63 - Expect the Unexpected

David Bryan fetchingly tossed his trademark blond ringlets as he held the door open, grinning at the woman who had arrived right behind him with three of her children in tow.  “Well, hello there gorgeous.  Did you hear there were going to be a bunch of hot bachelors at this bash tonight?  You gonna crash in hopes of finding a new husband?”

Despite the laughter of their respective children bubbling up around them as they all herded into the lobby of Jon’s building, Dorothea Bongiovi tried to stare through him with the heated lasers of her muddy eyes. She had never been impressed with him.  He couldn’t understand why, but some people were just peculiar, he supposed.

“I see you still think you’re cute, Lemma.”

The doorman nodded, waving them all along when he identified Jon’s offspring in the mix and David was couth enough to hold the elevator door and let Dorothea go first.

“And you still haven’t learned to appreciate the finer things in life.”  He once again grinned at her while simultaneously tapping the button for the penthouse.    “You know, like me.”

The teenagers were smirking into the screens of their cellphones as they texted out rapid-fire messages – probably to one another – while the little boys rolled their eyes at each other.  This was old hat for them.  It was as age-old as the natural animosity between a dog and cat.  He and Dot picked at each other.  It was their thing and it always had been.  David would take any opportunity to sideswipe her, mostly because she thrived on weeding out his short-and-curlies with a rototiller every time she got the chance.

She frowned with as much gusto as he smiled, shoving a hand through her wind-tousled hair and shaking it back behind her shoulders.  “Jon didn’t tell me you were helping chaperone tonight.  Who’s going to chaperone you?”

“Hardee-har-har.  I’m not chaperoning.”

“Like we’d come if he was,” David’s son Colton snorted softly to his twin sister, Gaby.

“Hey!”  He gave his son an affectionate twap in the back of the head.  “I’m a cool dad, and don’t you forget it.”

Dorothea surveyed the scene with a disdainful arch of her eyebrow.  “So you didn’t trust your two seventeen-year-old children to take the elevator alone?”

“Yes I trusted them, Ms. Nosy Rosy.  I came along specifically to…”  The elevator doors slid back, revealing the downstairs foyer of Jon’s penthouse where Jon was helping a woman into her coat.  From the respectable-size bumps in the front  of her sweater, mane of blonde hair and pretty face, he would assume this was the girlfriend.  Or…

David turned to Dorothea, challenge in his eyes and a wicked grin on his face.   “I came along to meet Jon’s girlfriend.  I’ve never met a soul-sucking siren before.  That’s what you called her, isn’t it Dorothea?”

Jesse’s palm hit the back of Colton’s head and then he made a crazy bee-line past all the adults, on the fast track for his room, David assumed. 

“Jesus Christ, Lemma!” Jon swore loudly around the mass exodus of children who followed along after the shame-faced pied piper like a pack of rats any circus would be proud to have.  Wide hands patted the woman’s shoulders, which were now successfully encased in the chocolaty brown leather jacket .

The woman who, David noted with admiration, managed to smile as though she hadn’t been verbally bitch-slapped.  Which was good, because it had never been his intention to bitch-slap anyone.  He just wanted to give Dorothea a little love-tap to let her know he still considered her part of the family.

Very good public façade my dear Siren.  That’s one point in your favor.

“David, you’re an imbecile,” Dottie snapped quietly, treating him to much the same smack her son had delivered to his. 

Au contraire.  I’m a genius because I know exactly how to push your buttons.  Score one – no, make that TWO – for me.

Before he could open his mouth again, the pretty blonde – what the hell was her name again? – smirked while looking at Jon from the corner of her eye.  “Did you know I’d been called a ‘soul-sucking siren’?”

“Uh…”  Jon looked like a rat trapped in a corner by a particularly fierce and ugly cat. 

“And more importantly,” she continued, folding cherry-red fingertips into her coat pockets and turning to fully face her boyfriend.  “Have I sucked away your soul?”

And the new girl gets another point for the balls she’s hiding in those tight jeans.

This time it was Dorothea who interjected, glaring at David and stepping between the two of them. “Sheridan, I apologize.  It was completely inappropriate of me to say that under any circumstances and I certainly didn’t know anyone overheard me say it.”

The blonde head slowly swiveled toward the brunette, smooth skin folding into shallow accordion-style creases as two pale eyebrows shimmied their way up her forehead.

This is gonna be good.

“Hm.  I wasn’t so sure about the ‘soul-sucking’ part, but I’m kind of partial to the ‘siren’ piece.  I think I’ll keep that, but thank you for the apology.  I appreciate the gesture.”  She gracefully dipped her head before turning to Jon.  “I’d better go.”

