Saving Liberty (Kissing #6) (40 page)

The Guardian Act was dead. A mass-backpedaling began, with all of the newspapers and TV channels who’d supported Kerrigan suddenly hating the idea of an invasive surveillance state and talking about how we needed checks and balances. It was sickening to watch them do a slick 180, but the public wasn’t fooled. We’d come too close to disaster. People would remember, the next time someone like Kerrigan came along.

“Mr. O’Harra!” yelled a reporter. “How does it feel to be dating the President’s daughter?”

Kian looked at me. “Great,” he said. And the way he said it made me melt inside. It was better than any lengthy speech he could have given.

“Any idea what you’ll do now, Mr. O’Harra?” yelled someone else.

I’d rehearsed an answer to that question with him:
I’m going to take some time to think about that.
But now that it came to it, Kian just did a big, unashamed shrug. There was friendly laughter from the reporters. I had a feeling they were going to like Kian: like my dad, he was a straight talker. We’d talked about what he might do next and tossed around a few ideas but we hadn’t made any decisions, yet. He’d quit the Secret Service: he couldn’t be responsible for guarding me
and
be with me. That meant a new agent took over my bodyguard duties: a blond-haired guy from Nebraska called Jack. Kian gave him a hard time at first, drilling him on everything, but we both liked him. And whoever was officially guarding me, what mattered most was that I had Kian’s protection, always.

And me? I’d veered away from the fundraising my mom had been gently steering me towards and was looking into a career with an investigative agency, focusing on political and corporate corruption. It wasn’t typical for a President’s daughter but I wanted to make a difference: there were too many people out there like Kerrigan and too many corporations willing to help them. I’d roped in my mom to help me with one bit of fundraising, though: we’d raised money for the soup kitchen that had fed me during my night on the streets, and opened a new homeless shelter. I also reported the guy who’d lured me into the abandoned building and the DC police picked him up just days later at a different soup kitchen. He was eventually charged with attacks on four homeless women.

The cameras clicked and clicked but the noise was dying down, the photographers getting their last few shots as the photo op came to an end. “How about a kiss?” yelled one reporter.

Kian and I looked at each other and my face flushed. Kissing him wasn’t a problem but kissing him
on camera?
I awkwardly turned to him and tilted my face up. He leaned down towards me and hesitated, as if trying to figure out how to do a chaste little kiss that would look good on the front pages.

Kian didn’t do
chaste.

“The hell with it,” he growled under his breath. And suddenly he was tipping me and kissing me full-on, his tongue parting my lips, his chest crushed against my breasts. The camera clicks became a continuous buzz again, the reporters yelling their approval. What they couldn’t see was Kian’s hand behind me as he squeezed my ass. A rush of heat went through me, twisting and arcing, clouding my brain and then soaking down to my groin. I grabbed his biceps and clung on, losing myself in the kiss. For long seconds, I didn’t care who was watching.

Eventually, we came up for air and reality set in again. I was panting and flushed: embarrassed and thrilled and melting inside, all at the same time. My mom was giving Kian a reproachful look but my dad was trying not to laugh. I mock-glared at Kian. “You’re not supposed to do that
to the President’s daughter,” I muttered.

He leaned closer and growled in my ear, each word scalding hot and silver-edged. “Then we got a problem,” he said. “Because tonight….”

I tried to keep a sweet, respectable smile on my face for the cameras as he whispered
exactly
what he was going to do to me. He balanced me perfectly: I worried too much about what the press and everyone else thought and he didn’t worry about it at all.

“...that alright with you?” he finished.

I swallowed and pressed my thighs together. “Kiss me again,” I muttered. “I’m not sure they got the first one.”

One Month Later

Emily

I opened the door to my bedroom and walked in on Kian wearing only his jockey shorts, his hard ass outlined through the thin cotton. Unlike the time when he’d walked in on
me,
he wasn’t embarrassed at all: he just stood there, all rugged tan body and gleaming blue eyes, and I felt his gaze sweep down my body. I flushed and quickly came in and closed the door behind me. “You’re getting changed
now?”
I asked. “We don’t have to go until eight.”

We were attending a ceremony that night recognizing soldiers injured in the line of duty. I’d already seen him in his tux and he looked fantastic, my very own James Bond. But that was hours away.

He shook his head and went over to the closet. I’d cleared him some space there, since he was practically living in my room, but we were really looking forward to moving into our own place. “I gotta go out,” he said. “I’ll be back before tonight.” I could hear the tension in his voice.

He started grabbing clothes, but not suits or the respectable casualwear my stylist had picked out for him: the jeans and leather jacket he’d been wearing when I first met him. “What’s going on?” I asked, a stab of panic going through me.

