There was no way he was giving this girl up. He’d worry about the consequences later.
‘I don’t think so.’ She turned to walk away from him and he grabbed her arm, his grip hard through the wool of her coat.
‘If that Christmas tree is as big as you say then you’re going to need help carrying it.’
She stared at him and shook her head. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Zan.’ He suddenly sounded very Italian and very frustrated. ‘I meant what I said last night.’
She gave him a wan smile. ‘You also made it perfectly clear in clinic this morning that you’d had second thoughts.’
He sucked in a deep breath but he didn’t let her go. ‘That isn’t true.’
He’d been trying to do the right thing but he knew now that he couldn’t do that. He had to be with this woman and somehow he’d make sure that she was kept safe.
‘I can read body language, Carlo.’ She lifted her chin. ‘So what did you want to talk about?’
‘A relationship between us isn’t straightforward.’ He almost laughed as he listened to himself. That had to be the understatement of the year.
‘You mean because you’ll be going back to Italy?’
No. Because he was deceiving her about who he was.
Because some crazed lunatic was out to get him.
‘Zan—’
‘I don’t expect commitment,’ she said, her head tipped to one side, her cheeks pink from the cold. ‘All I want is for you to be honest with me.’
Carlo rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, her words creating an unbearable tension in his body.
Honest.
That was the one thing he wasn’t being.
In many ways their whole relationship was a charade. She had absolutely no idea who she was involved with. What his life was like back in Italy.
And he ought to walk away from her but there was no way he could do it.
‘Decorating a tree is no fun on your own.’ He’d make sure that she was kept safe, he told himself. And he’d find a way to tell her the truth about himself when the time was right.
She looked at him for a long moment and he could see the question in her eyes.
She was trying to decide whether she could trust him.
‘Should I buy a Scotch pine or a blue spruce?’
He grinned. ‘Blue spruce. It’s the best.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘IT’S too big.’ Carlo gazed up at the top of the Christmas tree and then back at Zan, who was winding the lights around the branches.
‘It’s not too big.’ She crawled out from under the branches, eyes shining, humming along to the Christmas carols that were playing in the background.
‘It’s touching the ceiling,’ Carlo pointed out, and she grinned.
‘It’s supposed to. Now we just have to decorate it.’