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“I want cookies! Cookie! Cookie! Cookie!” Five year-old
Rebecca Ann Morgan had apparently been watching too many fuzzy blue monsters on
Sesame Street. Elizabeth glanced wearily at her oldest daughter who was
currently banging her tiny fists against the kitchen table in a spirited drum
beat. “Cookie! Cookie! Cookie!”
“No cookie,” her mother replied grimly, wincing when a spray of grease jumped up
from the frying pan and burned her wrist. “Eggs and bacon and Ovaltine, but no
cookie.” Across the table from her chocolate-haired haired daughter, Elizabeth’s
two blonde twin boys began fussing, smacking their tiny plastic spoons against
the trays of their high chairs.
“Don’t you two start,” Elizabeth warned them, playfully wagging her finger at
the boys and smiling when the toddlers laughed. “I’ve got some applesauce and
warm milk for my two little guys.”
Jason Morgan swept into the kitchen just as his wife was finishing up with his
daughter’s eggs, and he quickly dropped his keys and phone on the counter as he
joined his family for breakfast. Elizabeth was stirring up the Ovaltine when the
phone rang, and almost spilled the entire cup as she reached over for it. Jason
smiled warmly at her and tossed her a small hand towel as she tried to get rid
of whoever was on the other end, and then bent down on his knees between his two
young sons. The boys giggled and gurgled when he kissed them on the cheeks and
tickled their tummies, and as soon as he got up began crying out for their
applesauce.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, was trying to dump some sugar into her daughter’s milk and
keep the bacon from burning at the same time. Jason quickly took the milk from
her and screwed on the top of the sippy cup before handing it over to Becky.
Frowning when he saw his little girl pouting, Jason chucked her under her chin
and instinctively promised her that she could have a cookie after breakfast.
Satisfied, the little girl grabbed her milk from him and applied her lips to the
crazy straw jutting from the top. Across the kitchen, the phone was ringing
again and Elizabeth was having a hard time getting the bacon out of the pan
before it was ruined. They were in tight quarters and Jason nearly tripped over
a chair as he lunged for the phone, getting it on the fourth ring. The cord
stretched a good foot or two away from the jack, and Elizabeth quickly ducked
under it and Jason’s arm as she served her little daughter her eggs. And next
came the twins – fortunately, they were the easy ones. They ate whatever they
were given only because they barely had the sense to realize that if they didn’t
want to eat their strained peas, they could just smear them all over themselves
or the wall and be done with the whole messy affair.
She heard her husband issue a few terse orders into the phone and immediately
knew it was one of the foremen hired to take charge of the warehouse; that poor
man realized a little too late that he was in way over his head. Sonny and Jason
had ridiculously high standards and did not look favorably on even the slightest
delays or mishaps.
Her daughter was whining that she didn’t want her eggs sunny-side up, she wanted
them scrambled, Mama, and the twins were growing impatient. Maneuvering
the cord so that Elizabeth could get at the microwave, Jason looked for
something to stall his sons as he crossly explained to the foreman that, no, it
would not be alright if the shipments were delayed by two hours.
The microwave was ticking away as Elizabeth let out an exasperated sigh and took
the eggs away from her picky daughter, depositing them on the counter for Jason
to scarf down before he ran out. A calm breakfast at their house was unheard of,
and her husband was used to eating whatever odds and ends the kids condemned
right before a busy day at work. Behind her, Jason had found some Cheerios and
was dumping them on the little white trays in front of his little guys. Becky
guzzled her milk happily as her mother went to work making the damned scrambled
eggs, her eyes dancing gleefully around the kitchen from her father to her
brothers and finally to her mother. This was the routine she was used to every
single morning before school, and she wouldn’t want it any other way.
The bottles were done and the twins were fussing; Elizabeth, however, was in the
process of scooping the eggs out of the pan. Becky asked specifically for her
Elmo spoon and her father quickly grabbed it from the drawer, letting out a sigh
of relief when the little girl began to eat. Meanwhile, the twins were throwing
their Cheerios at each other.
Jason hung up the phone without saying goodbye to his incompetent foreman and
stooped to scoop up the Cheerios from the floor, banging his head on the
underside of the table when Elizabeth asked him to snag the applesauce from the
fridge.
It took her a minute to get the boys into their bibs, which the babies
apparently thought were brightly-colored nooses, and then Jason arrived with the
precious applesauce. He was trying to get the tops off the two bottles at the
same time with one hand when his daughter, now done with her eggs and halfway
through her bacon, began shrieking for his attention.
