Page 17 of The Bachelor's Dilemma

“How long does it take to do that? I can call back.”

“Great. Give me ten minutes.”

Myles hung up. The last forty minutes with Anna on the phone had been unexpectedly nice. His friends were still on the job site. He knew no one else in New York except the private detective he’d hired.

She was easy to talk with, but he wished he’d learned more about Anna. She’d kept the conversation focused on him, which made sense. She wanted to know more about him if she was seeing him in the morning.

He liked that. When he called her back, though, he’d make sure to ask her questions. He considered the complications of getting to know them while he was in the States.

Would he develop a bond with his son? Or just know him these few weeks, and keep the knowledge of his paternity a secret? He wasn’t sure how things would play out. But for the time being, he was content just to get to know Anna and Zack.

Ten minutes later, he called again. She answered on the first ring. He pictured her rushing back to be there when he phoned. It was a nice. He wanted to hold on to those feelings.

“So tell me a bit about you. I dominated the conversation before,” he said.

“That’s because your life is more exciting. I fight the crowds to go to work. Come home and spend time with my son until he goes to bed. Stay up as long as I can keep awake, then go to bed myself.”

Myles tried to think like a man who knew nothing about this woman, instead of knowing most of the facts of her life, thanks to the detective.

“What do you do on weekends?”

“In nice weather we always go to the park. It’s our only grassy area. During the winter, we often visit museums so he can run around without getting cold. Sometimes in the summer, we take a ride to the beach. Must sound pretty boring to a man who vacations in Europe.”

“It depends on whom I’m doing it with. One appealing part of your lifestyle is the stability you have. I’m a nomad.”

“By choice.”

“Maybe.”

“So by that, do you mean you might be interested in settling down at some point?”

“I hadn’t considered it. First, I was going to make my mark on the world.”

Myles didn’t go into how he’d wanted to leave something behind to mark his being alive. He’d no family, so he built structures that would endure for decades and beyond. Now things had changed. Whether he ever let Anna and Zack know who he was,he knew.He had a son.

“Settling down in one place would be a change. But at some point, surely you want a family?” she said.

“And if I die and they had to go into foster care? Too risky.”

“Whoa, where did that come from?” she asked.

“It happened to my parents. I was raised in the foster care system in Chicago.”

“Oh.”

Anna felt surprised. She remembered he said he didn’t remember his mother. For some reason, she’d thought his father was still alive.

“Hey, it’s not a recent thing. I never knew either of my parents. I’m still in touch with one foster family,” he said.

“That must have been tough.”

Anna wondered what would happen to Zack if something happened to her. She knew her mother would step in, but with her father in frail health, it would mean total turmoil for a long time.

She couldn’t bear the thought of not being there to see her son grow up.

“But what if you didn’t die? What if you lived to be an old man and then had no children, no grandchildren? Wouldn’t that be worse?” she asked.

Myles tried to envision himself old, with lots of little children racing around yelling and laughing while he sat on some nebulous porch and watched. They’d play in a big yard with old trees shading the grass. He’d have his wife of many years beside him.

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