President's Girlfriend 06 - The Sins of the Fathers (6 page)

“I think you
and Christian have issues you’re trying to work out and I don’t think a third
party living in your home is a good idea right now.
 
I feel the same way about Marcus being
there.
 
But it’s not my decision to make.”

“But it
matters what you think, Dutch,” Sam said.
 
“Very much.”

“But we want
her to stay with us,” Jade said in that sometimes bratty way of hers Dutch
didn’t like.
 
“It’s just until she work
some things out.”

“As I said,”
Dutch reiterated, “it’s not my decision.”

“But she’s
my mother.
 
She’s having hard times.
 
Why wouldn’t you want my mother to spend a
little time with me?”

Dutch looked
at Sam.
 
“What hard times?” he asked her.

Sam looked
away from him.
 
He had already concluded
that she didn’t come all this way to Finland just to ask if he approved of her
staying with Jade for a while.
 
There was
more to this tale.
 
A lot more, he
determined.
 
He also determined that Sam
was the kind of prideful person who wouldn’t want to discuss any “hard times”
in front of her daughter.

He looked at
their daughter.
 
“Why don’t you go see
what Chris is up to,” he said to her.
 
“I
want to speak privately with your mother.”

Jade,
however, was still perturbed with Dutch.
 
“Why can’t Ma stay with me?
 
What’s wrong with that?”

“We’ll talk
about it later.”

“But I want
her with me.
 
She’s my mother.
 
She wouldn’t be any burden on me.”

Dutch gave
his daughter a look that could chill the sun.
 
A look Jade knew all too well.
 
She didn’t like doing
so,
she hated it, in
fact.
 
But that look told her not to push
it.
 
She therefore got up, and left the
room.

Sam shook
her head.
  
“She’s a grown woman,” she
said with a smile, “but in age only.”

Dutch,
however, didn’t return the smile.
  
His
issues with Jade weren’t funny to him.
 
“Why did you want to see me, Samantha?” he asked her.
 
“You didn’t come all this way about any
living arrangements.”

Sam exhaled,
uncrossed her legs, leaned back, and crossed them again.
 
Dutch looked down at those shapely legs.
 
He realized, to his own surprise, that he was
getting aroused as he looked at her.

“You’re
correct,” Sam finally said.
 
“I most
definitely didn’t come here about living arrangements.”

Dutch waited
for her to continue.
 
She didn’t.
 
“Why did you come?” he asked her.

She let out
a frustrated exhale.
 
“It’s been a tough
few years.
 
I can’t lie.”
 
She looked at him.
 
“A really tough few years.”

“For the bookstore?”

“The bookstore, me, everything.
 
The truth of the
matter is
,
I’m broke, Dutch.
 
I’m nearing bankruptcy.
 
It’s been tough.”

Dutch stared
at her.
 
He had not expected this.
 
“How much?” he asked.

Sam paused.
 
“The bookstore is the worst of it.
 
It’s swimming in a sea of red.
 
I mortgaged the house twice to staunch some
of the bleeding.
 
Now I’m about to lose
both of them.”

“House and bookstore?”

“Right.”

How much
debt are we talking, Sam?”

“A couple hundred
thousand,” she said.
 
“For
starters.”
 
Then tears began to
appear in her pretty eyes.
 
“I’m sorry,”
she said, wiping them away.

“Nothing to be sorry about.
 
It’s a rough economy
for everybody.
 
I know that.”

“I thought I
could make that bookstore work.
 
I tried
everything.
 
Buy
one,
get one free, reading labs, book signings, but nothing worked.
 
Some days a handful of people come through,
other days nobody walks through that door.”
 
She wiped more tears away.

“
It’s
okay, Sam,” Dutch said as he uncrossed his legs and
leaned forward.
 
“Don’t beat yourself
up.”

“I never
learned how to do it, Dutch,” she admitted, her almond eyes looking at him with
a questioning glare.
 
“I thought I had it
figured out, but I never learned how to do it.
 
I did what my parents had wanted and earned my medical degree.
 
That was a big deal.
 
I was as proud as they were.
 
But then I tossed that aside to go into the
bookstore business.
 
Something I thought
I would love.
 
Now I can’t even do that
right.”
 
She covered her mouth as the
tears returned.
 
Dutch
quickly left his seat and moved over to her.
 
He sat beside her and pulled her into his
arms.

“It’s okay,”
he said, holding her.
 

It felt
heady for her to feel his arms around her again.
 
But she thought about her condition, about
what sorry state her life was in, and the tears returned.

“I thought I
had it all figured out,” she said again.
 
“Now I’m so broke I have to move in with my own daughter.”

“Sam, it’s
okay,” Dutch said as her sobbing increased.

“I’ll have
to try and get a job at a hospital, to help pay off the creditors, but there’s
no guarantee they’ll hold off that long.”
 
She shook her head.
 
“How could I
get myself in this position?
 
I feel like
such a failure!”
 

The idea of
a strong woman like Sam this beaten down shook Dutch too.
 
And he pulled her closer.
 
“It’s okay.”

“I should
have gotten out when I realized it wasn’t working.
 
But I was so stubborn. I was going to make it
work.
 
