Parker chuckled. “True. But that’s not what I meant. Whoever killed her went out of their way to set me up for it. Why? I don’t get it.”
“Do you have any enemies?”
“I haven’t had any enemies since I came back from the war.” He wrung his hands. “I keep to myself, Lily. I don’t interact with a lot of people. Unless they have something to do with the dogs I rescue, I don’t generally bother.”
“Yeah, I can see that about you.” I sat down as the coffeepot hissed and gurgled.
“I’m sorry,” he said, picking at a chip in the table’s laminate top.
“For what?” I was at a loss for what he could possibly be sorry for.
“Yesterday.” He tapped his thumb. “At the jail yard. The way I went after that guy. I…I don’t like that you saw me that way.”
He was earnest in his apology, which is why I didn’t try to minimize his feelings about the situation. But honestly, random violence is the norm in a Shifter community. I’d been exposed to it my whole life. “You were under a lot of stress.”
“When that guy talked to you the way he did.” He shook his head. “I was wound up pretty tight already.”
I decided to broach the subject of his anxiety. He’d brought up the war earlier, so I didn’t think it was out of the blue for me to ask. “Do you suffer from PTSD? I mean, from your service?”
He nodded but didn’t meet my eyes. “I don’t like to talk about it.”
“That’s all right. We don’t have to talk about it.” A final hissing signaled the coffee was finished. The aroma of the smooth, dark roast filled the kitchen. I got up and poured us both a cup.
“Elvis saved my life.”
He’d said as much at dinner my first night in town, but not how. “Was he a military dog?”
Parker laughed, the mirth brightened his sky-blue eyes. “No.” He took the cup from me and put his hand over the top to warm his palm. “I was at BAMC down in San Antonio—”
“Bamsee?” That sounded made up.
He grinned. “Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston. It’s an Army base in San Antonio. It’s where they sent me after I was patched up to recover.”
“Patched up from what?”
“I really hadn’t planned to talk about this.”
“Up to you.” I took a sip of my coffee, the dark, hot caffeine was like manna for my taste buds. I suppressed a groan of pleasure. Maybe that coffeepot was worth the wait.
Parker pushed his chair back a little from the table. “Firefight in Yemen. I took a bullet in my left shoulder and another in the chest. It missed my heart by a few inches.”
“Goddess,” I whispered. I knew he’d probably seen some awful stuff, but he’d nearly died. “Are you…”
“I’m fine now.” He flexed his left hand. “Some weakness in my fingers and I don’t have the rotation in my shoulder that I used to have, but other than that it’s all healed up.”
“And Elvis. Where did he come in?”
“Things got dark for me stateside. My military career was over, and…” He closed his eyes. He shook his head and opened his eyes again. “The nightmares. Not just about getting wounded. It was a mess there. I lost several buddies.”
“I’m sorry, Parker.”
“A friend of mine wanted to adopt a dog from a kill shelter, and I went with him. Elvis was scheduled to be put down that week if no one adopted him. Two seconds after we met, I knew he was mine. That night, I had the best sleep I’d had in two years. Elvis tucked in on me, and I felt…calm.”
I got it. Seriously. Smooshie made me feel the same way. Speaking of. She nudged her nose under my hand. “You decided to get up, eh?” She wagged her tail as I rubbed her shoulders and scratched her lower back. “It sounds like you rescued him, and he returned the favor.”
Parker smiled. “You’re right. The reason he’s so behaved is because we did a training course. He’s a certified emotional support dog. Which means I can take him with me to most places.”
“But not jail.”
He nodded. “Not jail.”
“Hence the anxiety and the violent reaction to the douchebag in the yard.”
“You nailed it.” He reached over and scratched Smooshie under the chin. “I didn’t like the way he talked to you.” His intense gaze made my insides squishy.
“I…I’m glad you’re back home.”
“Hopefully, I’ll get to stay.”
“Well, I’ve been checking around on the case. I think I have some leads. I don’t know if anything will pan out, but I know you didn’t do this, and I plan to prove it.”
Parker leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “You should let the police handle the case.”
“Because that’s worked out so well for you. As far as Sheriff Avery is concerned, he has all the evidence he needs to convict you with that stupid bat. It’s ridiculous.”
“You better watch it, Lily Mason. You keep talking like that, someone might suspect you like me.”
Oh, no. My heart tittered. “I would help anyone I thought was innocent,” I protested. Heat crept up to my ears. I was not a virgin, not for many years, so I wasn’t sure why Parker made me feel like a giddy school girl. His dark eyelashes swept his cheek as he blinked and it was as if I could see the whole thing in slow motion.
Stop it, I reprimanded myself. Human. As Buzz said, I could have fun with them, but there could be no long-term future for Parker and me. The problem was, if I let myself have fun with Parker, I knew I would want to keep him.
“It’s all right, Lily Drew,” he said, making a Nancy Drew reference. “I’m just teasing you. Seriously, though. I don’t want you to get in trouble. Or worse. Hurt because you’re trying to help me.
“I’m supposed to have coffee with Nadine Booth this morning at the diner.” And I needed to talk to Freda. I had a lot of questions about those photographs I found at Eds. Though, I wasn’t going to tell Parker about my clandestine B&E with my uncle last night. “She’ll tell me what the medical examiner has to say about Ed.”
“Really?”
“Uhm, maybe you better keep that to yourself.”
“Will do. I better get down to the shelter. Theresa and the other volunteers all showed up this morning, thank heavens, but I should probably be there.”
“Do you want to have lunch this afternoon?”
His face lit up, making him look less exhausted. “Sure. I’d really like that.”
“I’ll see you at noon then.”
“Noon it is.”