THE PRESIDENT 2 Read online

  “Isn’t that something? Way to go, Wilkie. He always was an oddball. But why would he do it?”

  “I can only guess,” Dutch said. “He didn’t tell me a thing. Nathan had to give me the heads up.”

  “So why do you think he did it?”

  “Because of you. Because that man is still in love with you.”

  “Oh, Dutch,” Gina said dismissively, “I’m sure that’s not it.”

  “Don’t you oh, Dutch me! I’ll bet that is it. But he can forget that. You are so off market, lady, that there’s no longer any market to be off of!”

  “What?” Gina asked with a grin. “Even you don’t know what that means.”

  “It means,” Dutch said, serious now, “that I love you and I’ll not stand idly by for any man to so much as think about getting a piece of you. They can’t have even a taste. Not even Roman Wilkes. Although I did phone and tell him how grateful I am for all of his assistance.”

  Gina looked at him. “You spoke to him?”

  Dutch nodded. “We spoke.”

  “And he admitted being the person who encouraged your mother to change her story?”

  “He didn’t admit it. But he didn’t deny it, either. He just told me to tell you to keep your chin up, that it’ll get better before it gets worse, and that he’s still working his butt off on behalf of Marcus Rance.”

  “Which will only mean more headaches for you, especially when the press gets wind of the fact that you’re bankrolling his defense and that my ex-lover is his attorney. They are going to have a field day with that one.”

  Dutch snorted. “I kind of think I’m used to it by now.” Gina smiled. “Besides, what do they want from us? Do they want us to sit by and let an innocent man rot in prison until I’m out of office, or do the right thing despite how it polls?”

  “Let him rot, of course,” Gina said and Dutch smiled. Then he moved her back on top of him. “And now,” he said, “it’s about time you show me if you’ve learned anything at all in the eleven years since I first blew your mind in this very room.”

  “But Dutch,” Gina said, amazed at his stamina, “I just showed you.”

  “Show me again,” he said, looking at her lips and then kissing them. “And again,” he said, still kissing her. “And again.”

  “Don’t you think, given the news of your mother’s passing, we should, you know?”

  “What?” Dutch asked, puzzled. “We should what?”

  “Ease up, Dutch. Out of respect.”

  “Respect for her? But we didn’t respect her.”

  Gina smiled. “You know what I mean!”

  Dutch nodded. He knew. He wrapped her in his arms.

  Then he looked at her. “Ready to go back?”

  “Back to the pettiness and the hypocrisies and the complaints about my clothes and my hair and my speech and why I’m so focused on the poor and not on the middle class? Go back there? Ah, let me see: No.”

  “Then you know what that means?”

  “What?”

  “More of this,” he said, rolled her over onto her back, and began kissing her.

  As he moved on top of her, however, he reached over to the nightstand, grabbed the TV’s remote, and with all of that Washington chatter still ringing in his ears, shut the whole thing off.

  EPILOGUE

  Seven Months Later

  The crowds were in the thousands by the time the Harbers prepared to leave the hospital. The city of Newark was still amazed that the First Lady of the United States would choose their still-struggling but beloved city, and her hometown, as the place for her baby to come into this world. Although neither she nor the president would admit it publicly, everybody who had an opinion believed that they did not want their child to ever have to say that he was born in the Beltway.

  Dutch sat in the corner of the hospital room holding his son with the nervousness of a brand new dad, and with the assuredness of a determined father. Every time he looked down at his tiny seven pound frame; at his big hazel eyes and little button nose; at his mother’s ears and forehead and his lips; and every time he smelled his wonderful baby smell, he wanted to cry.

  He had a son? Really? This was his boy? It still seemed surreal.

  And that was why he couldn’t stop praying. That was why he couldn’t stop thinking about the awesome responsibility he now had for this tiny little baby.

  Walter Robert Harber, Jr. Robert they would call him. Or Bobby, Gina had said.