Elizabeth rubbed her temple with one hand and quickly turned off the stove with
the other, taking the tea kettle off and leaving it on the rack. Jason was
trying to pay attention to his daughter or at least make her think he was,
answering in enthusiastic “uh-huh”s and “really”s as the twins fought over the
two bottles of milk. Elizabeth threw him two clean baby spoons – the boys had
long since tossed theirs away – and Jason tried to break up the little fight
going on between the two tow-headed munchkins.
But what happened – what always happened – was that the little guys decided that
the best place for the bottles was on the floor. Jason sighed and dropped to his
knees to retrieve them, banging his head on the table once more when his
daughter shrieked out for his attention again.
And that was when his darling wife swooped in to save him. She had snagged the
two bottles of applesauce in one hand and the cookie jar in the other, and now
stepped over her husband’s crouching form.
“Applesauce, applesauce,” she mumbled, placing the mashed apples into a tiny
bowl and placing it in front of her boys, “and cookie.” This last coveted item
she stuck directly in her daughter’s wide open mouth, and the little girl
stopped shrieking immediately.
The kitchen descended into comfortable silence as the boys slurped the sweet
fruit and Becky chomped on her cookie, and it was only then that Jason dared to
get up from under the table with the two bottles of milk in his hand.
Elizabeth was smiling at him as he straightened and Jason grinned down at her as
he took her in his arms. They never got a chance to greet each other each
morning until all the kids had something to occupy their mouths.
His lips met hers in a sweet kiss, and Jason could feel Elizabeth smile against
his mouth as Becky made a muffled noise of disgust around a mouthful of cookie
crumbs. His arms were wrapped around her waist and hers were around his neck and
for that brief moment, everything was calm and peaceful in their crazy
penthouse.
“Morning,” he mumbled against her lips as she laughed and gently broke away,
shoving him toward his keys and phone.
“I’ll see you later,” she smiled in reply as he grabbed his things and backed
toward the door, out for another day at work.
~*~*~*~*~*~
“Where the hell have you been?” Jason demanded as
Sonny stepped out of his car. “I’ve been here for ten minutes.”
The mobster shrugged. “Morgan forgot his lunch – I went and dropped it off
before coming here. What’s the problem?”
“We need to straighten a few things out with Bennini,” Jason scowled, striding
quickly into the warehouse with his best friend and partner at his side. “The
shipments were delayed by more than an hour this morning.”
The mobster’s displeasure was apparent in the crease of his coal-black brows.
“That’s unacceptable; we stick to a strict schedule and-“
“Well, he’s just going to have to learn how to follow our rules,” Jason muttered
under his breath as the man in question nervously came up to greet them. All
part in part of another lovely day at the warehouse.
~*~*~*~*~*~
“That’s the boy, Mama,” little Becky announced,
pointing her chubby little finger at a chubbier boy with red hair and a
sprinkling of freckles on his round face. “He’s the one that doesn’t share the
blocks. And he sat on my tower!”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean to, sweetheart,” Elizabeth soothed her child, quickly
glancing back at the limo where Trevor and Adam sat with her two sons as they
all dropped Becky off for another day at kindergarten. “Maybe he just didn’t see
where he was going.”
“But he won’t share, Mama,” Becky pouted. “He’s a meanie-beanie.”
“Becky Morgan!” The little boy in question had heard and was not pleased. “What
did you call me?”
Elizabeth exchanged apologetic glances with the little tyke’s exasperated mother
as the two children squared off in front of the jungle gym.
“I said you were a meanie-beanie!”
“Am not!”
“Are too!”
“Yeah? Well, you’re a…a…a poopie-head!”
Her daughter reeled back in horror at the cruel insult, covering her little
mouth with one small hand. “Wait’ll I tell my Daddy what you said, you little-“
If this had happened under any other circumstances, Elizabeth would have
laughed. Hell, Jason usually did. But this was quite serious – especially
judging by the suddenly dirty looks the meanie-beanie’s mother was giving her at
the mention of her enforcer-husband. Rubbing her forehead with one hand and
grabbing her daughter’s hand with the other, Elizabeth Morgan reflected that
this was what she had known to expect the minute she told Jason she wanted to
have his children.
~*~*~*~*~*~
“That was a close one,” Sonny muttered as he,
Johnny, Francis, Max, and Jason ambled back to his office for an impromptu and
casual meeting. “Too close.”
