Fire & Brimstone (Neighbor from Hell #8) - R.L. Mathewson Page 0,19

have a tendency to annoy the shit out of him, but he’d once again found himself in a moral dilemma.

Firing her after she’d agreed to do something that she hadn’t wanted to do felt…wrong. He couldn’t explain it and he didn’t like it, but there it was. He wasn’t going to fire her and he should have probably told her that so that she wouldn’t have to worry, but that would only create more problems. It was for the best that she didn’t know that her job was safe, otherwise he would probably have to deal with the devious woman pulling more shit behind his back and to be honest, he liked her better this way.

Even though she was still bugging the shit out of him, she was on her best behavior. So far, in the past two weeks she hadn’t gone behind his back and did anything major, tried managing him with that damn clipboard or that innocent little smile of hers.

It had been fucking perfect.

“New dessert menu?” she suggested, obviously getting desperate if she was starting to repeat herself.

“There’s nothing wrong with the dessert menu,” he said, shifting his attention back to the paperwork in front of him even though he was already thinking about changing the dessert menu. Not that he would tell her that since it would only encourage her.

“It needs pie,” she said matter-of-factly.

“It doesn’t need pie.”

But, it really did.

Damn it, now he wanted pie.

“Shouldn’t you be working?” he asked, wondering if he had time to go down the street and get a few pies before his brother showed up with the test results.

“Today’s my day off,” she said with a heavy sigh as she walked back around the bar and sat down on the barstool next to him.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Killing time and covering for Jane and Erin so they could take a break,” she said with another one of her shrugs as she stole a fry off his plate, making him wonder if she was suicidal.

Momentarily distracted by the fact that she’d had the audacity to come within twelve inches of his plate, he looked up from his paperwork and glanced around the dinning room. The dinning area was packed, but the customers were smiling, had their food, their drinks were filled and there wasn’t a waitress in sight.

“There should be four waitresses on right now,” he mumbled to himself, wondering where everyone was.

“Yes, yes there really should be,” Rebecca readily agreed. “But Tammy called in sick and Jenny quit last night so-”

“Jenny quit?” he asked, trying to picture her face, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember who she was.

“Ummm, you made her cry yesterday?”

No, that still didn’t help. “And she quit?” he asked, wondering how he kept ending up hiring waitresses that couldn’t handle a little criticism.

“Yeah, imagine that,” she said dryly as her attention shifted to the door where two of his waitresses were walking in, smiling and carrying a plastic takeout box.

“Thank you so much for covering for us, Rebecca,” Jane said with a warm smile as she placed the takeout box on the bar in front of Rebecca, which is where his focus may have shifted.

“You’re welcome,” he vaguely heard Rebecca say as he sat there, glaring down at the box, trying to figure out why he was smelling apples, cinnamon, pumpkin and vanilla.

“Melanie thinks that your brother is going to tell me that I’m diabetic,” she explained as she reached over the bar and grabbed some silverware.

“They would have already caught that,” he pointed out, wondering if it was some kind of Danish.

“That’s what I said, but she’s determined that’s what it is,” she said with a heartfelt sigh as she flipped the cover open and-

“Oh, God,” he groaned as he took in the beautiful sight before him.

Three, no four, large slices of pumpkin and apple pie topped with a massive amount of French vanilla ice cream. All that flaky, buttery crust just begging for his attention…

“Here,” she said, stabbing a second spoon in the ice cream.

Not needing to be told twice, and willing to overlook the fact that she expected him to share, he dug in.

Digging into a slice of pumpkin pie, she said, “She’s been going nuts on WebMD and is convinced that all my symptoms are a perfect match for Type II diabetes.”

“She’s that convinced, huh?” he asked as he stole a bite of her pumpkin pie.

God, this was good. He was going to have to find out where they