As You Wish

by Jude Deveraux

  Kit lifted his head to look at her, but Olivia just smiled and went on with the story.

  They all fell asleep, wrapped around each other, and only woke when a flashbulb went off. It was morning, her mother had arrived to help Livie dress for the wedding, and she’d taken a photo of them.

  Olivia looked up at the big house and knew that that picture was in a pretty frame on a side table in the well-used living room. One thing she’d done in her time in the past was to see that lots of photos were taken. Her new father-in-law had sent her an excellent camera from Japan and she’d begun photographing everything. Camden Hall was full of albums and pictures in frames.

  She didn’t go into the big house but kept walking toward the wall that separated River House. Three of the times she’d been here had turned into a naked escape over the big outer wall. First was with Kit, then Elise, then with Kit again.

  I think I’ll keep my clothes on this time, she thought. When she reached the river that ran in front of the house, she stopped. It was extraordinarily beautiful! She and Kit had owned the place for years now and she was remembering all the work they’d put into it. When they were in another country and saw a garden they liked, they copied what they could at River House. Twice, Kit had torn everything out. Both times, he’d been having trouble with some diplomatic negotiations and the hard labor of gardening had helped him think.

  For years, Kit and she and Tisha had lived in River House. Camden Hall had been empty most of the time, too big for the three of them, so they’d saved it for guests and parties. Every year Tisha had a party that included most of Summer Hill. Kit went all out, with animal rides, and friends of his flying in from whichever country Tisha wanted to show to the kids. One year they’d had a demonstration of yak milking.

  For years after Tisha was born, there’d been no more children. Not for lack of trying on their part! They went to doctors but they could find nothing wrong with either of them.

  “N’shalla,” Kit said. “It’s God’s Will.”

  Every chance they got, they returned to Summer Hill, and they’d filled River House with treasures from around the world.

  Then when Olivia was nearing forty years old, one day she couldn’t bear the sight or smell of lemons. She thought she was coming down with a cold, but her Egyptian housekeeper put her hand on Olivia’s flat stomach and laughed.

  Declan was born seven months later, Rowan a year after that, then last was Tully.

  During her pregnancy with Rowan, Olivia had been worried. She didn’t know why, but she kept thinking that something would be wrong. One night she’d cried and said, “He won’t be the same.”

  Only now did she understand her concern. In her other life, Rowan had had a different mother. And the second time, he was different. He’d always looked like his father but this time he had some of Olivia’s blonde coloring. And her humor. Previously, he’d been a very serious young man. Taciturn. Almost cold. But then he’d been raised by warring parents.

  The same but different, Olivia thought.

  With the arrival of the boys, their lives went from quiet, orderly peacefulness, with Kit being the center of it, to... Olivia smiled. To complete and utter chaos. After the sweet calmness of Tisha, the boys were a shock. Noise, laughter, tumbling fights, accidents, broken everything. Rules were considered a challenge. They seemed to truly believe that whoever disobeyed the most won.

  She and Kit left their fragile treasures in River House and moved into Camden Hall—and put bars on the upstairs windows. Kit lightened his workload but they still moved often—and Olivia and the children followed him everywhere. The boys adapted to new languages and grass huts and camel hair tents with extraordinary ease.

  As for Tisha, when she turned eighteen, she opted to stay in the US and go to school. She said she’d had enough of roaming the world. But no one was surprised when she married a young man who wanted to go into diplomacy. Their daughter Lori inherited Olivia’s acting talent. Kit had always felt that he’d cheated Olivia out of a great career on Broadway, so he bought an old warehouse in Summer Hill. He made it into a theater and last summer he put on a play starring their beloved granddaughter. He even conned his famous actor cousin into playing the lead. It had been an extraordinary success, even changing the lives of several people.

