THE PRESIDENT'S GIRLFRIEND Page 4

  The Master of Ceremony took to the podium again and didn’t miss a beat. “Our next winning organization,” he said as he continued the program. This was DC, after all, inside the Beltway, and they knew how to pretend everything was peaches and cream when it was more like sour cream. Dutch pretended too, as he redirected his attention to the Master of Ceremony and the next organization rep.

  But his peace was disturbed. She was disappointed in me, he kept saying to himself. And her words, her carefully crafted, blunt words, felt like a knife jab to his heart.

  Why it bothered him in such a personal way when he was well accustomed to political attacks by the biggest bomb throwers in the business, many of whom were elected members of Congress, he’d never know. But it bothered him fiercely.

  +++

  After the ceremony was over and the President and other dignitaries had already left the room, the crowd began to file out also. LaLa, who had her hand on Gina’s shoulder as if she had to shepherd her out, joked about how the other organization representatives were avoiding Gina like the plague. “They think your truthfulness is contagious,” she said with a smile.

  “Ain’t it something,” Gina replied. “You’d think I was up there lying on the man.”

  “Honey, I know. But who cares about these holier-than-Thou stuff shirts? Their organizations are hurting because of these budget cuts just like ours, and they’re probably glad you spoke up, but nobody will admit it publicly. Besides, they probably think people like us don’t deserve any presidential award anyway, have no right being anywhere near this White House, and your outburst, they feel, just proved their point. Well I say bump’em.”

  Gina smiled at LaLa’s choice of words.

  “Miss Lansing,” a male’s voice said from behind and Gina and LaLa both turned to the sound. He was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed young man, in a rumpled suit and bowtie.

  “Yes?” Gina said.

  “Hi, I’m Christian Bale. I know,” he said kind of geeky-like. “But no, I’m not the actor. I’m the president’s assistant. He wishes, that is, the president wishes to see you, ma’am.”

  Gina’s heart dropped. “To see me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Why would he want to see me?”

  “Why?” Christian said as if he could not believe her lack of insight. “Well, let me see. It may have something to do with the fact that you just told him off on national TV. I don’t know, he doesn’t share his innermost thoughts with me, but I’m just saying.”

  He reminded Gina of LaLa: a jokey, almost flippant quality about him. She, in fact, looked at LaLa.

  “What you looking at me for?” LaLa said. “The man is the President of the United States. It ain’t like you got a choice.” Then she exhaled, and her look turned serious, more somber. “I’ll meet you back at the hotel, girl,” she said. “And, Gina,” she added as she began to leave, “don’t get blinded by the lights. What you said today needed to be said, whether these other organizations, or the president himself, gives you credit or not. You told the truth.”

  Gina nodded and stiffened her resolve. “Okay, Christian,” she said with more gusto, “take me to your leader.”

  Christian smiled. What a piece of work, he thought. “This way, ma’am,” he said.

  FOUR

  Christian’s “leader” was her leader too, in fact the leader of the free world, and to her surprise she wasn’t taken to some side office on the West Wing, or even to the Oval office, but to what Christian said was the West sitting room of the second-floor residence. It was a less formal room in an almost living room style, with a big, lunette window that overlooked well-known landmarks like the Old Executive Office Building, a room with a yellow sofa, flanking arch-top chairs in pastel colors, sweeping gold curtains with yellow and blue trim.

  Gina took a seat on the yellow sofa and Christian sat with her. Although he seemed willing to talk, she mainly kept her own counsel. It wasn’t everyday that a girl like her got to have an audience with the president. The president! And it was exciting her in a way she didn’t think that it would.

  But LaLa was right. She wasn’t going to be blinded by the lights. She’d just, in Christian’s words, “told off” that same President and he was probably royally pissed. And the fact that they’d met before under circumstances neither could want public, made clear that this meeting wasn’t going to be a congratulatory one.

  He arrived nearly an hour after she and Christian had been seated. And as soon as he arrived, both she and Christian stood up.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Dutch said, moving fast across the room toward the large wet bar. “Have a drink, Miss Lansing? Did you offer her a drink, Chris?”

  Christian’s already pale face turned ghostly. “Ah, no, sir, I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t think--”

  “What would you care to drink, Miss Lansing?” Dutch asked, pouring himself a drink.

  “Nothing for me, thanks,” Gina said.

  “Nothing? Nothing at all?”

  Gina started to say water, just to sound non-combative, but she didn’t want water. Or anything else. “No, nothing,” she said. Then awkwardly added: “Sir.”

  This felt almost surreal to her, sitting in the White House residence, being offered a drink by Dutch Harber. She was almost waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out of a closet and announce that she’d been punk’d.

