THE PRESIDENT 2 (19 page)

“They make a very loving couple,” Victoria said, as if the past was nothing more than a truth to be forgotten.

Max looked at her, and then back at the couple.
 
He couldn’t forget that easily.
 
“An attractive one, in any event.”

Victoria, however, scoffed at his insinuation.
 
“She looks better with him than that Regina person any day of the week, I assure you of that.”

Max looked at Victoria.
 
“You don’t like Gina?”

“Do you, Maxwell?”

Max shrugged his shoulders.
 
“She’s growing on me, how’s that?”

Victoria snorted.
 
“You don’t like her, either.”

“I didn’t say that, Vicky.
 
She’s been an overall asset to Dutch.
 
I mean, she loves the guy and the guy loves her.
 
Besides, it was her quick thinking and legal smarts that saved his bacon at that press conference last week.”

“What save?
 
She threatened Jennifer Caswell with a lawsuit, something ambulance-chasing lawyers like her are great at doing:
 
Tossing threats.
 
But as the First Lady tossing these threats around? Oh, come now, Max.
 
It’s ludicrous to even consider.”
 
She stared at the twosome on the estate grounds.
 
“But then there’s Caroline,” she said.
 
“And although I have my issues with her, yes, I do, she’s still head and shoulders above that hood rat.”

Max looked back out of the window too, as Caroline carefully slid her arm through Dutch’s.
  
That chick, with Victoria as her mentor, knew exactly what she was doing.
 
“You do understand,” Max said, “that Caroline herself is half-black?”

Victoria continued to look out of the window.
 
“I know that there were once rumors to that effect, vicious rumors that her biological mother was black--”

“It’s no rumor, Vicky,” Max pointed out, “it’s a fact.
 
Your husband, God rest his soul, had his people investigate it.
 
I led that investigation.
 
She was adopted by white parents, she was raised as a white girl, but her biological mother, the woman whose circumstances forced her to give that child up for adoption, was a black woman.”

“Be that as it may,” Victoria said, “but at least it’s well hidden.
 
At least Caroline, unlike that Regina person, doesn’t flaunt her blackness.”

Max looked at Victoria.
 
How in the world did Gina “flaunt” her blackness?
 
By being black?
 
By living as a black?
 
Or maybe she just felt like he did that Gina could at least tone it down a bit.
 
But then again, unlike Max, Victoria Harber was supposed to understand these things.
 
She was a champion of blacks everywhere after all, a liberal icon.
 
Max inwardly smiled.
 
That was Victoria Harber for you: a woman who would give until it hurt to the poor, while all the while hating them for the very fact that they were poor.

“I need you on this, Maxwell,” Victoria said as she and Max looked at each other.
 
“I know about your political ambitions. Yes, I know about that.”

Max was astounded.
 
“I haven’t announced anything.
 
I haven’t told anyone--”

“You were making the kinds of inquiries that take no rocket scientist to figure out.
 
My spies figured it out.
 
And even Walter doesn’t know, I’m aware of that too.
 
But I know.
 
I have connections you wouldn’t believe.
 
Money gets you everything these days.
 
And with that money I could financially assist those ambitions of yours.
 
I could make your dreams come true.”
 
Max turned toward her.
 
She almost smiled at his eagerness.
 
“But my money and my support doesn’t come free, Maxwell.
 
There will be times when you will have to assist me too.”
 
She looked him dead in the eye.
 
“Understand?”

Making a deal with her was like dealing with the devil, but he nodded anyway.
 
And looked back out of the window, at the president and his lady.
 

Caroline Parker aimed to worm her way back into the president’s life: there was no doubt in Max’s mind about that now.
 
Her goal, aided and abetted by the president’s mother herself, was to use the sentiment of their past love to steal Dutch from Gina.
 
What was surprising to Max, however, was that Dutch looked like a man so caught up in the grips of that past sentiment, so stunned that his first true love was back within his grasp, that he just might not mind being stolen.

The twosome sat on a bench in front of the lake, as Dutch crossed his legs and Caroline snuggled further into her thick sweater.
 
A smattering of secret service agents, some visible, many not, blanketed the estate.

“Cold?” Dutch asked, knowing that he would be a poor judge of the weather right now.
 
The shock of seeing her again still had him reeling, still made him feel almost infernal.
 

“A bit, yes,” Caroline said.

Dutch immediately removed his suit coat and placed it over her small, delicate shoulders.
 
He remembered those shoulders; remembered kissing them and caressing them; remembered feeling so protective of them.
 

