Hey, it's a new story for Mother's Day! First up are the Flemings and a fire.
Un-beta'ed, so quibble away.
- o – o -
Mother's Day
Chapter one: The Sweetest Thing
Peter Fleming employed several world-class chefs that made Emeril and many other celebrity chefs look like rank amateurs. There was a reason for this: The billionaire could burn water simply by looking at it. (It was a good thing he was wealthy enough to afford an in-house chef, or he'd have been stuck eating take-out for the rest of his life.) He had passed the ability onto his daughter, three-year-old Jamie Elaine Fleming.
That little fact wasn't going to stop them today, though. After all, it was Mother's Day and there was the time-honored tradition of giving the lady of the house breakfast-in-bed. Knowing this fact, the kitchen staff had quietly removed the batteries from the smoke detector the night before and left pre-made goods in the massive fridge with incredibly specific instructions taped to the lids of the containers. There was no way their employer would be able to destroy breakfast with that many simple instructions.
And despite these precautions, Peter still managed to botch something. His daughter, sitting at the kitchen table and working diligently on a hand-made card for her mother, noticed the burning smell first.
"Daddy, is that supposed to happen?"
Peter looked at the oven and resisted the urge to drown himself in the pot of coffee he'd just made. (Coffee was the only thing he was able to make without setting something on fire or ruining it beyond recognition.) Black smoke was wafting out of it, for no reason he could understand. He'd followed the cook's instructions to the letter, for Christ's sake!
"No princess," Fleming sighed as he got the fire extinguisher off the hook by the door, "it's not." The fire was put out in due order, and the charred and blackened remains of what should have been a simple tray of cinnamon rolls was deposited in the trash. Again. The billionaire picked his daughter up and kissed the top of her head. "Sweetie, do you think your mother would object if we took her out for breakfast instead?"
Solemnly, Jamie shook her head. "Uh-uh. Can we go to I-Hop?" she asked, staring up at her father.
Peter smiled and hugged his daughter. Despite the fact that he was quickly becoming one of the wealthiest men on the planet, he and his wife still enjoyed going to restaurants that didn't cost several hundred by the end of a meal for two.
"Let's go get your mother," he said quietly, grabbing the bouquet of flowers he'd paid for the day before. His wife was, unsurprisingly, waiting in the foyer of their home, already dressed and ready to go.
It never failed that, every year, Peter would manage to burn breakfast on Mother's Day, no matter how good the instructions he was following were.
And, for two more years, everything was exactly as it should have been.
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So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Think Peter should learn how to avoid burning everything he tries to cook? Drop a line and let me know!