  Dutch grabbed his drink and headed for the sofa where Gina was seated. Although Gina had sat back down when Dutch urged them to, Christian remained standing. Gina was about to stand again, but Dutch motioned her back down. And then he gave Christian a look that could chill the sun. Gina wasn’t certain what it meant, but Christian was. He promptly bowed nervously and hurried out of the room. How a nervous man like him got a job as the aide to a take-no-prisoners politician like Dutch Harber, was beyond Gina.

  “He worked his butt off for me during my campaign,” Dutch answered her unasked question. “He’s a very discreet young man. Very discreet. I trust him with my life.” He said this as he took a seat, not in the chair flanking the sofa, but next to her on the comfortable, yellow sofa.

  And the mere thought of it, that she was sitting next to the most powerful man in the world, caused her entire body to suddenly feel constricted. She swallowed hard and then looked at him. She kept trying not to think about that night in Miami Beach, but she kept failing. Her eyes roamed down, from his magnificent face with that strong jaw she remembered so well, to his muscle-tight chest.

  “So,” Dutch said, as he crossed his leg, unbuttoned his suit coat, and turned his body toward her, “you’re the young lady who ate my lunch this afternoon.”

  Gina smiled at the way he had put it. “Christian said I told you off.”

  “That too,” Dutch said with a smile of his own, a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Mainly because he was too busy thinking about her, about how she looked even lovelier when she smiled. And her sizeable breasts, the way they heaved up whenever she began to speak, made his loins began to pulsate. “I know you’re Miss Lansing, but I can’t recall your first name.”

  “Regina. Although all of my friends call me Gina.” Gina said this and looked at him, to see if her nickname spurred him to remember.

  It didn’t. “Gina it is,” he said, and extended his hand. “I’m Walt Harber, Gina, although all of my friends call me Dutch.”

  Gina shook his hand. “I know. Your nickname is the most famous nickname in the world. But why, is what I’ve always wanted to know.”

  “Why is it so famous?” he asked, unwilling to let go of her hand.

  “Why are you called Dutch to begin with. How did that come about? Are you of Dutch ancestry or something?”

  Dutch laughed. “No, nothing like that. You ever hear the phrase ‘going Dutch?’”

  “You mean where you go out on a date and each person pays for her own food?” Gina had to make extra effort to remove her hand from his tight hold.

  “Correct,” Dutch said, disappointed t
hat she had released his grasp. “When I was a very young man in high school and would take young ladies out on dates, I was a strict adherent to that rule. One young lady who didn’t much like the rule, started calling me Dutch Harber, the guy who makes the ladies pay. From that day to this I’ve been Dutch Harber. But that’s a label for you. It tends to stick.”

  Gina agreed. “You don’t seem like the type who would make a lady pay her own way.”

  “Oh, but I am. Very much so. I like my women strong and independent. Able to handle their business.” He looked down at Gina’s breasts, and then back up into her eyes, with a hooded, lustful look he wasn’t attempting to hide. “A woman like you, Regina.”

  Gina didn’t quite know how to take that comment. Nor that look. Although she presented as this tower of strength, she didn’t see herself that way at all. The idea of a man taking care of her, and doing things for her, was romantic in her eyes, something she would probably enjoy. But since she’d never had the chance to find out if she’d enjoy it or not, she never wasted much time thinking about it. “I don’t know if I’m all that strong,” she said, attempting to laugh it off.

  “You may not know it, but I do.”

  “You?” Gina asked, wondering if he remembered Miami after all.

  “Yes, me.”

  “But you don’t know jack about me.”

  Dutch smiled. “I know that any female willing to stand before the President of the United States and call him everything but a child of God, has got to be strong.”

  Gina laughed. He loved the way her narrow shoulders shook when she did. “I like that about you,” he added, unable to share in her laughter.

  Gina felt the heat of his stare all over her body. He seemed determined to make it clear to her that he was interested. Which would be remarkable in and of itself. This man was the president, for crying out loud! But she was no fool, either. He was the very eligible bachelor President, a man who had lost his fiancée a decade ago in a plane crash and had, after mourning her death, decided to play the field liberally.

  According to press reports she remembered reading during the campaign, he was known in some circles as Wham Bam Harber, the hit and run specialist. The man who often played the field.

  And now this same man was showing interest in her? But why? Did he remember her and, more importantly, did he see her as an easy lay? Did he figure he could have some quickie, some booty call session with a powerless female like her, then dump her quietly because nobody but her powerless self would care? She decided to test the waters, to see if she was right.

  “Is this why you asked to see me? Because you think I’m tough?”

  “I didn’t say you were tough,” Dutch corrected her. “You aren’t tough. But you’re strong. And yes, that’s part of it.”

  “What’s the other part?” Gina asked, unsure what he meant. “The fact that you agree with me and will veto that budge bill?”

