had a serious physical reaction to her, that was certain. His cock was rock hard within seconds of seeing her tight ass on that
bed. He, in fact, wanted to fuck her so
badly he could taste it.
But he had
an emotional reaction to her as well. He
loved her. He loved everything about
Regina Harber. The press was going to
call him a loser for not being able to negotiate some compromise on European
debt, and the Congress was going to pile on, too. They would make the repeated point that if
Europe’s economy falls, the U.S. would be next. But Gina would be in his corner. She always was. And that, for
Dutch, was priceless. It was why he got
out of bed every day. It was why he did
all he could to remain faithful to her.
He had
planned to shower on Air Force One on the trip back to the States, so that he
could hit that thang of Gina’s as soon as he hit the sheets, but he was so
tired he had fallen asleep on the plane.
He therefore
went to the adjacent bathroom, undressed quickly, and jumped into the
shower. He thought about many things as
he cleansed his aching muscles. He
thought about Jade and that devil-may-care side of her that was beginning to
alarm him. He would talk to Gina, to see
what she thought, but he was beginning to lean toward therapy for that young
woman. Before she did some real harm, he
thought.
And he
thought about Jade’s mother. Her oddness
had undoubtedly made her a lousy parent, and now Jade ,
unfortunately, bore the burdens of that lousiness. But how could he judge Sam? He wasn’t there to help rear the child. He wasn’t there to temper Sam’s toughness and
sensibleness with the emotional attachment a child also needed. Sam had no intentions of ever being anybody’s
mother. She and he both knew she wasn’t
cut out for anything like that. But
Dutch kept hounding her for sex. Every
time he saw her he was trying to get her in his bed. And in a moment of weakness, she caved.
At first
they wore protection. Wore it the second
time, too. But by the third round in
that wild night of sex, they didn’t care. They fucked raw. Fucked like
rabbits in the raw. And the result of
that momentary lapse would last their lifetimes.
Dutch still
wondered what Jade’s youth had been like. His now deceased mother had threatened to have her friends in high
places make Sam’s life a living hell if she carried the baby to term. She therefore told Dutch that she had had an
abortion, and then disappeared from sight. He didn’t know Jade even existed until she was twenty-three years
old. Old enough to
have Sam’s brand of rearing deep within her. Old enough to be, in some
ways, even odder than her mother.
And Sam was
definitely odd. She still wore it like a
second skin. She was still that
tough-as-nails, do it her way Sam. Still had that toughness down pat. But now she needed help, she said to him,
which he knew was a hard admission for her to make. Which made Dutch admire her
even more. Not that she was this
great, empathetic person worthy of any admiration. She wasn’t a particularly likeable human
being, if he was to tell the truth of it.
But he
admired her because she was always true to herself. That took courage and it took conviction, and
Sam, for all her faults, had both in spades. And a woman like that, who raised their daughter alone, who went through
med school on scholarships alone, who gave up a lucrative practice to fulfill
her dream of owning a bookstore, now considered herself a failure. A failure. A woman with her brains and
beauty and talents.
Dutch would
gladly help a woman like that. He was a
very wealthy man. He would not hesitate
in helping a self-reliant, honest soul like Sam. She had planned to return to her medical
career, only because she needed the money, but Dutch had told her to not make
any rash decisions just yet. He knew she
really