He managed to look embarrassed. Sort of. “Yeah, I might have eaten here once or twice.”
Caitlin decided to leave that aside for now. Her stomach had really woken up when it got a whiff of the savory smells that filled the restaurant, and pretty much everything on the menu sounded good — it was Mexican food, but an artsier kind than she was used to. “Do you recommend anything?”
“Their mole is really good, and pretty much any of the tacos, depending on what you like. And we definitely need to have some of their sangria.”
That did sound good. A few glasses of sangria, the two of them tucked into this intimate corner…anything could happen.
And nothing should happen, she told herself. You’re eating because you’re hungry. This is not a date.
Then she remembered that she had no I.D., no money. Alex had paid for everything at Old Tucson Studios, and she hadn’t protested because she didn’t want to make a scene, but she couldn’t let him keep on doing that indefinitely.
“And what about me having no driver’s license to prove I’m of age?” she asked in an undertone. “They’re totally going to card me.”
“No, they won’t,” he replied, apparently not worried by the situation at all. “It’ll be fine.”
She raised an eyebrow at him, but didn’t have a chance to protest further, since a waiter showed up right then and asked for their drink orders. “A mason jar of the sangria de rosé,” Alex said without batting an eye, and the waiter just nodded and said, “Sure,” before heading off toward the bar.
“What, do you have Matías’ mind-control abilities or something?” she inquired. “I always get carded. Always.”
“Like I said, they know me here. And they know I wouldn’t be out on a date with someone under twenty-one.”
A date. He called it a date. But had he really meant it, or just used the word as shorthand for whatever they were actually doing? “So have you brought a lot of ‘dates’ here?”
His gaze slid away from hers. “A couple.”
Of course he had. Someone like Alex, good-looking, with a good job and an awesome house? He was probably knee-deep in girls wanting to go out with him. But had they been civilians, or the kind of distant cousins it was okay to have a relationship with? Probably a mixture of both, if her own experience was any indication. Having to hide the truth about who you were from a civilian could be a real pain, but having an ex who was also part of the extended family could be even trickier….
She was distracted from that line of thought by the arrival of the chips and salsa. Thank the Goddess. At least she’d have something to munch on along with the sangria.
Which appeared almost immediately after the chips, forcing her to make a quick scan of the menu and decide on the carne asada tacos, while Alex got the mole. He poured some sangria into her glass and then into his. She waited a second after she lifted her drink, wondering if he was going to clink glasses with her or something. But apparently he thought that wouldn’t be in the best taste, considering their current situation, so she continued bringing the glass to her lips as if her hesitation had been for some completely different reason.
“So what now?” she asked.
He was munching on a chip, and waited to swallow before he replied, “I don’t know — there are a few places nearby where we can listen to live music after dinner, if you want.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“No, I guess not.” His fingers wrapped around his sangria glass, but he didn’t drink. Instead, his dark eyes watched her steadily as he said, “What are we supposed to do? Obviously, my mother’s working on it in the background, since she has Miguel snooping around and doing what he can, but I don’t know how much that’s really going to help. Even if someone saw Matías and the other two guys when they took you to that rental house, what good is that going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Caitlin responded. She’d never been much for reading mysteries or watching detective shows, preferred science fiction and fantasy instead. Head in the clouds, her brother used to tease her. It certainly hadn’t prepared her for this sort of situation. Still, she wracked her brain, trying to think of something they might have missed. “Maybe…maybe if someone did notice the warlocks, then saw them drive away with Roslyn and Danica?”
Alex’s expression brightened somewhat at that suggestion. “Okay. Did you see a car when you went to the house?”
Time for more brain-wracking, as little as she wanted to revisit those harrowing memories. She’d been sort of out of it at the time, thanks to Matías’ grip on her mind. But she’d noticed what the house looked like, more or less, and as far as she could recall, she didn’t remember seeing a car in the driveway or parked out front. She supposed they could have hidden it in the garage; even if they didn’t have a remote, they could’ve opened the door from the inside once they had access to the rest of the house.