Free DUTCH AND GINA: A SCANDAL IS BORN by Mallory Monroe

staring at this gorgeous black woman with the hazel eyes, a woman who would never mix business with pleasure although he tried on countless times to get her to at least go out on a date with him, only to be rebuffed.   But he still wasn’t buying her remedies.  
    He leaned forward, his elbows on his thick thighs, his anger with his soon-to-be ex-wife driving his need to seek revenge, rather than to bother with the upcoming fallout from the bad publicity his divorce was garnering.  
    “We should destroy her image the same way she’s trying to destroy mine,” he offered.   “That’s what we ought to focus on: a campaign to discredit her.”
    Liz, however, wanted to roll her eyes.   They always wanted revenge.   Even at their own peril.   She was a tough cookie too, and wanted what she wanted, but she was a smart tough cookie and knew how to pick her fights.   She knew how to wait for just that right time.   For just that right moment.   What Barney didn’t seem to understand was that now, in the midst of the character assassination he was undergoing, was nowhere near the right time.
    “The American public doesn’t give a flip nickel about that wife of yours,” Liz reminded him.   “Who is she?   You made her what she is today.”
    “Thank-you!” Barney agreed with a smile.
    But Liz remained dead serious.   “She doesn’t have a sneaker deal to protect.   You do.   That’s why your agent sent you to me.   It’s your image we have got to rehab, not worry about hurting your wife.”   Her desk intercom buzzed.   She pressed the button.   “Yes, Madge?”
    “Pick up,” Madge said through the intercom.
    “If you knew my wife,” Barney said, “you’d understand how I feel.   She’s telling my lawyers she wants a half of everything I own.   Half!”
    Liz held up a long, manicured finger as she picked up the telephone.   “What is it, Madge?” she asked her secretary.   “I’m still in a meeting.”
    “You have a confidential phone call from Allison Shearer, ma’am.”
    Liz hesitated.   What in the world would the president’s press secretary want with her?   Especially after the way Liz was forced out of the Harber administration a mere year into his first term.  
    She looked at Barney.   “I have to take this, Barn,” she said, prompting him to stand to his feet.   “I’ll get with your agent and we’ll come up with a game plan.”
    “I still say we should give her a taste of her own medicine.”
    “We’ll see,” Liz said, more to get him out of her office than to appease any of his delusions of revenge.   When the door closed, she leaned back in her chair.   “Send the call through,” she said to her secretary.
    And when she found out what the call was about, when she found out that the president wanted to meet with her, that he wanted to see her again, her heart began to soar.   And just like that, she thought with the kind of sneer that often made her clients tremble, she was back.   Back with Dutch, with the only man she had ever loved, where she belonged.   And nothing, not Allison Shearer, not Crazy Max and his shenanigans, not even that new wife and kid of Dutch’s, was going to stand in her way this time.  
    Not this time.
     
    The photo release became the news of the day.   At first there was a mild reaction, as many cable news commentators focused more on how beautiful Little Walt was and how smart it was for the Harbers to release the photo.  
    But by late afternoon, the conversation changed.   Dutch and Gina, along with LaLa, Christian, Max, and Allison, were seated on the couches inside the West Sitting Hall watching the evening newscast, when one commentator, on CBS, put it bluntly:
    “Although the baby is a beautiful, healthy baby boy, and I am sure the president and First Lady are quite proud, he looks, by and large, like a light-skinned black child.   We can’t escape that fact, nor ignore it.   Walter Harber, Junior looks far more