“Now you’re cold,” she said in her sweet, coquettish way.

“No, I’m fine,” Dutch said truthfully.
 
“Cold is the least that I am.”

Caroline looked at him.
 
“Still shocked?”

Dutch nodded.
 
“That would be an understatement.”

“I know, babe.”
 
Dutch looked at her.
 
She used to always call him babe.
 
“I just didn’t know where to turn.
 
Talk about shock.
 
That’s what I was in.
 
My husband had really done a number on me.”

“Was it another woman?”

“No!
 
He was very faithful.
 
In some ways, I wish it was as simple as another woman.”

“Tell me what happened to you, Caroline.”
 
Dutch said this with pain in his voice.
 
“Why did you let me believe you were dead?”

“I was supposed to go to France to make sure everything would be ready for our honeymoon.
 
That was the purpose of the trip; that was why your mother had arranged it.”
 
Caroline looked away from Dutch when she told this lie: his mother had arranged for her to go to France, all right.
 
But not to prepare for their honeymoon, as both she and Victoria were telling others, but for her to take up permanent residence at a Villa in Provence, France, where she would remain with five hundred thousand dollars cash from the Harber estate.
 
If she resurfaced in any way, shape or form, those sex tapes, and there were many, would be shown to Dutch and the world, and she’d be castigated even worse.
 

But she wasn’t about to tell Dutch any of that.

“I felt as if I was under so much pressure,” she went on, “that I just kind of had a breakdown.
 
I couldn’t come back.”

“So you stayed in France?”

“I stayed.
 
I just stayed.
 
The plane was leaving, and I was on the flight manifest, but I told the pilot to leave without me, that you had decided that I would stay for a few days longer.
 
He didn’t question it, he just did what I instructed him to do and he and his crew left.
 
I never dreamed there would be an accident.”
 
Tears welled up in her eyes.
 
“I never dreamed that that poor man and his crew would be killed.
 
But, as life sometimes would have it, it became the perfect cover for me.
 
So I used it, yes, I did.
 
I used it to my greatest advantage.”
 

She looked at Dutch.
  
“I never meant to hurt you.
 
But I was young and there was so much pressure on me.
 
From your mother and your father--”

“And from me,” Dutch added for her.

“And from you, yes.
 
I felt the pressure from you too.
 
And everybody was billing this as if it was going to be the marriage on the century, from Nantucket to Cape Cod.
 
It was just too much.
 
I didn’t know if I was ready for all of that responsibility.
 
So I cracked under the weight and just couldn’t face this place anymore.”

“Did you plan to stay away this long?”

“No.
 
Yes.
 
I don’t know, Dutch, I didn’t have a plan.
 
I just floated around for a few days, staying in this villa and that villa, especially after I found out the plane had crashed and there were no survivors.
 
I made the decision then to let that fact, that there were no survivors, be my new reality.
 
So I just floated from there.
 
By the time I met Pierre I was a different woman, Dutch.
 
I was independent and was just glad to float.
 
I didn’t want any responsibilities.
 
But then I made the mistake of falling in love.
 
We were married.
 
And then the roof caved in.”

“In the form of his fraudulent business dealings.”

Caroline nodded.
 
“Right.
 
And just like I told you earlier, it just devastated me.
 
I was left with nothing.
 
I was literally poverty stricken.
 
After divorcing him, I didn’t know where to turn.
 
My parents, I guess I should say my adopted parents, had since died, I had no siblings that I knew about, so I reached out to your mother.
 
And here we are.”

She covered her mouth as the tears returned, and she quickly stood to her feet.
 
Dutch stood too, as he saw the emotion in her eyes.
 

“I never meant to hurt you, Dutch,” she said through her tears.
 
“I was just so lost then, just so . . .” She leaned against his chest.
 
At first he just stood there, not knowing quite what to do, and then he wrapped her into his arms.
 

His heart hammered as he held her.
 
This was
Caroline
, not any woman.
 
This was the first woman he had loved so completely that he gave his heart to her.
 
He not only loved and wanted to marry her, but had every intention of marrying her.
 
He had asked her, she had said yes, they had planned their wedding down to the last detail.
 
Her trip to France was her and his mother’s idea, a chance for her to make last minute preparations on their honeymoon Villa.
 

For years a small part of Dutch blamed his mother for Caroline’s death; for the fact that she was the one who encouraged her to go on that trip, a trip that ended in that fiery, horrific plane crash.
 
He never dreamed she wasn’t among the dead; that she had decided not to return to him.
 
And he still could hardly believe that she was here, alive, and back in his loving arms.