“Fresh out.”

“What’s this?” He held up her pink Tinkle Belle.

“Ice cream scoop.”

“Weird-looking ice cream scoop.” He began to pull it from its plastic bag.

“Leave it alone.” She hadn’t needed to use it recently, but still...

Enlightenment struck. He gazed through the plastic bag at the Tinkle Belle, then at her. “I always wondered how women—”

“Now you know. Put it back.”

She’d parked catty-corner from the beat-up Pilsen row house where Hill lived. As Tejano music blared from a vintage clothing shop next door, Coop flipped open her glove box and rooted around. When he got tired of that, he poked at a loose panel on her dashboard. She willed him to be still so she could try to forget he was there. As if that were possible.

“How do you know your guy’s inside?” he asked.

She pointed toward the top floor. “He’s passed by that corner window a couple of times.”

“Maybe he’s in for the night.”

“Could be.”

“What if he really did throw out his back on the job?”

“Then he deserves his money.”

A lowrider shot past. Coop draped his arm across the seat, his fingers brushing her shoulder. “You don’t always have to be the toughest Viking in the longboat, you know.”

She should never have told him about Duke’s child-rearing habits. She had to retrench. “I’m not a romantic, if that’s what you mean. I don’t dream of a hubby and house full of mini-me’s. I had more than enough of domesticity taking care of my father when I was growing up.” Along with never whining, crying, or admitting uncertainty.

“It’s understandable that your father was overprotective, considering what happened to your mother, but it was dead wrong of him to leave everything to your stepmother.”

Piper shrugged, as if it were no big deal. “What was your mother like?”

“She was adventurous. Funny. Not very domestic. Pretty much the opposite of my old man. A little like you. Except sweet.”

She smiled. The front door of the row house opened, and a nervous-looking guy with a bony face and untidy shoulder-length hair emerged. Piper straightened. “That’s him.”

Hill sat on the lighted stoop and lit a cigarette. Coop watched him smoke for a while, then looked at the time on his phone. “This is like watching paint dry, and it’s barely seven o’clock.”

“You didn’t have to come with me.”

“I was hoping for a high-speed chase.”

So was she.

Wylie stood and stretched. Piper picked up her Nikon, adjusted the focus, and took a couple of shots.

“Not exactly proof of anything,” he said.

“Employers like to know you’re on the job.”