No Pressure

by Elle Keaton

  Joey James has given up on finding his ‘Prince Charming’. There is no such thing, he needs to be realistic about his chances at a lasting relationship. A chance encounter with a former school mate at the local grocery store changes everything-maybe.

  Before Joey can decide what to do about it, he is swept into a terrifying scheme. Forced into helping a dangerous stranger in exchange for his family’s safety, Joey begins a perilous journey into the criminal underbelly of Skagit. He will do whatever is needed to protect his family.

  Buck Swanfeldt had a secret crush on Joey James in high school. Buck’s social anxiety and two-year age difference made it impossible for him to approach Joey then. Life since high school has been challenging, and lonely. Eight years later, fate brings them together and Buck decides to act. He utterly fails. He would have left it at that, except fate seems to be intent on pushing Joey in his direction, and clearly Joey needs someone at his back.

  Dark, sordid secrets hiding in Skagit are bubbling to the surface, danger lurks in unexpected places. Buck has never been anyone’s hero, but something about Joey has him throwing caution to the wind. Together the two men take on a dangerous force greater than themselves. But sometimes our worst enemy is ourselves.

  *warning: may need tissues!

  eBooks are not transferrable.

  They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement

  On the copyright of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and

  incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons,

  living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is

  entirely coincidental.

  Dirty Dog Press

  Seattle, WA 98125

  No Pressure (Accidental Roots 2)

  Copywrite 2017 by Elle Keaton

  Edited by Alicia Z. Ramos

  ASIN: B06XPB6CZ5

  Cover by Zoe Cottingham

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or

  reproduced in any manner without written permission,

  except in the case of brief quotations for critical reviews and articles.

  Ellekeaton.com

  Amazon.com/author/ellekeaton

  Facebook as Elle Keaton

  Twitter @piratequeenrdz1

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  Dedication and Acknowledgements:

  Thank you, everyone.

  To my children, Zoë and Harper who have been incredibly patient, and encouraging, through this endeavor, as well as being my most enthusiastic cheerleaders. Again, Zoë designed the cover without too much complaint about naked men.

  To my editor who edited the heck out of this manuscript, over and above the call of duty. Any errors are mine alone. Alicia probably tried to talk me out of them, yet I insisted.

  The town of Skagit exists only in my imagination as well as the wonderful people who inhabit it, any similarity to real people or places is coincidence.

  This book is a work of fiction and should be treated as such.

  *This publication is intended for adults, aged eighteen and over due to; sexual content, language and other matters adults are supposed to know about but most of us don’t.

  Harry Potter, a multitude of Disney movies, Princess Bride, Cobra, Datsun, Ford Mustang, Mercury Marquis, Honda CRV, are all copy written names which do not belong to me and I thank the companies in advance for letting my characters use them.

  Anyone I have neglected to acknowledge is my fault alone.

  It’s been a wild ride.

  Thank you

  Elle

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  Forty

  Excerpt (No spoilers, just a little taste)

  One

  “Hi.”

  Joey turned toward the deep, tentative voice coming from behind him. It was a distraction from his tropical-paradise daydream in front of the tidy display of seasonal oranges, starring imaginary cabana boys and fruity drinks. One of the oranges was rotten; he could smell it from three feet away. The odor ruined his excitement for mandarins, but not for a sandy beach with toned men in tiny swim trunks.

  A guy he didn’t recognize was hovering a few feet away. Was he talking to Joey? Maybe Joey did recognize him? He saw so many patients every day, but he rarely forgot a face. This face he didn’t think he’d have forgotten. No way. The guy was tall. A high percentage of guys were taller than Joey, but this guy was practically a tree. Joey would get a crick in his neck looking up at him. He had a nice body, Joey couldn’t help noticing, like he spent a lot of time at the gym or just worked hard. Dark blond hair, with long loose curls that swept the collar of his shirt. Yum. Joey smiled. Smiles don’t cost anything, his mom always said.

  “Joey James, right? Buck Swanfeldt.” The silence was awkward. “We went to Franklin at the same time.” Okaaay, so the guy was talking to him. Wow.

  Wracking his brain for a memory of a younger-looking person than the man who was standing in front of him, Joey failed. Because if that had been at the same high school as Joey, no way would he have missed it.

  “Oh. I’m usually pretty good with faces, sorry. It’s nice to meet you again, though.”

  This was becoming more and more awkward with each passing moment. Funny, it was normally Joey who was making a fool of himself. It had become something of a pastime.

  “No, it’s cool. I was a couple years behind you. Anyway, I just wanted to say hi.” The guy rushed the words out in a jumble, then disappeared so quickly down the cereal and baking supplies aisle Joey could almost pretend the interaction had never happened. What the hell had that been all about? He walked over, peering down the aisle, but Buck Swanfeldt had already vanished from sight.

  Suffering from a merciless case of terminal curiosity, Joey dug out one of his old yearbooks when he got home. Oh, lord, he hated being reminded of his senior picture. His stick-straight, reddish-brownish hair had been past his shoulder blades like some sort of wannabe rock star. He looked like a refugee from the 1970s. With the additional shame of pimples and braces.

