As You Wish Read online

“Good boy.” Tara took a step sideways. Another one, and she’d see the book at the back of Alejandro’s waistband and know he’d been playing a joke on her.

  Elise had seen Tara do some nasty things to people who laughed at her. She whipped out her hand, pulled the book out of Alejandro’s waistband, and held it behind her own back.

  Sure enough, Tara looked behind him, admiring the view. There was just lots of skin, no book. She stepped away. “I need to go.” She ran her hand down Alejandro’s arm. “You, cutie, come see me. Maˇnana.”

  “Si, si. Maˇnana. Tres.” Alejandro looked like he was trying hard to understand her.

  “No, no. Dos. Two. Come tomorrow at two p.m.” She rolled her eyes at Elise, and whispered, “Beautiful but dumb.” She gave one last look at Alejandro, then left.

  Elise stood beside him in silence until Tara was out of sight. “I’m so sorry.” She handed him back his book.

  “That’s all right,” Alejandro said. “It’s the most fun I’ve had for months.”

  “By the way, that’s one of my favorites.” She nodded at the novel. “I feel like I owe you. Would you like a glass of lemonade?”

  “Yes, but no. My brother would kill me. I bet that right now he’s glaring at the back of me.”

  Elise looked around him and there was Diego staring at his brother’s back with fire in his eyes. “He is,” she whispered, then stepped to the side. Loudly, she said, “Would you show me? I have no idea what that looks like. It’s around the other side of the house.”

  As soon as they were out of Diego’s sight, she held out her hand. “I’m Elise.”

  “And I’m Alejandro.”

  They shook hands. His was big and work calloused and very warm.

  He broke the hold. “I really should get back to work.” He took a step away.

  “Why are you here? You don’t seem like a...” Elise realized she was putting her foot in her mouth. “I mean... Your English. It’s so good, but I mean...”

  “It’s all right. I understand. At home in Mexico, I teach Spanish to English people. I need to speak the language well.”

  “And you know about plants, right?”

  “I do. I studied botany. My brother thinks it’s a useless subject to know.”

  “My family feels that too! My degree is in Fine Arts. Try to get a job in that!” They smiled at each other.

  “I don’t mean to be an elitist, but if you have a degree and a job, why are you here?” She raised her hand to indicate the garden. “Doing this?”

  “I must reveal my secret. I got into trouble at home and my big brother rescued me. Got me out of the country and gave me a job.”

  “Oh. Trouble as in drugs?”

  “I wish. Then I’d be rich. Maybe dead, but rich.”

  Elise laughed.

  “I’m sure you have other things to do than listen to a gardener’s life story.”

  “No, I can’t say that I do. My husband wants me to cook some exotic dishes for his clients. But all of them just want beef. And lots of it. So no, I don’t really have anything else to do. What kind of flowers are those?”

  “Peonies. Paeonia california. And those over there are Paeonia corsica.”

  “Wow. I’m impressed. And based on my little garden here, I think your degree is quite useful.”

  “Thank you. I was hoping you’d like it.”

  His eyes really were extraordinary. “I should have studied domestic management.”

  “And I wish I’d learned how to get a wheelbarrow loaded with a hundred-and-fifty-pound dogwood up a hill. First time I tried it, the thing fell out twice.”

  “And you picked it up and put it back in?”

  “You can bet Diego wasn’t going to help me. He—”

  “Alejandro!” It was Diego—and his tone was a command.

  “My brother wants me to get back to work. I have to go.”

  She frantically searched for something to say that would ensure that they’d talk again. “If I take Spanish lessons, will you help me?”

  He was walking backward. “Yes. Most of my clients were women. Bored wives of rich men. Like your friend Tara. They were the problem.”

  “Oh, I see. And she’s not my friend.” Her head came up. “I guess I’m like them.” She couldn’t keep the deflation out of her voice.

  “You are far away from being like any of them.” The way he said it was so nice that she smiled.

  “Alejandro!” Diego bellowed.

  “I’m in trouble now. To maˇnana.”

  Smiling, she watched him walk away until he was out of sight.

  Chapter Eight

  Elise had been taking Spanish lessons for a month but she’d not seen Alejandro. Diego and his other men had been there as usual. They mowed and trimmed and pulled weeds with quick efficiency, then left in a couple of old trucks.

  She didn’t dare ask Diego where his brother was. She didn’t want him to think she wanted something more than someone to talk to. Which she assured herself that she didn’t.

  One Sunday at the joint family dinner, her mother said it was time for Elise to start taking responsibility in the community. She kept her groan to herself. To her mother that meant joining committees and trying to show interest in whatever the other members—all of them over sixty—had to say.

  She hadn’t told anyone she was taking Spanish classes three mornings a week. She was sure her mother would complain that it wasn’t French.

  Her teacher was a Mexican woman in her fifties, very nice, and she was constantly feeding Elise. “You are too thin!” Elise ate everything she was served but she didn’t put on weight. But then she never sat still long enough to let calories settle.

  One day her teacher’s three young grandchildren were there. Elise took one look at them and forgot about the teacher. She spent two hours with the kids and they delighted in telling her that every word she said in Spanish was totally wrong. Elise learned more from them than from any formal lesson.

  After that, her teacher made sure the children were always there. Elise made a great babysitter. She and the children cooked Mexican dishes, played Mexican games, and spoke only in Spanish. By the end of the month she wasn’t fluent in the language, but she was on her way.

  It was when her teacher said her father was ill and she had to return to Mexico that Elise again began to feel the loneliness of her life. Kent was always gone, girlfriends all seemed to have busy lives, and her mother was pushing her into joining the dreaded committees.

  Elise began to have dreams—both real and made-up—of a man on a horse who rescued her from—from everything. One morning she woke up startled. In her dream, it had been Alejandro on the horse.

  She finally got up the courage to ask Diego where his brother was. She was told he was on “another job.” His tone was unmistakable. Alejandro was off-limits to her, a married woman.

  That Sunday, Elise was standing by the door waiting for Kent to finish a call so they could walk to her parents’ house for the weekly dinner. Or, as she called it, the What’s Wrong with Elise? dinner.

  “Come on, it’s not that bad,” Kent said when he joined her.

  “My mother wants me to join her committee about cleaning up the parks.”

  “Sounds like a worthy cause.”

  “It would be if we did some actual cleaning. But I’m to help some other women decide how to deal with the people who have been assigned by the court to do community service. Like any of us know how to do that.”

  “I’m sure you’ll do fine.” Kent was looking at his watch.

  “Need to be somewhere?”

  “Don’t start on me! For once, let’s have a nice meal without you starting a fight. Maybe it would be good for you to join a committee or two. Do something instead of sitting around here all day and complaining.”

  The unfa