because I hadn't been very involved with interview processes before. I worked remotely most of the time so I didn't get that much input in who was hired for what. That would probably change now that I'd been promoted, which meant today would be good practice for the future.
Learning new skills was important, right?
Cam and I discussed what we wanted the assistant manager to do and how often we wanted her to work. Since she had another part-time job, we'd have to work out the schedule from the very beginning. We also each picked four interview questions based on suggestions from Brody. He'd come in earlier with Jacks and the two of them were too cute for words. He'd been aghast at the idea that we were going into this interview without a detailed list of questions. I thought we'd done a pretty good job even though Cam rolled her eyes at my first one.
"What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?" she asked incredulously.
"Of course. We make and sell ice cream. What if she's a psychopath who only eats vanilla? We can't hire someone like that."
"There's nothing wrong with vanilla ice cream," Cam argued. "Vanilla ice cream, especially homemade, is delicious."
"It is, but it shouldn't be anyone's favorite."
Cam shook her head but stopped arguing with me. Probably because she didn't want to scare the potential hire with our bickering as soon as she walked in the door.
"Is Lee a family name or just short for her real name?" I asked.
"She rarely uses her real name, which is Lyria, and probably sticks to her nickname because her brothers refused to call her anything but Lee since she was a baby."
"Lyria is a pretty name. How many brothers does she have again?"
"Four."
That was right. Four brothers. Jeez. "Damn, are they older, younger, mixed age, what?"
"Older," Cam answered.
"Wow, I bet it was hard to be Lee growing up with four older brothers."
Cam nodded. "Oh, yeah. The Prescott boys were all well-known and much avoided when they were in high school. They're all a year or so apart, and at one point in time, all four of them were in high school together."
"I take it they weren't well-behaved," I muttered.
Cam laughed. "Nope. Definitely not. Lee is the youngest by six years. I think her parents gave up on the idea of having a girl but she was a surprise baby."
"So you know them pretty well?"
"I know her family and her brothers better than I do her. The youngest brother, Scott, was in J.J.'s graduating class."
"Scott Prescott?" I asked.
Cam nodded, her eyes dancing with mirth.
"No wonder he was wild as hell with a name like that. He deserved to take his revenge on his parents for that moniker."
"Okay, Sierra Nevada Watkins."
Oh, no she didn't go there.
I glared at her. "And that's exactly why I'm picking the worst nursing home I can find when my parents are too old and feeble to fight back."
She rolled her eyes, probably because she knew I was lying. "Speaking of Mr. and Mrs. Watkins, how are they doing?"
"Meh," I answered with a shrug. "I haven't heard from them in a few months, but the last time Mother Dearest called, they were in the Bahamas."
"A few months?"
"You know my parents," I said with a shrug.
There was a familiar sting in the vicinity of my heart at the words, but it wasn't as painful as it used to be. After nearly three decades of benign neglect, I'd learned not to expect too much from my parents. I didn't think they were capable of anything other than the distant form of affection they'd shown me for as long as I could remember.
In all the ways that truly mattered, I'd met my real mom and dad the first time that Cam brought me home for dinner in college.
"Those people," Cam muttered beneath her breath.
She didn't get to finish her thought because a young brunette woman entered the shop. People turned to look and smiled or waved before they returned to their ice cream.
"Wow, Lee grew up," Cam said beneath her breath as she watched the woman coming toward us.
Wow was right. Lee wasn't the right name for a woman as stunning as this one. She wasn't as tall as Cam, but she was a little taller than me.
She also looked like a model. Her long brown hair was parted down the middle and fell around her shoulders in a smooth curtain. Her face was a perfectly symmetrical arrangement of large brown eyes so dark