  Buck Swanfeldt had been in the class two years behind him; who knew? Light-years apart during high school, of course; rarely did juniors and seniors mix with the younger students. Joey still had no idea who Buck was, much less who he’d been back then. Buck’s tiny black-and-white picture looked nothing like the mountain of man who had stopped him by the oranges.

  Joey spent the rest of his evening flipping through his yearbook, snickering at his schoolmates’ bad haircuts and wardrobe choices. Recalling the scandal when another senior had tried to submit a senior portrait of himself dressed up as Harry Potter. Brady Jones and he had argued heatedly about whether Harry had actually graduated or not, and
thus was the portrait even valid as a senior picture. He finished off the rest of a bottle of red wine, totally forgetting to make himself dinner. Oops.

  It wasn’t until the next afternoon, after a brutal shift at St. Joe’s, that he thought about Buck Swanfeldt and wondered if he would see him again. His ER shift had been pure misery. He’d started the day sleepy from the wine and hungry from not eating, and like any good Murphy’s Law-abiding hospital, all hell had broken loose: several car accidents, an accidental poisoning, and an entire girls-under-eight soccer team complaining of stomach pain after a team trip to the local pizza parlor. By the time he checked out for the day, he’d been on his feet over eight hours without even a coffee break. He couldn’t wait to get home and pour himself into bed.

  Even though he was beyond exhaustion, Joey stopped on his way out to the parking lot to chat with his fellow nurses. He loved his job, for the most part, and especially the diverse community he worked with. He wouldn’t trade it for the world. After promising Hasanna, the newest nurse staffing the information station at the front entrance, he would bring something for the staff party the following week, he finally escaped, slipping outside into the bitter cold late December had brought to the city of Skagit.

  A flimsy slip of paper was fluttering against his windshield. His beloved car was twenty years young and an unusual shade of orange, except for the driver’s side door, which a previous owner had replaced with a dark-blue one at some point. He had a sneaking suspicion he was going to be in the market for a new-to-him car soon, but hoped that was a few months away.

  No way did he have a parking ticket; this lot was employees-only. Probably some college kid had been paid to drop flyers on all the windshields. It must have been there for a while. He leaned across the hood and tried snagging it with his numb fingers, but half of it ended up still frozen to his windshield, the other half in his hand. What the hell?

  He’d been staring at it for a while before one of the EMTs he knew walked up behind him, scaring the ever-loving crap out of him.

  “You okay? You look like you saw a ghost,” Robert, his name was Robert, asked.

  Joey hastily crumpled the paper, sticking it in his coat pocket. “Yeah, fine, thanks.”

  He scraped off the other half of the paper before getting into his cold car. Even cranking the heat and blasting the defrost could not dispel the cold Joey felt. Based on a quick glance around, his seemed to be the only car with a flyer on it.

  Two

  Buck could not believe he had run away from Joey James. His built-up inner bravado had fled when he’d seen Joey at Hardwick’s, Skagit’s local organic grocery. It had taken everything he could muster to approach and then stutter out a half-assed greeting. Way to go, Buck. Maybe he had been dropped on his head one too many times. His dad always said he wasn’t good enough for anything but working on cars anyway.

  His plan, such as it was, had failed spectacularly. He read about people all the time who had met while shopping. Was there some kind of grocery-store etiquette he was unaware of? Was it not supposed to happen in produce? Produce seemed to Buck like the best place. After all, a person could get into an intriguing conversation about some of the weirder produce. What was daikon? And that Asian fruit with the super-heavy peel, what did you do with that? Then, in Buck’s imagination, after you met a few times, say, in produce, you would get comfortable and maybe exchange a recipe. Phone numbers to follow. And so forth.

  In hindsight, maybe not a great plan.

  Buck had run away. Oh, god, no one was even around and he could feel embarrassment crawling up the back of his neck, his face heating up. If he had ever had a chance with Joey, he’d blown it. No self-respecting guy would want to be with him if he couldn’t even approach them like a normal person. His face was hot with shame just thinking about their encounter.

  In Buck’s defense, it had been beyond obvious that Joey had no idea who he was. Joey may not have known that they had gone to high school together. Buck himself had mostly forgotten Joey until he’d spotted him at the hospital after that wild ride with Micah Ryan and the other folks who had come crashing out of the blackberry brambles that crazy day a couple of weeks ago. He now knew that one of them was Bear, a Ukrainian refugee of sorts, and the other, Perla, was still in the hospital with a head injury.

  The only person Buck had noticed once they all arrived at St. Joe’s emergency room had been Joey. But Joey hadn’t seen him. Being a reasonably practical person—after all, neither one had spoken to the other for at least ten years—Buck hadn’t been offended. Of course, he hadn’t said anything, either.

