The Near & Far Series

by Serena Clarke

  She put her sunglasses on her head as she skirted around a pair of sunbathing tourists, and jogged up the last few steps, her ankle recovered from its Wiltshire injury.

  “You look lovely,” Cam said, bending down to give her a kiss as she reached him at the top. She closed her eyes as his lips met her cheek, savouring the moment.

  “Thanks. You look nice too.”

  He was wearing the suit again, a crisp white shirt open at the neck, making her feel underdressed in her floaty cotton dress.

  “One last meeting.” He looked around, distracted. “Let’s go in.”

  She’d given up asking about his mysterious meetings. The only thing left to do was make the most of her last time with him. “Would you like to get a coffee now?”

  “No.” He looked over her shoulder, towards the entrance. “Let’s find Cecilia first. We didn’t see her last time.”

  “Oh, okay.” She followed him in, grateful for the coolness of the air-conditioning. He was obviously still in efficient business mode. Whatever the business was.

  “Let’s ask this guy,” he said, making a beeline for a uniformed guide. He explained that they were looking for Saint Cecilia.

  “Ah, Italian. I believe some of those paintings have been moved recently,” the guide said. “Would you like me to show you where she is?”

  “That would be lovely,” said Livi. It wasn’t as if Cecilia was very famous or extravagant or dramatic. In fact, she was quite modest, unremarkable even. But she was a bit special. After admiring all the reproductions, it would be nice to see the real her.

  The guide led them through a large room hung with canvases small, large and enormous, past earphone-clad visitors awed by the history within arm’s reach. Then they followed him along a smaller corridor, until they came to a closed door. He got out a heavy ring of keys. Livi raised her eyebrows at Cam, surprised at the high security, but he just shrugged. The guide unlocked the door, and told them he would wait outside, then Cam stood aside so that she could enter first.

  She only made it two steps in.

  On the jewel-red walls in the little room were six ornate gold frames, each one glowing in a soft waterfall of light. But there were no great works of art. Instead, each frame held a single word, beautifully inked on parchment-coloured paper. ‘Livi’ said the first. She slowly turned, her mind hardly processing what she was seeing. ‘Will’ said the next. Then ‘you’. Her pounding heart knew what was coming next. Her eyes travelled across to ‘marry’ and ‘me’. In the last frame was an artful question mark.

  She turned around and he was on one knee, a small pale blue box in one hand. She caught her breath. “Really?”

  He smiled. “Yes.”

  “But…how did you do all this?”

  “Sasha’s wife is on the board.” He shifted a little on his knee on the hard parquet floor, his hand poised to open the little box.

  She couldn’t quite put it together. “Wait. Sasha is…a lesbian?”

  “What? No. He’s an economist.”

  “Oh! I thought you and Sasha…all those phone calls…”

  He laughed. “Right, the name. His mother’s family was Russian. And he’s a nice old guy, but I’m not especially attracted to nose hair and false teeth. He’s one of the last great eccentrics—whenever he has a thought, he rings to tell you about it, and you’d better be available to hear it. Especially if something’s riding on it.”

  He stood up again and put the still-closed box in his pocket. Then he took both her hands, and a deep breath. In the lights, his greeny-gold eyes shone almost the colour of her own as he looked at her.

  “Livi. I let chances slip away because I thought we would just happen, because we were meant to be. You are the greatest work of art I can imagine. They could fill every frame in this building with paintings of you, but none of them would do you justice. Nothing but the real you is so beautiful and sweet and honest and maddening. I can’t be on the opposite side of the world without you any more.”

  She looked back at him in amazement, blown away by the beauty of his words and the strength of his emotion. Bex and Gemma were right after all. Now his passion was clear on his face.

  “I never knew,” she said, shaking her head. “But, why did you traipse around Paris to help me find Ryan?”

  “I needed to know if it was something real.” His fingers were warm and steady around hers. “Until you followed it through, you wouldn’t know. And if it wasn’t real, then you could let it go. I was hoping, anyway.”

  “Since you got here, I’ve started hoping too,” she admitted, and all at once that hope was reflected in his face.

  “I didn’t know what you’d think, especially after that night in Paris,” he said. “I mean, we’ve been friends for so long. It might have been too late. Or too weird.”

  She shook her head. “It was Sasha who caused that confusion. It does feel a bit strange—but in a good way.” He smiled, and she hated that she couldn’t say what they both wanted to hear next. “But now—my new job. And going back there...” She looked away at the frames, wishing things were different.

  “Is that the only thing stopping you from saying yes?” He gently turned her face to his, and as he waited for her answer, she could see the reflection of her own face in his searching eyes.

