As You Wish Read online

  One fateful summer, three very different women find themselves together in Summer Hill, Virginia, where they find they have much more in common than they realized...

  Sixty-year-old Olivia’s first marriage was long and unhappy, but now she is a newlywed, thrilled to finally be starting her life with the man she’s always truly loved—even if they are getting a late start. Kathy is in her forties and married to a handsome, successful businessman. Theirs would be a fairy-tale romance if it weren’t for one problem: he’s passionately in love with someone else! Twentysomething Elise is also in a troubled marriage, stuck with the man her wealthy parents chose for her. Now that he has a pregnant mistress, he seems willing to go to drastic lengths to take Elise out of the picture.

  Though each of them wound up at the summerhouse for separate reasons, it’s not long before they begin to open up about their regrets, their wishes and their dreams. And when they’re presented with the opportunity of a lifetime—a chance to right the wrongs of their past—all three discover what can happen when dreams really do come true.

  A heartfelt, magical tale, As You Wish is a shining example of Jude Deveraux’s enchanting storytelling that will charm longtime fans and delight a new generation of readers.

  Praise for the novels of Jude Deveraux

  “Jude Deveraux’s writing is enchanting and exquisite.”

  —BookPage

  “Deveraux’s touch is gold.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A steamy and delightfully outlandish retelling of a literary classic.”

  —Kirkus Reviews on The Girl from Summer Hill

  “[A]n irresistibly delicious tale of love, passion, and the unknown.”

  —Booklist on The Girl from Summer Hill

  “[A] sexy, lighthearted romp.”

  —Kirkus Reviews on Ever After

  “Thoroughly enjoyable.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Ever After

  JUDE DEVERAUX

  As You Wish

  Look for Jude Deveraux’s next novel

  A WILLING MURDER

  available soon from MIRA Books

  For more from Jude Deveraux, visit her website at jude-deveraux.com.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Langley, Virginia 1970

  “Get strong. Get tan. Think you’re smart enough to do those two things, kid?”

  The man was as tall as Kit, a couple of inches over six feet, but he was very wide. Kit wondered if three of himself, glued side by side, would be as wide as this officer. With his short black hair, he looked like a cartoon bear.

  “Yes, sir.” Kit’s back was so straight it was like steel.

  “And when we pick you up in the fall, if you pull your pants down, I don’t want to see your shiny white ass. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m to sunbathe in the nude.” As soon as he said the words he knew they were wrong. They sounded too elitist, too much like who he was, which was not “one of the guys.” His father didn’t lube cars. Dad had stopped a couple of tribal wars in the Middle East, but that wasn’t something Kit could brag about.

  When the big man leaned closer, as much as Kit wanted to step away, he didn’t. “Was that a remark? A joke? Are you laughing at me, kid?”

  “No, sir!” Kit practically yelled the words. Sweat was running down the back of his neck.

  It was 6:00 a.m. and he’d been pulled out of an early training session to go to this man’s office. But he hadn’t minded. At nineteen, he was the youngest of the recruits—some of whom had spent a couple of years in Vietnam—and he’d been hassled the most. “You been weaned yet, kid? Potty trained?”

  “Miss your mommie, do you?”

  “A few years back I had a one-nighter with a girl named Montgomery. Think I could be your daddy?”

  Kit had smiled through it all, but each barb had made him more determined to do a job that he was uniquely qualified for.

  The big man took a step back from Kit. “You...bathe—” his tone made fun of the word “—however you want to, but in September I want you and that big nose of yours lookin’ like you’ve always lived in the desert. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir, you do.”

  The man took another step back and looked Kit up and down in contempt. Like all his father’s family, Kit was tall and lean, built more like a runner than this guy, who could probably bench-press cars. “I don’t know what they were thinking when they got you,” he muttered. “You’re just a boy, and you’re so skinny you could slide through a keyhole.” He shook his head. “Do I have to remind you that no one—not even your famous daddy—is to know what some idiot picked you out to do?”

  “No, sir, you don’t.”

  “You think, Montgomery, that you can hang around your kinfolk and not tell them why you are—what did you call it?—sunbathing in the nude?”

  “I won’t be with them, sir.” Kit wasn’t looking at the man directly, but staring over his shoulder.

  “Oh, that’s right.” The man had a sneer in his voice. “You’re rich. Own lots of houses, do you?”

  Kit wasn’t sure if he was supposed to answer that or not. Some time ago he’d realized that he couldn’t spend the summer before he shipped out with his family. They were too perceptive and too nosy. They’d know he was up to something and they’d do whatever was necessary to find out what it was. And knowing them, they just might make sure it didn’t happen.

  No one was to know that he was training to go undercover in Libya. A young man named Muammar al-Gaddafi had just taken over the country and Kit was to find out what he planned to do. Thanks to his life with his diplomat father, Kit was fluent in Arabic in all its dialects. From the classic, to the Lebanese that was half French, to the Arabic spoken by the Saudis that came from inside a person’s throat, he knew them all.

