Hot Christmas Kisses. Joss Wood

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.

      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