President's Girlfriend 06 - The Sins of the Fathers Read Free

and her mother were never a priority to him,
but she pretended as if she was well-pleased.   “Oh, thank-you, Daddy!” she said with an exaggerated smile that didn’t
reach her eyes, and she hugged him again.  
    And then she
was gone.  
    In a swirl of cheerfulness.  
    And just
like that, Dutch thought, his teary-eyed daughter went from bereaved mother to
the happy little lamb she often tried to project herself as being.   But that ability of hers, to turn her
emotions off and on like a faucet, as if emotions were nothing more than a
tool, disturbed him mightily.

 
    “Where’s
Daddy?” Little Walt asked again as he and his mother hurried out of the South
Portico of the White House, and climbed into the waiting limousine.  
    His mother,
Regina “Gina” Harber, smiled.   She knew
exactly how her son felt.   She wanted him
back too.   “He’s still at what they call
a summit, honey, in a country called Finland.”   She said this as she buckled her precocious young son into his car
seat.   She wasn’t going to dumb-down the
language for Little Walt.   There would be
no baby talk from her.   She spoke clearly
and she answered all of his tons of questions.   “He’ll be back home late tonight.”
    “That’s not
home,” Little Walt said as he looked down at the buckle, his shoulder-length,
curly brown hair flopping down and around his handsome face.  
    “What did
you say, Walter?”
    He jerked
his head up, revealing stunningly beautiful green eyes.   “Daddy’s not home.”
    “That is
absolutely correct,” Gina said adoringly as she put on her own seat belt.   “You are such a smart little boy.   You’re smart just like Daddy.”
    Little Walt,
an unusually thoughtful child, scrunched up his face as if he was still trying
to work out the sense of his mother’s comment.   “You say I’m smart like Daddy.   Daddy says I’m smart like Mommy.”   He let out a sigh of great frustration.   “I don’t know what to believe.”  
    Gina
smiled.   And then
laughed.  
    The drive to
Blair House was a quick one because the residence was a stone’s throw from the
White House.   Although it was known as
the president’s guest house, Crader McKenzie, who had already taken up
temporary residence there before his appointment as vice president, decided to
stay until the end of the president’s term.   He could have moved his family into the official vice presidential
residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory, some three miles away from
the White House, but he, instead, stayed put.   Which pleased Gina no end.   In fact, given the proximity of Blair House
to the White House, Gina had wanted to walk over rather than ride.   But before Dutch left town he had ordered the
Secret Service to not allow her to walk anywhere.  
    “Surely he
didn’t mean that to include Blair House,” Gina had tried to reason with the
agent.   “It’s right there.   It’s not even a block away.”
    But the
agent called his boss, his boss called the head of the Secret Service, and the
head of the Secret Service decided to phone the president himself for clarification.   Dutch then phoned Gina and told her, in no
uncertain terms, that she wasn’t walking anywhere, and that included Blair
House.    She wanted to disagree with him
but she knew, by his tone, that his word was final on the matter.
    Besides, he
didn’t say she couldn’t go to Blair
House.   Just that she couldn’t walk there.   And she needed to get there.   They took the limousine.
    Crader
McKenzie, the Vice President, met them at the Blair House entrance with a grand
smile on his handsome face.   He was wearing
a blue suit, the color matching his eyes, Gina thought, and she had never seen
him so ramped-up.   He kissed her when she
stepped out of the limo, and unbuckled Little Walt himself.
    “This is my
man right here,” Crader said as he lifted Walt into his arms.   Walt grinned.   “You are just growing by leaps and