Hot Christmas Kisses

DJ linked her fingers around her knees and tried to calm her racing heart. As a child, every time she’d tried to communicate with her mother, she’d been castigated, shamed or ridiculed. If she could avoid talking, she would. Because, when she tried to explain her thoughts and feelings, more often than not, she made a hash of things.

Look what a mess she’d made of talking to Matt. He’d stormed out, mad as hell.

Prior experience told her that this conversation wouldn’t go well, either. DJ fiddled with her hair and sent a longing look toward her computer. This was why she liked numbers and spreadsheets and data. They didn’t require her to form words.

“DJ, we’re worried about you,” Jules said.

“I’m f—”

“If you say you are fine, I swear I’m going to slap you!” Darby said, her words and expression fierce. “We know something is wrong, it has been for months and months!”

Hearing the fear and worry in her voice made DJ feel like a worm. And because she was already overly emotional, tears rolled out of her eyes and down her cheeks.

Jules dropped to her knees in front of DJ. “For God’s sake, just tell us already! Is your mom being a super bitch? Is it Matt? Did he do something to you?”

“No, that’s not it.” DJ ran her hand around the back of her neck and looked for her courage. Lifting her head, she looked past Jules to Darby. “This is so damn difficult for me, Darby, I don’t know how to tell you this—”

“Just say it, DJ.” Darby ground the words out.

“When Matt and I got together last Christmas, I got pregnant. I miscarried about six weeks later, in February. I never told Matt. I never told anybody.”

Jules gasped, but DJ was most concerned about Darby. Color leached from her face and her bright eyes looked like moonlight in her face. DJ saw her friend’s hands shaking. Just like she’d anticipated, Darby was taking the news badly.

DJ needed to apologize. “It was an accident. I didn’t plan it. I knew it would upset you, so I didn’t tell you. And I felt so damn guilty because I didn’t want to be pregnant when you want a child so badly. And then I felt—still feel—sad, and guilty, for losing that child.”

Darby rocketed up and slapped her hands on her hips. She shook her head and looked at Jules. “Can you believe this?”

Jules stood, too, and took a step closer to Darby, showing that they were a unit, a team of two, and that DJ was on the outside of their group.

“So, judging by his shouting, Matt is furious because you didn’t share this news with him, either?” When DJ didn’t answer, Jules threw up her hands. “We don’t blame him. He has a right to be as mad as all hell, Dylan-Jane.”

DJ bit her lip. Okay, their reaction was worse than she’d expected. She lifted her hands and quietly murmured, “I’m sorry.”

Tears turned Darby’s eyes a lighter shade of silver. “I’m sorry that you had so little faith in us that you couldn’t tell us sooner, DJ. I’m sorry that you think I am petty enough to only think about myself when you are faced with one of the most difficult situations of your life. I’m sorry that you think so little of our friendship, so little of yourself.” Darby’s soft words were loaded with sadness. They burned DJ like acid-coated hail.

“When are you going to realize that you can mess up, DJ, that you can be human?” Darby asked.

The hailstones turned into hot bullets that pushed through skin and bone to lodge in her heart.

“Dammit, DJ, for months we waited for you to talk to us, to ask us to share your burden. But you shut us out! Then you started looking and sounding better and you slowly started coming back to yourself, so we decided not to bug you, to let you be. But now we find out that you were pregnant and that you had a miscarriage and you chose to deal with all that alone?” Darby cried.

“Everyone was worried about you, DJ. Callie, Levi, the Lockwood boys,” Jules added. “When are you going to realize that you are as valuable, as much a part of this family, as the rest of us? When are you going to start leaning, start accepting that we are here for you?”

DJ should trust them. She wished she could. They’d never, not once, let her down. But she was terrified that someday they might.

At eight, she’d believed she was the center of her dad’s world, but he walked away without looking back. Her father had been the first, but Fenella continued the rejection. Every time she dismissed or denigrated DJ, played her mind games, DJ felt as alone, as abandoned, as she had the day her dad left.

It was easier to believe the people she loved would abandon her when she needed them most rather than face that kind of hurt again.

Darby rubbed her hands over her face. “Dammit, DJ, I am so sick of you trying to be perfect, of you standing alone and apart. I cannot believe I am saying this, but you have to make a decision. Either you are part of our lives in every way, prepared to lean on us, or you go your own way. Whatever you choose, we are never going through this again!”

