THE PRESIDENT 2 Read online

But he realized it too, she decided, because he suddenly moved back from her, severing their sudden sensual contact. She looked at him. He handed her his handkerchief.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, wiping her tears away.

  “Nothing’s the matter,” he said in an almost defensive tone. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “It’s just so great seeing you again. I didn’t think it could be possible.”

  He looked her dead in the eye, studying her, his green eyes so intense she wondered if he could see right through her, right straight through to her plotting and scheming. “I got married, too,” he said to her.

  That wasn’t the words she had expected to come out of his mouth. “Did you?”

  “While you were away, in France. I got married too.”

  “Yes, Dutch, I know. The world knows.”

  “Her name is Regina, as I’m sure you also know.” Dutch wanted to make himself clear. He stared into her eyes. “She’s the love of my life, Caroline, a wonderful, kind woman. There has never been anyone like her and never will.” And, as if to put a nail in the coffin of any ideas she might have about them getting back together or being anything more than friends, he added: “I would like for you to meet her.”

  If Caroline had any doubts, his declaration of love for Gina was supposed to have removed them all. She, instead, removed herself from his arms. And stared right back at him. She wasn’t accustomed to being rebuked by a man. She, in fact, in all of her life, had never been rebuked by any man. Her husband Pierre always craved her, Dutch used to always crave her, all of the men she hired to work around her home in France whenever her husband was away on business, craved her. And once she got every one of those men in her bed, and showed them what she could do, they craved her even more. She knew she was a sex addict. She knew she had to have it and have it repeatedly and by different men because one man was never enough to satisfy her own craving.

  But she was getting older now. And afraid of being alone now. Sex for her was no longer a toy. After Pierre’s betrayal, it was now the only weapon she had if she ever was going to experience that pure happiness she knew she would have had if his mother hadn’t had a private eye following her, and taped her sex sessions with all of those other men.

  But his mother was right. He would play hard to get initially, as the shock of seeing her alive and well began to take hold. But give it time, Victoria had told her. He’d come around. He’d compare her to that person he was married to, a woman who couldn’t keep herself out of trouble to save her life, and who had caused him nothing but problems even before he said I Do. There was no doubt in Victoria’s mind, she had insisted to Caroline, that he’d come around.

  There was some doubt in Caroline’s mind, however, especially now that he was obviously excited by her but was still able to restrain himself. There was a time when Dutch had so little restraint when it came to her body. And given how rapidly he had engorged when she rubbed against him, she had absolutely expected him to carry her upstairs and fuck her brains out, the way he used to do her; the way she was beginning to crave for him to do to her again.

  But he didn’t do it. He, instead, pulled back. Caroline, however, wasn’t completely offended. She knew her value. She knew that it would be just a matter of time before he would be hers again. Especially if that so-called wife of his, according to Victoria and what she herself was able to find out from press reports, was as horrid as she seemed.

  “Yes,” she said to Dutch, smiling that smile he used to find so sexy; smiling grandly in an attempt to keep her true feelings completely her own. “I’d love to meet her. Truly I would.”

  TEN

  Dutch sat at the head of his mother’s lunch table and couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of Caroline. He still couldn’t completely wrap his brains around this. She was alive? It still seemed impossible to him. He remembered getting the news of the plane crash. He, his father, his mother and Max sat in the morning room waiting for answers. Were there any survivors, he would ask when he wanted to ask if Caroline survived, but was too terrified to be that specific. He remembered his father sitting beside him on the sofa, putting his arm around him, comforting him, seemingly as crushed by the news as he was.

  And he remembered getting the word from French officials: no survivors. None. All, they said, were basically incinerated within the wreckage of the plane, somewhere on that mountain. Cooked like meat, he remembered his father mumbling. Cooked like meat.

  “But it’s true,” Victoria, who sat at the opposite head of the table, said. “Walter, isn’t it true?”

  Max and Caroline, who sat at the table also, looked at Dutch. Dutch, who had been staring at Caroline more than he had been listening to any around-the-table conversation, looked at his mother. “Sorry?”

  Victoria smiled at his inability to pay attention to anything but his woman. This was even easier than she thought it would be. “Caroline. Isn’t she as beautiful as the day she stepped onto that plane?”

  Dutch raked up a few peas and moved to put them in his mouth. “Yes,” he said as he ate. He said it because it was true. She was as beautiful now as she was then. Older, yes, just as he was older, but she still had that extra something that always made her so alluring to him. But what was odd to him wasn’t the fact that he still found her attractive: her attractiveness was just a fact in and of itself. But what surprised him the most was that his love for Caroline, which he thought had been so absolute and strong, seemed almost weak and feeble when compared to his love for Gina. Because there was no comparison. None.