“Who the hell knew that Taggert would have his whole fucking unit down there to
inspect coffee?” Johnny scoffed in disgust. “Wasting taxpayers’ money, that’s
what he’s doing.”
“And why would you care, John?” Francis scoffed. “You don’t even pay your
taxes.”
The Irishman rolled his eyes. “What are you now, my Ma? Knock it off, Frannie.”
“Careful, Johnny,” Max warned as he tossed a manila folder onto the desk in
front of Sonny. “That’s how they got Al Capponi, remember?”
“It’s Capone, numb-skull.”
“It’s Alphonso Capponi, you-“
“Focus,” Jason ground out, grabbing the folders. “We need to make sure this
doesn’t happen again.”
They had come too close for comfort that morning – the delayed shipment had
thrown everything out of sync. Taggert had intercepted the line and done a
painstaking search for any illegal substances. Jason could still remember the
look on the detective’s face when all he found was good old fashioned Columbian
Roast – He was Eliot Ness cracking open a shipment of wooden crates only to find
a few umbrellas.
Max nodded and slowly lowered himself into a leather chair. “For one thing, we
know at least that our communication lines are damn effective. We got the second
truck rerouted before the PCPD even heard it coming.”
“We can’t use that shipment line again, though,” Francis declared grimly. “We’re
going to have to find another way.”
“That route’s no good,” Sonny agreed. “The other alternative is a more expensive
one, and we can expect a delay of at least forty minutes on all shipments if we
go with it.”
“Well, we’ve got to come up with something,” Jason sighed, tossing a legal pad
at Johnny and throwing himself down on a hard leather chair. “And soon.”
Another damn lovely day at the warehouse.
~*~*~*~*~*~
“She actually said that?” Carly Corinthos
laughed, leading Elizabeth into the kitchen atop four inch high pencil heels
that perfectly matched her skirt and nails. “She actually said her daddy would
beat that boy’s daddy up?”
“It was terrible,” Elizabeth groaned, shifting her hold on the two little boys
in her arms as she followed her friend into Sonny’s favorite room in the
penthouse. “We’re never going to be invited to any play groups or story times
or…or…PTA meetings or Booster fundraisers ever again.”
“Jason will be devastated,” Carly clucked, smirking wickedly as she tried to
find the cookbooks that Elizabeth had lent her a few weeks ago. She had been
trying her hand at cooking, much to Sonny’s chagrin, and when she discovered
that she never kept a single cookbook in the house, she had immediately pilfered
her next-door neighbor’s.
Elizabeth’s lips curved downward sourly as she watched the tall blonde leisurely
finger her way through a shelf of newly-purchased cookbooks in search of the
ones she had borrowed. The twins were tired – they usually were after they
dropped Becky off at kindergarten – and were beginning to fuss and whine in the
warm caverns of her neck where they tried to steal a few minutes of sleep.
Elizabeth shifted them in her practically-asleep and tingling arms, glaring at
the back of Carly’s head and thinking how lucky the woman was – Michael was in
junior high and Morgan was only a few years behind, and both boys had adjusted
admirably. Meanwhile, her own little wild child still felt the need to announce
that her daddy could beat up everyone else’s daddy.
“Here we are,” Carly announced, pleased with her sleuthing abilities. The blonde
cheekily extended a high stack of books toward Elizabeth. “Ooh, you sure you can
manage that, Lizzie?” The brunette wanted to tell her to go to Hell. Smirking at
the sight of the twins asleep on her shoulders, Carly tipped her head and led
her out of the penthouse and next door to her own, helping her in through the
door and setting the books on the desk.
“Need any help there?”
Elizabeth shook her head with a smile, glancing down when one of her boys cooed
something and fisted his little hand in her cashmere sweater. “I’m good, Carly.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
Jason was on his way over to Pier 52 to retrieve
some files from the warehouse there when his phone rang. He quickly pulled it
out and was immediately greeted with his best friend’s less-than-thrilled voice.
“Jason.”
“What is it?”
“How far are you from the warehouse?”
The enforcer glanced out the window and then called up to the driver to slow
down. “About two miles.”
“Can you come back?”
“Why?”
A heavy sigh. “Sandoval’s here.”
Jason’s brow furrowed. Don Sandoval? One of the heads of the Five Families?
“What the hell does he want?”
“He’s been going through hard times with the authorities up in Little Lucca,”
Sonny informed him, mentioning the predominantly Italian territory where
Sandoval ran his syndicate. “And he thinks it’s our fault.”
“Aw, Jesus,” Jason muttered. “Not again.”
