Accidental Roots The Series Volume 1: an mm romantic suspense box set

by Elle Keaton

  The fog he was used to being enveloped by, used to hiding out in, was his comfort zone. Had been for years. For the most part he could function within its promise of safety and forgetting. A pair of somber brown eyes were proving to be his unraveling. The safe fog was eroding, leaving him exposed and vulnerable.

  Micah had thought he was imagining things; why would anyone watch him? For the last decade he’d managed quite nicely, thank you, without anyone taking notice. He was less interesting than watching paint dry.

  Micah’s brain couldn’t decide whether he should be flattered or run in the other direction, never setting foot in the Booking Room again. It was unnerving. His body was responding to what the stranger’s stare seemed to offer. Of course he was probably wrong, and the guy was not watching him with a kind of hunger Micah had long since stopped dreaming would ever be directed toward him.

  If anything, he became clumsier. More awkward, more self-conscious. He’d never been very good at keeping track of where his arms and legs were; now they seemed to have developed lives of their own. In the past couple of days he’d tripped on empty stretches of sidewalk, knocked over inanimate objects with one or both elbows, and dropped random items from his lifeless grip.

  He was comfortable as a ghost in his own life, drifting through without having to feel, in opposition to the laws of physics. Instead of his actions having equal opposite reactions, or creating energy, Micah’s existence dissipated to nothing, swallowed by the universe. Rather than the butterfly effect, he liked to think of it as the Micah black-hole effect. It was easy to manage. No surprises. No fear.

  Brandon had been the one to point it out to him in a fit of frustration and anger over how Micah lived. Or, rather, didn’t live. Micah hadn’t had the heart to tell Brandon he was a ghost. Maybe he wasn’t dead, but he certainly wasn’t living; had no reason to. Brandon had thrown up his hands in frustration before pulling him in for a tight hug, because Brandon loved him and sometimes was the only reason Micah got out of bed in the morning. Brandon was the only person who had touched him in years. Micah didn’t know what he would do if he stopped.

  Looking up from the crossword puzzle he’d snagged before one of the other regulars got to it, he was caught by a pair of warm brown eyes looking his way.

  Five

  FIVE

  Spring eighteen years ago in Skagit had been brutal: constant heavy rains all over Skagit County and Western Washington. Mudslides, rivers hovering at flood levels, bridges and roads washed out. The weather had felt like an analogy for Adam’s life. The next small push would finish undermining his foundation, bringing it crashing down—every frustration, each glint of anger or dissatisfaction demolishing his emotional sandbags. And it had.

  He had always known he wanted to go into law enforcement. It had seemed an outrageous dream—there was no way Gerald was going to pay for a criminal justice degree—until his SAT and ACT results had come back, and suddenly he was being courted by UCLA, MIT, big names. Adam had never wanted anything so badly. He was tired of being Gerald’s boy. He wanted to be Adam Klay and be proud of it, and to do that he had to get far away from Skagit. Adam had only talked to Gerald a few times over the intervening years. The fight they’d had over Adam deciding to become a cop had been brutal. Unforgivable things had been said. So, yeah, he had been pretty fucking surprised when the lawyers had called him with the news.

  A crash of furniture startled Adam from his dark memories. Cute hopeless guy (Micah—he had to stop thinking of him as cute hopeless guy now that he knew his name) had managed to spill his coffee—again—and when he’d jumped up to avoid the lava flow, he’d knocked his chair over. On autopilot Adam stood up, too, to help or whatever, inadvertently locking eyes with the guy, who looked like he wanted the floor to open up underneath him.

  Sara grabbed a towel while Ed and Adam watched her do her thing, clucking and tsk-ing and taking the blame for overly hot coffee. Micah looked miserable. Adam had never witnessed such a clumsy person.

  “I am so sorry, Micah! I was distracted by my dad and his friend who’s visiting, my bad.”

  Ira had also come out from behind the counter but had nothing to do since Sara Nightingale, Savior of Clumsy Coffee Drinkers, was already on it. He muttered something that Adam couldn’t quite hear, though he was reasonably certain it wasn’t nice.

