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

by Elle Keaton

  Weir tried lifting his other hand, to wave them away.

  “G’way.”

  “Oh, I was right, he’s telling us to go away. Not until you open your eyes for us, Ace.”

  Fuck, he hated that nickname. He was going to kick Adam’s ass, soonish.

  Weir’s eyes didn’t exactly fly open, but he was sufficiently irritated that he managed to drag his eyelids to a level where they allowed unwanted light in. He blinked. It hurt. Everything hurt.

  Moving his head hurt, too, so he rolled his eyes around, trying to figure out where the three men in the room were. Adam and Micah both had chairs pulled up on his right, while Sterling, of all people, hovered somewhere to his left. That must be who had touched him when he tried to move. Why was he in a hospital room?

  “Canceled vacation?” he managed to whisper before adding a pathetic, “Thirsty.”

  Through his lashes, he watched Micah get up and speak to someone outside the door. Minutes later, a nurse darted into the room with a large cup of ice. She made everyone go stand in the hallway while she checked and recorded his vital signs. She peppered him with questions, but he could only answer one or two of them and was too tired anyway. Yes, he knew his name, his birthday, and who the president was. As for what happened, he had no recollection beyond leaving his hotel to go for a run.

  He was groggy and wanted to go back to sleep, but the nurse, Georgia, explained the police needed to question him about the incident. Oh, great. Fuck. He nodded to encourage her to go away. Hopefully everyone else would go away, too.

  He had only met one of the SkPD officers who entered the room before, during the original case that brought both him and Adam to Skagit. Jack Summers. Weir loathed him. He was an asshole. Weir had hoped to find something on him when they conducted the ethics review of SkPD following the Matveev case, but he had been clean. Go figure.

  Weir managed to answer a few of their questions before, like it or not, his damaged body decided it was time to return to dreamland. It was impossible to focus on their questions; their presence only increased his exhaustion. As his eyes were slipping closed, he heard Georgia inform them that that was enough; they would have to come back at a later time. It was nice to have her on his side.

  It was a relief when he pried his eyes open again an undetermined amount of time later and only Adam was in the room with him. He appeared to be sleeping, but when Weir made a pathetic sound he turned his head.

  Seeing Weir awake, Adam stood, moving closer to the bed. “Ah, awake again. Are you planning on staying with us this time?”

  “Du—” His voice crapped out. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Dude, why are you here?” On his best day Adam was barely civil, unless Micah was around. Micah had some kind of superpower that turned Adam to mush.

  Adam gripped the rails along the side of the bed. “Ace, regardless of what you think, I actually do like you. I even respect you. When Joey called to let me know, of course we came back. Who else would be here?”

  And thank you, Adam, for the sensitive reminder that Weir had no one. He turned his head away, not wanting Adam to see the emotion he couldn’t hide. Whatever pain medications they’d pumped him full of left him feeling weak and vulnerable.

  “Hey.” Adam reached over, gently pulling Weir’s chin so he could see his face. Weir wasn’t strong enough to stop him. “Hey,” he repeated.

  Weir loathed the expression on his face. Pity. Weir hated pity. Adam was lucky. In the past few months not only had he fallen in love with a wonderful man, a nice half-brother (one he seemed to tolerate, at least) had crawled out of the woodwork, and he’d bonded with Ed Schultz and his daughter Sara. All in all, a little makeshift family created from his father’s unfortunate death. Adam wasn’t alone by any stretch of the imagination.

  For months Weir had harbored a little crush on Adam, even when the guy acted like a complete tool. He’d known, though, as soon as he’d seen Adam and Micah together, that Adam was a goner. Weir was jealous, and man enough to admit it.

  “Hey,” Adam said a third time.

  “‘Hey’ what? I’m not deaf.”

  “Christ, you’re prickly today. What have they got you on? Demerol makes me a cranky asshole.”

  “Doesn’t explain the rest of the time,” Weir muttered.

  Adam grinned, reaching to pull the chair he’d been sitting in closer to the bed. After making himself comfortable, he asked, “What happened? Do you remember? I want to hear it from you, not that caveman, Summers.”

