A Boy's Christmas Wish. Patricia Johns

thing to complete me heart and soul would be black forest cake. Since I don’t have that, I’m making do. You want some?”

      He shook his head. He didn’t know about this stage of things—he’d been long gone by the time Lana had been showing, and seeing Beth now brought back all those regrets. Beth smeared some spread onto a cracker and popped it into her mouth.

      “So...” He cleared his throat. “Do you need me to do a bakery run or something? How urgent is this?”

      Beth smiled. “I’m good. No worries. A few carrot sticks wouldn’t kill me, either.”

      She dipped a spoon into the hazelnut spread and brought it up domed in chocolate goo. She began nibbling around the side of the spoon. So much for carrot sticks—not that he blamed her.

      “How have things been around here?” Dan asked.

      “With my dad, you mean?” she asked.

      “Yeah.” Was it wrong of him to care? He’d been willing to join their family five years ago, and that had to count for something.

      “Dad is kind of depressed,” Beth said. “As you’d expect.”

      “Is he writing?” he asked. Rick had always been plugging away on something. His books took a couple of years to finish, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t constantly working.

      “No.” She sighed. “I haven’t seen him write a word since I got back. Instead of facing everything at once, he’s tackling the problems he thinks he can fix. Like child support.”

      “The father isn’t paying?” Dan frowned. “What kind of guy were you with, Beth?”

      He still felt protective of her, whether he had the right to or not. At the very least, he’d expected that Beth’s guy would be head and shoulders above the likes of him, but if he wasn’t even supporting his child... At least Dan had done the right thing eventually. Maybe this guy would, too.

      Beth sipped some chocolate hazelnut off the spoon, then licked her lips. “What kind of guy? The wrong one.”

      “It isn’t that complicated to get child support,” Dan said. “I could show you the government websites that get the process started—”

      “No.” Her tone was decided, and he stopped. “Does Lana pay you support?”

      “No.” He cleared his throat. “I’m fine. I can take care of Luke on my own. Besides, Lana is in a rough spot—has been for years.” He paused. Her expression had changed. “What?”

      “You told me about Lana,” she said. “You’d always said that you two weren’t that serious.”

      “And we weren’t.”

      “But a child together?” She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t care if that pregnancy was planned or not, that makes things a whole lot more serious.”

      Dan sighed. “You have a point, but emotionally—”

      “Emotionally?” Her eyes snapped fire. “That’s semantics, Danny! I told you everything about my past, my hang-ups, my feelings, my hopes for the future. I was an open book with you. But you—” she looked around as if searching for the word “—weren’t.”

      “The last I had seen Lana, she’d told me she had taken a pregnancy test, and she was done with me,” he said. “She never even told me when he was born. She told me about six months later, and she reiterated that she didn’t want me in the picture. It didn’t exactly feel real.” It was a stupid thing to say to a pregnant woman, and he knew it. “I was wrong, okay?”

      “Yes, you were.” She nodded. “But you know what hurts the most? You didn’t trust me enough to tell me. You were a dad. There was a little person out there with your DNA. You had to feel something.”

      “Of course I felt something!” Dan erupted. “And a whole lot of what I felt was shame!”

      Beth didn’t answer, but the fire in her eyes dwindled, and she dropped her gaze.

      “I walked away from my child, Beth.” His voice wavered. “I hated myself for that. Forgive me for not wanting you to hate me, too.”

      They stared at each other for a couple of beats. These were old hurts, ones he’d thought he’d dealt with, but standing here with Beth, it all felt raw. She’d wanted him to share his feelings—but she came from a rather privileged position. She came from a well-respected family who struggled with their own issues, granted, but would she have understood what his life had been like in Vancouver? How empty he felt? How stupid he felt for getting involved with a woman he knew he had no future with?