four weeks, Ella felt as if she were walking on clouds. She was enjoying the bribery investigation and it was looking as if the guy, named Bernard Lingus, was difficult to work with. Ella still didn’t have evidence that he was accepting bribes, but she was getting closer. He definitely lived outside of his salary. She’d also discovered that his family wasn’t wealthy. So the fact that he drove a Porche to work while living off of a salary of about sixty thousand euros didn’t make sense. His house was plain. Very non-descript. But he also owned a nice motorcycle.
From a distance, Ella snapped pictures of him pulling out of his garage in the shiny, new Porsche. She also got pictures of the guy trying to drive his motorcycle, but he was clearly needed more practice.
But every night, she returned to Malcolm. They always met at his place though. There was never a discussion about meeting at her place, since she didn’t have any of the creature comforts in her apartment that he did.
Once a week, she met her father for dinner and he’d asked about her glowing happiness, but Ella wasn’t ready to tell her father about him. For some reason, telling her father about dating Malcolm would make it real. Or maybe, telling her father would make it more…intimate somehow.
So when she went for dinner once a week, they discussed her investigations, his flowers, and his budding relationship with Ingrid, which seemed to be blooming. But nothing about her relationship with Malcom.
She also felt the need to spend the night at her apartment after dinner with her father. The night before she did that for the second time was the advent of their first argument.
“Explain to me why you can’t just come back here after dinner with your dad?” he asked, lifting his chin as he shaved that morning.
Ella stepped out of the shower, grabbing one of the big, fluffy towels his housekeeper kept stacked right by the shower door. She wrapped it around her, feeling relaxed and wonderful after yet another night in Malcolm’s arms.
“Because I don’t get to see him very often when I’m gone. So, when I’m in town, I make time to see him.”
“I thought you spoke to him on the phone almost every day.”
“I do,” she said as she left the bathroom, knowing that his eyes followed her. “But having dinner with him is different than talking to him on the phone. You know that.”
Malcolm’s eyes were hard as he looked at her in the mirror. “I don’t talk to my dad. Ever. And I don’t go to his place either.”
That news startled her. “I know that you have a strained relationship with your father,” she said as she pulled on underwear, jeans, and a tee-shirt. “But I didn’t know that you two didn’t see each other at all.”
“Never.”
“Not even for holidays?” she asked, surprised.
“No,” he replied simply.
She stared at him for a long moment, stunned by his response. “Wow. I guess…”
“Why don’t you invite your father here for dinner?” he asked, grabbing a towel to dry off his smoothly shaven jaw.
That stumped her. She still hadn’t told her father about their relationship.
Malcolm wasn’t an idiot. At her stunned expression, his eyes narrowed and his lips thinned. “You haven’t told him about us, have you?” he demanded.
Immediately, Ella saw his eyes darken, but this time, it was with anger and not desire. “I haven’t hidden anything from him,” she replied evasively.
He tossed the towel onto the counter and walked over to the closet, leaning a shoulder against the frame. “You haven’t actually told him though, have you?”
Ella hated feeling guilty. “I haven’t lied to him.”
A dark eye lifted in response. “So, you don’t consider a lie of omission to be a lie?”
Oh, good one! “Yes. It’s a lie, but…” she wavered, knowing that she was in the wrong here. Closing her eyes, she felt defeat tighten her throat. “You’re right.”
He pushed away from the frame and walked into his dressing room. Ella brought clothes back and forth from her place to his each night.
“When are you going to tell him?” he asked, his voice slightly muffled as he pulled on a dress shirt.
This was normally one of her favorite parts of the day. Second only to the moment that she came back to be with him after work. She loved being with him, talking with him. She loved feeling his arms wrap around her as she sighed at the end of a long,