  Weir gathered his scattered thoughts. “I decided to go for a run. I hadn’t been going. I needed to get out. It was raining; I went anyway.” Adam watched closely as he tried to put together a timeline of what happened. “What day is it? How long have I been here?”

  “It’s Thursday afternoon. Two days. They kept you sedated until last night. It was this morning when you woke up before.” That sentence was way too complicated. Fuck, his head hurt.

  A neuron trudged half-heartedly across his sore brain. Closing one eye, he tried to think. “Was Sterling here?” He had a vague memory of hearing his voice.

  “Yeah, your boyfriend was here.”

  A wash of panic flooded his system. Boyfriend? Sterling wasn’t his boyfriend. They had sucked each other off a couple times; that did not equal boyfriend. A boyfriend required more emotional investment than Weir was capable of.

  “By the look on your face, although it’s a bit hard to tell between the swelling and the bruising, I’d say you disagree? He seems to care, if that makes any difference.”

  Weir attempted to wave the comment away but ended up gasping from intense pain when he tried to move his right arm again. Finally he asked the question he most dreaded the answer to. “What’s the damage?”

  “Injuries?” Adam asked.

  Weir nodded, very carefully.

  “Regardless of what it’s going to sound like, apparently you were very lucky.”

  “Not feeling lucky.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re alive and annoyed with me, Ace. The short list is: fractured collarbone, right arm compound fracture, deeply bruised ribs. Your right femur, fractured. The orthopedic doc will be in soon to go over the details with you. Last I heard they were talking surgery as soon as the swelling goes down. Sounds like you may get some superhero metal stuff. There doesn’t appear to be a spinal injury. Whoever hit you, they slowed coming around the curve, probably only going about thirty miles an hour. Maybe less.” Adam did the finger-quote thing when he said “only.”

  “Fuck. Anything else?”

  “We were hoping you could tell us.”

  “I don’t remember anything except running, thinking about geoducks and why anyone would put something that ugly near their mouth. They look like giant cocks.”

  “You like cock.”

  Weir glared at him. “Not those cocks. Anyway, tell me more.”

  “Sterling says he found you at milepost seven near the scenic overlook turnout. Happened to be driving by, he says. There you were, lying on the ground like a rag doll. The car that hit you came from behind and was traveling fast enough to knock you into the guardrail—that’s where the bruised ribs come from. It’s lucky you weren’t further down the road or you would have ended up in the surf. What the hell were you thinking, running in that weather?” Adam demanded.

  “I was thinking I needed to go for a run before I went batshit crazy. I was thinking I needed to clear my head. I wasn’t thinking I’d nearly be killed by some fucking asshole.”

  Weir felt tired again. He’d been hit by a car and left to die. It weighed him down. Images of Esther haunted him. Had she been run over and abandoned? Tossed in a ditch? Buried in a shallow grave? It was probably the medication, but still disturbing. Adam continued talking, while he shut his eyes and let himself drift away.

  When he woke for the third time he was, unfortunately, truly awake. A Dr. Mortimer and a different nurse were in the room. It was still Thursday, early afternoon, they said.

>   “Mr. Weir?” The doctor was an older white guy, mid-fifties, with a shock of white hair and a stoop from being nearly seven feet tall, as far as Weir could estimate from lying flat on his back. He made a face at being called mister.

  “Yeah?”

  Long and short, he was going to be fitted for not one, but two metal plates. One in his arm and one in his thigh. His only question before being rolled to the operating room was, “Will I be able to run again?”

  The nurse was sweet, a ginger-haired woman who smiled down at him, saying, “We certainly hope so.”

  Nine

  “Look, he seems to like you.”

  Sterling squinted at the crazy man.

  “Okay, tolerate might be a better word, but that says a lot. He’s not an easy guy to get to know. He doesn’t let his guard down very often.” Adam sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. Definitely crazy.

  “Why me?” He did not sound like a whiny bitch.