“Go??” Nobody was going to steal David’s turn at the speaking podium this time.  He jumped in with both feet before Jon could pucker his lips to utter a single word.  “I just got here, baby.  What’s your hurry?”

Eyes that he couldn’t distinguish the color of in the shadowy entryway slid disdainfully down the length his wool pea coat, plaid scarf, faded jeans and boots.  “I’m sorry.  While I know who you are and you, obviously, know who I am… I don’t think we’re at the ‘baby’ level of familiarity, Mr. Bryan.”

“I think I just got a girl-crush on her, Jon.”

He narrowed his eyes menacingly at Dorothea’s gleeful chortle.  “Don’t you have a husband to snare, or something?”

“Don’t let ‘em scare ya,” Jon advised Sheridan with a faint look of…  amused disgust, if that was possible.  “They love to hate each other.”

“Well…  That’s all the better reason for me to go, before they both turn on me.”  Smiling easily, she leaned around him to hit the elevator call button.  “You all have a lovely visit.  I’ll be back in about an hour, Jon.”

“Hey…”  His friend reached out to snag her wrist.  “You forgot something.”

Her smile went from easy to affectionate as Jon leaned in to dust his lips across hers.  “Be careful and hurry.”

“I will.”  The promise was offered from the confines of the elevator and she waggled her fingers at the group as they watched it swallow her behind closed doors.

“But… but….”  Dammit!  David hadn’t gotten to talk to her at all!  He’d schlepped into the city specifically to check this chick out and she was gone just like that.  Poof.  “Where’s she going?  I thought she was going to be here for this thing?”

“She’s going to pick up her nieces and nephews,” Jon informed him with crossed arms and the stink-eye of death.  “Don’t fuck with her, Lemma.”

David flung his hands into the air as a gesture of total innocence.  “I just want to meet the girl who’s in line to replace Devilish Dorothea.  Guess I’m gonna have to start calling her Satanic Sheridan.”

Dorothea pulled her coat tight and turned to tap the call button again.  “I’d tell you to go to hell, David, but apparently that means you’d be living with me.  NOBODY wants that.  Jon, when are you bringing the kids home?”

“Tomorrow morning,” he chuckled and locked eyes with her, offering up a meaningful look.  “Thank you.  That was the Dottie I know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Neither did David, and that bugged the shit out of him.  

Flipping his wrist up, he checked his watch as the elevator returned to sweep the Devil D down…  where she belonged.  It was only five o’clock.  His wife surely wouldn’t kill him if he was a little late getting home for their party. 

Besides, he could get the scoop on the ex-spouse undertones while waiting for the most-intriguing Sheridan to return.   Two birds with one stone.  Who could pass that up?

§§§

“You look exhausted.”

Sheridan whipped her head up from the tray of cookies that she was bringing out of the oven.  Glancing from him to the golden circles of chocolate dotted dough, she took a breath and realized that she hadn’t stopped all night. 

Everybody was meeting at her apartment, so she didn’t have to make the rounds picking up all of the kids, but the younger ones were in rare form.  David had been waiting for her to return and she had to make get-to-know-you conversation with him while simultaneously trying to get her crew acclimated to Jon’s crew and his home. 

Thankfully, David had seen her challenge and excused himself after only a perfunctory chat and a promise to meet for dinner with them later in the week. 

From there her night of insanity had begun in earnest:  Cooking, doling out food to the teenagers, doling out entirely different food to the non-teenagers, cleaning up the kitchen, refereeing two fights between her brawling nephews, Evan and Eli, and then Madison had gone into a prima donna snit when she couldn’t manage to beat any of the boys on Mario Kart.

It was… mortifying.  She was completely and totally embarrassed by their behavior and hadn’t had the nerve to ask Jon if he was appalled at their heathen-istic ways.  Her only comfort was that he’d met them at Christmas and hopefully realized they weren’t always like this.  His boys, of course, had been model citizens in comparison, merely watching “her” youngsters like one would a science experiment gone awry.   

I don’t remember it being this hard last year.  I’ve got to give up this tradition before these kids kill me.

For the time being, they were all watching Finding Nemo in Jake and Romeo’s bedroom while they waited for chocolate chip cookies.  They were peacefully co-existing and it had only taken half her sanity coupled with a bucket of magic fairy dust to make it happen.  Fairy dust… cookies…  Same thing in the world of a seven-year-old.