  For a moment, Olivia looked at the differences and the sameness of the two lives. Almost always, deaths had occurred at the same time in both lives. The same people had married and divorced. She’d been worried that changing one thing would destroy good things, but it hadn’t. There had been some bad happenings, like when Kit’s father went out sailing and never returned. Every death had nearly killed her, but when Olivia looked back, it had all been nearly the same.

  Except for Alan, she thought, and again she felt that all-consuming smile flow through her. The great guilt she’d carried for most of her other life was finally gone.

  She was especially proud to remember that she’d changed one life drastically. Just as she’d done the first time, Estelle had miscarried, but without a car wreck—and again, she was told that she could have no more children. At the time, Olivia was pregnant and living in Charlottesville with her parents and going to school. She didn’t understand it then, but when she was told of Estelle’s miscarriage, she became hysterical. She and Estelle had never been close, but Olivia knew she had to help. She called Dr. Everett and he gave her the number of the unwed mother’s home in Jacksonville. In the end, Estelle adopted a little girl and it was Olivia who urged her not to keep the adoption a secret. It took a while to get Estelle to go against the beliefs of the era, but she did. And that allowed her and Henry to end up adopting six more children.

  “Hi.”

  Olivia turned to see Kathy and Elise sitting on the terrace of River House. They were both smiling in a way that made her sure that they had achieved what they wanted to.

  Elise ran her hand over her protruding stomach. “This is my second.”

  “I have two children,” Kathy said. “And you’ll never guess who I married.”

  “Calvin Nordhoff,” Olivia said.

  “Spoilsport!” Kathy said.

  “Is anybody hungry? I am!” Elise said. “Let’s go inside and I’ll make tacos and we can talk.” Her eyes sparkled. “My sister-in-law, Carmen, gave me her recipe.”

  “Did she give you her brother too?” Olivia asked.

  “In exchange for Kent. I got the better deal. Much better!”

  Olivia and Kathy laughed, but then Olivia said, “Wait a minute. I thought you wanted to forget the past.”

  “Changed my mind. If I forget, then I might slip back into trying to please people who don’t exactly have my interests in mind. Alejandro laughs when I mention things that never happened, but he doesn’t mind.”

  “Speaking of which, how did your family take your marriage?” Kathy asked.

  Elise snorted. “After Kent got Dad out of jail, he thought it might be a good idea to listen to what all of us had to say. But then, Kent was threatening to leave Dad in there if he didn’t.”

  “Jail? I can’t wait to hear this.” Olivia looked at Kathy. “And what about you? Are you okay?”

  “Better than I thought possible.”

  “I want to know what happened to Andy,” Elise said to Kathy as she opened the door. “I want—” She broke off as she looked about the house. When they were in it before, everything had been so perfectly, professionally laid out.

  Now the house had that lived-in feeling that a family gave it. There were still art objects from the world, but they were interspersed with cheap trinkets and many photos of laughing people.

  Elise picked up a picture of three good-looking young men. “Wow! Who are these beautiful creatures?”

  “My sons.” Olivia’s tone told of her deep, deep love for them.

  “I want to hear every word,” Elise said. “From both
of you.” She looked at Kathy. “How’s Ray?”

  “Married to Rita, thanks to me. And you know what? She gained so much weight after her last baby that she’s bigger than I ever have been. But Ray is still mad about her and can’t keep his hands off of her.” She took a breath. “I learned that, contrary to all those diet people promising happiness if you just get a flat belly, love can’t be weighed. It isn’t given or denied based on the bathroom scale.”

  Olivia and Elise were smiling at her.

  Kathy looked at Olivia. “Did you get your ex with his mistress?”

  “In a roundabout way, I did, but—” She looked at Elise’s pale face. “Let’s feed this young lady, then spend the rest of the day talking. I think we have a lot to tell.”

  “Wait!” Kathy said, then looked at Elise. “I need to know something. Did you get pulled onto that black horse?”

  “Oh yeah,” Elise said. “Repeatedly. Our son runs so fast that Alejandro says we made him on the back of that horse. I don’t think that’s true, but there was that one time when...” She trailed off dreamily.