  “I can’t commit to that at this point.”

  “But why, sir? I don’t think you understand how all of these rounds and rounds of budget cuts are affecting programs like mine. In this bad economy, all of our private donations have completely dried up. Not that they were outstanding to begin with. I mean, who wants to give money to an organization that helps gang bangers and prostitutes get their acts together? Who wants justice for those former criminals, right?”

  It was the word justice that stopped Dutch cold. And he remembered. He remembered the MC at the awards ceremony mentioning that she used to be a public defender. And her passion for the poor and misbegotten. And her nickname is Gina. And she has those striking eyes and curvaceous figure and . . . But It couldn’t be, he thought.

  Unaware that his look had changed dramatically toward her, Gina kept talking. “So private donations have never been our driving force,” she continued. “It was government grants that kept our doors open. But if Congress keeps cutting that funding, our revenue stream will dry up so completely that we won’t have any choice but to shut down. And Block by Block Raiders is a very successful organization, we don’t have to pad our numbers the way a lot of these other non-profits do. We’re for real, sir.”

  Dutch was certain now. It was her. It was that wonderful young lady in Miami Beach all those years ago. The one that had rocked his world for that one night. The night of his father’s death. He had been so traumatized by succeeding events, so swept up by the enormous burden he immediately had to bear as the heir to his father’s fortune, that he tried his level best not to entertain memories of that wonderful night. He became so successful at compartmentalizing his life before and after his father’s death, so spot-on with his singular focus, that, over time, his memories of that night began to fade to such an extent that they became no memories at all.

  Until now.

  When Gina realized she was getting no response from the president, she looked at him. And that lustful look she had seen earlier was now replaced with a look of alarm. “What is it?” she asked him. “What’s the matter?”

  Dutch didn’t know how to play this. Had she forgotten about Miami? About that night?

  “You’re the founder of Block by Block Raiders?” he asked her.

  Gina was spooked now. He recognized her, she could tell it by that unsettled, stormy look in his eyes. “Yes, sir,” she said cautiously. What, she wondered, would he do with his knowledge?

  “You call it BBR?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It helps former gang members and, and prostitutes, with their legal issues, among other things, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Because you’re an attorney. The MC mentioned you were a former public defender.”

  Ah, there it was, she thought. It was out there now. “That’s right,” she said.

  Dutch nodded, sipped from his wine. Found himself looking down at her breasts, remembering how he once sucked them. He began to rub his forehead. “From Newark?”

  Gina smiled. “Yes.” He definitely remembered.

  Dutch was stunned he hadn’t put it together sooner. Although the days following their encounter were pretty much a blur as funeral arrangements and business meetings took a front seat to any one-night-stand, her image would still cross his mind. He couldn’t count how many times, early on, he considered tracking her down, to find her, to keep her as his.

  But life kept getting in the way and the responsibilities kept compounding, making it impossible for him to track anybody anywhere. And by the time he was urged to go into politics, a lifelong dream of his father’s, remembering one night stands in beach hotels was about as productive for the reality of his life as a hole in the head.

  “You remember that night, don’t you, Gina?” he asked her pointblank.

  Gina nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  He let out a grim sigh. Began rubbing his forehead again. “And you’ve shared that information with?”

  Gina frowned. “Nobody. Why would I share something like that?”

  “Not exactly my finest hour. Sleeping with a young lady and not following up.”

  “I didn’t ask you to follow up. I didn’t follow up, either. I would be the fool of fools telling somebody about that.”

  “About the fact that you once spent a night with a future president, I don’t know. It could be a lucrative story for some tabloid.”

  Gina shook her head. He truly didn’t know her. “I’d rather eat nails,” she said, “than to sell any piece of my life to them!”

  Dutch smiled. Relieved. That’s my girl, he wanted to brag.

  “So, you gave it up,” he said. “Being a public defender, I mean.”

  “It gave me up,” she said.

  Dutch frowned. “They fired you?”

  Gina nodded. “Yep. As soon as I got back from Miami.”

  “But you were so devoted, so looking forward to helping the less fortunate. What happened?”

  “You remember the guy I drenched in the hotel lounge?”

  Dutch nodded. He remember
ed all of it now. “Yes, of course.”

  “He filed a complaint. Said I assaulted him for no apparent reason when I threw my drink on him. He didn’t press charges, but my superiors said I showed very poor judgment and fired me, anyway. It helped that this attorney I drenched happened to be the grandson of a former superior court judge. So since I was still on probation and they could fire me at will, they did. Summarily.”

  “You didn’t fight it?”

  “Did I,” Gina said, remembering that wretched time. “I fought it with all I had. I even tried to get in contact with you, since you were the only witness that I felt would tell the truth. I Googled your name.”

  “But you didn’t know my name.”