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 de