  “For all the reasons I said. Plus, I am going on this goddamned vacation, but I can’t if Weir is here alone. The hotel he’s staying in isn’t going to cut it. He doesn’t have anybody to help him out, all right? Plus, stairs. It works out, too, because if you guys are around Micah will quit worrying about his psycho cat. It’s the perfect solution. Also, I won’t tell the SkPD that you weren’t first at the scene.”

  Sterling gaped.

  “Shut your mouth, you’re gonna catch flies.”

  Sterling shut his mouth.

  “So, am I calling Micah and letting him know it’s a done deal, or what?”

  “Fine. But this is ridiculous. We don’t know each other.”

  “By the end of it both of you will have a new friend; isn’t that sweet?”

  Sterling wanted to strangle Adam. If the man weren’t built like a brick shithouse, he might seriously consider it. He had a bar to take care of, a sister to keep an eye on, and other shit he was barely getting a handle on. “How do you know I wasn’t first at the scene?”

  Adam pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why am I constantly having to remind people that I am the one who is a federal investigator? Your story was a bit farfetched, plus I wondered about the two jackets. I had your phone records checked out. Don’t worry, your sister is clear; it wasn’t her car. You’re both ruled out as suspects.”

  A weight Sterling had been struggling with lifted. He believed his sister would never purposefully do anything like that, a hit and run, but what if she’d panicked, left the scene, and then come back? Sterling had concocted all sorts of scenarios over the past few days, none of which looked good for Raven. He almost felt like he needed to apologize for suspecting she might be so careless.

  Who was he kidding? Raven was a newly minted sixteen-year-old driving in terrible weather conditions. Pony was older, but that hardly made a difference. It was not beyond the scope of imagination that they were responsible for Weir’s condition.

  The last four days had taken their toll on Sterling. After following the ambulance to the hospital, he’d hadn’t known what to do. With Weir somewhere on the other side of the automatic doors, hooked up to god only knew what kinds of tubes and bags of fluids, Sterling had felt helpless. Helplessness was not something he had experienced in many years. It was a feeling he detested.

  “Fine.”

  “Whoop! I’m calling Micah right now.” When Adam reached over to fist-bump Sterling, he couldn’t help recoiling. The guy was certifiable.

  It was Joey James’s fault that Sterling had claimed to be Weir’s boyfriend.

  He’d been desperate. Joey had approached him while he was cooling his heels and freaking out in the ER.

  “Sterling, you came in asking for Weir, the guy who was found on the side of the road?”

  “Kind of, yeah.” He had forgotten that Joey worked in the ER. Joey and he had never been friends. Currently they were operating under a let-bygones-be-bygones sort of truce. Sterling hadn’t been kind to Joey when they were in school together. He regretted that, but couldn’t change it.

  Joey looked at him closely, a little closer than Sterling was comfortable with. “So are you guys, um, seeing each other?” Joey irritated the shit out of Sterling. He was a very large personality crammed into a single, very petite, package. Also extremely persistent. Sterling wondered how Buck dealt with him on a daily basis. The guy was fucking exhausting. Joey and Buck’s sweet New Year’s kiss under the mistletoe bobbed to the surface of his memory, and Sterling lost his power to resist, because that kiss had been adorable.

  “Kind of, okay. We hung out a couple times.”

  “Hung out.” Joey had his hands on his hips.

  “Fuck, you are irritating. Hung out, blow jobs, what the fuck else do you want to know?”

  “Well,” from Joey’s tone of voice Sterling knew he would regret his outburst, “I was wondering if you want to be able to see him at some point, but for that you are going to have to be more than a ‘blow-job friend.’”

  And that was how Sterling went from “blow-job friend” to “boyfriend.”

  Sterling was currently plotting Joey’s death. Joey had opened his big fucking mouth and told Adam that Sterling and Weir were an “item.” Who the fuck was an “item” these days? It made him sound like he was in his seventies instead of his thirties. Sterling took a deep, calming breath. He needed to focus on the bar and its endless paperwork, not freak out about babysitting the child detective.

  “Yo, Bailey, what this I hear about you and some girl? Carol?” Kent yelled over the small crowd in the Loft tonight.

