Center Stage by Bernadette Marie Page A

family.”
    “Well, don’t get me started on Ed. He’s the smartest kid I know. If Zach keeps him around, I’ll guarantee you Ed will be running the place.”
    John set down his mug, but it was his face that grabbed hold of her attention. Something was on his mind, and he didn’t know how to talk about it. She’d seen it before.
    “What’s bothering you?”
    John let out a breath. “You and your family.”
    That wasn’t a positive statement, and she couldn’t imagine where he’d go with it.
    “Something wrong with my family?”
    “No. No.” He tried to ease back in his seat, but he wasn’t comfortable. She figured John Forrester hadn’t talked so much in his whole life, and now he was having deep conversations on a daily basis. She’d ease him into it.
    “My family is very important to me.”
    “I know. In fact, when you were talking about offering Clara the part, your eyes lit up.”
    “My nieces and nephews are my life.”
    He nodded and reached for her hands across the table and held them. “That’s what I’m trying to get to. How can you not want to have children?”
    Her heartbeat began beating extremely hard in her chest. “Why do you ask?”
    “I think you’d be a fantastic mother.”
    Which way was this going? He hadn’t wanted kids. She hadn’t wanted kids. That was part of the charm that was their relationship. Which one of them was now causing the problem?
    Arianna pursed her lips together. “Do you want kids?”
    “I’m fifty-three years old.”
    “I’m not sure that was an answer to my question.”
    He held her hands tighter. “I just think that you’d be so good at having them. You shouldn’t give that up.”
    “Do you want kids?” She reiterated her question.
    This time he shrugged, and that made her heart rate go even faster. It was very uncomfortable.
    “John, what are you trying to say to me? You want to have a baby?”
    The tense look on his face softened. “Can you imagine? By the time they were thirty, I’d be eighty-three.”
    “You’re freaking me out. What are you talking about?”
    He lifted her hands to his lips and gently placed a kiss on her knuckles. “No, I don’t want kids of my own. I gave that desire up years ago. But you are still young enough to have them, and if you wanted them, I wouldn’t run away.”
    She let her shoulders drop. “I don’t want kids. I thought you knew that.”
    “But you love your nieces and nephews so much…”
    “Yes, I do.” She scooted out of her side of the booth and walked around the table to sit next to him. “They are my world, just as my brothers and sister are. I don’t want some big wedding with flower girls and ring bearers either.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “You asked me when we first tumbled on my bed if I would commit to you. That’s what I did. John, I don’t want a wedding dress. I never have. I don’t want children. I never have. But I have grown very fond of you.”
    “Okay.” He kissed her on the cheek. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just didn’t want you to give up something that might someday be important.”
    “You’re all I want. Stay with me forever?”
    “I promise.”
     
    Just to prove he did love a woman with her mouth full of pie, John had bought one for them to take home. Arianna had scolded him, but he’d seen her break off a piece of crust and eat it before she expended him in bed and then fell asleep.
    As he watched her dream, he thought about his ex-wife. She was nothing like the woman wrapped in his arms, and he supposed that was why everything now was so perfect.
    His ex-wife had a family now. It had been something she’d wanted, and he hadn’t been against it. It just hadn’t happened. Fate was sometimes generous—no matter how it played itself out.
    He was happy for her, even if he hadn’t seen her in the nearly ten years since she’d taken everything he’d ever saved. She must have needed it more, he always told himself.
    Of course, he’d never been