  “It’s okay,” Micah whispered to his feet. His shoulders were tight, and his face was flushed an unbecoming beet red. The guy was going to stroke out if he kept blushing like that. Adam tried to go back to chatting with Ed and quit watching Micah out of the corner of his eye, but he was having a hard time concentrating on what Ed was saying.

  Ed finally left, promising help with Gerald’s place; he had friends who wanted to pitch in and could donate equipment. Adam was ambivalent about Ed’s help, but he knew if he didn’t accept it he’d never get the place cleaned up. He did not want to go back out to the property by himself. Ed’s assistance would force him to act. Ironic that someone who examined crime scenes on a regular basis couldn’t stomach a nonviolent scene.

  Another coffee disappeared as he sat and watched the drizzle-mist come down. When he’d moved to L.A., he had spent every possible minute outside. Any time off from school or work was spent at the beach, finding hiking spots, or just sitting on the porch. It had taken him about two years to realize the sun was there to stay. He could spend a weekend indoors and wouldn’t emerge to find a nuclear winter had set in. He hadn’t realized he missed the rain.

  The café door swung open and a couple of uniformed officers tramped in. Adam had grudging respect for most of those guys; a few he had a lot of respect for. They had a tough job, were overworked and underpaid. The relationship between the feds and local law enforcement was difficult. Adam tried, but often he lost patience with posturing jerks who made his job even harder. It shouldn’t matter which branch of law enforcement they represented; they were all trying to do the same thing. These particular guys pinged his yahoo radar. And he thought—he hoped not, but he thought—he might recognize one of them.

  He kept his eye on them ordering their coffee and chatting with Sara, half listening to the vague chatter in the shop. Even though it was now late afternoon, traffic was still busy, the tables full. Micah still hunched over his laptop, muttering to himself as his fingers flew over the keys. Adam could see his lips moving. The guy was a wreck; anyone could see that. Sighing, Adam went back to trying to concentrate on paperwork.

  One minute he was staring out the window again, watching raindrops trace a path on the plate glass and contemplating life; the next he was grappling with 180 pounds of man, seeming to consist mainly of arms, legs, and embarrassment.

  “Oh, my god.” Micah struggled to regain his balance without crushing any of Adam’s parts. His handsome face was mere inches away from Adam’s own, and now Adam knew he did have gorgeous green eyes. “I am so sorry. I—” he pushed off Adam’s chest and shoulder, “—never mind.”

  He smelled good. Adam cursed himself for noticing.

  “I’m going home before I kill someone.” Micah’s voice was as shaky as the rest of him.

  “No. Don’t go.” Adam stood, grabbing Micah’s wrist before he could get too far away. “It was my fault. I stuck my legs out there; anyone could have tripped.”

  Micah tugged his wrist out of Adam’s grasp. Adam’s fingers tingled where he’d been holding on. And wasn’t that the stupidest thing he had come up with in a while? With Micah’s scent wafting around, he had lost his ever-loving mind.

  “Let me buy you a coffee?” What the hell was he doing? “It’s the least I can do after setting up a booby trap for you to fall onto … into.”

  Micah stared at him for a heartbeat. He was tall—taller than Adam’s five feet ten, anyway, and much leaner. There had been a reason Adam played football in high school. It wasn’t because he was the best at blocking passes, but because he was built like a fire hydrant; he blocked people.

  Curly brown hair, green
eyes, a few freckles, a little bit of scruff on his cheeks. Very nicely put together. Micah reddened under Adam’s gaze. Sweet.

  “Um, no offense, but I think I should quit while I’m ahead.”

  “I’m Adam Klay, by the way.”

  “Um … I’m, I mean my name is Micah. Micah Ryan. Who knows what the next cup may do? I’ll never get home, and the cat will think I’ve abandoned him so he’ll shred the couch, and … uh.” Micah shut his mouth with a snap, his cheeks a less-dangerous shade of red this time.

