Fire & Brimstone (Neighbor from Hell #8) - R.L. Mathewson Page 0,4

life in misery, but the frustrating woman refused to listen to reason. No matter how many times she’d begged, glared and bitched, Melanie refused to drop it. Melanie had always believed that she was sick and had always been there for her. She’d understood when she was too sick to do anything and never got pissed when she had to cancel plans so that she could spend some quality time curled up in bed, trying to pretend that she didn’t hate her life.

It had meant the world to her to have someone in her life that didn’t think the worst of her. Having Melanie in her life was the one thing that had kept her sane all these years. It was just too bad that her best friend was driving her insane with all this nagging and threats of violence. She didn’t want to go see another doctor, but unfortunately for her, Melanie didn’t seem to care about what she wanted. Her best friend was determined to figure out what was wrong with her and fix it even if that meant dragging her kicking and screaming to see every doctor in the world.

Even though it annoyed the hell out of her, it meant the world to her having someone who believed in her the way that Melanie did. No matter what anyone said about her, Melanie always had her back, which was why she resisted the urge to throttle her best friend when she refused to back down and just accept the fact that there was nothing that anyone could do to fix her.

*-*-*-*

“What about the specials?” Rose, a waitress he’d hired a few months ago on the recommendation of his sister-in-law, asked.

“What about them?” Lucifer asked as he leaned back against the wall, looking through the time cards.

“Are there any changes?” she asked as she glanced at the menus for the night.

There should be, but the new recipes that he’d been working on weren’t ready yet. “No. They’re the same as last week,” he said as he glanced up at the whiteboard by the clock to see what last week’s specials were.

He looked over the list before deciding that the dessert menu was a little weak. “I’ll make a call to Dixon Bakery and see if they have anything they can spare for tonight’s dinner service,” he said, deciding that it would probably be for the best if he went in person and had a Bradford special to help him recover from this morning’s disappointment.

She really was going to be the death of him, he thought as he initialed this morning’s time stamps. All except two. He set the first one aside and looked for the matching time stamp. It only took him a few seconds to find it.

Sighing, he said, “Aimee?”

“Yes?” Aimee said, shifting nervously and for good reason.

“You’re fired,” he said, not bothering to look up from her time card.

“But-”

“You have five minutes to clear out your locker,” he said, placing her time stamp aside before selecting the other time card that she’d decided to stamp this morning and making him wonder why he was having such a hard time firing Rebecca.

“You can tell Kelly when you see her that she’s fired as well,” he said, putting a line through Kelly’s timecard.

She didn’t say anything else as she quickly grabbed her stuff and left, because she knew better. He didn’t take any shit from anyone and he rarely gave second chances. There was a reason why everyone called him Lucifer to his face and asshole to his back. He didn’t have a problem with either nickname, because he’d earned both.

Even as a kid he hadn’t been someone that you wanted to fuck with. He never took any shit from anyone and if you had a problem with that, he’d always been more than happy to clear up any misunderstandings. Although he was an asshole, and he had absolutely no problems with admitting that, he wasn’t a bully and never pulled any shit. If you left him alone, he left you alone, but God help you if he caught you fucking someone over because he’d be in your face before you had a chance to blink.

He wasn’t like the rest of the men in his family. They were more laid back, easy going while he was straight-laced and probably took everything too seriously. He’d always been like that and had never thought about changing and why should he? He was happy with the way that his life had