Chapter 1
"I don’t like surprises.”
-Celia
The car swerved, and my stomach lurched. I was in danger of losing my religion. Or maybe just my breakfast. It was a toss-up at this point.
I took a deep breath and reached for the blindfold. “Are we almost there?”
“No peeking!” A deep voice from my left warned as he slapped my hand away from my face.
“I don’t know why I agreed to this,” I grumbled.
“You love surprises!” A second deep voice floated from the backseat.
“No. I don’t.”
“Yeah, you do!” The driver insisted as he took a turn on two wheels.
I gritted my teeth and grabbed for the armrest. “For the love of Pete! Is it possible to take those turns a little easier?”
“No way,” the driver chuckled. “We’re running late. And you don’t want to miss out on your surprise!”
“I told you guys a thousand times. I don’t like surprises,” I insisted, reaching for the blindfold again.
A hand touched my left shoulder. “Please, Mama. Let us surprise you! It’s just a few days until Christmas. This is going to be fun!”
I took a deep breath and counted to ten. When that didn’t work to calm me down, I counted to a hundred. I tried to get my heart rate to slow, but it was useless. I didn’t like not knowing where we were going. And I hated not being in control. Maybe that’s why I was getting car sick.
“Are we there yet?” I whined.
Both boys laughed.
Yeah. This was really freaking funny.
The car swerved right and pulled to an abrupt stop. I reached out with one hand to touch the dashboard. The other hand had the armrest in a death grip.
“We’re here!” The driver yelled, then opened the car door. Another car door opened from the backseat. Then, my door opened.
I felt a large hand reach for mine on the dashboard, yanking me out of the car without so much as a warning. I stumbled out of the seat and nearly landed on my face, but a strong arm caught me around my waist.
I reached up to snatch the blindfold off my face. This had gone on long enough.
“Ta-da!” My twins pointed to the building in front of me with a dramatic flourish. A sign that said, “The Chop Shop” in neon spaghetti noodles blazed over the door of what resembled a restaurant.
“Why all the secrecy to bring me to a,” I paused and peered again inside the large windows. “Restaurant?”
Both boys laughed again. Oh yeah, I was a true stand-up comedienne today.
“Not a restaurant,” Lance twined his arm through mine.
Logan grabbed my other arm. “We’re going to a cooking lesson!”
My 6-foot-tall twins hustled me through the door, checked in with the hostess, then dragged me to the only prep table left in the place. And, of course, it was the one right up front.
There were six tables. Each one had baskets of vegetables and plates of meat. A block of knives and other utensils sat neatly next to the ingredients. And a cooktop waited at the end of the prep table.
This was the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. If there were a Hall of Fame for Bad Ideas, this would be part of the main exhibit.