Ashley and Mandi were doing their part to redeem the family name for her.  Mandi was plastered to Jesse’s side upstairs in the media room, where the teens were watching movies, but she wasn’t parked in his lap.  And Ashley had been doing no more than exchanging shy glances with Colton while talking with Gaby and some of the other female guests.  Both of them were being respectable young women… thank God.

“I feel exhausted,” she wearily admitted to Jon, sliding the cookie sheet onto the stovetop to cool.

He eased up to her from behind, loosely looping his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her right shoulder to peer at her handiwork.  “Cookies look amazing.  Are there enough for me, too?”

Eking out a silent sigh, Sheridan let the oven mitt hit the counter beside the cookies and sank back into the solid comfort of his body. 

Sometimes…  Sometimes this is enough.  

“I can probably spare a couple for you, seeing as you’re being so complimentary and all.”

He cinched his arms tighter, dusting her jaw with a prolonged kiss.  “This is nice.  Family stuff with you is different than ‘us’ time, but I like it.  It feels comfortable being with you this way.”

“Mm.  I was just thinking something along those lines myself.”

"Speaking of family... I can see you in Madison's smile and the stubborn set of her chin when she gets mad.  I might have missed it if I hadn't known she's your biological child, but since I do, it's hard not to see.  You make pretty babies, ya know."

She snickered softly.  "You didn't say that she got my temper.  How very chivalrous."

His chest rumbled beneath her shoulder blades, and the vibration served the same purpose as a massage chair for Sheridan.  Her knotted muscles and harried temperament jiggled together into her own personal Sea of Tranquility.  Ironic that a man who was typically wound tighter than an eight day clock could have such a calming effect on her.

If she couldn’t curl up and take a nap, then two more minutes of this…  togetherness.  That’s all she needed.  It was eleven-thirty already.  She could make it until midnight if he would hold her just a little longer.

“Can I tell you something else?” 

She had no trouble understanding the whispered words.  His mouth was so near her right ear that she could feel the moisture from his breath and it had her own mouth slowly curving at the corners.  He could tell her anything he wanted – except that Nemo had been found and children were invading their tiny kitchen oasis.

“Mm hmm,” she hummed groggily.  The gentle sway of their bodies as he rocked them from side to side was hypnotic.

“I love you."  

That woke her up.  Sheridan pulled back so that she could twist around and peer curiously into the face that was made all the more handsome by its sparkling eyes and tender smile.  “Excuse me?”

The smile dug a little deeper and one wide hand caressed the apple of her cheek when callused fingers gently swept the loose hair from her face.  “I said 'I love you'.”

She shook her head in disbelief even as her heart pounded an unsteady staccato rhythm.  Never in a million years had she dreamed…  It was so surreal that it couldn’t quite manage to pierce the tough skin of reality.  She couldn’t think beyond her aching muscles, the dirty dishes in the sink and a houseful of rambunctious kids that could come trooping in here at any moment.

“Wow, Bongiovi.  Your timing sucks.  Could you have picked a LESS romantic time and place to trot out those three little words?”

His hands crept down to burrow into the back pockets of her jeans, and he urged her close with a quiet laugh.  “Nobody ever said I was romantic, but if it bothers you so much, think of it this way.  There won’t be a minute of 2012 that you don’t know how I feel about you.”

“Oh.”  The right side of her mouth kicked up in barely-restrained amusement, his words of love doing a voodoo dance in her stomach.  It felt a lot like that scene from Beetlejuice where all the dinner guests become the ghosts’ puppets, singing and dancing to “The Banana Boat Song”.  She had no control over the things her body was doing.  “Well, there’s that I suppose.”

Jostling her in the circle of his arms, he glowered down at her with an air of expectancy, growling, “And?”

She tipped her head to one side and blinked up at him with wide-eyed innocence, playfully asking,   “And what?”

“You know what.”

“I do?  Huh.  Let me think….”  One eye squeezed shut and she scrunched her nose, pretending to wrack her brain.  “Uhhh…”

“Jesus.  You really don’t have anything you wanna say to me?”

Sheridan cradled his piqued face between her palms, beaming out a mischievous smile.  “Of course I do, you silly man.” 

She stroked the beautifully sculpted cheekbones with her thumbs, loving the hint of uncertainty dancing in his eyes.  Jon Bon Jovi wasn’t as cocky and self-assured as he wanted her to believe – not in this moment, anyway.  That tiny sliver of vulnerability skating on the blue pond of his irises was enough to convince her to soften her smile and drop the bratty, smart ass response she’d been prepared to dish up. 

Instead, she finally gave her heart permission to use her mouth and tell him what it had been hiding in its depths for some time now. 

“I love you, too, baby.  I love you, too.”