthing
your husband.”

“I’m not
badmouthing him.
 
I’m telling you the
truth.
 
And Dutch probably does the same
thing,
I’m just keeping it real.
 
We didn’t marry a couple of priests,
La
.
 
We married two
virile,
very
virile men.
 
They are going to look.”

“But do they
touch?”

Gina thought
about this.
 
“I can’t speak for Crader,”
she said.
 
“I can only speak for Dutch.”

“And I
already know your answer,” LaLa said.
 
“You’re such a realist.
 
I already
know you’re going to say there’s no way of telling if Dutch touches or not.
 
Right?”

“Wrong,”
Gina said. “You are so wrong.
 
Dutch may
look, I know he will look, but he won’t touch.”

“But you
can’t be a hundred percent certain of that,” LaLa reminded her.

“A hundred
percent, no,” Gina admitted.
 
“Of course not.
 
But
I’m reasonably certain he won’t go there, which is great progress for me.
 
I mean, he’s a man, I understand that.
 
Men can be downright dogs, I understand that,
too.
 
But I trust my husband one-hundred
percent now.
 
I have to.
 
And no, that kind of trust didn’t come
overnight.
 
Bet that.
 
But it’s here now.”

“So there’s
no way under the sun that Dutch can cheat on you, is that what you’re telling
me?”
 

“No, I’m not
telling you that at all,
La
.
 
Of course he could cheat!
 
But that’s not the question.
 
The question is
will
he cheat?
 
Will he see
and not touch?
 
I know he has it in him
to touch, but will he touch?
 
I say no.”

This
surprised LaLa.
 
Gina had never been the
type to speak in absolute terms regarding anything, especially what some man
who was not in her eyesight twenty-four-seven would or would not do.
 
“And you’re absolutely certain of that?” she
asked her best friend.

“I’m
absolutely certain of my trust in him,” Gina answered absolutely.
 
“I would be beyond surprised if Dutch cheated
on me.
 
Hell, I’d be a basket case for
months.”

They both
smiled.

“And don’t
get me wrong,” Gina continued.
 
“I’m not
sitting up here like some pie-in-the-sky, clueless airhead telling you he never
has or never will.
 
I’m telling you I
pray daily that he doesn’t.
 
There’s some
serious skanks out there eager to get their hands on my husband, I know
that.
 
And his ass is probably just as
eager to get his hands on some of them.”
 
They both laughed.
 
“But I truly
don’t believe he’d betray me like that.”

“But he’s
still a man, G.”

“I hear
you.
 
And you’re right.
 
He’s still a man.
 
A special man, yes, very
special.
 
But he’s a man.
 
And you and I both have had our share of
heartaches to know that loving a man is a risk no matter who he might be, I
feel you, girl.
 
None of them are sure
bets.”

Although
LaLa smiled at that, she was far from comforted.
 
That look
of concern
returned on her soft, brown-skinned, pretty face.
 
If Dutch Harber wasn’t a sure bet, she
reasoned, how in the world could Crader ever be?
 
Especially since Crader didn’t have half the
willpower Dutch seemed to have, and Crader had already cheated on her long
before they were married.

But she
refused to dwell on all of that.
 
Gina
had misgivings about Dutch when they were first married, too.
 
Now she was certain of her man.
 
Or, at least, as certain as
you could be about somebody else.
 
But LaLa was going to hold onto that ray of hope.
 
In time, if Crader acted right, she’d be as
certain of him, too.
 
She married a
gorgeous man, a man who was going to look at the ladies, and the ladies were going
to look at him.
 
But she had to trust
that he didn’t touch.
 
She had to trust
that his cheating ways ended forevermore the day he decided to change course,
and asked her to marry him.

Crader made his way into the beautifully-appointed Truman
Study and plopped down behind the desk.
 
Allison Shearer, who was standing in front of that desk, waited until he
sat down.

“Good
afternoon, Mr. Vice President.”

“This
couldn’t wait?”

“No, sir,”
Allison said and handed him a manila envelope.
 
“It definitely couldn’t wait.”

Allison slung
her long, blonde hair out of her face as Crader slowly opened the envelope and
pulled out a newspaper clipping.
 
A
yellow post-it note was sticking onto its front.
 
Show to
VP,
the post-it note said.

“Where did
you get this?” Crader asked as he removed the post-it note.

“It was
mailed to my home.”

Crader
looked at her.
 
“Your home?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Crader
looked at the news clipping’s headline:
 
Vegas Couple Killed in Private Plane Crash
.
 
Crader looked down, at the grainy picture of
the couple, and then he looked at the names below the picture.
 
Jim and Elvelyn Rosenthal.
  
Didn’t ring a bell at all.
 
He looked at Allison.

“What is
this about?” he asked, confused.

“I thought
you’d be able to tell me,” Allison said.
 
“It said for me to show this clipping to you.”

Crader
looked at the attractive couple again.
 
And then he read the news account.
 
They were on their way to Aspen, Colorado in their private
plane,
the plane developed engine trouble, and shortly
thereafter crashed.
 
They were the only two
on board and both were killed.
 
They had
been married for a year and a half.
 
They
had a child, the guy was a wealthy businessman, both were considered wonderful,
vivacious, had everything to live for high society types.
 
Yada, yada, yada.
 

Crader turned
the clipping over, saw nothing, and then looked back at Allison.

“I must be
missing something here,” he said.
 
“I
don’t get it.”

Allison
shrugged her shoulder.
 
“There’s
certainly something there somebody wanted you to see.
 
I assumed it would be obvious.”

But it
wasn’t.
 
Not to Crader.
 
He looked at the couple again.
 
Jim and Elvelyn Rosenthal.
 
Jim Rosenthal.
 
Nothing.
 
Elvelyn Rosenthal.
 
Nothing.
 
Nothing about this couple was ringing any
bells with him whatsoever.

But then, as
he stared at the couple, he realized he was staring more at the names than the
faces.
 
He looked closely at the
faces.
 
And closer still at the woman’s
face.
 
Elvelyn Rosenthal.
 
Elvelyn.
 
Elvelyn Mitchell?
 
Last time he saw her she had just gotten
married.
 
Was never told the man’s name
and he never asked.
 
Could this be
Elvelyn Mitchell?
 
Was this
Elv
?
 

He looked
harder.
 
It was an awful picture for
identification purposes.
 
She had on dark
shades, a scarf around her neck, and it wasn’t a close-up but full-length, and
from a distance.
 
But that blonde hair,
that tall, thin physique, the way she carried her pocketbook.
 

His heart
began to pound.

“What is
it?” Allison
asked,
her face now as anxious as his
appeared.