  She remembered how right it was sitting next to him in the pub, laughing and joking. His rage as he tore Len away from her. The perfection of leaning into him on a Parisian summer night. Rewinding further, the memories stretched back to school days. She’d taken his constancy for granted, a steady presence, a best friend. Now here he was, a grown man in a well-tailored suit, handsome and smart and kind, telling her, Livi, that he couldn’t live without her.

  She thought of the times she’d watched him leave her. Years before, when he’d gone off travelling. At the art gallery, when she told him about Rob. At St Pancras, when she thought he was being summoned by a glamorous Sasha Fernsby. How could she bear to watch him walk away again?

  He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out an envelope. “You’re not the only one with career news.” He took a piece of paper from the envelope, and held it up for her to see. “The tome is finished, and this is a job offer. I’ve got a post at the New Economic Institute. I had to visit with the affiliated professors in London, and in Oxford and Cambridge, to get their approval, but we finalised the last details this morning.”

  “Really?” Hope lifted her heart. “So this…institute…it’s here?”

  “In London.” He put the letter away again. “It’s an independent organisation, a sort of think-tank. They work with the London School of Economics, the World Economic Forum, that kind of thing.”

  “So all the phone calls were about work.”

  “Sasha’s the founding director. If I wanted the job—and I did—I needed to jump through every hoop. But he was willing to make some effort for me, too.” He pointed to the golden frames.

  She looked at him. The perpetual student now had a real life, and an impressive one at that. “You are properly clever.”

  He shrugged. “Clever enough, anyway.”

  Simply acknowledged, without ego. It was, she realised, one of the things she loved about him.

  “So you’re staying.”

  “I have to now, whether you want me to or not. I’ve just signed a contract.”

  She took a step and threw her arms around him. “I want you to.” With her ear pressed against his chest, the words were loud in her head. They sounded clear and sure and right.

  “Is that a yes, then?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. But you’ll have to sign another contract.”

  He laughed, and she felt his whole body relax. She looked up. Standing in the little jewel-box room, their words still hanging in the air, she felt like she was seeing him anew. This was another Cam, a man she didn’t really know at all. In that moment, she was struck with shyness. As he tangled his fingers in her hair and tilted her head, never taking his eyes off
hers, her heart suddenly seemed a size too big. Slowly, he leaned down. She could hardly breathe. Then, unhurriedly, he kissed her. Purposefully, with the intensity of years of waiting for the things they’d just told each other, but with such restraint that she found herself pressing into him, wanting more, every part of her seeking its home against the matching part of him. When they parted she felt blurry, swimming in the heat of their connection.

  “You do want it,” he said, his voice both satisfied and wondering. “It wasn’t just Paris.”

  All she could do was nod, too overcome to be shy now about her desire. She’d wanted the rush, and she got it. But here was something more than the Rob rush, or the Ryan rush. Everyone talked about chemistry, and electricity. She’d experienced it herself, the fervent charge of two people who can’t keep their hands off each other. But this, she thought, was beyond voltage. What she hadn’t expected was the depth-charge of their history, all the years of sharing and friendship and—yes—having each others’ backs. It was something elemental—like the poles had suddenly switched, with the step they’d taken, and everything was rearranged. Which, in a way, it was.

  She thought she knew him.

  Now she realised, with delicious anticipation, how very much better she’d be getting to know him.

  She reached into his pocket and took out the little blue box. “Could we try that again, please?”

  He took it from her and got back on one knee, his face serious. Slowly, he opened the lid to reveal a sparkly, princess-cut solitaire, set in a narrow gold band. But before he could say a word, she was down on her knees too. He slipped the ring on her finger, where it glittered and shone in the gallery lights.

  As she looked at Cam, and the ring, and back again, she still didn’t feel grown-up. She just felt like her most real self, with nothing to prove, and nothing to hide from. Home wasn’t just about where, but also about who. And this—the two of them together—was her own true home.

  * * *

  They finally found Saint Cecilia, high on the wall amongst the other seventeenth-century Italians in room thirty-two. She was just one of many artworks in the room, and she was more than a little overshadowed by an enormous painting of shepherds adoring the baby Jesus. But…she was lovely.

  Once, a platonic Livi and Cam had whiled away their time in Livi’s childhood bedroom, beneath her poster Cecilia. And now another version of her was leaning against the wall in Livi’s London bedroom. Here, though, the real thing gazed out of her heavy gold frame, still watching and waiting for what lay ahead, while beneath her, very unsaintly thoughts of what lay ahead were running through Livi’s head.

