It was a mom-and-pop restaurant and looked like any other Italian restaurant, with Chianti bottles and burgundy furnishings. The checkered curtains on the windows were clean and starched. The windows sparkled. But it was the fragrance that welcomed customers. There were nine tables, and all were full with people in various stages of their meals. No one entered behind them, and there was no one waiting to be seated. Sam relaxed when frosty bottles of beer arrived, along with two huge baskets of crunchy breadsticks and a red-hot Diablo sauce.

Sam fished out the printouts from her pocket and passed them to Zoe, who read them and passed them on.

“Damn, you do good work, Sam,” Olivia said. “We owe you big-time. While we were out there shopping you were working your butt off. This is…fantastic.”

Kayla read slowly, a wide grin stretching across her face. “Joey will find the jerk. Trust me. He’s better than a hound dog. Oh, God, I can’t wait to get my hands around his neck.”

No one asked whose neck she was talking about. They all knew because they all felt the same way.

“I guess we need to flush this stuff, right?” Zoe asked. She volunteered to do it. Slick followed her to the ladies’ room and waited outside while she did what she had to do. They walked back to the table together.

“All gone,” Kayla whispered.

“Are we good or what?” Olivia chortled, holding her beer bottle aloft.

“We’re goooood,” the others chorused.

Then the conversation switched to what they’d done with their time in New York, what they’d bought, what they thought of the city, then the relief that they were actually returning to the mountain in the morning.

They all looked at Sam, in awe, when she described the outfits she’d purchased. She flushed when they asked if she was trying to impress Pappy, Lukash, or Vandameer.

“Alpha,” she said. Then she told them what she’d bought for the big dog. The others laughed as they, too, admitted they’d all bought something for the wolf-dog with the yellow eyes.

“Anyone buy Pappy and Kyros a present?” Slick queried.

They all admitted they had, even Hawkins.

“Do you think they’ll have a tree?” Zoe asked fretfully. “It isn’t Christmas without a tree. Or do you think we’re supposed to go out and chop one down?”

“I guess we won’t know till we get there. I’m actually looking forward to going back,” Sam said.

The others agreed as they clinked their bottles together. “Merry Christmas, everyone,” Hawkins said.

Chapter Twelve