The Near & Far Series

by Serena Clarke

  “And you don’t have to wonder about all the various things the police might want to talk to you about,” he added. “It’s sorted out. By the way, I’m glad that was his kneecap, and not mine. Nice shot, 99.” He grinned.

  “Oh, no.” She grimaced. “That was terrible. Thank you for getting me off the hook.” Then she looked at the Disney-worthy sandcastle. “So…you weren’t a sand sculptor after all.”

  “Actually, I kind of was. It was ridiculous how that fake job took on a life of its own. I made quite a lot of money at it, but I couldn’t keep it.”

  “Well, you’re good at it.” She held out a hand to the sandcastle, as proof. “So…what are you now? A regular police officer again?”

  “Nope. I’m unemployed. Kyle was my last assignment. I’ve finished with all that—it’s no good with Lily needing me, especially now she’ll be with us full time.”

  She nodded. In any version of Reid, there was the good father. She liked that so much. At the same time, it made her nervous, because what if he wanted to be a father again? She probably couldn’t go there, and that was something she didn’t want to burden him with, let alone the whole getting sick thing. Not that she was assuming he was here with an eye on forever. Hoping, maybe. Assuming, no.

  “But,” he added, oblivious to her thoughts, “there is a kind of beach art I do. That pewter table you admired at my parents’ house was mine.”

  “You made that?” She was genuinely impressed. “So you’re the local artist your mum talked about. It was amazing.”

  He shrugged, carefully modest, but she could see he was pleased. “Thanks. It’s fun. And it earns a bit of money too. They seem to have gotten popular.”

  “I bet.” She regarded him, processing all this new information, reconciling this new, neatly trimmed Daniel Reid, undercover cop, artist, with the Reid of her last few weeks.

  “You okay?” he asked. “That’s kind of a lot to lay on you.”

  “I don’t think any surprise can throw me now,” she said. “It’s been a crazy few weeks. Big highs, and lows I never saw coming. One surprise after another, good and bad. You know, when I left for the States, I really wanted to change myself, be someone different. But it seemed like everything around me changed faster than I could.”

  “You don’t have to be anyone other than yourself,” he said. “That’s the version of you I like.”

  “Oh…”

  He ran a thumb gently across her lips, and they parted slightly. Then he leaned down and lay a whisper of a kiss on her mouth, sending a thrum of desire through her body.

  “You know,” she said in a slightly husky voice, “all the things I thought were the new Cady, were actually just the bits of regular me that I never set free before.”

  “Is that right?” he said, his tone teasing. “Which bits did you set free? Any bits I might be interested in?”

  She laughed, feeling shy all of a sudden. “I think you already know.”

  “Humor me.”

  She took a breath. “Okay…the talking dirty on the phone bit. The fooling around in the back of a bus bit. Oh, and the pressing up against you until I feel you pressing against me bit.”

  He laughed. “That’s one of my favorites.”

  “I kind of like it too.” She stepped closer, still not touching him, but only a breath away.

  “I think you need some practice though.” His voice was low, gravelly.

  She loved the new knowledge of her power over him. “I might have already forgotten how it goes,” she teased.

  “I haven’t.”

  He leaned down and pulled her against him, pressing in a very convincing way, and kissed her—without hesitation, without any space between them, without secrets. The sea breeze caught her hair, the sand was warm under her toes, and the kiss was like the breath of life, every breath she wanted to take from here on. Life was short, but he was here, and she clung on, feeling her body warm and her heart fill again.

  Then a seagull swooped over their heads with a whooshing kerfuffle, making them jump, and landed on the sandcastle tower. He sprang into motion to shoo it away.

  “Can’t have seagull poop on your castle, Lady Cady,” he called back to her as he waved the bird off.

  “That’s for me?” she said, even though she knew it was.

  “If it pleases you.” He swept an arm out and bent at the waist, a parody of a bow.

  “Oh, it pleases me very much.” She put a finger to her lips, still tingly from the kiss. “You know how to please me.”

  He came back and reached for her again, drawing her close, and she dropped her shoes in the sand so she could hold him properly in return.

  “Come back with me,” he said. “I can’t give you a real castle, but I’ll try to give you the fairytale.”

  There was no joking in his tone, just the simple wanting of a man who knew what he needed, and was willing to risk asking for it. It was exactly what she wanted to hear, but alongside the joy was a doubt. She hesitated, then the words came tumbling out.

  “What about the…you know, I have to be tested. You love Lily so much. I know we’re not at that place, maybe we never will be, I’m not saying we will, but what if you want more and I can’t give it to you? Or I get sick?” Heaven help her, she knew she was saying too much, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I don’t want to be a burden on you.”