  Adam smiled. “Next time, maybe?” He sat back down, vowing to spend the rest of the afternoon working on his own shit and not interfering in the lives of complete strangers.

  Given that the Booking Room happened to be across from Skagit police headquarters, Adam saw cops there every day, along with a fair representation of the rest of Skagit. He’d shuffled all the regular patrons around in his head until he had them fairly well categorized. Lots of cops; a few young mothers who met to gossip. They wore yoga pants and pushed strollers with better suspension systems than his aging Subaru. A group of senior men who shared a large table and complained about anything and everything and for some reason were obsessed with the American Civil War. Pretty standard for the neighborhood.

  Adam watched as a disheveled young woman he’d never noticed before, clutching a grubby backpack, sat down at Micah’s table. Micah startled and then stared at her with his classic confused look. Adam wondered what was going on.

  Finally, Micah said something, so quietly Adam couldn’t hear.

  The girl nodded, not replying, just staring down at the backpack, twisting her hands together. She was young, much younger than Micah. She was pale and looked cold. Not dressed for November weather at all, only worn jeans and a thin T-shirt covered with a paltry windbreaker. Her hair was probably a pretty blonde, but at the moment it was stringy, half falling out of a blue knit beanie. Her eyes darted around the room, and when she caught Adam’s gaze she stood abruptly and hurried down the hallway to the restrooms. Huh.

  Ten minutes later she hadn’t returned. Micah was still sitting there waiting, with his own belongings packed up. Adam had to quit stalking.

  His mother had called a couple of times, so he stepped outside to talk to her, finally admitting that he was in Skagit taking care of Gerald’s business. She expected him at Thanksgiving, she said. Since when?

  “What are you doing? You could have paid someone to do this for you.”

  Adam sighed. She heard him.

  He half listened to her rant at him. When he’d gone to stay with her in California, immediately after graduation, before he started college, he’d been old enough to understand she had never intended to have children. Adam had been an experiment or an accident; either way, an event that she immediately regretted. This need to berate him about his life choices was relatively new. Adam didn’t know what to do with it. He suspected she was bored and didn’t currently have a man-friend to keep her occupied.

  Micah fumbled out the door while Adam was standing under the eaves with his cell phone to his ear. He watched Micah walk away and debated telling his mother an emergency had come up, but his stuff was still inside. Nix. Instead, Adam had a front-row seat while Micah hurried up Main and then turned left, heading into the nearby residential neighborhood. After clicking off his mother’s rant, Adam grabbed his own coat and laptop and headed back to his dismal motel room.

  Six

  SIX

  Micah wondered what it felt like for heart-attack victims when the defibrillator sent that first crucial five hundred volts of electricity flowing through their heart muscle. His skin was on fire; his own living heart beating so quickly he thought it might smash out of his chest.

  Before he could do something extraordinarily foolish, like take the mysterious Adam Klay up on his offer of (more) coffee, Micah gathered his belongings, the pack Jessica left behind, and what was left of his wits, and stumbled out the door. Adam was talking on his cell phone again, but Micah could feel his hot stare against his back as he headed toward the safety of home.

  He had fallen into a handsome stranger’s lap. In public, at his favorite coffee shop. Literally tripped and fallen straight into it. The earth could not open up quickly enough to swallow him. Not his finest hour.

  Who falls into people’s laps? How had it even happened? One minute he had been headed back to his table after a trip to the men’s room, kind of thinking about a late lunch; the next he was ass over teakettle, ending up in the lap of a very attractive man. The first one he had taken notice of in many years. In his defense, his mother used to say he needed to pick up his feet, usually with a big sigh after he’d ended up facedown on the living-room floor or tripped over a crack in the sidewalk.

  That night as he lay in bed, his cat curled up at his feet, Micah thought about Adam Klay. In his bedroom with the curtains drawn against the dark month of November, he could admit he didn’t merely notice Adam Klay, he was attracted to him. Falling into Adam’s lap had been Micah’s version of a defibrillator. His bewildered heart, numb for years, began to beat with hunger and hope. And fear as well, because he’d thought this part of his life was gone. He had purposely let it go.