  The unfamiliar sensation of the ring on her finger was nothing compared to the sensation of standing close alongside him, her hand firmly in his and the memory of their kiss burning in her mind. She turned and pressed herself against him again, threading her arms around his waist under his suit jacket. “If we were alone in here, all the saints would have to close their eyes,” she said.

  He smiled at her, and pointed to the deep-buttoned leather seats in the centre of the room. “If we were alone in here, I would have to throw you onto those and—” He stopped suddenly as a group of tourists stopped to admire the shepherds next door.

  “Nice guys can play dirty, huh?” she teased, keeping her voice low.

  “Who said I was a nice guy?” he threw back.

  “Live in denial if you like, I know the truth about you.”

  “You might be surprised at what you don’t know about me,” he replied, ignoring the tourists and kissing her with all the promise of what she was going to find out.

  As she closed her eyes, she marvelled at how right it was. How could she have been in denial all this time, so blind to what was right in front of her? Ironic that Cecilia was the patron saint not just of music, but of the blind. Maybe she’d been looking out for Livi all along—bringing her, when the time was right, to this very spot. Cass would certainly think so.

  “Beginnings, endings, and beginnings again,” she said over his shoulder to the painted Cecilia, when he finally let her go.

  He gave her a quizzical look. “What?”

  But she just laughed, and shook her head. It could be hard to tell whether an ending was good or bad, but now she knew one thing for certain: sometimes you have to go full circle—all over the place, maybe—to get back to the right beginning.

  Epilogue

  Trafalgar Square. Interview day. It was breezy at the top of the steps, but the view over their shoulders was impressive. As Livi took her place, the diamond on her finger caught the sun. She drew from the bronze strength of the lions in the square behind her, and stood tall. Inside was Cecilia, as strong and true as Livi aspired to be (but more saintly than she would ever aim for). She thought of Cam, tidying up the endings of his life far away, but soon getting back on a London-bound plane.

  Now the reporter fussed a little more with his hair, then gave the cameraman a nod. But he shook his head behind the camera. “Move over mate, Nelson’s column is coming right out the top of your head.”

  He shuffled a little to the side. “Okay now? Right.” He cleared his throat and reassumed his news face.

  “Here I am with Livi Callaway, who has bounced back from abject humiliation at the hands of last year’s Dance ’til You Drop heart-throb to find success in London, and love with her childhood sweetheart. Livi, first tell us about your new business venture…”

  She smiled right into the camera. It was going to be fine.

  Thanks for reading All Over the Place!

  Would you like to know when Serena releases a new book? Join her mailing list at www.serenaclarke.com/newsletter to receive a notification, along with special offers and exclusive extras.

  * * *

  Reviews help other readers find the kind of books they love. If you enjoyed All Over the Place, please do consider leaving a rating and comment at your favourite online retailer or review site.

  Your review is greatly appreciated!

  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.

  Find her online at:

  www.serenaclarke.com

  serena@serenaclarke.com

  Acknowledgments

  Huge thanks…

  To all the writer friends I’ve been lucky to find—online and in ‘real life’—for the support, advice, and steady stream of happy distractions.

  To the RNA in the UK, and their New Writers’ Scheme, for guidance on the first draft of All Over the Place.

  To Alice Hoffman, for generously allowing me to quote from her amazing book, Practical Magic.

  To my friends and family, for your love and support through all the ups and downs, near and far away.

  And most of all, to Adam, Nate and Zach, my heroes big and little. Wherever you three gorgeous guys are is the place I want to be.

  First published 2013

  This edition copyright © 2014 Serena Clarke

  All Over the Place

  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 ackn
owledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction.

  ISBN: 978-0-473-38779-2

  Created with Vellum

  Also by Serena Clarke

  One Distant Summer

  From LA to the sunny South Pacific, make your escape with this sweet and steamy, feel-good beach read.

  One summer can change everything.

  * * *

  Jacinda Prescott spent one life-changing summer in Sweet Breeze Bay, New Zealand, and left disaster in her wake. Since then, she’s thrown herself into her music career, and her life in LA. But when the price of fame threatens to become more than she’s willing to pay, the distant bay calls her back.

  * * *

  Liam Ward walked away from everything he knew after the death of his talented brother, the guy Jacinda loved and lost. When he finally returns to the bay, looking for closure, she’s the last person he expects to find—and the last woman he should fall for.

  * * *

  Stuck as neighbors for the summer, their off-limits attraction is hotter than the South Pacific sun. But the secret that ties them together is the one thing that could destroy her career, and break their hearts all over again. As the bay works its magic, they realize that this time, one distant summer might bring them closer than they ever expected…

  The Near & Far Series: The Complete Box Set

  Free Bird Books, 2017

  Cover design by Books Covered

  Copyrights apply as stated in individual titles.