Saving Liberty (Kissing #6) (2 page)

What the hell is going on?
I didn’t normally react to guys like this. Or stare at them like this. I dragged my eyes away from his body and looked at something safer, like his face.

Big. Mistake.

I looked up just as he reached me. Even his jaw didn’t fit the scene. Strong and gorgeous and sporting a thick layer of black stubble, gleaming in the sunlight. None of the other guys around me were unshaven. I wondered if it would be scratchy, when he—

Get it together, Emily!

But I couldn’t get it together. Because set right into that beautiful jaw were the most perfect set of male lips
ever.
Just the right combination of hard, strong upper and soft, sensuous lower. I unconsciously licked my lips, then realized what I’d done and blushed.

He was wearing sunglasses so I couldn’t see his eyes, but he had soft, tousled hair, the blackest I’d ever seen. The wind was playing with the strands in exactly the way I wanted to.

“Miss Matthews,” said a voice. It was weird, because he’d said it without moving his lips. And the voice didn’t match his face at all. It was a refined, Boston accent, slightly nasal. It would fit better with—

Realization hit me. I twisted around to look at the guy in the suit—mystery man’s companion. I’d completely forgotten about him and, immediately, I felt awful.
What’s the matter with me?
“Hi! Yes!” I said enthusiastically. The breeze blew a lock of hair across my face and I scrambled to push it back.

The suit told me that he worked for one of the chemical companies sponsoring the science fair and we both agreed that,
yes,
the kids were wonderful and it’s
so
important to get them interested in science at an early age and meanwhile a photographer to my left was snapping picture after picture of us shaking hands... and my mind, however hard I tried, kept drifting a few feet to my right, where mystery man was lurking.

I forced myself to focus on the suit, to nod sympathetically about how the new clean air bill was going to affect his company and reassure him that, yes, my dad totally understood the needs of industry and he was working very hard to make sure the right balance was met (after a whole day of saying it, the words rolled off my tongue like song lyrics).

Talking to the suit wouldn’t normally have bothered me at all. It’s part of being the President’s daughter. But right then, all that small talk seemed so... stupid. False and meaningless. It was because
he
was standing there, just out of my eye line, his presence rolling off him in waves and slapping up against every inch of my body. Talking to
him...
that wouldn’t be meaningless at all. It was suddenly all I wanted to be doing.

But I’m not someone who can be rude to anyone. So I took my time with the suit, listened to his concerns and promised I’d pass them on. And only when I’d finished did I flick my eyes in the direction of mystery man and raise my eyebrows to ask….

“Oh!” said the suit. “That’s my protection.”

As if he wasn’t even worthy of a name. I
hate
people who do that. I felt a deep, hot rush of anger on mystery man’s behalf. I turned to him and stuck out my hand. “Emily Matthews,” I said.

He seemed surprised. I couldn’t see behind the sunglasses but I imagined him blinking at me. Then he took my hand in his much bigger one and it was
so
much better than the suit’s handshake: warm and strong and comforting. “Kian O’Harra,” he said. “Ma’am.”

That
voice fitted. It was strong whiskey poured over slabs of rough-hewn rock, American but edged with something else, something beautiful and silvery I couldn’t place. It burrowed deep into my brain and throbbed straight down to my groin. I’d never heard anything so good in my life.

“Emily,” I said in a
don’t be silly
tone.

“Ma’am,” he rumbled stubbornly. And for some reason that sent a hot rush through me. I think it was the combination of old-fashioned politeness and the feeling that he really, really wanted to rip all my clothes off.

I swallowed. “You don’t
look
like a bodyguard,” I thought. And then realized I’d blurted it out loud.

He grinned as if he was very proud of that fact and took off his sunglasses. I found myself looking up into the clearest, bluest eyes I’d ever seen. A blue that put me in mind of frozen lakes of pure, glacial water... and yet his gaze wasn’t cool at all. I could feel it heating up my skin, like I’d just opened an oven door. He didn’t gawp, didn’t glance down at my body. And yet I swore I felt that heat slide right down me.

“You don’t look like
other
bodyguards,” I said. He must have some sort of security clearance: there was a huge pistol holstered on his belt and you don’t carry a weapon anywhere near the President’s family without some very thorough checks. “Are you with a security company?”

He shook his head, not taking his eyes off me for a moment. “Private,” he said. “Just me.” He gave me a wry grin, showing white teeth. “I don’t play well with others.”

“Well,” said the suit a little hotly, “we should let you talk to someone else.” And he walked away, jerking his head to indicate that Kian should follow him. As if Kian wasn’t worth wasting words on.

Kian and I both tensed in reaction. He scowled at the guy’s retreating back, those glorious pecs lifting and his biceps swelling. I could see the anger building in those pure blue eyes and for a second I thought he was going to thump one big fist down on the suit’s head, knocking him into the ground like a tent peg. But then he glanced back at me and we exchanged a look:  
asshole!
And the anger seemed to drain from him. He sighed, gave me one last grin and ambled after the suit. I could hear the suit muttering something about
not paying you to flirt.