  Olivia put her hands on Elise’s back and pushed her toward the kitchen. “Food first, then stories.”

  Chapter Thirty

  When the women were settled, there was a mutual agreement that Elise should go first and she had them laughing about walking in front of Alejandro in her underwear.

  Her story took hours. The best part was at the end, when Elise finally stood up to her mother. The two mothers sat on a couch, the fathers in chairs, and Elise stood in front of them. Kent was beside his wife. For the first time, he was on Elise’s side. Come what may, he’d decided to take a stand. “When you two were in college,” Elise said, “you concocted a plan that you’d marry men who were either rich or aristocratic, and you did so. Later, you decided that your kids would marry each other.” She used her height to loom over the two women. “Did you even once think about what Kent and I wanted?”

  “You adored Kent,” Elise’s mother said.

  “Probably because that’s the only thing I ever did that got approval from you.”

  “We don’t have to listen to this,” Kent’s mother said, but he clamped a hand on her shoulder and made her sit there.

  Since Elise’s father had spent three days in jail and was now facing possible prosecution for an attempted kidnapping, his attitude had changed. He sat quietly and listened.

  Elise went on with her tirade. She told all four of the parents that they had to give up their snobbish racism or they were going to lose their only children.

  She didn’t dare look at Kent when she said that because he was still terrified of losing his job. He wanted it all, the money and Carmen. As for Elise, she was so happy with her new life she could walk away from them and their money—and they knew that.

  In the end, the parents conceded. Carmen and Kent were going to move into the house on the property of the parents and Kent was allowed to keep his job. But then, unlike his father, he was an asset to the business.

  The parents offered to buy Elise and Alejandro a big house nearby, but they declined.

  She knew that taking it would put them under obligation to her parents. And besides, she knew them. Her mother would show up every day with “suggestions” about how Elise should live her life.

  After a lot of talk, she and Alejandro, Diego and his wife and children, and three of their employees, decided they were going to move to Fort Lauderdale so they’d have year-round work.

  When Elise finished telling her story, she turned to Kathy. “Your turn.”

  They opened a bottle of wine—club soda for pregnant Elise—and went into Olivia’s pretty living room. They snuggled up on the well-worn, comfortable chairs and couch and waited for Kathy to begin.

  * * *

  Kathy took a sip of her wine. As she was curled up in a chair, she was glad that she looked the same as she did before she went back in time. But inside she was very different. “As I said, I at last figured out that body type doesn’t matter as much as I thought it did. With the way the media bombards us with skinny, skinny, skinny, it’s all I could think about. Diet books, diet pills, and sneers. Lots and lots of sneers. I seemed to have been considered evil for not being thin.”

  She grimaced. “Dr. Oz had a show where some big women came onto the stage and the audience was told that no applause was allowed. And why? The only ‘sin’ the women had committed was eating an extra helping of barbecue. I’ve seen child molesters on TV talk shows who were applauded because they said they were going to do better. But overweight women were given less courtesy and kindness than criminals.”

  Kathy took a deep drink of her wine. “You know that commercial for toothpaste where the men ignore the skinny girl and lust for the one who has a curvy body—and white teeth?”

  “I love that ad,” Elise said.

  “That was mine. The guys in the office booed it, but women across the globe loved it.”

  “So tell us what happened,” Olivia said. “How did you get your ads on TV and billboards?”

  “And in print.” Kathy’s smile of pride told a lot. She put down her glass. “I got angry. I didn’t know so much of my father was in me. But then, I was on a very limited time budget and I knew what awaited me if I didn’t change things. Besides, Dad was yelling at the man I wanted.”

  “This is Andy?” Olivia asked. “The one you did not end up with?”

  Kathy nodded. “When I woke up, I was sitting in Ray’s office. It took me a while to figure out where I was and when. I looked at Ray’s calendar and saw that he was in Chicago—and it was before we were married. It took me quite a while to adjust. First of all, there was my body. It was different.”

