“I’m super hungry,” Elisa admitted. “The pickled beets and goat cheese look interesting, and the braised pork shank sounds amazing.”
“It does.” He put his menu down. “I’m thinking I want to try the fried risotto balls and don’t tell Gary or Greg.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Because of the innuendo they’d make?”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “Because there’s mushrooms in the risotto and they’d get on my case about eating fungus.”
“They don’t like mushrooms?” Her brows drew together in her puzzlement. She was extremely cute.
“It’s a long story involving Boom and this phase she went through where we had to justify to her why she needed to eat anything. We had protein and vegetables covered but fungus was a harder sell.”
Elisa laughed.
Dinner went faster than Rojas thought possible. Service was good. Souze was well behaved. Every table at the café was filled and it was a small space, but the outdoor seating had enough room for him to relax. He wouldn’t have chosen to sit outdoors if it hadn’t been for Sophie’s suggestion and the fact that Souze sat with him. Despite the GSD’s chill demeanor, his ears twitched back and forth with every sound. Watchful. Meaning Rojas could ease his watch a little. Enough to enjoy the evening.
Elisa had just tried one of a trio of mousses, and her eyes almost rolled into the back of her head, when a woman in a dress suit approached their table.
“Elisa! There you are!” The woman’s voice had been pitched to carry and everyone in the restaurant turned to look as she took the last few steps to their table.
Startled, Elisa blinked up at the woman. “Julie. What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you, obviously.” As the woman waved her hand, a strong mix of cheap perfume and hairspray wafted over to Rojas. “Your mother is incredibly worried, so when Joseph contacted us to let us know he’d found you, I offered to fly over on the first available flight.”
He held his breath until he thought the evening breeze must have dissipated the pungent smell. “Did you fly in alone?”
Julie looked at him as if she’d only just noticed him. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business, whoever you are, but yes.”
Julie crossed her arms, forcing her low-cut shirt lower and showing off some very impressive cleavage. There was a calculating look in her eye for a split second and then it was gone. She was checking to see if he’d checked her out.
Rojas didn’t lean back or away from her, instead reaching forward to brush Elisa’s hand on the table with his fingertips. Hopefully, she’d take it as a comfort. Whoever this Julie was, she’d caught Elisa by surprise and the tension was becoming palpable.
“I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch with my mother.” Elisa didn’t take her hand away from his, but she didn’t look at him, either. “But I did share my reservations about checking in with her.”
Julie rolled her eyes. Hard. “Which is why we are all incredibly worried about you. Disappearing without any warning. Leaving your fiancé. Hopping all over the country over the last few months. You were under a lot of stress planning your wedding, and I really think taking all those pills was getting out of hand.”
Rojas went cold. “Pills?”
No. Absolutely not. If there was one hard line he had, it was abuse of those damned medications.
“Oh? Don’t worry, they’re all prescribed medications.” Julie fluffed her hair. “Taking a couple a day is no big deal. I took a diazepam before I hopped on the flight over here. Couldn’t fly without it. But, really, it got to a point where every time we saw Elisa, her eyes were vacant and glazed. She was always bumping into something.”
“I was depressed, not drugged. And I don’t bump into things more often than anyone else does. When I’ve gotten distracted, I’ve bumped into the front desk back at work even. You know this.” Elisa tried to turn her hand to catch his, but he withdrew it. “Joseph got the medications for me, but I wouldn’t take them.”
He didn’t want to hear it. The words “prescribed” and “medication” echoed inside his head, and all he could think of was his late wife’s slurred voice yelling at him over the phone, telling him it was his fault she needed her pills. After all, he was never home, always out of communication when on missions. They’d never known exactly when he was leaving or when he’d be coming back.
“Please.” Julie’s tone turned sarcastic. “You expect us to believe the way you changed, the way you were walking around like nothing around you was touching you, was because you were depressed? I don’t think so. Your mother was already talking to Joseph about maybe limiting those prescriptions. He said you insisted you needed them to cope.”
Rojas stared at Elisa, hard. He’d told her about his late wife. She knew how he felt about those damned pills. “You should have told me.”
Elisa’s eyes widened, hurt flashing, but he clamped down on the part of him that cared whether he hurt her or not.