  But even with that, Caroline still managed to give him a rise. That concerned him. All she had to do was press that lithe little body of hers against him and his penis was ready to jut out of his pants and penetrate her. For a quick, unthinking moment he actually had wanted to fuck her. He had wanted to feel what it was like to be inside of her again. That was a first since his marriage to Gina, and that concerned him. Why would he even have considered such a thing? No woman compared to his woman. None. But he had truly wanted Caroline.

  She was alluring, yes; he’d admit she was very alluring. But so were many women he knew and had to associate with sometimes on a daily basis. They never gave him any rise. Of course he had been in love with this particular woman, had made plans to marry and protect her for the rest of her life. And when he thought she had died, as when most loved ones die, the memory of her became embedded in his brain as some kind of perfection personified. Only her good was remembered. So he intellectually understood why he would react a little stronger sexually toward her than he did to any other woman outside of his wife.

  But it still concerned him.

  “When she first walked into this home,” his mother continued, “I could hardly believe my eyes. ‘Caroline?’ I said aloud. ‘Is that you, Caroline?’ It took quite some time for me to get over it. Just as it will for you, too, Walter.”

  Caroline smiled. “Dutchie looked like he had seen a ghost,” she said jovially. Dutch smiled too.

  “It was rather shocking,” he said.

  “And Maxwell was even worst,” Victoria said and they all laughed. When the laughter died down, she added: “But we are so very happy to have you back, Caroline. Your parents, God rest their souls, would have been so happy.”

  Caroline nodded. “I know. And I feel so terrible that I didn’t even let them know anything. But I wasn’t myself back then.” She wasn’t very close with nor cared much for her adopted parents to begin with, and that was the real reason she felt no obligation to them, and Victoria Harber knew it. But she was determined to keep the charade going.

  “You were overwrought,” Victoria said. “I was telling Walter, I was telling your parents, I was telling everybody that something was wrong with you, that they were stressing you to the max. But nobody listened to me.”

  “It was my fault,” Caroline said. “I was taking on too much.”

  “Nonsense! You were a soon-to-be-bride so in love you could hardly
think straight.” Could sleep with every Tom, Dick, and Harry, Victoria inwardly thought as she said that, but you certainly weren’t thinking straight. “It was a lot on someone so young.”

  She wasn’t all that young, Max was thinking when his cell phone began to ring. He stood and moved away from the table to answer it. Ed Drake, National Security Advisor, only gave him a code. He closed his phone and immediately turned to the president.

  He was laughing at some joke Caroline had told. “If you think the French people are arrogant, you should meet their president. That man never talks to me when we’re together, he lectures me. Loves to call me son. He’s got a few years on me, yes, but not that many.”

  “They treat me the same way some times,” Caroline said as Dutch began to turn his attention to Max. “Americans, they seem to say,” she continued, looking at Max too, “what do they know?”

  “Yes?” Dutch asked his best friend who now had that serious, I’m the chief of staff look.

  “It’s nine o clock, sir,” Max said and it was all he needed to say. The president immediately tossed his napkin on the table and stood to his feet.

  “What’s the matter, son?” Victoria asked him.

  “I need to get back to Washington.”

  “Oh,” Victoria said, thinking fast as Dutch walked over and kissed her on the cheek. Their relationship, ever since his marriage to Gina, had been quite contentious. But even he had to admit that his mother was at least attempting to make some amends.

  He turned toward Caroline next, who stood to her feet. “I’m really happy, still shocked,” he said with a smile, “but happy to see you alive and well.” He reached over, to also kiss her gently on the cheek, but she moved her mouth just enough that his kiss landed on her lips. Victoria thought that such a move was very deft of her. Dutch, however, stepped back from her.

  Victoria looked at Max. She had agreed to financially assist his political ambitions, but, as she also made clear, her money didn’t come free. By that look on her face, Max had a sneaking suspicion that she was calling in one of those payments already.

  “Sir,” he said to the president. Dutch looked at him.

  “I think she will need to come too. So we can decide how we’re going to handle her return.” Dutch looked puzzled. “Caroline’s return, I mean. The press could turn it into something we don’t need to have to deal with.”

  Dutch nodded. “Okay. You’re right, of course. Handle that, Max.”

  Fielding Reynolds, the president’s personal assistant, also known as his “body” man, entered the dining hall. “It’s nine o’clock, sir,” he said.

