As You Wish Read online

  Kit opened his mouth to reply, but he couldn’t hold back. He started laughing. “My mother would agree with you, but I...”

  Olivia waited for him to continue but he said nothing else.

  He sat down on her cream-colored chair. “I was thinking of buying some bikes for those rapscallion kids. Anywhere around here I can get them?”

  Olivia pulled a jumper and three blouses out of her closet and put them on the bed. “Trumbull’s Appliances can order what you want, but otherwise you need to go to Richmond or Charlottesville.”

  “That’s the same way we do it where I live.”

  “Oh?” she said in an encouraging way.

  “Warbrooke, Maine. The town was founded by an ancestor of mine and it’s full of my relatives. If we don’t want to marry a cousin we have to go out of state.”

  “And what if you do want to marry a cousin?” She pulled out a Bill Blass pantsuit, off-white with gold buttons. She was tired of wearing worn-out dresses all the time. Maybe one evening they could use the big mahogany table in the dining room.

  “That’s as likely as your going out with the kid who delivers the propane.”

  “I don’t know... Alfie’s kind of cute.”

  “He certainly thinks you are.” There was venom in Kit’s voice. “And the guy who said he stopped by to see the old men couldn’t take his eyes off you.”

  Olivia looked at him, startled. He was frowning deeply. “That’s Ted. His father owns the furniture store. I hardly know him.”

  Kit didn’t reply, but he seemed annoyed. He got up, mumbled something about seeing her later, then left the room.

  Olivia stood there for a moment. What in the world was wrong with him? She tossed a blue jacket by Pierre Cardin on the bed, then pulled out a red jumpsuit. It had a halter top and wide legs, with a small waist. Maybe they’d have a picnic under the magnolia tree. She got out a few more items, some jewelry, a few pair of shoes, then pulled a suitcase from under her bed and packed. She took her time doing it as she didn’t want to give him the idea that she was in a hurry to go into town with him.

  When she finished, she sat down on the bed. She needed to think about what she was doing. She knew she was very—okay, extremely—attracted to him, but it couldn’t possibly go anywhere. In New York, her cast mates had tried to look on the bright side of spending the summer waiting for the play to begin. A summer affair seemed to be what most of them planned. “Summer jobs, summer sex,” one of them said.

  Olivia had wanted to seem as worldly as they were so she’d agreed. But a summer affair with a teenager? Then what? Break his heart when she went back to New York? When he was fifty, would he talk about the famous actress who’d ripped his heart out? That wasn’t something she wanted associated with her name.

  The sound of voices drew her out of her thoughts. No one was supposed to be home. Who in the world had he invited into her parents’ home?

  She entered the living room just as her father and Kit came in from the hall that led to her father’s study. Since he’d retired from banking, he’d indulged himself in his love of ancient history, even to writing a few papers.

  “There you are,” her dad said. He was shorter than Kit and a bit slumped from years at a desk, but he was still handsome. “Your young man has been telling me about his life in Egypt. He’s even invited your mother and me to stay at his parents’ house in Cairo in January.”

  Years of acting lessons helped her hide her shock at hearing this. “How nice,” Olivia managed to say, then added, “He’s not my young man. He’s only nineteen years old.”

  “Oh, I see. My mistake.”

  Olivia glared at her father. She knew when he was laughing at her. As for Kit, his eyes were also laughing. “Are you ready to go?” she snapped. “Or do you want to stay and discuss Tutankhamun’s tomb—which you probably helped to build.”

  Mr. Paget looked shocked at his daughter’s rudeness.

  “Actually,” Kit said, “I did see his tomb. It was opened for just a few hours and my father came to get me out of bed at three a.m. to go see it. I was ten years old and it was all very exciting.”

  With each word, Mr. Paget’s eyes widened. “Is it...? Does it...?”

  “Could you get my suitcase?” Olivia said to Kit as she went to the front door. Once she was outside, she wanted to kick herself. What was it about that boy that brought out the worst in her? When he was around, she seemed to go through every emotion. Anger, laughter, lust, a feeling that she had to win, all of it so strong that they nearly killed her. And she had to admit, sometimes jealousy. The kids, Uncle Freddy, Mr. Gates, and now her own father seemed to adore him. He could do no wrong. They seemed to think he was brilliant, entertaining, a hard worker, and now it looked like he was a world traveler. A house in Cairo! Not Cairo—pronounced K-row—Illinois, but the real one. Pyramids. Sphinx shot up by the Turks. Really! Was there no end to the boy’s good qualities?

  He came out with her suitcase in his hand and put it in the back of the truck. He started to go around to her side to open the door but she did it by herself.

  Kit started the truck and headed toward town. But then, he pulled over beside Mr. Ellis’s cow pasture, turned off the engine, got out, and opened her door. “We need to talk.”

  Olivia looked straight ahead and didn’t move.

  “If I have to pick you up, I will.”

  She got out of the truck, but her expression let him know that she didn’t like his attitude.

  There was a gate nearby and he motioned to it. They walked together for a while until they came to a pretty rock formation. Olivia had been to it many times when she was a child.

  Stepping back, Kit held out his hand. He was motioning for her to sit down.

  For a while, they sat a yard apart, silently watching the cows grazing in the field.

  “I grew up all over the world,” he began. “My father is in the diplomatic service. He worked his way up from being a kid who carried the briefcase of some major to being a traveling advisor. If there was a problem in the Middle East, he was often called in to fix it. My mother followed him everywhere—and she dragged her three kids with her. I’m the youngest so I’ve been to more countries, been exposed to more cultures and languages than they have.”

  For a while, Olivia didn’t say anything. It seemed that he was saying something very serious. Should they give free rein to the strong emotions between them or pull back? Stop it before it started? “I have a career ahead of me. I’ve worked for it since I was a child.”

  “And I have something waiting for me too,” he said.

  She gave him time to tell her what he was going to do, but he didn’t explain. She knew he wasn’t going to say any more. “We’ll be friends,” she said, and he nodded in reply. So be it, she thought. Or as he had said, “As you wish.” They had set boundaries. They hadn’t openly acknowledged their...their attraction to each other. But in a way they had—and they were in agreement about it. Now was not the right time for either of them. They had lives ahead of them and they didn’t want them interrupted. Friendship was their destiny.

  “What’s the big secret about Ace?” Kit asked. “And what’s the kid’s real name?”

  She turned to him. “No one told you?”

  Kit shook his head. “I’ve been working rather a lot so I’ve not had time for chats.”

  “Me too,” she said. “But coq au vin can’t compete with single-handedly raising old tombstones.”

  “They told me you were doing a better job.”

  Looking at each other, they laughed. It seemed that the old men had been playing them against each other. Their shared amusement cleared the air.

  Olivia took a breath. “Ace’s name is Kyle Chapman and his mother is dying of ovarian cancer. His father is the town’s only doctor, and between patients and his wife, he can’t care for the child. And besides,