“He’s outside in his car and demanded to meet with both of us immediately.
Come back.”
The enforcer was already telling his driver to turn around. “Sonny?”
“Yeah?”
“We could have a war on our hands if he convinces the others that we’re fucking
things up with the police, couldn’t we?”
His friend’s voice was grim. “Looks that way.”
Jason closed his eyes and gripped the handle of the door. A bloodbath was the
last thing they needed. “I’m on my way.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
“Mama! Guess what? I made a picture!” Her little
daughter was bouncing happily along beside her as the two of them walked to the
waiting car after yet another exhausting day at kindergarten. “See? See? Do you
like it?”
The guard opened the door for them and Elizabeth smiled at the young man as she
followed her daughter in. “Explain it to me, baby.”
“OK,” the child nodded seriously, half crawling into Elizabeth’s lap as the car
turned onto the road. “This is me – I’m in the pink – and this is you. I put you
in a blue dress because Daddy says he loves it when you wear blue.”
Trevor grinned at his boss’ wife as he jostled one of the boys on his knee.
Across from him, Adam was playing patty-cake with the other little tyke.
“And this is Jake and this is Sandy,” the little girl continued, pointing to two
little blobs with yellow hair and big blue circles for eyes on the wrinkled
paper. “They’re eating grass.”
Adam snorted and gently settled his little charge back into the appropriate car
seat.
“And here’s Daddy,” Becky exclaimed happily. “His hair’s all messy and he can’t
find his other boot. That’s because I hid it.”
Elizabeth grinned at that little anecdote, remembering well that one time that
Jason had combed the entire penthouse in search of his right motorcycle boot,
finding it later that night in his daughter’s toy chest next to her music box.
The wide-eyed little girl was peering up at her expectantly, and Elizabeth
wrapped an arm around her little shoulders and pulled her close. “It’s just
beautiful, sweetheart.”
“You think Daddy’ll like it, Mama?”
”I know he will.”
Becky studied her painting before nodding once. “Yeah, he always likes anything
we paint for him.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
Jason leaned back wearily on his black leather
desk chair and closed his eyes as Sonny fairly collapsed on the couch. “I don’t
know how we pulled that off.”
“A hell of a lot of smooth-talking on my part, I’ll tell you that much,” his
best friend replied, shrugging out of his jacket and rolling up the sleeves of
his olive-colored oxford shirt. “And to your credit, you didn’t shoot anyone.”
That got a grin out of the enforcer. “It would have been the only way to shut
Jocko up.”
Sonny smirked at the mention of Sandoval’s vertically impaired right-hand man.
“That little guy’s got a big mouth.”
“And a microscopic brain.”
A comfortable silence stretched out between the two partners as they thought
back to that meeting on the brink of disaster. Sandoval had been livid,
declaring that the activities of the Corinthos-Morgan organization would bring
heat on all of the families and had done his best to incite the other heads
against the two men. Fortunately, Sonny had powerful alliances with at least two
of the Five Families, and it didn’t go anywhere fast. They were able to placate
Sandoval after much fast-talking and many promises, and then the meeting had
been adjourned. They’d been playing with fire, and thankfully, no one got
burned.
“I’m going to head home,” Sonny announced, “as soon as I finish up the Mariani
business. You callin’ it a day?”
Jason shook his head reluctantly. “I’ve got to get the routes finalized by
tonight for the shipments tomorrow.”
Sonny nodded, grabbing his coat and preparing to head to his own office. “Take
it easy, man.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
Elizabeth usually tried to start dinner when Jason got home so
that they could all eat together, but by eight-thirty the kids had been famished
and began screaming bloody murder. Becky had wanted macaroni and cheese and made
one hell of a Socratic oratory on why her dear mother should comply, and
finally, Elizabeth had given in and begun boiling the pasta.
She had just gotten the boys settled into their high chairs with their blue
plastic bowls – the ones Sandy and Jake liked to use as hats instead of for
dinner – and was trying to pay attention to her daughter’s babbling when she
heard the door to the penthouse open and instantly knew that her husband was
home.
His footsteps were heavy and slow and she could tell that he was tired after a
long, grueling day at work. She heard him drop his keys and phone on the table
as she strained the pasta and told Becky to get the crackers that the boys liked
– anything to keep them occupied.
The little girl was trying to reach the bright red box of crackers when her
father walked into the kitchen. A smile instantly brightened his weary features
when he saw the little brunette, and Jason promptly lifted her up in his arms
and grabbed the crackers himself. He smiled at Elizabeth as he placed little
Becky in her seat and then gave the boys three Ritz crackers each, pleased when
they immediately stuffed one into their little mouths.
