Read Online Fire & Brimstone: A Neighbor from Hell by R.L. Mathewson - Free Book Online

her bag and pulled out her keys. “He’s an asshole,” she said pointedly, shooting Lucifer a glare as he stepped aside and allowed her to pass.
                  Once she was gone and the door was shut, he leaned back against it and for the first time since they’d been ushered into this room, he looked up from his phone. “You didn’t bring a purse,” he reminded her as though this should mean something to her.
                  “Well,” she said, glancing around the room, looking for anything that would aide in her escape, “you didn’t exactly give me a chance to grab one. Not with all the manhandling.”
                  “What’s that devious little mind of yours up to?” he asked, not looking as though he really cared that he’d just been called an asshole. Then again, he’d been called worse.
                  “Escape,” she said, seeing absolutely no point in lying.
                  “Don’t you want answers?”
                  “I already got my answer,” she said, wishing this place had a window or a backdoor.
                  “It was the wrong answer,” he said confidently, which made her chuckle because she knew for a fact that he’d always thought that she was a hypochondriac, or, at the very least, crazy.
                  “And what makes you so sure that the answer will be any different than last time?” she asked, giving up on escape and decided to sit on the chair stuck in the corner and wait for the doctor. As soon as he found out that the insurance company wouldn’t cover all the expensive tests that he would want to run and that she was now unemployed, she had a feeling that this appointment would be over in record time.
                  “And what if the answer comes back different?” he shot back, like there was even a remote chance of that happening.
                  “It won’t. So, there’s no point in being here,” she said impatiently, wondering what the hell was taking the doctor so long.
                  “Then what if I said that I would give you your job back if you gave this a chance?” he said, instantly putting her on guard and making her wonder if he was screwing with her, but one look at his face told her everything that she needed to know.
                  He had something to prove.
                  She should say no, walk away and find a new job and hope that her past didn’t follow her, but Melanie had been right about one thing this morning. She did love the Fire & Brimstone. As much as she hated to admit it, he’d probably offered her the only thing in the world that would make her even consider going through with this hell again.
                  Knowing that he probably wouldn’t make this offer again, she nodded and graciously said, “Only if it comes with a raise.”

Chapter 9
    Two soul-crushing weeks later…
                  “What if we put a couple of computers on the tables by the back corner?” his own personal version of hell asked distractedly as she continued to gaze around the large open dining area, looking for more changes to make.
                  “No,” he said evenly, taking a bite out of his cheeseburger as he looked over last night’s sales, hoping that she would take the hint and leave him alone.
                  “It might bring in a new customer base,” she said, using the three words that she seemed to have fallen in love with over the last two weeks.
                  “No, it wouldn’t,” he said, wondering why she couldn’t leave him alone for five minutes so that he could enjoy his after lunch snack in peace.
                  “But, it might if you gave away free internet and-” she started to explain in that excited tone of hers that she’d developed recently, the one that told him that she was