“You were busy,” she said as he started setting everything out on the patio table.
“This?” His shoulders lifted. “Most of it’s just stuff from Trader Joe’s that I nuked.”
“Well, it still looks good.”
He came over to her then and cast a practiced eye over the skirt steak sizzling away on the grill. “Speaking of which, that looks about done. Let me dish it up.”
She handed over the tongs, and he picked up the carne, then deposited it on a plate. Standing this way, he was very close to her, and she shivered. In a good way…but still.
Seeming to notice, he inquired, “Getting cold?”
“No,” she said hastily. “Just hunger pangs, I guess.”
“Well, let’s fix that.”
They went and sat down, and he dished some rice and beans on her plate, along with a tortilla.
“I usually roll it in a tortilla and put some peppers on top. It’s good that way.”
Caitlin thought that sounded better than good, so she assembled her food the way Alex had described while he busied himself with uncorking the wine and pouring some into her glass.
“I hope you’re okay with the wine. Back in the car, it sounded as if you were worried about getting something to drink.”
Wincing, she said, “I hope you don’t think I’m a lush.”
“Hardly.” He flashed her a smile, then added, “I don’t know too many people who wouldn’t need a drink after what you’ve been through today.”
Maybe that was true. Right now she felt like a coward for sitting here on this fabulous patio and sitting down to eat with an equally fabulous guy. She should be doing something, shouldn’t she? There had to be something she could do to help her friends.
Problem was, there wasn’t much she really could do. Not until that third eye of hers…or whatever it was…woke up and started giving her some of the information she so desperately needed.
“Possibly,” she allowed.
Alex seemed to sense her internal turmoil, because he leaned forward slightly and said, “I know this must be hard for you, but really, I think the best thing to do is relax as much as you can. Worrying won’t change anything.”
That was probably true. And it seemed the quickest path to relaxation was drinking some of that wine, so she lifted her glass. “Okay…I’ll try.”
“That’s a start.” He raised his glass and clinked it against hers, as if sealing some sort of agreement.
She took a sip. Wine was sort of a part of Verde Valley culture, but her parents had been strict about her not drinking before she turned twenty-one. It hadn’t stopped her from trying alcohol, of course, since not everyone in town was as uptight on the subject of underage drinking, but she’d never been one of the party girls, the ones who managed to get wasted at almost every high school get-together. Anyway, no one drank wine at those parties. Beer and tequila shots and sometimes whiskey, all of which she’d thought were pretty nasty. Margaritas were a different story, but no one bothered with mixed drinks when it was so much easier to get drunk on the straight stuff.
This wine, though…it was smooth and dark and rich, and sent a comforting warmth down her throat. Some of the tense, knotted-up sensation seemed to leave her neck and shoulders, and she pulled in a breath.
“Better?” Alex asked.
“Starting to be,” she replied, then sipped again before setting the glass down so she could get to work on that carne asada. Drinking too much on an empty stomach could be dangerous for a number of reasons. She sent a sidelong glance in Alex’s direction, but he seemed intent on his food as well, eating a forkful of black beans before returning to his own rolled-up tortilla filled with meat and roasted peppers.
They ate without speaking for a few minutes. He seemed to sense that she didn’t want to talk. Or at least, he was willing to sit back and let her initiate the next round of conversation, for which she was grateful. There were so many things she did want to talk about, but wasn’t sure how to begin the dialogue.
A few more sips of wine gave her the courage to ask, “Alex — what’s going on with your grandmother? I mean, I’ve heard Angela talk about her, and — ” Caitlin wasn’t sure how to say, and she sure never mentioned how sick your prima was, so she let the sentence break off half-finished.
But he seemed to know exactly how she had intended to finish the thought. Brows drawing together, he drank some more of his own wine, then replied, “We’ve been trying to keep it quiet. Most of the time there isn’t all that much interaction between our clans, so it wasn’t that difficult. And for the past few years my mother has been handling some of the ‘go-between’ kind of stuff for our prima anyway, so if Angela called to get permission for you and your friends to come down to Tucson and spoke to Luz instead of Maya, no one would think it was that strange.”