  His business, Swanfeldt’s Auto and Body, which he had taken over after his dad passed, kept him busy. Buck did most of the restoration work himself, and had one guy to help with repairs and maintenance. Buck had been working on cars since middle school. Cars were easy, unlike people; cars didn’t harbor hidden motives requiring Buck to navigate a labyrinth of unspoken rules. They could be bitches, but they always gave up their secrets to him eventually.

  The shop was cold today. He rubbed his arms to try and warm up a little, hoping his furnace wasn’t crapping out on him. Due to Adam Klay, he had enough work right now to get him through to spring without taking on any new restorations. Unfortunately, the way his shop was currently set up, he couldn’t do a lot of the work he needed to. He needed more space. It was a case of horse or cart. He was going to have to talk to the bank. Two of Adam’s cars were almost pristine, considering they’d sat for thirty or forty years inside a damp shed. The ’69 Camaro and ’75 Charger needed only comparatively minor cosmetic work aside from rebuilding their magnificent engines.

  The one he worshiped, the ’68 Pontiac GTO…she needed real love to be brought back. He sensed the power she harbored under her hood, and the tips of his fingers tingled in anticipation. There were modifications he needed to make to his shop before he would even consider working on her. This one was going to be amazing—if he ever got the space, and didn’t freeze to death.

  The front door lurched open with a screech, and Miguel Ramirez sauntered in. Five minutes late, as usual, but the guy was an incredible mechanic, so Buck didn’t mind. Buck cared that locals who brought their cars to his shop were treated right. Right price, right work, at the right time. Miguel had never let him down. A few minutes late or not, he was worth three lazy or inept mechanics.

  The three shadows sulked in the cold silence of the shop, biding their time. Waiting and watching.

  “When do we get to start working on them, boss?” Miguel asked, seeing where Buck’s attention lay.

  Miguel had shown up at Buck’s front door one day tentatively asking about work. He’d been cold and soaking wet, with a large backpack slung over his shoulder. Buck hadn’t needed any help at the time. He’d had a part-time guy he called when his customers all decided to get tune-ups at the same time. Something about Miguel made Buck take a chance.

  Three years later, Buck still didn’t know a whole lot about Miguel except that the man was an artist with a wrench. He’d lost a few customers who didn’t appreciate a “Mexican” working on their car. Miguel had looked worried about that, but Buck didn’t want those customers anyway. With Miguel’s talented help his business had ticked steadily upward, and now he was looking to expand his shop.

  “Still sourcing parts for the Pontiac. She had to go and be special,” he sighed. “Plus, getting them apart and back together is going to take too much space away from our bread and butter.”

  “We need more space, boss.”

  “Yeah.”

  They stared at the slumbering beauties under their sheets, taking up two of the three bays. No way was he leaving them outside. In fact, he probably also needed to beef up security for the shop. The old-school alarm system his dad had installed was so out-of-date it belonged in a museum.

  “You know,” Miguel offered, “that print shop, or whatever it is next door, nobody’s been there for weeks. Maybe even a month. The stuff that guy was working o
n is just sitting there and the mail has been piling up.”

  For a guy who was perpetually late, Miguel was very observant. Buck had been thinking along the same lines. “Yeah, well, for now let’s roll up the gate and get on with the day.”

  “Yeah, boss.”

  The day went quickly, the two of them managing to get four easy tune-ups turned around before noon. Buck grabbed lunch and coffees for both of them from the Booking Room. Miguel loved their sandwiches, but refused to set foot in there as it was across from the Skagit police station. Miguel claimed he and the station were mutually intolerant.

  “It’s like being lactose intolerant; as long as I stay away, it doesn’t bother me. One sip and I’m miserable for days.”

  “Are you lactose intolerant?”

  “What? No. That’s like a metaphor, Bucky.”

  “Don’t call me Bucky.” Buck frowned.

  “Oh, come on, everybody has the hots for Bucky, even Captain America.”

  Miguel thought he was funny. Except Buck had never told anyone he was gay, never said the words out loud. He knew Miguel was just teasing, but it still freaked him out. He didn’t care…so much as hate it when people knew personal details about him. His sexuality didn’t define him; why should it matter to others? He hated it even when people asked him what he did the previous weekend—he always felt like they were filing his answer away so they could judge him later.

  And that was probably why he’d run away into the baking aisle last night. Like the coward he was.

  Three

  The slip of paper, once Joey pieced it back together like he was archaeologist, was a printout of a picture of the front of his parents’ house. Nothing else was on it. He sat in his car after assuring Robert that he was fine, trying to think why something like that would be on his windshield and who would put it there. He came up with nothing.

  In the end, instead of going home to his apartment and the bed he had been fantasizing about for ten hours, he headed over to see his mom. His parents had purchased a home near Elizabeth Park more than fifty years earlier and lived in it their entire adult lives. It was hard for his mom to be there alone now. Especially since Joey’s dad hadn’t passed, only moved to a “memory care facility” after being diagnosed with severe dementia. Maureen had insisted on keeping the house, which, though Joey didn’t mind, meant he spent more time there than at his own apartment.