Page 2 of Whiskey Wednesdays

He thought for a second. “The man with the large hat who trims the hedges?”

“Yes,” I ground out. “And his name is Javier Cruz. He’s been working here fortwo years.” He’d called my dad “the man with the large hat.” My throat hurt from wanting to yell at him.

His phone vibrated and he looked down at it. “You don’t know what I’m talking about then, eh?” I could hear his Canadian accent a little.

“No.” My voice sounded strangled.

“Okay then.” He strode away without another word.

Hadn’t I heard somewhere that Canadians were usually friendly? That one certainly wasn’t. I picked up the watering can and continued watering the plants while trying to rein in my temper.

Dad lived in the small caretaker home on the sprawling estate. Potted herbs and a red geranium dotted his kitchen windowsill, and his eclectic book collection overflowed the shelves lining the wall.

A stunted black and white shorthair cat named Marshawnda kept him company. We called her Shawnda for short. She’d been half dead and had a terrible eye infection when Dad found her, and the vet hadn’t been able to save her eye.

“How do shrimp wraps with homemade kimchi sound for dinner?” he asked.

Dad was lean and weathered from working outside all day. He’d given me his tan skin tone and dark hair, which now had streaks of gray in it. His eyes were his most startling feature. They were a light golden brown, and my brother Liam and I had inherited them.

“It sounds great. And we can playTicket to Ride, Europewhile we eat. You ready to lose again?”

He smirked. “I thought memory loss usually came with old age.”

Before my mom died, my family would play games together at least three or four times a week. It took Dad a couple of years before he could play with us again after she died. But when Liam gave him the popular German-style board game for his birthday, there was no going back.

Dad sniffed. “Are you going to play dirty again, and block my train routes instead of trying to build your own?”

I smiled and laid out the board that showed train tracks snaking through Europe, then started dealing out the cards. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times, old man. You need to abandon your flawed strategy of focusing on your long train route.”

Shawnda wound her way around my feet, then jumped up into my lap, and I absently scratched behind her ears.

“Oh really? Who won last time?” He held his hand up to his ear. “What’s that? I can’t hear you.”

I laughed and smacked his arm. As we played, we talked about my schooling and upcoming schedule. I’d be finishing my clinical hours during winter semester to complete my physician’s assistant master's degree.

In December, I planned to move to a little apartment nearby in Palm Springs to finish up the last of my hours and be near my dad.

He grinned. “I can’t believe you’re so close to graduating.”

I used a wildcard to block one of his routes, and he frowned down at the board.

“It feels like I’ve been going to school forever. I’m glad the university worked with me so I could finish here.”

“It’ll be nice to have you around.” He patted my hand.

“I met your new boss today. Well, kind of.” Drawing a card, I studied the board. “He started spewing a to-do list at me, and wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise before he tried to walk away.” I left out the part where I’d lost my temper.

“Did you tell him who you are?”

“Yeah, finally. He thought I was his new assistant. When I told him he said, ‘okay then’ and walked away.”

Dad shrugged. “That sounds about right. Did you see his brother, Noah?”

“No. He was alone.”

He put his cards down. “I can’t remember if I mentioned last night that Connor’s younger brother, Noah, sometimes comes and stays at the main house.”

“I don’t remember you mentioning him.”

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