  Olivia spoke up. “If you want different, you should go from your sixties to your early twenties. Now that’s a shock!”

  Kathy smiled. “I had forgotten that Ray’s obsession with having a body like some California beach boy had soaked into me. When I was growing up, Dad and his energy weren’t around, so it was just Mom and me and we were readers. We liked quiet pleasures. But then I married Ray. He worked out and he got me to do it too.”

  “Alejandro is more of a reader, but his sister and I like to—” She broke off as they were staring at her.

  “This is the Carmen who made your life so miserable?” Kathy asked.

  “This time around she didn’t steal my husband and besides, she’s not bad at helping to run the business. This isn’t about me.” She looked at Kathy. “Go on with the story.”

  “So anyway,” Kathy said, “I was sitting at Ray’s desk and thinking how soft I was and that I needed to go to a gym when I noticed a pile of folders on the bookcase. I was pretty disoriented and not sure what to do. I picked up the folders and started looking through them. They were Ray’s ideas for future ad campaigns.”

  “And you knew which ones would work,” Olivia said.

  “I did. At first it was just a joke. I kept saying, ‘Yes, yes, no, no,’ that sort of thing. It was fascinating knowing the future and which ideas the clients were going to like. And I knew how the client would change them. Ray had put a star by one of the ideas, but I knew that the client was going to hate that one, but he’d love the one in the corner that Ray had drawn a line through.”

  “What did you do?” Olivia asked.

  “Actually, I think I was afraid to go outside and face everyone. It’s a lot of responsibility to think that in just three weeks you have to do something so fabulous that you change your entire life.”

  “I agree,” Olivia said. “I tried to save the entire town—and I had to work to keep myself from writing President Nixon and warning him that...” She waved her hand. It was all too much to tell.

  “I had no problems at all,” Elise said. “Three weeks was plenty of time to escape my megalomaniac parents, my greedy fiancé, and, oh yeah, find a career.
And while I was at it, I was supposed to make the man I adored, but who didn’t remember our time together, fall in love with me.”

  “But you did it,” Olivia said.

  Such a look of pride came onto Elise’s pretty face that the room seemed to grow brighter. “I did, didn’t I?” she said softly. She looked back at Kathy.

  “Ray’s office was quiet and since no one paid much attention to me, I knew I wouldn’t be bothered. I pulled some paper out of the printer tray and began making sketches of how I knew the ads would be. There were two that had flopped, and afterward we knew why, so I fixed those.”

  She smiled in memory. “It was wonderful. When Ray’s secretary came in, I had papers everywhere.”

  “Who was his secretary?” Elise asked.

  “Back then, he still had Martha. I knew she wanted to retire, but Ray wouldn’t let her. He kept giving her raises and begging her to stay. I asked her to find out where Rita Morales was and to ask her to come in for a job interview as her replacement. She was so pleased I thought she was going to cry.”

  Olivia laughed. “Great idea! So what about Cal?”

  “I’m coming to that,” Kathy said. “Martha went through all the papers I’d done and she knew they were good. She didn’t say a word, just unlocked one of Ray’s desk drawers and pulled out a two-foot stack of folders. They were clients of other firms who Ray wanted to win. He was trying to come up with ideas he could show them that would entice them to come to Dad’s firm.”

  “And you knew every campaign that would win them over,” Olivia said.

  “Yes, I did,” Kathy said. “Martha plopped the folders down in front of me and put my cell phone on top. ‘Record the jingles you make up,’ she said, then left. As I went through them—and most of them Ray and I had worked on together—I realized that it was more about choice than creativity. The ideas that were eventually used were there but we’d presented the wrong ones.”

  Kathy looked at them. “She called Bob from the art department and he came up and sketched out storyboards. And she called in Dave and he brought a keyboard and put music to the jingles that Ray and I had discarded.”