Fire & Brimstone (Neighbor from Hell #8) - R.L. Mathewson Page 0,92
as she contemplated sticking her tongue out at the paranoid bastard.
Aidan nodded as he closed the folder and tossed it on the counter before he shifted his attention to Lucifer, who was still watching her a little too closely.
“You working tonight?” Aidan asked, already moving on while she sat there struggling to get over the biggest scare of her life.
“Patrick’s scheduled to work,” Lucifer said, sounding bored.
Seriously? Did neither one of them care how close she’d come to reenacting the scene from Alien? Selfish bastards, she thought, shaking her head in disgust until the action caused her head to recommence with the spinning.
“Then come to dinner tonight,” Aidan said, really making her wonder how many patients tried to kick his ass.
“Fine,” Lucifer said, sounding a bit distracted, which would explain why he gave in so easily to something that he normally tried to avoid.
Not that she knew why.
If she had a family that wanted to see her…
Well, she had Melanie’s family, who had always treated her like one of their own, but it wasn’t the same. They loved her and always included her in family dinners, holidays and birthdays and made her feel welcome, but they’d never called her on her shit, told her when she was messing up like they did with Melanie. Not that she normally complained when it meant that she could join in the fun and torment Melanie, but it would be nice to belong, to really belong.
Then there was her family…
They avoided her at all costs and seemed to be going out of their way to let her know that she wasn’t important to them. Which was fine with her, because she’d rather not have to deal with them for any reason.
“Do you think that you can walk to the truck?” Lucifer asked, pushing her hair out of the way so that he could see her face.
She probably could, but…
“I would prefer to be manhandled,” she said with a sniff since she’d felt that she’d more than earned it after the scare that he’d given her.
“You’re going to vomit if you try to walk,” he guessed correctly.
“Without question.”
*-*-*-*
“Can you sit up?” he asked, hoping that she was going to say no, because he wasn’t sure that he was ready to go inside and deal with his family, their questions and the bullshit that they were going to put him through for bringing Rebecca with him.
“Probably,” came the muffled response while Rebecca continued to absently trace circles on the leg that she was using as a pillow.
Not that he was complaining since it gave him a reason to sit there. They were probably going to miss dinner, but maybe that was for the best. He’d rather get this talk out of the way so that he could get back to the Fire & Brimstone and get his mind off of things for a while.
“Are you okay?” she asked with a heavy sigh as she gave up on playing with his knee and rolled over onto her back.
Staring out the window, he nodded. “I’m fine.”
“You haven’t said anything about what just happened,” she pointed out, drawing her knees in to get more comfortable on the bench seat of his truck.
“Neither have you.”
“I was too busy having a nervous breakdown,” she explained.
“We should go inside,” he said, carefully pulling his hand away, but she wasn’t letting him off that easily.
Tightening her hold on his hand, she placed it right back on her soft belly. “We need to at least pretend to talk about this,” she stubbornly said, but he knew that talking about this was the last thing that she wanted to do.
While he wanted nothing more than to lose himself in the Fire & Brimstone, she was probably dying to go home, shove Melanie off the couch and distract herself with horror movies and Hershey Kisses. Maybe he should put this off for another night and take her home so that she could do just that.
“What exactly do you want to talk about?” he asked, suddenly feeling exhausted and not even the idea of digging into his mother’s cooking could get him to move.
“I’m not ready to have a baby yet, Christopher,” she said softly as though it was something to be ashamed of.
Smiling down at her, he said, “Neither am I, but,” he said, adding that “but” in there no doubt to scare her before he continued, “even if things had turned out differently, it would have been fine.”