  Dutch began moving fast again. “Has everyone been contacted?” he asked Fielding.

  “Yes, sir,” Fielding said. “They’re either on their way or in the Situation Room now. You’re be briefed on Marine One.”

  Dutch, without looking back at his mother or his ex-fiancée, walked and talked with Fielding and left the hall.

  “Surely we can’t leave it like this,” Victoria said, thinking fast, glancing at Caroline. Then she stood. “Max!” she called out to the chief of staff, who was leaving himself. “I wish to come too. To Washington I mean. To spend more time with my son.”

  When Max gave her a rather doubtful look, she added: “Caroline and I can share the Lincoln Bedroom if they don’t have room.”

  Max smiled weakly. “Of course there’s room. The president’s mother is always welcome at the White House. There will always be room for you. But we’ll have to leave now.”

  “Of course,” Victoria said, moving from around the table, as she called for Nathan Riles.

  Caroline quickly followed, but then touched Max rather sensually on his lower back to get him to stop walking while Victoria continued forward.

  “What does ‘nine o’clock’ mean?” Caroline asked.

  “Developments,” Max said, and that was all he was going to say about it.

  “I need your support, Maxwell,” she said, her voice lowered.

  “Support?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what exactly am I supporting?”

  “My bid to win my man back,” she said without obfuscation. “What else?”

  Max stared at her. “He’s happily married, Caro. None of your wiles will work this time.”

  “Let me worry about that part. I just need you to stay out of my way. Put in an occasional encouraging word in his ear. Or,” she added, straightening his always crooked tie, “that wondrous night we spent together all those years ago, while I was clearly still Dutch’s woman, may just be revealed.” She smiled after she said this, and walked away.

  Max, knowing such a revelation would ruin him in every way possible, could barely stand.

  ***

  By the time Max, Victoria and Caroline had arrived at the helipad on the outer edge of the Harber compound, Dutch was seated on Marine One and being briefed, on a secure phone link, by Ed Drake.

  “Okay, Eddie, I’ll see you shortly. And tell the team good job. Finally some good news.” And then Dutch hung up the phone, feeling hopeful for a change, as his body man removed the phone from his grasp.

  He leaned back, looked at his mother and his resurrected former fiancée.

  “Good news?” Caroline asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I should rather think so.”

  Then she smiled that sexy smile he used to adore. And, to his horror, his penis began to throb.

  ***

  The convoy of five SUVs left the Alan B. Polunsky prison with Gina, LaLa, and Christian in the fourth one. Gina was on the phone, with famed defense attorney Roman Wilkes, asking if he would get involved. When Roman agreed to look into the matter and then get back with her, she beamed. And hung up.

  “Think that’s a good idea?” LaLa asked her.

  “You heard his story, La,” Gina said. “I can’t just hear him declare his innocence with information that could so easily be checked out, and do nothing.”

  “But even he admitted he used to sell drugs.”

  “Yes, he used to. But if his story is right, he turned his life around, had a legitimate job. Let’s not forget, LaLa, that that’s what Block by Block Raiders was all about: helping criminals make a new start. Marcus Rance would be a textbook example of what we were trying to do.”

  “If his story is true,” LaLa pointed out.

  “Right. If it all checks out. That’s why I called Wilkie. He’s the best defense attorney around. He’ll get to the bottom of it without alerting the press and turning this into some kind of a media circus.”

  Christian snorted.

  Gina looked at him. “What is it, Christian?”

  “I mean,” Christian said, smiling, “he’s known as creating a circus around every case he tries.”

  “That ain’t all he’s known for,” LaLa threw in.

  Gina ignored her. “That’s because the cases he tries are generally poor people already declared guilty in the court of public opinion. Mr. Wilkes has to change that perception, and the only way he can do it is to court the court of public opinion, so to speak. Trust me, he knows what he’s doing.”

  “But do you?” LaLa asked.

  Gina looked at her. “Our past relationship will have nothing to do with this. This isn’t about us. This is about Marcus Rance.”

  “But that man couldn’t keep his hands off of you when y’all used to date.”

  “If what Marcus said to us is true, he could have been falsely accused, La. I can’t turn my back on that. And I can’t hire just anybody. Because the attorney who takes on a case like this can’t just be good. He’s got to be great, like Roman Wilkes, because if there was any man that was guilty as sin in the court of public opinion, it’s Marcus Rance. I have to make sure that he didn’t go the way so many of our BBR clients went and was found guilty just because of his past sins.”