Fire & Brimstone (Neighbor from Hell #8) - R.L. Mathewson Page 0,13
me what’s going on?” he asked, deciding that he could pretend that he actually cared since she’d so graciously shared her fruit pies with him.
Shifting her attention back to the television, she muttered, “It’s not important.”
“Then why are you upset?” he asked, glancing around the large apartment for that damn dog and her wingman so that he could push her off onto them and make his escape now that he knew that he wasn’t the cause of her mental breakdown.
“Because it’s my right as a woman to get pissed off for absolutely no reason,” she said with a shrug as she stared blindly at the television.
“Uh huh,” he said absently, wondering why Melanie wasn’t here to handle this.
“She took Mojo out for a walk after I threatened to kill her if she didn’t stop bugging the shit out of me,” she said, answering his unasked question and letting him know that there would be no escape for him, because he couldn’t leave her like this.
Could he?
Well, he could, but he was pretty sure that would make him an asshole and right now, being an asshole somehow felt…wrong.
*-*-*-*
“Don’t you have a restaurant to run?” she asked, wondering why he hadn’t left yet.
He was really wrecking this for her.
He ignored her question and asked one of his own. “When’s Melanie coming back?”
“Well, since she’s attempting to take a two hundred and sixty-five pound dog for a walk by herself, I’m guessing that we won’t be seeing her until she calls and asks for a crane to help drag Mojo back,” she said absently while she continued to stare numbly at the television as Chucky slashed and diced his way through another bad joke, wondering why Lucifer was still here.
As soon as she’d given him what he wanted he should have left, satisfied with the knowledge that he’d finally managed to kick her out of his restaurant. Actually, as soon as he’d realized that she was crying, he should have shown her the door and washed his hands of the whole situation. It was something that she’d seen him do in the past when he had to fire a waitress and they’d foolishly decided to see if they could manipulate him with a few tears to change his mind. It usually had the opposite effect on him.
The same could be said for the women that he’d dated over the last few years that thought pretty little pouts and a few crocodile tears were enough to wrap him around their little fingers. They actually seemed to have the opposite effect on him as well. Not that she’d been paying attention.
Okay, so she had probably paid a little too much attention to his love life, but then again, who hadn’t? It was hard not to! The women that he dated brought endless hours of entertainment to them all and for that alone, they would always have a special place in her heart.
Every single one of the women that he’d dated, and there had been quite a few over the years, seemed determined to bring him to heel. For whatever reason they all seemed to look at him as some poor wounded soul hiding behind an asshole exterior that only they could break through.
They were wrong, but she never had the heart to tell them, mostly because that would have meant putting an end to the entertainment that they provided and there was no way in hell that she would ever do that. Not when their obvious attempts seemed to really annoy Lucifer and put a smile on her face.
She wasn’t sure if it was the challenge of breaking Lucifer or the fact that he was incredibly hot that had women going nuts over him. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter to her just as long as they didn’t stop doing it. There was really nothing like watching a woman try to break Lucifer so that the rest of the world could see what a kind, generous, and caring man he really was.
It was always fun watching him prove that he wasn’t.
“What’s really going on, Rebecca?” he asked, rudely disturbing thoughts of happier times and making her wonder why it mattered.
It wasn’t like he didn’t already know. So, what was the big deal admitting it?
“Haven’t you heard? I’m a hypochondriac,” she said with a shrug as she continued to stare blindly at the television, surprised at how little she cared any more.
Chapter 7
“Get up,” Lucifer snapped, wondering why he had to repeat himself.