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.

“Fuck. Off,” Aidan, the laziest fucking bastard in the world, said as he buried his head beneath his pillow in a useless attempt to escape the bright bedroom lights that Lucifer had turned on so that he wouldn’t trip over all the medical books, clothes and empty food wrappers thrown everywhere.

“Get up,” he said, hating to repeat himself and his brother knew it.

“No,” Aidan said, reaching blindly for the quilted comforter and yanked it up, over his head to help block out the light and further pissing Lucifer off, because he really didn’t have time to play these games. He was supposed to be going over second quarter taxes tonight, but instead he was here, dealing with this lazy bastard.

“Are you going to stay in bed all fucking night?” he had to ask, because this was really starting to get fucking old.

“All fucking night? It’s barely two in the morning, you asshole!” the fucking prima donna of the family snapped, sounding unreasonably pissed.

“Then you have plenty of time to help me!” he snapped right back as he ripped the comforter off the bastard.

With a growl, Aidan shoved his pillow aside, turned over and…frowned.

“Why do you have a woman thrown over your shoulder?” Aidan asked, shooting the temperamental woman that was no longer speaking to Lucifer, as though that were somehow a punishment, a curious look.

“She’s the favor,” he said, although he felt that it should have been more than obvious.

“Does the favor have a name?” Aidan asked with a calculating gleam in his eye that Lucifer didn’t really care for.

“Pain in the ass,” he said, taking perverse satisfaction in the way that Rebecca’s entire body stiffened against his at the insult.

She wanted to say something, was probably dying to tell him to fuck off, but she wouldn’t say anything since she’d promised never to speak to him again after he’d refused to release her. Why she thought that threat would work on him, he would never know. As soon as she’d said it, it had all but guaranteed that he wouldn’t release her until he got to the bottom of all this bullshit.

“Is Pain in the Ass the favor?” Aidan asked as he sat up.

“She think she’s a hypochondriac,” he said, biting back a smile when he heard her grumble something angrily.

“Is she?” Aidan asked with real curiosity.

Was she?

Probably.

At least, that’s what he’d always thought, but something about the way that she’d called herself a hypochondriac tonight hadn’t sat well with him and he couldn’t figure out why. He should have just nodded, congratulated her on finally figuring out what the rest of the world already knew, but that lost expression when she’d said it had him wondering if there was really something going on.

“No,” he said, surprised to find that he actually believed the little demon.

If she’d looked even remotely happy when she’d announced that she was a hypochondriac, he would have walked away in a heartbeat, happily washing his hands of her, but she hadn’t done that. She’d looked genuinely miserable when she’d said it and that alone had told him that maybe she hadn’t been faking it.

Aidan stood up and said around a yawn, “Make an appointment with my office in the morning and we’ll see what we can do,” as he walked past them and headed towards the bathroom, but unfortunately that just wasn’t going to work for him.

“It is morning,” he pointed out, wondering why his brother was being so difficult about this.

“Make. An. Appointment,” his normally considerate brother bit out, emphasizing every word and making him wonder why he’d come here instead of going to his father with this.

Probably because his father would have kicked his ass as soon as he flicked the lights on. God, his family was so fucking trying sometimes, he thought, deciding that he’d just wait until the office opened in the morning and drag her inside.

*-*-*-*

“Open the fucking door!” the man that had apparently lost his mind in the last twenty-four hours demanded as he continued to pound on their door.

“Yeah, let me get right on that,” she said, biting back a yawn as she stepped over Mojo, pausing as she did so that she could rub the big lazy dog’s large stomach with her foot for a few seconds.

The terrifying snores that she’d become used to momentarily stopped so that he could groan in pleasure, but before she was done giving his stomach a good foot rub he was already snoring again. Smiling, she walked into the kitchen and grabbed a Coke, needing it desperately after the bastard currently banging on her door and threatening to wring her fucking neck if she didn’t get her ass in gear and get ready to go see his brother in five minutes, had kept her up until four this morning.

She still couldn’t understand what had possessed the normally sane, and severely assholish, man to drag her off like that. What she’d actually expected when she’d confessed her worst fear was for him to nod, remind her that she was fired and tell her to have a nice life.

Okay, so the “have a nice life” part was pushing it and she knew it, but she had expected him to wash his hands of her and leave after her grand life-altering announcement. She’d hoped for it at least, but once again life had played a nasty trick on her and decided to make her really screwed up day even more fun by dragging her kicking and screaming out of her apartment just when the movie was getting good.