The frikkin’ Haymarches had never paid for a meal! Ever! She’d tried and tried to make her mother see that they were taking advantage of her good nature, but her mother always just looked at her and blinked innocently. And handed out more food.
“Yes, it would!” Savannah shouted at the top of her lungs.
She turned and marched towards the door.
Then she stopped.
She could actually feel two holes burning into the back of her shirt. Her mother’s eyes. How did she do that? She didn’t have psychic powers, and yet Savannah was fairly sure that if she didn’t do what her mother wanted within the next sixty seconds, she’d burst into flames.
She turned around and glared at her mother. “Fiiiiine,” she gritted out.
“You’re just the sweetest little thing,” her mother cooed.
Argh. Had her mother been taking lessons in annoying from Austin?
“Don’t rub it in. And I hope your cooking skills include roadkill, because that’s what we’ll be eating when we lose our restaurant and our home and have to live in the woods.”
Savannah picked up the tray full of plates of chocolate silk pie that her mother had set out, and headed to the door.
Before she made it, her mother called after her, “Is he nice?”
“Who?”
“The wolf I smell all over you.”
“Mom!” Savannah cried, scandalized. Her cheeks were catching fire. Blazing red. She could feel it. Why was the floor not opening up and swallowing her? Why, floor, why? Trapped in the kitchen, holding a tray of pies for the biggest mooches in Fox Hollow when she wanted to just smash those pies in their faces, and having her mother quiz her about her non-existent love life. Was this what hell felt like? She doubted it. She couldn’t imagine Satan being quite that mean. “It is not like that! I mugged him for his keys, in fact. It was a work thing.”
Her mother shrugged and started chopping green peppers. “All right, dear, as long as there’s a reasonable explanation. Not that I’d be against you dating a wolf, mind you. But I’d be very upset if you were dating someone and not telling me about it.”
“No worries,” Savannah growled. She pushed the swinging door open with her foot.
“Because I would need to check up on him, his family, his friends, and the neighborhood he lives in, of course.”
“And that is why I’m going to die single. Hopefully really soon,” Savannah muttered.
“I heard that!”
Savannah hurried across the room and began handing out plates with pie slices to the Haymarches.
When she walked over to Anthony, who was wiping pizza sauce off his face with a paper napkin, she snapped, “Every time you work here, food disappears. You slack off on your work and take like six lunch breaks every shift. We are a business, not a food bank.”
Anthony, a wiry fourteen-year-old with a generous splattering of freckles on his face, grabbed the last pie plate from her hands. His mother was a drug addict and had multiple burglary convictions, and Anthony seemed at risk of following in her footsteps. He’d been suspected of shoplifting and was banned from most of the stores in downtown Foxhaven.
“Your mother’s a lot nicer than you.” Anthony smirked.
“Sheisa lot nicer than me.” Savannah scowled. “That’s why you don’t want to push me too far, because unlike her, I will whip the tar out of you.”
Anthony crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out at her. She smacked him on the side of his head, hard.
Savannah’s mother yelled from the kitchen. “I saw that! And you’re not too old for me to ground, young lady! You tell that nice little boy sorry!”
There was only so much crow Savannah could eat in one day. With a muttered curse, she walked out of the room with all the dignity she could muster, which was not a lot, given that her cheeks were still flaming red and she apparently reeked of wolf. No, even worse, she reeked ofAustin.
But as she walked onto the diner’s front porch and saw who was pulling up, her heart sank.
Nope, she was not done eating crow today.
Because Algernon’s Hummer was parked in the parking lot, and he, his son Marvin, and his bodyguard Sylvester were strolling towards the diner.
