As You Wish Read online

  “I’m not—” she began, but stopped when Alejandro turned to look at her. She gave a cough as she glared at Miguel, who grinned back at her.

  Now Elise was looking at what she could see of Alejandro’s body and imagining the feel of it, the taste of it, the—She quit thinking when she realized that his eyes were open. Slowly, he held out his hand to her in invitation.

  Yes! she thought. She would go to him and for the first time in her life have sex with a man who wanted her. A man who desired her. Who—

  She couldn’t believe what she did, but she threw back the cover and ran out of the room. In the living room, she leaned against the wall, her heart pounding, and tried to understand what she’d just done. This is what she wanted, wasn’t it? This is what she’d complained to Olivia and Kathy about. So far in her life, she’d missed out on great sex. Maybe later, after she got away from Kent and their parents, she would find someone to have it with, but right now there was this beautiful man. So why was she turning down his invitation?

  Because she liked Alejandro, that’s why. To him they’d just met, but to her, she’d laughed with him, shared his hopes and dreams.

  And damn it! She wanted more than just wham! Bam! Be quiet so Diego doesn’t hear.

  She wanted... What she couldn’t have, she thought.

  She heard the shower running in “their” bathroom. Yesterday after lunch, he’d insisted that Diego stop at a big drugstore and let her go inside to buy some toiletries. Alejandro had gone in with her and paid for everything.

  Her toothbrush was in a glass with his. They used the same container of toothpaste.

  His razor—which he didn’t use often—was next to her pink one.

  Elise tried to calm herself—and to stop thinking. As she pushed away from the wall, she noticed the rolled-up papers on the coffee table and wondered what they were. When she unrolled them, she saw that they were a garden plan for Mrs. Bellmont.

  It took Elise about two minutes to see that it was a rip-off design from an estate she’d seen in England. An elegant, tranquil English garden was the last thing someone as flamboyant as Mrs. Bellmont would want.

  She looked at the bottom. Ah. Right. Designed by Leonardo. The delicate little man who was all the rage of the neighborhood. Her mother had said she wanted to get Leonardo to redesign her garden. “And put in some stainless steel sculptures?” Elise had said, but her mother’s put-down look had silenced her.

  Diego came into the room, yawning.

  “Are you going to do this garden?”

  “If I get the job,” he said. “I hate that guy. He never tells what kind of anything he wants and I have to guess. He’ll write, Red Flowers. What does that mean? He doesn’t even tell how tall they have to be.”

  “So when the client doesn’t like them it’s your fault,” Elise said.

  “That’s right.” He was going into the kitchen. “You want some eggs?”

  She rolled the plan back up. “I’ll make breakfast. You sit down and tell me about Alejandro.” Her face turned red. “I mean, tell me about Leonardo from your point of view.”

  He knew she hadn’t made a mistake; she wanted to know about his brother. “He doesn’t have a girlfriend and nobody thought he’d stay here to do work that gets his hands dirty. But some girl in her underwear was walking around a hotel room and he hasn’t been the same since.”

  It wasn’t until he got to the end that she realized he’d said it all in Spanish. His eyes were sparkling.

  “Very funny,” she said. “Don’t tell him.”

  “When not talking to you is making my little brother so miserable? I wouldn’t dream of it.” They heard Alejandro in the bedroom. Diego lowered his voice. “Are you going to break his heart?”

  “He broke mine this morning when I had to say no to him,” she whispered back. “Besides, your sister wants him to seduce me so she can tell Kent on me. I want to be sure I’m not just a part of that plan.”

  Diego gave her a look of sympathy. “Family, right?”

  Elise gave a laugh, then turned and started breakfast as Alejandro entered the kitchen.

  * * *

  They went to the Kendricks’ house to weed the flower beds and put down new cedar mulch. Elise was given the job of deadheading the roses. She put on a big canvas sling bag, used some little cutters, and began clipping.

  What she was really doing was watching the men. The minute they moved to the front of the house, she planned to make her escape. The Kendricks’ house was just across the back lane from her parents’ place, and the little cottage where she was to live after her marriage.

  She’d promised Diego not to do anything that might get them in trouble, but if she were caught, there might be repercussions. Her father would demand to know who had helped her run away.

  What Elise wanted to do was slip into her parents’ house and get some clothes. And there was cash hidden in her room. If she was to make her escape to Maine, she needed to buy a plane ticket.

  It wasn’t until after lunch that she saw her chance. When she told Diego that she’d work on the bed by the back fence, he nodded. The second the men went around the corner, she made her move.

  There was a wide service lane separating the houses. It was where the landscapers, cleaners, and delivery people parked their vehicles. Garbage was picked up here. No big green bins were ever put in front of the houses.

  Elise knew that her parents’ house would probably be empty. Even if they had people looking for their missing daughter, she doubted if her parents would interrupt their routine. Her mother’s beauty and massage appointments took up a great deal of her time. Then there was clothes shopping and what Elise called “gossip meals,” where the women told all the salacious things they’d heard about each other. Her mother would certainly go to those to try to prevent the truth from being told about Elise and Kent.

  She went out the back, crossed the lane, then slipped through the gate that was behind the house she’d lived in with Kent. As she ran past it, she paused for a moment. She’d never been happy in that house and it had never seemed like hers.

  It was when she turned back that she saw Alejandro. He was standing there watching her.

  Even when she rasped, “Go back!” he didn’t move. She didn’t dare speak any louder in case someone was in the house and heard her. “I need some clothes.” She was wondering when he was going to stop this lunacy of pretending that he didn’t understand her.

  He made a gesture for her to go ahead, letting her know that he wasn’t leaving.

  Turning away, she ran across the garden to the side door of the house. She knew where a key was hidden and she knew the alarm code. Please, she thought, don’t let them have changed it.

  Alejandro stood beside her as she punched in her father’s birth date, then held her breath. No alarm sounded. When she looked around again, Alejandro was nowhere to be seen, but when she reached the big, two-story foyer, he was standing at the foot of the stairs.

  How does he know his way around the house? she wondered.

  When she reached her bedroom, he was already there to open the door, and she frowned. “As soon as we see Diego, you’re going to explain how you know where my bedroom is.”

  With a smile, he shrugged that he had no idea what she was saying.

  Frowning, as she was growing tired of the game, Elise went to her big walk-in closet. She needed to pack some things, but she didn’t want to take so much that her parents would report a burglary.

  Alejandro leaned against the closet doorway. “I wish I could talk to you,” he said in Spanish. “I wish I hadn’t listened to my sister and started all this about the language. But then, I’m afraid of what I might say if I did talk to you.”

  When he stopped, Elise looked at him. “Go on. Talk,” she said. “I’m nervous and your voice calms me.” She made gestures to show what she mea