  Joey must have told Adam about the fake-boyfriend thing. Then a sort of insane tin-can fucking phone tag had ensued. Sterling could only imagine that Adam had mentioned something to Ed; Adam wasn’t friendly enough with anyone else in Skagit who spread gossip. Ed must have told Sara, and from there it spread like a wildfire. Now the whole fucking city of Skagit thought he and the (admittedly very sexy) injured, not female, Weir, were an “item.” ITEM. He had, happily, never been an item with anyone. Ever.

  Ever.

  He scowled across the short distance to where Kent was standing at the door, checking IDs. “Shut it. Have you met me?”

  Kent looked like he wanted to press further, but Sterling narrowed his eyes at him, effectively ending the interrogation. Sterling went back to pouring drinks and thinking about Weir, wondering exactly how he had gotten himself into this mess. He managed quite nicely, thank you, avoiding relationships. Didn’t want one, never pursued one, happily single. Suddenly he was expected to take care of someone? He shuddered.

  It wasn’t like he had been horribly scarred by a breakup or anything. Sure, his parents rejected him, but Sterling had landed on his feet. Eventually. The lesson learned had been, don’t trust anyone, especially the ones you think have your back. He was making it on his own. His achievements were his alone, things no one could take from him. And he had plans. He did not want, or need, a relationship to validate his existence.

  There was no way this bizarre plan of Adam’s was going to end well. He liked Weir enough. He had panicked at the scene of the accident, and later at the hospital. Any normal human being would have.

  Maybe not every normal human being would have agreed to Joey’s cockamamie pretend-boyfriend scheme in order to gain access to Weir’s hospital room. But Sterling had needed to see with his own eyes that Weir could recover. He hadn’t been able to rid himself of the gruesome image of Weir’s broken body strewn across the mud and weeds, discarded like so much trash.

  For a Saturday night it was damn slow. Sterling had his back to the door and was restocking the liquor lining the back bar, making a mental note that St. Patrick’s Day had taken its toll on the supply and he needed to stock up on Irish whiskey. When he turned around, Adam and Micah were sitting at the bar. Adam was sporting an irritating grin. Sterling wanted to slap it off his face, except the agent surely had moves that would put Sterling in traction.

  “Thanks so much for offering to house sit, Sterl
ing,” Micah gushed.

  Sterling glared at Adam. The asshole didn’t even have the grace to look ashamed of himself.

  “It will make such a difference for Weir, too.” Micah leaned closer over the bar top, whispering, “He doesn’t have any family, so even if he could get home to California, he would have to go into assisted care for a few weeks, maybe longer. We came directly from the hospital. His surgery went well, but he has physical therapy and movement limitations. He’s lucky he’s in such good shape, although the doctor did mention he’s underweight.”

  “Yeah, I bet he’s thrilled you’re sharing all this, Micah,” Adam drawled.

  “If Sterling is going to be helping him, he needs to know this stuff,” Micah retorted.

  Sterling groaned, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling and trying to dig up patience from somewhere. Micah was a seriously nice guy. Adam, he was going to vote off the island.

  Micah looked from Adam to Sterling. “I’ve got the house ready. Weir can use my bedroom on the main floor. You’ll have to take one of the second-floor ones, sorry. I’ve emptied them out as much as I could on short notice. We’re planning on leaving tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Sterling choked out, his voice rising an octave. He hoped his sister appreciated his sacrifice. If he was going to be somebody’s nanny, she better not plan on missing any school or fucking up in any other way until she was well over the age of eighteen.

  “Clock’s ticking. Warning, I have no idea how Weir is going to handle this… arrangement.” Adam tapped the bar with his thumb and forefinger.

  Sterling stopped fidgeting with the bar towels stacked underneath the drink station. “You haven’t told him?”

  “Time didn’t seem quite right. He was in recovery, coming out of the anesthesia.”

  “Wait.” Sterling finally clued in on what Micah had said a minute earlier. “He had surgery already?” Sterling hadn’t known Weir was having surgery so soon. An unnamed emotion surged again. “He’s okay?”