  He shook his head. “And I might get Alzheimers, or be run over by a bus, or go bald.” She laughed at this, and he smiled, but then went back to serious. “You can only cross bridges as you come to them.”

  She thought of Jeremy, and how he’d bailed out. “It’s easy to say that now, but I think that bridge could be ahead. I’m not sure.”

  He shrugged. “There’s no point in what-ifs. You have to give things a try, or you’d never do anything.”

  After her adventures in the last while, this resonated. “I’ve definitely been giving things a try lately. New starts are my specialty.”

  “Exactly. And we can’t be sure of anything until it’s right in front of us.” He stepped back and took her hands in his, holding her steady in front of him. “And what I have in front of me right now is you, Cady. I don’t know what the future will bring. But what I do know—what I’m sure of—is that I want you. The question is, what do you want?”

  She looked into his eyes, the tiger eyes that got her every time, sparking her desire and distraction and longing even as they teased her, or watched her with an unreadable expression. He waited, holding his ground as she looked back at him, thinking about what she already knew to be true. All the crazy events of the last weeks, good and bad, were part and parcel of bringing her here. And even the events long before that—her mother’s desperate decision, and her chance meeting in London twenty-five years ago with a young Holt, instead of some other man, was the start of Cady’s own path from England to California and back to this beach, with this man, wanting her. How could she be second-guessing any of it?

  “You,” she said, finally letting her heart override her last fear. “I want you.”

  And she tiptoed in the sand to kiss him, sure that this was the new start she’d been waiting for.

  Epilogue

  Stinson Beach at this time of year was wild and rugged, the Pacific Ocean stretching into a cold grey infinity off the coast. Cady sat in a camp chair, rugged up in a thick jacket, with a blanket around her shoulders and ugg boots on her feet. Down in the hard sand, Reid was working, pouring molten metal into the mold he’d carefully dug out for another table. Alongside him were several burners, keeping pots of metal hot. Every now and then she caught the metallic smell as the breeze veered in her direction.

  Lily was engrossed in digging too, a series of ditches around Cady’s chair, filled with shells and sticks. Then she looked up, suddenly intent on something urgent.

  “Can I have my ears pierced for my birthday?” she asked. “Please? I’m going to be seven, you know. And Violet can get her ears pierced too.”

&nbs
p; Cady looked at her earnest face, remembering how badly she’d wanted real earrings when she was little. “I know, chicken. Your dad and I will talk about it.”

  Even though she knew his real name, he’d always be Reid to her. And with Jody permanently in Canada now, all the day-to-day decisions were falling to him and Cady. She was pretty sure the answer to this question would be a yes.

  Lily clambered up onto her knee and snuggled in, trying to get comfortable. “The baby gets in the way now,” she complained.

  “Sorry about that,” Cady said. “He’ll be out soon, though.” She shifted Lily a little more sideways on her lap, making it snug for all three of them in the chair, and the little girl leaned in, keeping warm under the blanket too.

  Reid came up, his heavy work pants and shirt covered in sand and flecks of metal. He pressed his arm to his forehead, hot from working with the scalding liquid.

  “Okay, now we wait for it to cool.” He bent down and kissed Cady, laying his fingertips on her belly. Then he pinched Lily’s nose, making her giggle.

  “Is the man in the gallery going to take this one too?” Lily asked.

  “He is. He wants so many I can’t keep up.”

  “You need to work harder,” she said, making him laugh.

  “You keep me too busy, Lily-Pilly.”

  She smiled up at him. “I like coming to the beach with you.”

  “Me too,” said Cady. He was extra sexy here in his element, working up a sheen of sweat as he toiled on the sand, digging the delicate mold and handling the scorching liquid metal. The fact that the end result was exquisitely artistic only added to the attraction. And she wasn’t surprised that his art was in demand, enough to earn a very decent living.

  She’d put her freelance event management work on hold for now, but they’d be okay in the cottage under the hill, until they found a house for all four of them. Holt was excited to be a granddad, and wanted them to move closer, but they were staying in San Francisco. They liked being near Lily’s grandparents and the other Flashpointers (even though Flashpoint itself was over, with Kyle having joined the weasels in jail for the next while), and being near the beach, where Reid’s art took shape.

  “Good things happen to us on the beach,” he said now, his expression wicked as he looked pointedly at Cady’s belly.

  “You must never tell the baby,” she instructed him sternly, but he just grinned, and she shook her head in mock despair. The hidden meaning went over Lily’s head, as they knew it would.

  “We should get married here,” he added, making her heart ping with happiness. It wasn’t totally out of the blue—even pre-baby, it was obvious they were heading that way—but he’d never mentioned anything in front of Lily. Now they smiled at each other, no need to spell it out. Her days of faking it were long past, and there was no mystery any more, only the sure truth of the simple, good thing they had together.