He nodded at the bed.

There was a letter there, handwritten, the envelope addressed to him. I snatched it up and read as he dressed. My eyes widened as I scanned down the page.

Kian pulled on his jacket. “You don’t need to come,” he said. “I can do this on my own.”

I got up off the bed and walked over to him, then looked up into those big blue eyes. He was trying to hide it, but I could see the pain there, the memories that had been slowly poisoning him until I’d got him to open up. The letter had brought them to the surface again, jagged and sharp. “You don’t have to,” I told him, and pulled him close.

***

The meeting was set for Anacostia Park: we’d come full circle, since that day I met Kian. By now, it was November and the temperature was dropping fast as the sun went down. But it was a beautiful evening, the sunset turning everything shades of red and gold as it sank below the horizon. I walked hand in hand with Kian as we made our way towards the bench and sat down. Jack and the other Secret Service agents arranged themselves to form a perimeter around us, just far enough away that they wouldn’t be able to hear our conversation. I looked around and took a couple of deep breaths. I’d expected to be nervous, coming back to the park, but I seemed to be okay: it was a nice milestone to have reached.

A few minutes later, Kian stood up and nodded at a man walking along the path towards us. He was coming out of the sun and I had to screw my eyes up to see.

“Is that….” I asked, standing and looking at the man.

Kian nodded silently. I saw him swallow, nervous as hell, his hands clenching into fists. I ran a hand lightly up his arm and over his shoulder, rubbing him there until I felt him relax a little. “I’m right here,” I murmured.

The man stopped in front of us. I recognized the build and the jet-black hair. I recognized the jawline and the shockingly blue eyes.

“Emily,” said Kian after a moment, his voice tight, “this is my brother, Sean.”

Neither of them moved. They stared into each other’s eyes in silence for long seconds, the tension rising and rising until I was sure they were going to swing at each other. Then they broke at the same moment and pulled each other into a fierce hug.

“Christ,” muttered Kian when he let his brother go. “It’s been
years.”

Sean nodded. “You sure we’re okay here?” His accent was a lot stronger than Kian’s, halfway between American and Irish.

I nodded. “The Secret Service won’t let any reporters come close. And no one knows it’s you we’re meeting.”

Sean nodded. “Good. I don’t want to cause you problems.”

“You in trouble with the law?” asked Kian.

Sean ran a hand through his hair, the same gesture I knew so well from Kian. “No more than usual,” he said. “But... probably best if no one noses around me for a while.” He looked between Kian and me. “I met someone, too. And she was in trouble. I had to help her do something bad... so we could do something good.”

Kian shook his head angrily. “For fuck’s sake, Sean,” he snapped. “If you were in trouble, why didn’t you come find me?”

Sean squared up to him. “Same reason you didn’t find me.”

They stared at each other, neither of them backing down. But slowly, I saw them both soften.

“It’s time,” said Sean. “Louise—the woman I met—she made me see that. You know what we need to do. That’s why I’m here. We’ve all been out there on our own too long.”

Kian lowered his eyes, staring at the ground. I could feel him tensing up again, all the memories flooding back. I found his hand and squeezed it, letting him know that whatever he had to do, I’d be there with him.

Kian looked at his brother. “You’re right,” he said at last. He took a long, slow breath, and it was almost as if it was the first real breath he’d taken in years.

“We’re going to find them,” said Sean. “Aedan and Carrick. Wherever they are.”

“And Bradan,” said Kian, his voice thick with emotion. “Whether he’s alive or dead. I want to know what happened to him.”

Sean gripped Kian’s shoulder and nodded. “Bradan too.”

Kian took another deep breath. “Alright, then,” he said. “Let’s start putting this family back together.”

<<<<>>>>

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed
Saving Liberty,
please consider
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Turn the page to read
Punching and Kissing,
the story of Kian’s brother, Aedan. Yes, the whole book, absolutely free! :) Note that there’s a trigger warning on the copyright page.

To save her brother, a desperate woman volunteers to take his place in an illegal underground fight. Now she has 30 days to learn to fight…and the only person who can help her is the Irish beast of a man everyone’s afraid of, the blue-eyed colossus named Aedan O’Harra.

Or find out what
bad thing
Sean helped Louise do in
Growing and Kissing
.

Feel like more of a thriller? Try
Lying and Kissing
.
Shy CIA languages expert Arianna spends her days translating phone calls from Russian mob boss Luka Malakov…and fantasizing about him. She doesn’t expect to be sent to Moscow to meet him in person…or given orders to get close to him. Now she must seduce him, spy on him and betray him. The one thing she mustn’t do is fall for him…

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Losing My Balance,
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