No matter what.
 
Now look at me.”

“Sam, it’s
okay.
 
I’ll take care of it.
 
All of it.
 
Don’t worry.”

Sam at first
was sure she didn’t hear him right.
 
He’d
take care of all of it?
 
The most she had
hoped for was a small loan to keep her largest creditors temporarily at bay,
until she could get back on her feet.

She looked
at him.
 
“I can’t ask you---”

“You aren’t
asking me.
 
I’m telling you that I’ll
take care of it.”

Sam stared
at Dutch.
 
She once had a chance with
him.
 
And they were equals then.

“Thank-you,”
she said, and moved back into his arms.

Yes, she
thought, as she closed her eyes.
 
She
didn’t have to play any seduction games whatsoever.
 
All she had to do was keep Jade close at
hand, keep little Jade under her thumb, and Dutch would automatically follow.

CHAPTER THREE

Dutch
stepped out of the helicopter, saluted the Marine on duty, and made his way in
a lumbering gait across the south lawn of the White House.
 
It was nearly one in the morning, he was dead
on his feet, and he felt, in an odd way, very lonely.
 
Jade and Christian left Helsinki after the
reception yesterday, taking a relieved Sam with them, but he was forced to stay
and attend more emergency meetings that netted a big fat zero in terms of
results.
 
Which meant the media was going
to have a field day with his lack of success.
 
Europe’s economic woes were of their own making, but the American press
was sure to blame their American president.
 
Now he was back in DC, back at the White House, and missing Gina
terribly.
 

As he made
his way through the doors of the South Portico, saluting the Marine guarding
the door, he knew Gina would be fast asleep this time of morning.
 
She always tried to hang, he thought
amusingly as he walked along the corridor, but she never could.
 
Not that it mattered. He missed her so much
he knew he was going to wake her up regardless.

He made his
way upstairs to the quiet Residence, stopping in the Nursery first to eyeball a
sleeping Little Walt.
 
The Nanny on duty
stood to her feet, but Dutch motioned her back down.
 
Then he reached over the bed and kissed his
young son on the forehead.
 
Walt seemed
to smile unconsciously at just the smell of his father’s nearness.
 
It warmed Dutch’s heart just watching his
reaction.
 
Then he kissed him on the
forehead again, and headed for the presidential suite.

He was
right: Gina was fast asleep.
 
But she was
lying across the bed in clothes, a short skirt and a belly-button length
blouse,
as if she had tried with all she had to stay awake
for his arrival.
 
He just stood there,
his hands in his pants pockets, his expensive suit now rumpled, watching her.
 
He had a serious physical reaction to
her, that
was certain.
 
His cock was rock hard within seconds of seeing her tight ass on that
bed.
 
He, in fact, wanted to fuck her so
badly he could taste it.
 

But he had
an emotional reaction to her as well.
 
He
loved her.
 
He loved everything about
Regina Harber.
 
The press was going to
call him a loser for not being able to negotiate some compromise on European
debt, and the Congress was going to pile on, too.
 
They would make the repeated point that if
Europe’s economy falls, the U.S. would be next.
 
But Gina would be in his corner.
 
She always was.
 
And that, for
Dutch, was priceless.
 
It was why he got
out of bed every day.
 
It was why he did
all he could to remain faithful to her.

He had
planned to shower on Air Force One on the trip back to the States, so that he
could hit that thang of Gina’s as soon as he hit the sheets, but he was so
tired he had fallen asleep on the plane.
 

He therefore
went to the adjacent bathroom, undressed quickly, and jumped into the
shower.
 
He thought about many things as
he cleansed his aching muscles.
 
He
thought about Jade and that devil-may-care side of her that was beginning to
alarm him.
 
He would talk to Gina, to see
what she thought, but he was beginning to lean toward therapy for that young
woman.
 
Before she did some real harm, he
thought.

And he
thought about Jade’s mother.
 
Her oddness
had undoubtedly made her a lousy parent, and now
Jade
,
unfortunately, bore the burdens of that lousiness.
 
But how could he judge Sam?
 
He wasn’t there to help rear the child.
 
He wasn’t there to temper Sam’s toughness and
sensibleness with the emotional attachment a child also needed.
 
Sam had no intentions of ever being anybody’s
mother.
 
She and he both knew she wasn’t
cut out for anything like that.
 
But
Dutch kept hounding her for sex.
 
Every
time he saw her he was trying to get her in his bed.
 
And in a moment of weakness, she caved.
 

At first
they wore protection.
 
Wore it the second
time, too.
 
But by the third round in
that wild night of sex, they didn’t care.
 
They fucked raw.
 
Fucked like
rabbits in the raw.
 
And the result of
that momentary lapse would last their lifetimes.

Dutch still
wondered what Jade’s youth had been like.
 
His now deceased mother had threatened to have her friends in high
places make Sam’s life a living hell if she carried the baby to term.
 
She therefore told Dutch that she had had an
abortion, and then disappeared from sight.
 
He didn’t know Jade even existed until she was twenty-three years
old.
 
Old enough to
have Sam’s brand of rearing deep within her.
 
Old enough to be, in some
ways, even odder than her mother.