That made me flush... but I grinned a little, too, turning away so that the cameras couldn’t see. Guys don’t flirt with me. Guys barely speak to me: they’re too intimidated by my dad. And I spend twenty-four hours a day in a bubble of security, everyone I interact with carefully screened and vetted and every conversation watched. The idea of even meeting someone is far-fetched;
dating
would be absurd. Especially since I finished college and moved into a room at the White House. I mean, sure, it’s
The White House,
but it’s still living with my parents. I was looking forward to starting my new job in a few months and getting a place of my own.

What kind of name was
Kian
anyway? I was sure it was spelled that way, too: he’d said it
Key-an,
not
Kane.
It sounded hundreds of years old, maybe something from England or Scotland. The sort of name you’d give to some ancient warrior, standing on a windswept clifftop about to lead the charge against his foes. It suited him: there was something old-fashioned about Kian.

I sighed and turned back to the science fair. Time to get back to my duties. And stop thinking about rough, gorgeous, totally unsuitable men. Especially ones I’d never see again.

I took a step towards the other judges. The press moved in and I heard a flurry of shutter clicks.

And that’s when the first gunshot rang out.

Kian

Asshole.

Businessmen annoy me at the best of times—which is a problem, because they’re the ones who hire me, these days. But now he’d dragged me away from
her
and that made me royally pissed.

“I’m not paying you to flirt,” bleated the guy. “I’m paying you for protection. She’s right, you don’t even look like the other bodyguards. Couldn’t you have worn a suit?”

I ignored him. He didn’t need protection. He’d only hired me because he’d wanted to feel big and important. What he really wanted was a guy in a suit with a bulge under his jacket to stand by his side and say
yes sir, no sir, the limo’s here, sir.
He didn’t notice—or care—about the actual protection stuff I did, like checking the sightlines and watching the crowd, sweeping under his limo for devices or planning escape routes.

I was tempted to tell him where to shove it but I was painfully aware I needed the job. So I walked silently beside him, soaking up his bitching and moaning, and keeping myself calm by thinking about Emily.

I don’t like politicians. And back when I used to protect them, I found that most of their families were pains in the ass, too. Back-slapping, guffawing senators who’d get wasted on brandy and need help sobering up before they could get into a strip club, then more help tottering from the limo to their house. Meanwhile their trophy wives would be sleeping with the gardener or the personal trainer and the poor kids were forgotten about aside from photo opportunities until they grew up to be carbon-copies of their folks. I’d never met the President but it made sense that he’d be even worse. And therefore that his daughter, by her twenties, would have become a power-hungry, backstabbing bitch.

And yet she hadn’t been like that.
At all.

She had an infectious energy about her that made me want to grin. I’d seen it in her as we approached, as she talked to the kids and shook hands with the businesspeople. The sort of person who lights up the whole room when they walk into it. And she was... I couldn’t think of a better word than
good. Good,
in a city where every damn person was either trying to win power or cling onto the coattails of someone already there. She’d treated me as if I deserved respect. I hadn’t had that for a long, long time.

And all the goodness, all that energy, was wrapped up in a body that made me instantly hard. Long, graceful legs, from what I’d glimpsed under that summer dress, and pert, luscious breasts, not big but perfectly shaped. She had a gorgeous wide mouth... I could have stared at those lips all day and when she’d licked them I’d caught my breath. All that soft, mahogany hair that hung down her back... I wanted that to be the only thing she wore. I wanted her sitting naked on the edge of my bed with that hair trailing down her naked back and pointing to that hot little ass like an arrow. And then I’d grab her waist and pull her to me and try to decide whether she or I would go on top.

That voice: sweet and earnest and so soft it seemed to wrap around you. It had a warm shaft of Texan sunshine running through it, but a very particular kind... I couldn’t imagine her whooping or hollering. She sounded more like the innocent young schoolmarm who’d just arrived in town, all laced up tight in a bodice.

She was
good.
And that made part of me want to do very bad things to her.

Worryingly, it made another, deeper part of me come alive in a way I hadn’t expected. It almost made me want to pick myself up out of the gutter and climb up to her lofty heights. Which was nuts. I’d made peace with what I was a long time ago.

Damn... so
that
was the President’s daughter. I sighed. Some oil tycoon or CEO was going to be a lucky SOB, someday soon.

We reached the limo and I opened the rear door for the suit. He was just climbing in when the first gunshot rang out.

Everyone looked up. That’s what happens with civilians: they’re so completely unused to gunfire, they think that it can’t possibly be happening
here, now,
to
them.
So their first reaction is to look around for the backfiring car.

I’d already gone into autopilot. I stuffed the suit into the limo before the shot had finished ringing in my ears. I started to climb in after him. One leg was already in the car when I turned and looked at the scene.

One man—a Secret Service agent, from the look of him, was down on the ground, blood staining his white shirt. And standing maybe six feet from him, looking down at him with huge, horrified eyes, was Emily.

As I watched, a second shot rang out. Another Secret Service agent was hit in the shoulder. He’d been running towards Emily and the impact sent him sprawling on the ground.

Now everyone started moving and screaming, running for the exits of the park or pressing themselves to the ground. Everyone except—