  And Kit had inherited the hawk nose of his father’s family and the dark eyes of the Italian ancestry of his mother. With a tan and in the right clothes, he could sit in a souk, smoke a bubble pipe, and no one would pay any attention to him.

  Months ago, one of his father’s friends, a former American ambassador to Syria, had spent a week at their house in Cairo. Kit had seen the man watching him as he played kickball with Egyptians, ate schwarma from a street vendor, and as he got into a loud argument in Arabic with a cabdriver. Just before the ambassador left, he’d asked to speak to Kit in private. He started by asking if Kit would like to help his country. It had been a dramatic opening that appealed to Kit’s deep pat
riotism. Without hesitation he’d said yes.

  It hadn’t been easy to lie to his family and say he wanted to take a year off from college to bum around the world. Only his father seemed to guess the truth. He’d stared at his son for a while, then said, “What can we do to help you prepare for this...this trip?”

  “Get me away from here,” Kit said before he thought, but his father had nodded in understanding.

  Two days later, Kit received an invitation to spend the summer at Tattwell, an old plantation owned by relatives of his mother, the Tattingtons.

  When Kit was silent at the question, the big man waved his hand. “Go on. Get out of here. Just remember that I’ll be one of them that picks you up and you better be fit and dark. Now go!”

  The next night Kit arrived in Summer Hill, Virginia, and the next day he looked into the eyes of the woman he would love for the rest of his life. But Miss Olivia Paget didn’t feel the same way about him. In fact, she felt exactly the opposite. As though his life depended on it, Kit worked to change her mind.

  Chapter One

  Summer Hill, Virginia

  Present day

  Regret, Olivia thought as she looked about the little restaurant. On a TV talk show she’d seen that morning, the young, perfect-looking interviewer, her hair unnaturally shiny, asked the old actor if he had any regrets about his long life in show business.

  Of course he said no. He’d had a great life and wouldn’t change a thing. What else could he say? That he regretted his marriage to wife number two, who took everything he’d worked for during his forty years in film? That he wished he hadn’t made the three really bad horror movies when he was broke? What about the twelve years he’d wasted when he was in a drugged-out, alcoholic stupor? But then the critics agreed that he was a better actor when he was drunk. After rehab, he became serious and dull. A costar notoriously said that bourbon seemed to be his fuel to joy.

  But he said he regretted nothing. I’ll drink to that! Olivia thought.

  What would she say if that interviewer, her dress tighter than the skin of a snake and about the same size, asked Olivia what she regretted in her life?

  “Sex,” she’d say. “I missed out on those precious years of young sex. Shoved up against a wall, slamming away in the front seat of a car with the gearshift ramming into your back, sweat dripping off your noses, the sun coming up and you’ve been at it all night, and the next day you’re so sore you can hardly walk. That’s what I regret missing in my life. One summer of it was not enough!”

  She imagined the interviewer’s face, her HD makeup that made her look plastic, freezing in place. Would she be stern and say, “That’s not what you’re supposed to answer”? Would the network bleep out what Olivia had said? Would Robin Williams smile down from Heaven and say, “You go, girl”?

  To Olivia, one of the great mysteries of life was why young people believed that sex wants, needs, thoughts, cravings—any and all of it—disappeared with age. When did a person go from being “hot” to “cute”? “They’re such a cute couple.” That’s what kids automatically said about people past the age of... She wasn’t sure when that was reached. And at what age were you supposed to forget that you’d ever had sex? Forget those days you spent naked by the pond. The smell of the grass crushed under your body. The water so warm and seeping into crevices, then him licking it away. Kids were shocked if a person over fifty mentioned anything sexual. At what age did a person revirginalize?

  “Hello.”

  She looked up to see a big, tall young man—at least young to her—midthirties, possibly older. He was quite good-looking, and his eyes had a kind of feral energy that Olivia guessed would get him whatever he wanted. The shirt and trousers he wore looked casual, but she could tell that they’d been custom-made for him. But the smooth outward appearance of him seemed studied, as though he were an actor playing a role.

  “Are you Mrs. Montgomery?” His words were spoken in a newscaster’s voice, with no real accent. But she would put money on it that it wasn’t the way he spoke when he was a kid.

  “I am. And you’re from Dr. Hightower?”

  “Yes. Do you mind?” Politely, he waited for her to motion for him to take the chair across from her. He sat down, then nodded for a waitress to come to him. As Olivia had guessed, the young woman arrived quickly. When he gave his order for black coffee, Olivia was glad to see that his eyes didn’t linger on the pretty young waitress. Nor did he speak until she’d left. “Jeanne—Dr. Hightower—said you would take us to the house.”

  “I will, but we need to wait for the other tenant, Elise, to get here. I got a text from her and she should be here in a few minutes.”

