President's Girlfriend 06 - The Sins of the Fathers (27 page)

As soon as the
doors to the West Sitting Hall opened, everybody sat up at attention.
 
But it wasn’t the president arriving.
 
It was Gina.

“Good
morning, everybody,” Gina said as she entered.
 
She was dressed conservatively, in a white and brown cardigan sweater
and skirt set, and Sam was impressed with her style.
 
This would be the woman Wham Bam Harber would
eventually settle down and marry, and it was no surprise to Sam that she would
be a smart, savvy sister.
 
Dutch, she’d
inwardly suspected, always favored the sistas.

Gina offered
everyone drinks, everyone declined, and then she sat on the second sofa in the
room, the one facing Jade and Marcus.

“The
president had to take a critical call from the German Chancellor, but he’ll be
here momentarily.”

“Okay, you
told us, so you can leave now,” Jade said to Gina.

Marcus
looked at Jade, astounded.
 
Or, at least,
he was playing the role of a man astounded.
 
“Don’t be rude,” he said to her.
 
“That’s my sister you’re talking to.”
 
He knew he had to keep Gina in his corner.
 
He lose Gina, he lose access.
 
He lose access, he could kiss his plan and
all of those millions Thurston Osgood had been floating under his nose goodbye.

Gina,
however, just sat there.
 
She was
accustomed to Jade’s little comments.
 
They didn’t bother her.
 
Besides,
Gina thought with an inward smile, Dutch had taken care of her little sassy
butt last night, and on Gina’s birthday.
 
A kind of ironic birthday gift.

“So, sis,”
Marcus said smilingly, as if, Gina thought, he had nothing to do with why this
emergency meeting was being called in the first place, “when are we going to
hook up again at Bridge Gap?”

“I’ll have
to check my schedule,” she said.

“I haven’t
heard a word from the director about that job they offered me.
 
Board approval shouldn’t take this long.”

“It
shouldn’t, but I’m sure she’ll let you know.
 
You have to be patient in DC.”

Marcus
didn’t like the way she phrased that, but he continued to smile
nonetheless.
 
He wasn’t blowing this
chance.
 
He had already contacted his
crew.
 
Everything was already set up and
waiting for that perfect time.

It would
take only a few minutes longer before the doors to the West Sitting Hall were
opened again, and Dutch and Christian came through.
 
Jade was a little uncomfortable seeing
Christian with her father, but she played it off.

Dutch spoke
and sat beside Gina.
 
Christian spoke to
Sam only, and sat beside Dutch.
 
It was
as if the lots had been cast, and the sides had already been taken.

Dutch,
however, didn’t have time to play games or to beat around any bushes.
 
He had to be on Capitol Hill soon enough and
he needed to take a break before he left.
 
This little get together was not his idea of a break.
 

“Did you
allow Marcus Rance to have sex with you last night?” he asked his daughter
point blank.

Gina looked
at Marcus and Jade, anger in her eyes.

Jade decided
to deflect.
 
“You don’t know what it’s
like, Daddy,” she said.
 
“Christian acts
all innocent around you, but you just don’t know.”

“So it’s my
fault?” Christian said.

“If you were
the kind of husband you’re supposed to be,” Jade answered, “nothing would have
happened.
 
And nothing happened
anyway!
 
Don’t believe that nonsense
Christian’s telling you.”

“It isn’t
nonsense,” Sam spoke up and said.

Everybody
looked at her.

“Stay out of
it, Ma,” Jade said.

Sam looked
at Dutch.
 
“In answer to your question,
yes, Dutch, your daughter, our daughter, is one fucked up individual who
allowed this man to hold her against a wall and do all sorts of sexual things
to her.”
 
Then Sam looked at Jade.
 
“And it wasn’t the first time, either.”

Christian
was surprised by this.
 
Dutch wasn’t.

“I never
caught them before,” Sam made clear, “but I sure as hell suspected it.”

“Well, we
can’t help your suspicions,” Marcus said with a smile on his face.

“But you had
sex with her last night,” Christian said to Marcus.
 
“That wasn’t a suspicion.
 
That was a fact.”

“In your
mind,” Marcus said, continuing to smile.
 
“Not in my mind.”

“Then
something’s wrong with your mind because I know what I saw with my own two
eyes.”
 
Dutch looked at Christian.
 
It was about time, he thought.
 
“And it wasn’t an illusion what I saw last
night.
 
It was you pounding into my wife,
not an illusion.”

“Whatever,
Chris,” Marcus said dismissively, which only inflamed Christian’s passion.

“I trusted
you!” Christian screamed.
 
“I invited you
into my home.
 
I tried to be a friend to
you!
 
And this is how you repay me?”

“I don’t owe
you shit!” Marcus yelled, forgetting to smile.
 
“Jade helped me out.
 
And nobody
else!”

“Jade is my
wife,” Christian reminded him.
 
“We’re
one in the same.”

Jade looked
at Christian.
 
Dutch stared at her.
 
“One in the same?” she said to her
husband.
 
“We aren’t one in the same,
what are you talking about?
 
You disgust
me.
 
All you want to do is work, work,
work
.
 
You don’t even
know how to have any fun.
 
You’re nothing
like me!”

“You used to
think we had a lot in common.”

“Well, I
thought wrong, didn’t I?”