This was the reason she didn’t talk, why she kept her own counsel. Once again, she’d cracked open her shell only to have a knife shoved into her exposed belly. She talked to Matt; he’d exploded. She opened up to the twins, and they issued her an ultimatum.

“We need you to talk to us!” Darby said, her expression now determined. “We want to know about the big and the little things, the good and bad. And stop trying to find every excuse you possibly can for avoiding Christmas family functions. Enjoy being with us over the next few weeks. For the first time in your life, properly embrace what being part of our family means. If you can’t do that, if you won’t do that, then I think it’s time we all move on. We love you too much to only have access to a facade. And frankly, we damn well deserve more!” Darby didn’t raise her voice, but DJ was left in no doubt that she meant every word.

DJ looked at Jules, hoping to find her as shocked at this ultimatum as DJ. But Jules just looked sad. “Let us know what you decide, Dylan-Jane.”

God.

Jules followed Darby to the door and when it closed behind them, DJ dropped to her chair and stared at the floor.

Yep, it was official. Having heart-to-heart conversations really wasn’t what she did best.

* * *

The following evening, Matt walked across the road to Levi Brogan’s house. Like most of the houses in the gated community, and like Lockwood House itself, it was Georgian-inspired with its portico and columns. But instead of redbrick, the cladding was painted a pale gray and the white-framed windows were free of shutters. Ivy climbed up the side of the three-story building and across the front of the three-car garage, on top of which was what looked to be a guest apartment.

Matt rested his hand on the gate and looked around. He liked this exclusive community, liked the amount of space between the houses, the big trees and the quiet streets. He was used to the bustle of city living in The Hague, but this golfing community held a serenity that appealed. He’d never visited here before.

This was Dylan-Jane’s world, her people.

For years they’d met on neutral territory, places where neither of them had friends or acquaintances. They could focus on each other with no distractions. Their trips to unfamiliar places subconsciously reminded them that their time together wasn’t real life.

But being in Boston, in her town, and living across the road changed that.

He couldn’t get on a plane and distance himself. His obligations to his grandfather and the meeting he hoped to have with Emily were happening side by side with his need for DJ.

He wanted her—of course he did. He didn’t think there would ever be a time when he didn’t want her. But here, in Boston, he’d started wondering about more than the attraction between them. Which house was her childhood home? Had she climbed that magnificent maple down the street? Had she been a tomboy or a girlie girl, naughty or nice?

Matt rubbed his forehead with his fingertips, trying to push away the curiosity. He was asking for trouble if he looked at DJ as anything other than a no-strings, uncomplicated affair.

He didn’t do complications. He avoided risk. For the past eighteen years, he’d forced himself not to think about having a family, reinforcing the belief that marriage and having kids wasn’t for him. He’d been at the mercy of unpredictable parents and then unyielding grandparents and neither set of parental figures gave him anything near what he needed. He didn’t want to perpetuate that dysfunctional cycle...

For eighteen years, he’d managed to stand apart, to not get involved, to be self-sufficient...but being in Boston made him think of family and those childish shattered dreams.

It had to stop. He was not an insecure kid anymore.

Enough of the past...

Matt jammed his hands into the pockets of his pants and rocked on his heels, still not walking through the gate. There could never be anything more between him and DJ, he knew that, but he was also certain that he owed her an apology. By losing his temper, he’d reacted badly. She’d shared a horrible experience with him and he’d seen the pain in her eyes, but he’d pushed her feelings aside to indulge in his life-wasn’t-fair moment. He should’ve listened, tried to understand before reacting.

Yeah, not his proudest moment.

Irritated and ashamed, Matt pushed through the gate and walked up the steps to the ornate wooden door. He knocked and when a female voice answered, “We’re in here,” he stepped into the hall.

Matt followed the sound of the voice to a large sitting room filled with sofas covered in a mishmash of fabrics and colors. It shouldn’t work, but it did. It was luxurious and comfortable and homey and chic all at the same time, and he immediately felt at home.

Glancing around, he saw Jules and Darby sitting on a flame-orange sofa, holding on to wineglasses like they were lifelines, tension radiating off both of them. Shoulders hunched, mouths tight, eyes bright. Matt frowned, looking for DJ. Where was she?