“Hey, honey,” his wife smiled. “How was your-“
There was that telephone again. Jason rolled his eyes and grabbed it, tempted to
just slam it back down in the cradle, and his best friend’s voice immediately
filled his ears. He tried to tell her that no, he and Elizabeth couldn’t make
dinner on the 22nd because Becky was in the school play – no, she was a tulip in
Alice in Wonderland….something about a dance of the flowers.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth was distributing the pasta into bowls and shredding the
cheese over it as Becky tried to get her father’s attention. Jason nodded at the
little girl and cradled the phone against his shoulder as he poured the little
girl the glass of milk she wanted. The twins, at this point, were smearing
cracker crumbs in each other’s hair while crying at the cruelty of it all.
Elizabeth sighed and tried to break up their little fight but then the oven
beeped, indicating that the little rolls that Becky loved so much were done and
needed to be taken out.
Jason hung up on Carly in the middle of the blonde’s spirited account of how she
found the perfect shoes at Wyndam’s but still wanted to borrow Elizabeth’s pair
that was almost perfectly identical to her new find, and the enforcer tried to
clean up his two sons the best he could. If they were like this at such a young
age, he didn’t even want to think about what they’d be like when they got older.
Right now, they were fighting over crackers. Soon, they’d be fighting over
sports teams and girls and cars…the fun would never end.
“DaddyDaddyDaddyDaddy!” His daughter, the little diva that she was, wanted his
attention once more. “I made a painting, Daddy, and you don’t have your boot
and-“
“Jason!” Elizabeth yelped as she collided into him as he ducked away from the
twins, almost dropping their daughter’s dinner. Fortunately, his strong hand
grabbed the bowl before it could fall and Jason placed it in front of the little
girl in one smooth, fluid motion.
“And Sandy and Jake are eating grass and-“
“Why are the boys eating grass?” he asked his wife as she quickly cleaned off
the small mess Becky had left on the table.
“Jason, would I feed our sons grass?” the brunette asked with a frown,
depositing the dirty dishes in the sink and reaching for a paper towel. Her hand
smacked against the tray of biscuits, almost sending it to the floor, but she
grabbed it just in time. She slid the biscuits onto the table and placed one
bowl of macaroni in front of Sandy before reaching for the other one.
“Daddy, I dropped my fork!”
Jason obediently dropped to his knees to retrieve the fork and banged his head
against the underside of Sandy’s tray when Elizabeth almost tripped over his
long legs. Resisting the urge to curse under his breath, Jason watched the
little bowl of macaroni topple over the edge and half onto him, scattering the
soft pasta all over the floor.
“Daddy dropped the pasta! Daddy dropped the pasta!” Becky informed her mother
helpfully in a sing-song voice as she scampered away to get herself a new fork.
“Jason-“
The boys were beginning to fuss again, and pretty soon Becky’s little head poked
under the table to watch her father hurriedly scoop the pasta up into the bowl.
“Whatchadoin’, Daddy?”
He quirked a brow at her. “Eat your dinner for me, please, will you, Angel?”
“’Kay, Daddy.”
Her head disappeared from view and Jason heard Elizabeth scooping out some more
pasta for the boys. Apparently, Sandy had just hit Jake because his son’s cries
now pierced through the small kitchen and across the table, Becky was having her
own problems.
“Mama, I need milk! MilkMilkMilkMilk, Mama!”
Sighing, Jason scooted out from under the table and quickly launched himself up
to his full height, reaching for the cookie jar by the fridge. Reaching his
sons, he quickly grabbed a few curls of macaroni with his fingers and inserted
them in Jake’s mouth first, and then another few pieces into Sandy’s. The boys
quieted instantly and chewed the pasta, and Jason resorted to the tried-and-true
method of stuffing a cookie into his daughter’s mouth. She grinned happily at
him and pushed her empty pasta bowl away, chomping away on the chocolate chip
cookie.
Elizabeth was laughing when Jason abandoned the cookie jar and snaked his arms
around her waist. Her chuckles were muffled instantly when his lips pressed hard
against hers, and she brought her hands up around his neck when Jason molded her
against his body. Their kiss was brief but passionate, and Jason’s eyes were
twinkling when he pulled back and gazed down into her eyes.
“Sometimes, Elizabeth, I’m just so proud to be your husband.”
The End.
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