  And Dutch looked back down at the baby. And prayer some more. He prayed that he would get this right. He prayed that he wouldn’t be too tough on the boy, that Gina wouldn’t baby him, that they would somehow manage, even their clumsiness, to get it just right. He looked at Gina, who was standing on the side of the bed, her baby bags all packed and ready to go. Looking like a kid herself. And Dutch smiled. Because he knew now, not the night he became President of the United States, not the night he won reelection, but even when he married Gina. But he knew now, at this very moment, in this hospital in this struggling, wonderful city, that he was above all men the most richly blessed.

  After Gina complained no end about their requirement that she ride a wheelchair downstairs, despite LaLa and Christian’s pleads, she ultimately agreed to ride down on the elevator and then get out and walk.

  “Thank-you,” LaLa said, moving over to Dutch and looking at the beautiful baby that would become her godchild. Christian looked too, and although he was slated to be the godfather, he felt more like the big brother than anything paternal. But he smiled, said his goo-goo-ga-ga’s and stood beside Dutch.

  And then all of them, Dutch, Gina, Robert, LaLa and Christian, and the contingent of agents, made their way onto the elevator and after Gina got out of the wheelchair, out of the hospital. The Secret Service had wanted them to go out a back way, away from the crowd that kept on swelling. But Dutch had said no.

  These people, mostly poor, mostly happy black faces, were the people he represented. The real America, not that plastic society they had to deal with.

  And he wasn’t running away from them.

  The festive crowd went wild as soon as the happy couple appeared. And as soon as they realized the president was carrying the baby, they became nearly hysterical. Hundreds of cameras flashed as they all tried to take pictures of the newborn even though the perimeter the Secret Service had set up was too far away, and the president had the baby too snuggled, for them to be successful. But they tried anyway.

  Dutch grinned and Gina waved as they moved slowly toward the limo, the baby beginning to cry at the terrible sounds of the new, ear shattering cheers. And Dutch wanted to tell him to get used to it. But he only looked down at him and smiled. Don’t worry, he wanted to say. These are the good guys.

  LaLa offered to take the baby with her in the car that she, Christian and other staff were riding in, but Dutch refused the offer. This baby, his eyes made clear, would be raised by him and Gina, not by aides, nannies, or other assorted people. LaLa smiled, because she knew exactly what he meant, and headed for her awaiting limo.

  And when Dutch, Gina, and Robert got into their limo, and Robert took his tiny fingers and wrapped them around his father’s big finger, seemingly holding on for dear life, Dutch did cry. He let the tears roll. Gina looked at him, looked at the death grip the baby had on Dutch’s finger, and wanted to cry too.

  Because nothing was more beautiful to a couple that was supposedly always surrounded by it, than a gesture that was so common, so expected and predictable, until it was, because of its simplicity, the most beautiful of all.

  Dutch looked out at the glowing crowd, a crowd that seemed to love them. And he loved them back, if only for that moment, because they were the everyday people, the heart and soul of America. And even when he saw a smattering of distractors, with signs that read, Those Women Told the Truth, or compared the president to Hitler, he still was the happiest man alive.

  Before the limo doors were closed, a reporter in the front of the rop
e line was able to shout out if the president was sorry that his mother didn’t live to see her only grandchild. And Dutch, without hesitation, yelled out, “no,” unsure if the reporter heard him or not.

  Gina looked at him. “That was so not politically correct,” she said as the baby grabbed her finger too.

  “I know,” Dutch said, looking up at Gina’s radiant face, and then down at the baby, a baby who already had them wrapped around his fingers. And Dutch couldn’t stop grinning. “Isn’t it great?” he asked.

  And Gina grinned too, because it really was great. Because they had decided, for the sake of the child, for the sake of the office Dutch had sworn to uphold, that they would not quit. But they also decided that they would live on their own terms. On this they stood firm. And if Washington didn’t like it, if the American public didn’t like it, if Congress had problems with it, then they could always force them out.

  But in the meantime they would move along at their own pace, as a threesome now, accustomed to the cheers and jeers of the crowd, the ups and downs of the polls, the shouts and yells of reporters, as the doors of the limousine shut out the noise, and they were ushered, kicking and screaming and laughing from ear to ear, back into the fishbowl.