  Then he bent down and picked up the plastic spade Lily had abandoned by her earthworks.

  “Come on, Lily,” he said. “Let’s build another castle for Lady Cady. Remember we were talking about a double moat, to keep the dragons out?”

  He started down the beach, but Lily hesitated. “Are you really going to marry Dad?” she asked, putting a finger on Cady’s cheek.

  “It seems like it, maybe,” she said, watching closely to see her reaction. She would never take this little cherub for granted. Not this one on her knee, or the one growing safely in her belly. Safely, without any fear of growing up to suffer from Wodarski-Ebner. She’d been tested when she came back to the States with Reid, and the result came back negative. She should have had the test years before, of course, and saved herself a lot of doubt and heartache—heartache that was well and truly behind her now. It seemed monumentally unfair that she was in the clear, and not Shelby too. She was back in London working, living healthily now, and researching all kinds of alternative therapies. One good thing had come of all the drama since their mum died—despite being far away in miles, they were closer than they’d ever been.

  Now Cady waited for Lily’s response to the getting married idea. “Would that be okay with you?”

  “He already asked me that,” she said, winding a strand of Cady’s hair around and around her finger. “It’d be different, I guess.”

  She nodded, elated to hear that he’d already checked in with Lily, but anxious that she should be okay with it. “Yes, a bit different. But mostly the same, really.”

  “That’s good,” she said. “’Cause I like it this way.” She jumped down and dashed off to join Reid, waiting where the soft sand became firm.

  “Me too,” Cady said to herself, as she watched them start on the castle’s foundations. “I like it this way too.”

  Thanks for reading The Same But Different!

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  About the Author

  Serena Clarke grew up in a family of itchy-footed readers and dreamers—not concentrating, reading the atlas and Narnia books, and planning to run away somewhere magical as soon as she could. At sixteen, she packed her bags and went to live in faraway Sweden. It was the beginning of many travels and adventures…with a few mishaps along the way! Seventeen countries later, she’s living her happily ever after near the beach in beautiful New Zealand, where she writes escapist romantic fiction.

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  Find her online at

  www.serenaclarke.com

  serena@serenaclarke.com

  Acknowledgments

  Heartfelt thanks…

  To my friends and family, at home and around the world—for all the encouragement and support, for leaping in to help with research, and for telling your own friends and family about my books.

  To Adam, Nate, and Zach, for putting up with a wife/mother permanently glued to her laptop, and being proud of me all the while.

  To the amazing Beta Babes—Alison, Carla, Dee, Julianne, Lauren, LaVerne, Liz, Maxine, Nicky, Paula, and Suzanne—for beta reading the first draft of the story.

  To Vanessa, for proofreading the book, and for the happy, geeky proofreader discussions.

  And to the incomparable Unicorn girls: sweethearts, badasses, life changers. It wouldn’t be the same without you.

  Copyright © 2014 Serena Clarke

  The Same But Different

  Free Bird Books

  Cover design by Books Covered

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction.

  ISBN: 978-0-473-38779-2

  Created with Vellum

  How far would you go to find the place you’re meant to be?

  * * *

  It was a South Pacific paradise…until it wasn’t. After a reality TV disaster in New Zealand, Livi Callaway heads back to London, determined to stay under the radar. But her new life is complicated by unexpected visitors from her old one, and new dangers and temptations lie in wait.

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  Late one night, she meets a mysteriously sexy American on the Underground—and the events that follow take her from the heart of
London to the golden lights of Paris, via a trail of rock stars dead and alive. A family in disarray, a determined Swede, a crazed Australian, and a childhood friend (who might yet be more than that) have her all over the place as she tries to discover the American’s secret—while keeping her own.

  * * *

  With help—and occasional hindrance—from her friends, what she eventually finds is something unexpected…sometimes, running away can lead you to exactly what you didn’t know you needed.

  What readers are saying about All Over the Place

  “Charming, sassy, and utterly romantic.” – A Tasty Read Book Reviews

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  “I became obsessed with this book! This book hooks you in and doesn’t let go until the end…I loved it!” – Amazon reader

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  “This book reminded me of a great chick-flick kind of movie, only in book form. And everyone knows the book is always better!” – SMI Book Club

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  “If you’re looking for something just a little different, but are still a romantic at heart, I recommend this book. And be prepared to be entertained!” – Find Your Next Read

  * * *

  “Filled with rich, deep emotion, engaging characters and dialogue, and plenty of intrigue that kept me turning the pages…Ms Clarke is certainly an author to keep an eye out for!” – Storm Goddess Book Reviews

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  “One of the best, most romantic, awe-inspiring and awwwww-inspiring happily ever afters I’ve read in a long time. Brava, Serena Clarke! I plan to read more by you.” – Random Book Muses