Hot Christmas Kisses

Matt leaned forward and swiped his thumb across DJ’s lower lip, his fingers lightly stroking her jaw. Desire burned in her eyes and under his fingers her skin heated. Glancing down, he noticed her nipples beading, pushing against the thin fabric of her silk shirt.

She’d never been able to hide her attraction to him, thank God. Because he saw her need for him, could feel her heat, could almost taste her...he pushed.

He kept his voice low, but his tone was resolute. “So here’s what’s going to happen, Dylan-Jane. I’m going to be living across the road from you and we’re going to run into each other often. Your friends are mine and our paths will cross. And even if they don’t, I’ll make damn sure they do. It’s been too damn long since I’ve had you and I want you under me as soon as possible. Yeah, this year has been unusual, I accept that. What I don’t accept is this barrier you’ve flung up between us. But know this, I will pull it down and I will find out why you put it up in the first place.”

“Matt—”

“Not done.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “We’ve always been honest with each other and you’re not being honest now. While I think part of what you said is true—you like being alone and Christmas sucks—that’s not the whole truth.”

“You haven’t told me the whole truth about why you are back in Boston,” DJ pointed out.

He hadn’t, he had to give her that. “But that has nothing to do with you, nothing at all, and I know, don’t ask me how, that your stay-away-from-me attitude is all about me, about us.”

He saw agreement flash in her eyes and sighed. God, what was going on with her? And why couldn’t she just spit it out? Matt closed his eyes and released a long breath.

“Jesus, DJ, just tell me already.”

DJ stood up, walked over to the window and folded her arms across her stomach. She bowed her head and he could see her shoulders shaking. God, he hoped she wasn’t crying. Tears were his Kryptonite. He stood up, went over to her and stood behind her, not touching her but silently offering his support. “You can tell me, Dylan-Jane.”

DJ remained silent for a long time and when she finally turned, he saw the capitulation in her eyes. Finally!

“We made love on Christmas Eve and I got pregnant.” Her words were a series of punches in his solar plexus. He battled to find air, to make sense of her words. Then DJ took another deep breath and spoke again. “I lost the baby in February.”

It took a minute, an hour—a decade—for his brain to restart, his mouth to work. He thought he was calm but when the words flew out of his mouth, they emerged as a roar. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me? As soon as you knew?”

DJ’s face drained of color and she retreated a step so that her back was flush against the window.

“I tried—”

“Not that hard,” Matt shouted, unable to control the volume of his voice. “I had a right to know, dammit! How dare you take that away from me? You lied to me! You let me believe one thing when the exact opposite was true. Jesus, Gemma!”

Gemma? Had he really said that?

Matt stared at DJ, noting her dark eyes dominating her face. She was edging her way to the door, needing to walk away from him. He didn’t blame her. In his anger and shock, he’d overlapped Gemma’s and DJ’s actions and he wasn’t sure which situation he was reacting to. He needed to leave, to get his head on straight, to think about what she’d said, what had happened.

To find distance and control.

Matt whirled around, walked to the door and yanked it open. Stepping into the hallway, he saw Jules and Darby jogging down the hallway toward him with Amazonian warrior-woman expressions on their faces. They blocked his path, momma bears protecting their cub.

“What happened?” Jules demanded, her expression fierce.

“Did you hurt her?” Darby asked, equally ferocious. “If you hurt her, we will make her press charges.”

God, what did they take him for? “She’s fine. We just had an argument,” Matt wearily replied.

Air, he needed air.

“If she’s hurt, Edwards, I swear to God we’ll string you up,” Darby told him before she and Jules pushed past him and rushed down the hallway to their friend’s office.

Matt watched them rush away, his heart trying to claw its way out of his chest. He rubbed his hand over his breastbone, trying to ease the ache, a part of him still not believing DJ’s declaration. For the second time in his life, he’d heard that a woman had miscarried his baby. Unlike the last time he’d experienced this news, the baby he’d briefly given DJ would not, like Emily had earlier this year, write him a letter and tell him that he, or she, was his biological child and ask if they could meet.

He didn’t want a family, wasn’t cut out to be a dad, but, man, that thought made him feel profoundly sad.

Three (#u5fb66e2a-be0d-567c-baa0-5b530d5e8cd7)

So wow. That happened.

DJ stared at her office door, flabbergasted by Matt’s off-the-wall reaction. She’d spent hours imagining the conversation they’d just had, and she’d never once thought Matt—cool, calm, controlled Matt—would lose it.

And lose it loudly.

DJ dropped to the edge of her couch and placed her head in her hands. After trying to reach him a few times in March and failing to connect with him, she concluded that there was simply no point in telling Matt that she’d conceived and then miscarried. It had happened so quickly, he’d been so far away and, really, what impact would it have on his life? Zip. Zero.

If anything, she’d expected him to be thankful she wasn’t still pregnant because, hell, a part of her was grateful for that.

There were many reasons why she felt relieved about losing the baby—and even more reasons why she felt guilty for feeling relieved. Not having to tell her own mother that she was going to be a single mom was high on the list. DJ hadn’t had any contact with her father since she was a child, so telling him wasn’t a factor.

Her parents were, in fact, the reason she’d never wanted to have kids. She was terrified that she, like them, would turn out to be as horrible at raising a child as they were.

She lived with the memories of her father walking away—at Christmas, for the love of God!—to move in with another woman and her child, a girl he adopted as his own shortly after leaving. He’d left DJ with Fenella, who wielded her tongue like a scalpel. DJ’s goal in life had been to have an awesome career and enough money so she could be free from her mother’s checkbook and caustic tongue. No stranger, DJ knew, could hurt you as much as someone you loved.

DJ’s office door banged open and her best friends rushed inside. DJ stood, and Darby grabbed her biceps and gave her a tip-to-toe scan.

“We heard shouting. Did he hurt you? Are you okay?”

“What? No!” DJ frowned at them. “Matt would never hurt me.”

Jules arched her eyebrows. “We heard him yelling.”

DJ wrinkled her nose. Fair point.

“You don’t fight, DJ, so what’s going on?” Jules asked.

And there it was.

While she didn’t volunteer information, she didn’t lie to her friends. As Darby stepped back, DJ gestured for them to sit on the sofa. She’d dropped one bombshell today, she might as well drop another.

A year was a long time to keep this secret and now that she’d shared it with Matt, she didn’t want to keep it to herself anymore. Darby and Jules were her friends, she should be able to tell them stuff. She wanted to tell them, even if it would be hard to say and, for Darby, hard to hear.

DJ looked at the twins, thinking that they couldn’t be more different if they tried. Jules was dark-haired and blue-eyed, Darby a silver-and-steel-eyed blonde. The only thing they had in common was their stylish dress sense and the worried expressions on their faces. They sat down on the couch and Darby gestured to the chair opposite, silently suggesting that DJ join them.

DJ wanted to stay exactly where she was.

“Sit down,” Jules suggested.

DJ touched her fingertips to her forehead, conscious of a monstrous headache. She sucked in some air, waited for her knees to lock and walked over to the empty chair, sending a wishful glance toward her coffee machine. Damn, she needed caffeine, preferably intravenously injected. And if it was laced with a stiff shot of whiskey, she wouldn’t complain.

“Talk to us, DJ,” Darby said, sounding worried.