  Sometimes, your heart wants what it wants. Micah dreamt that night about warm brown eyes, strong shoulders, solid arms he knew could catch him if he fell. They already had.

  Seven

  SEVEN

  Finally, Adam had come to a firm agreement with Ed about cleaning up Gerald’s property. The old man and his daughter had wormed their way, if not into Adam’s heart, at least into some gray area of likeability. Adam blamed it on the caffeine Sara had plied him with over the past few days and Ed’s general refusal to be ignored. As promised, Ed had called some other old friends to help. Adam was reluctant at first, but he recognized that stemmed from not wanting to face the past. Ed and Sara both rushed to reassure him that the guys weren’t carpetbaggers coming to pick over the estate. They were what Ed termed “Gerald’s true friends.” Chances were Adam had met them at one point or another before he’d made tracks for L.A.

  Driving out the previous afternoon to Gerald’s, alone, had been poor planning on his part. Ed needed another day or so to get stuff together; he thought he’d just go and look again. Muscle memory had him exiting I-5, continuing down the narrow state road, and counting driveways until he found the right one. Development had happened here, too. The always-empty five-acre lot next to the road had been developed with a huge post-something, Craftsman-style monstrosity.

  He bumped down the gravel access road, and the enormous cedar tree loomed from the left, its branches sweeping the roof of the car as he inched closer. The sensation of returning to his past was so strong Adam was unable to open his car door. He sat listening to the tick of the engine as silence seeped inside, a blanket covering him.

  The late-afternoon light was gloomy, and there weren’t any porch lights on, just his own headlights shining into the darkness. He turned them off, cursing, wondering if the utilities had finally been cut off. His father may have been a curmudgeon who flipped off the county government every chance he got, but he was also a valuable commodity to the community. Fans came from all over the country, and even the world, to see his work and where it came from, spending lots of money.

  His eyes adjusted as he sat, gloomy dusk turning everything into shades of dark as evening settled in. The hulking log house and looming cedar tree were blacker outlines against the rolling November clouds. Nothing and everything had changed. The Doug firs stood on the other side of the drive, silently watching and waiting. It began to rain harder. He left without getting out of the car.

  They were sitting in the café the next morning while Ed confirmed the time they’d meet to check out the property. He proudly held up his cell phone so Adam could see it, declaring that Sara had dragged him kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century; he could even text. Adam smiled at that and was disturbed to realize he wasn’t used to smiling. Not someth
ing he did a lot in his profession, true. But he’d been happy once. Maybe not overjoyed, but happy. He didn’t think he had always been an asshole.

  The same uniformed guys as before blew in, quickly confirming Adam’s opinion that they were indeed assholes.

  “Hey, little lady, can we get a couple coffees to go?”

  Sara looked up, annoyed. “Sure, Jack, as soon as I get these folks’ drinks.”

  Jack ignored the two people in line ahead of him. It was cops like these who gave the other 99 percent a bad name. The second one, dark-haired and skinny, had the grace to look faintly embarrassed. “We’re in a hurry, babe. Got a meeting.” The snake-oil voice was enough to make a person vomit.

  The ambient temperature in the café quickly dropped to something that could only be measured in Kelvin.

  “Look, Jack.” (The “ass” was unspoken but heavily implied.) “I do not care that you are sporting that fancy uniform. I am not your babe, never will be. If you call me that again, I will complain to the department. If you want to keep coming into my shop for coffee, you will treat me and my customers with the respect we deserve.” Jack didn’t hear that last part because he had slammed back out the door, leaving his partner to trail behind in shame.

  “Sorry about that, Sara,” he offered before following Jack.

  The entire shop was silent. Sara sighed and rolled her eyes. “As you were, folks.” With that, she efficiently finished up the coffees she had been making. Ira looked on, typical scowl on his face and bar towel in hand.

  Adam was restless in the motel that evening. The TV was on in the background, a habit from years of trying to keep up with local authorities while assisting with a case. Even so, he had far too much time to think about stuff he’d ignored by working eighty-hour weeks for years.