  When the waitress put the coffee before the man, she set down a plate of little lemon cookies. “They’re on the house. For—”

  She glanced at Olivia. “For both of you.”

  Olivia knew the girl’s mother and it took only a quick squint of her eyes to make the girl go away. When she looked back at the man, she wondered if he was as oblivious to the attention of the waitress as he seemed.

  “I guess Jeanne told you that I’m Ray Hanran.”

  “I was told little more than your names, but I did assume that you and Elise are friends.”

  “Oh no,” he said, “I’ve never met my new housemate. There was supposed to be an older woman staying with us, but she dropped out.”

  Olivia couldn’t help frowning. “I know that the other guest is quite young.”

  “Is she? I have no idea. You know Jeanne. She tells you little about anything.”

  “Actually, I don’t know her. It was my husband, Kit, who asked me to escort you two to the Camden Hall estate.”

  “Estate? That sounds bigger than I thought it was.”

  “Jeanne’s summerhouse is one of four small houses on what used to be a fairly grand property.” Olivia was concerned about the arrangements. “Does this young woman, Elise, know that she’s spending the weekend with a man she’s never met?” She gave a pointed look at the wedding ring on his left hand.

  The way he smiled showed that he knew what was in Olivia’s mind. “I don’t know what she’s been told. None of this was my doing. It took Jeanne weeks to make me believe I should stop work and go to some cabin nestled in the woods.” His eyes widened. “You don’t think this is like a dating service, do you? Meant to match me up with some lonely young client of hers?”

  The way he leaned back in his chair made Olivia think he was going to leave—which would disappoint Kit greatly. “I really don’t know anything,” she said quickly. “My husband was called away to DC and he sent me an email saying a psychologist, Dr. Jeanne Hightower, was sending two of her clients here for a long weekend. He asked if I would please meet you two in this restaurant and lead you there. It’s not easy to find.”

  Ray frowned. “I don’t understand any of this. I’m having...” He took a drink of his coffee and seemed to consider whether or not to confide in her. “I’m having some serious marital problems and Jeanne was recommended to me. I’ve been going to her for weeks, but I haven’t made any progress in my decision about what to do. I was planning to quit therapy, but then Jeanne started nagging me to go to Virginia to spend some time at her summerhouse. I finally gave in and here I am.”

  Suddenly, a look of abject terror came onto his face. “This isn’t one of those retreats, is it? Where I’m supposed to wear a white robe and talk about my...my feelings?”

  Olivia couldn’t help a laugh at the fear in his voice. “It’s not. The house is a pretty little three-bed, three-bath, and it was empty for years. I wasn’t even aware that it’d been sold. I’ve lived in Summer Hill all my life but I’ve only been on the grounds of Camden Hall once, and that was many years ago. But now that I live there—”

  “You live there, but you’ve only seen it once?”

  Olivia didn’t like talking about her per
sonal life, but she knew she had to say something to keep this man from leaving. In her calmest voice, the one she often used with strangers, she said, “You see, I’m a newlywed.” She waited for his astonishment. Young people seemed to think older women were born married. He did look surprised, but he recovered quickly. “At our wedding, my husband gave me the deed to a house on the Camden estate. He and I were together years ago when we first saw the old River House on the property so he knew I liked the place.” She paused to remember that blistering hot day when the two of them were naked. Young, strong bodies glistening in the sun.

  She looked back at Ray. “My husband bought the house for me, but I didn’t see it. We left from the wedding to go on a six-month-long honeymoon to see the places where he’d worked during his life as a diplomat.” Places I should have seen with him, she thought, but didn’t say. Kit had also recently introduced her to people she should have known for the last forty-plus years.

  “As soon as we got back to the US, Kit got a call from someone in DC and had to leave, so I returned to Summer Hill. I spent last night at the house of a friend. After I get you and young Elise settled at Dr. Hightower’s house, I’m to go to the home my husband bought for us. It’s at the other end of the estate.”

  He looked at her for a moment, seeming to consider this information. “Isn’t a groom supposed to carry his bride over the threshold of the new house?”

  If Olivia hadn’t asked herself that very thing, she would have laughed. But her disappointment showed on her face. The first time she saw the inside of the house she wanted to be with Kit. Part of the reason for their long honeymoon had been so the old house could be repaired, painted, and furnished. Every day they’d delighted in seeing the photos the decorator and the work crew sent them. They’d begun with cobwebs and mice, a raccoon in the attic, and 1940s electrical. But underneath the filth had been beautiful old beams and stone fireplaces, and giant windows that looked out onto a pretty pond with an island in the middle. It was all going to be perfect!

  But as much as she’d enjoyed the traveling and buying things for their house, there were times when such deep waves of regret flooded Olivia that she’d been unable to move. Kit and she had known each other for so very long and they should have been together all that time. She should know the best places to shop in Istanbul. She should be able to speak Arabic because she should have lived with Kit when he was stationed in Egypt. She should—