“Okay, okay.” Rob held up his hands. He gave Liam a conspiratorial look. “She’s feisty, this one.”
Liam pierced him with a glare. “She’s a lady, and I’ll thank you to keep a respectful tongue in your head.”
Rob leaned back in his chair in surprise. “Whoa, there, my man. I was just kidding around.” He glanced at Cora with a barely concealed smirk. “No hard feelings, right? Lady?”
Cora turned to leave. “Come on, Liam.”
“Where are you going?” Rob called after them.
She spun around. “Did anyone talk to the pawnshop owner to see if he noticed anything?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then that’s where we’re going. He lives upstairs from his shop, and he watches the neighborhood with the same level of dedication that you watch Real Housewives.”
Rob sucked in a breath. “You know about that?”
Now it was Cora’s turn to smirk. “Everyone knows, Hopper.”
“Damn,” Rob muttered. “Joe promised not to tell.”
“Your partner’s not the one who let it slip,” she said. “Remember last week at Danté’s when you had too many shots of tequila?”
He nodded.
“You sang like a bird.” With that, Cora opened the kitchen door, and Liam followed her into the hall.
“Who is that man to you?” he asked as she led him out of the building. “I didn’t like his tone with you. Why did he call you Peaches?”
Cora glanced at him sideways. “It was just a nickname he gave me a long time ago. He knows it bugs me, which is why he does it. Rob and I go way back. We used to date in high school, but that was when we were young and foolish.”
A flash of jealousy spiked through him. “That man used to call on you?”
She gave him an odd look. “I mean, yeah. He called me all the time. Teenagers and their phones, you know.”
“But you’re not together anymore,” he said, just to make sure.
“God, no.” She laughed as she stopped at a shiny sedan and unlocked the doors. “That ended a lifetime ago.”
Good. One less obstacle to worry about. “Yet, he still calls you Peaches,” he grumbled, getting into the car. “I don’t like it.”
“Hey, ease up there.” Cora gave him a strange look. “Rob’s actually a decent guy. He just likes to tease me. Besides, it was a long time ago and there’s nothing there, trust me. He’s like a brother.” Cora pulled the car out of the parking lot and onto the busy street. “I was barely seventeen when we dated,” she explained. “We were just dumb kids.”
His scowl deepened. That was the same age she’d been when she fell in love with him. “Seventeen is plenty old enough to know your mind.”
Cora scoffed. “Hardly. If I still had to be with the guys I dated when I was a teenager, I’d die of embarrassment.”
“Oh, is that so?” He didn’t like where this conversation was headed. He certainly didn’t like thinking about Cora being courted by other men. Hugh was supposed to be a good father. What kind of a man would let his daughter go all over town with multiple suitors? “Exactly how many were there?”
“Guys?” Cora seemed oblivious to Liam’s growing annoyance. “Not nearly as many as I’d have liked. My dad was ridiculously protective, and most boys were too afraid to date me.”
Thank God for small mercies, Liam thought darkly. Hugh was a decent father, after all.
“Some of them were real winners,” Cora said with a laugh. She hit a yellow light at an intersection and slowed to a stop, then flashed him a smile filled with scandalized glee. “One guy was even a thief.”
Liam’s gut clenched.
“Ironic, isn’t it? Me being a cop, and all.”