“What are
you doing?” Christian asked, tears coming into his eyes.
 
“How can you talk like this?
 
I love you and you know it.”

“Stop saying
that!”

“But it’s
true, Jade.”

“Then that
sounds like a personal problem to me.”
 
Her face was frowned.
 
“You
disgust me, I abhor you, and you’re talking about love?”

Dutch leaned
forward.
 
Gina could see that he had had
it with that daughter of his. “Marcus,” he said, “I want you to go back to the
house, pack up your bags, and leave my daughter’s residence.”

But Jade was
horrified.
 
“That’s my house,” she told
her father.
 
“You can’t control my house
just because you paid for it.
 
The title
is in my name now.
 
Mine.
 
And Marcus is staying with me!”

Dutch stared
at his daughter.
 
It felt like a game of
chess to Gina.
 
“Are you telling me, are
you telling your husband, that you’re choosing Marcus over him?
 
That you no longer wish to remain in your
marriage?”

Christian’s
heart was pounding as he waited for Jade’s response.
 
Jade seemed hesitant too, it seemed to Gina,
but she pressed on.

“That’s
exactly what I’m telling you,” she said to Dutch.

Christian’s
heart plunged.
 
He stared at his wife for
a long time.
 
He wiped his tears away but
kept staring at her.
 
He thought they
could overcome many things.
 
Even last night.
 
Now
he knew better.

He got up,
and headed out of the room.

“Christian,
wait!” Gina yelled after him, but he kept on walking.
 
For his own self-respect, he kept on walking.

Dutch leaned
back.
 
Even he didn’t see this coming.

It was Sam
who spoke up through the long silence.
 
“I’m taking Jade back to South Carolina with me,” she said.

Jade stared
at her with horror in her eyes.
 
Marcus
stared too.
 
He needed Jade to execute
his plan.
 
No Jade, no plan.

“I’m a grown
woman,” Jade said.
 
“I’m not going back
there.”

“Yes, you
are,” Sam said without hesitation.
 
“I’m
not Christian.
 
And you don’t have me
wrapped around your finger the way you do your father.
 
I dare you to buck me.”

It all
flooded back for Jade.
 
The lack of warmth.
 
The lack of consideration.
 
The way her mother’s word was supreme and she would knock the fire out
of her if she didn’t obey.
 
She lived in pure
terror of her mother back then.
 
And even
to this day, if her mother, like now, put her foot down firmly enough, she
still lived in pure terror of her mother.
 
It was irrational and it was unreasonable.
 
But Dutch and Gina did notice how Jade didn’t
dispute her mother’s contention, nor did she say another word.

LaLa had
just stepped out of the shower inside her Georgetown home, and was drying off
when the doorbell rang.

“Great,” she
said aloud as she removed her shower cap.
 
She wrapped the towel around her body, knotting it just above her
breasts, and hurried to the front door.
 
It more than likely was one of her aides bringing over the draft copy of
the speech she was set to deliver tomorrow at the women’s center.
 
But when she looked through the peephole and
saw Christian rather than an aide, she quickly opened up.

“Christian,”
she said, urging him inside.
 
The agent
in charge of her protection remained on the home’s porch as Christian entered,
and she closed the door behind him.

“What’s
wrong?” she asked him.

Christian
kept shaking his blond head, fighting back tears.

LaLa could
just feel his pain.
 
“Come on, bud,” she
said as she moved him toward the sofa.
 
“Let’s have a sit down.”

They sat on
the sofa, side by side.

“Now tell me
what’s going on.”

“I’m so
sorry to bother you,
La
.
 
I didn’t mean to come here and bother you
like this.”

“Will you
stop!
 
What’s
happened, Chris?
 
Is it Jade?”

Christian
nodded his head.
 
“The President made her
come to the White House, and to bring Marcus.
 
The things she said,
La
.
 
I was amazed.”

“What
things?”

“About our marriage.
 
About
me.
 
She prefers Marcus over me.”

“Marcus?”
 
LaLa was astounded.
 
“Jade and Marcus?”

Christian nodded, looked at LaLa.
“Yeah.
 
I caught, me and Miss Redding, we caught Jade
and Marcus making out.
 
Fucking!” he said
angrily.
 
It was a word he’d never used
before, but the president had described it correctly.
 
“And then it’s like she blames me.
 
She says she doesn’t want our marriage,
La
.
 
She doesn’t want
us to be together anymore.
 
She says I
disgust her.”

“Oh, Chris,”
LaLa said and pulled him into her arms.
 
He grabbed hold of her, tightly, and almost sobbed in her arms.
 
It hurt just that badly.

But he
refused to cry.
 
It seemed useless to cry
over somebody who said he disgusted her.
 
So he tried with all he had to forget about Jade, as he sat on that sofa
with LaLa.

And LaLa was
patient with him.
 
She knew what he was
going through.
 
She held him, rubbed his
hair,
comforted
him.
 
But the more she held him the more he began to realize that he was right
where he wanted to be: in LaLa’s arms.
 
He experienced her.
 
He
experienced her sweet perfume scent, and her kindness, and her heart, and her
integrity, and he couldn’t cry anymore.
 
Because, in truth, there was rarely a time that he made love to Jade
when he wasn’t wishing, just a little, that it was LaLa’s vagina he was shoving
into.
 
LaLa, he knew, would have never
betrayed him.