"Single?"
Alex blinked obviously taken aback.
When an old father asked a man that question and especially for his daughter there were typically strings attached.
He cleared his throat, accepted the small knife Mr. Hartwell offered him, and started shaving the charcoal to a fine tip. "Single," he confessed.
"Single?" Mr. Hartwell's eyebrows went up. "A man like you? Half the city must have its young women after you.
What's wrong are your standards impossibly high, or are you not looking for one?"
To the old man, Alex was not merely competent and wealthy, but a man of talent and modesty as well.
Women should have been queued up by all reasoning.
"In my hometown, I was merely a ordinary worker," Alex joked, a wry smile crossing his face. "A relative once tried to fix me up on a blind date, but the girl. well, she didn't think I was good enough for her."
His face wrinkled slightly at the recollection of that disastrous blind date that Mrs. Lata had fixed him up with Anjali.
