Saving Liberty (Kissing #6) (7 page)

Absolute chaos erupted. The Secret Service had prepared for every possible threat... but not for me to go psycho and try to evade them. Was procedure to evacuate the whole family or just me? And how do you evacuate someone who’s trying to escape?

A Secret Service agent the size and shape of a linebacker stepped in front of me and tackled me, wrapping his arms around me and lifting me clear of the ground. I flailed and kicked, catching him in the knee with the point of my shoe, and he gritted his teeth. The crowd, which had been clapping and cheering, grew eerily silent. I could imagine hands going to horrified mouths, lips being bitten... and a thousand camera phones clicking.

Harlan took control. “Liberty to Castle,
go!”
he snapped.
Castle
was the White House.

The White House. Safety.

I was bundled headfirst into the limo. The interior should have been dim but it was being lit up almost continually by the flash of cameras from behind me. I felt the bodyguards pile in alongside me and then we were screeching away from the curb. I looked up through the rear window and saw my dad being bundled into the car behind me.
No!
He was having to leave, too. The whole evening was ruined because of me!

“Emily?” said Hudson. “Emily?”

The darkness at the edges of my vision closed in... and I passed out.

***

Two hours later, I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom with my ear pressed up against the door. Dr. Thorpe, a psychiatrist, had left me in my bed doped up with a sedative but I needed to know what they were saying about me so I’d staggered over to the door to listen.

I could hear my dad’s hushed voice in the hallway outside, demanding answers. My mom was there, too. My emergency consultation with Dr. Thorpe should have been private, of course, but things like that go out the window when it’s the President asking.

The first thing I heard was
post-traumatic stress disorder.
Which was ridiculous because that was something soldiers got, after being shot in Iraq. I didn’t have any right to have something like that.
Just grow up, Emily! Get over it!

“—not uncommon.” Dr. Thorpe was saying. “We can make progress, given time. But we should have started treatment much sooner after the event.”

I heard my dad sigh. “We didn’t
know.
We thought she was okay.”

I closed my eyes as the first hot tears rolled down my face. I wanted to be okay. I wanted to be the dutiful girl I’d always been, on hand for photo opportunities and interviews, supporting him. I was messing everything up.

“—a sedative,” said Dr. Thorpe. “She’ll sleep now. But she needs to start seeing someone to address this.”

A concerned question from my mom, too low to hear.

“Months. It’s harder because she’s under so much pressure. Everything is harder when you’re doing it in public view.”

I could imagine my parents nodding understandingly. I couldn’t hear their parting words but I could guess at them.
We’ll give her as much time as she needs.

I didn’t
want
more time. I wanted this thing out of me. I wanted
me
back.

I put my head in my arms and wound up falling asleep like that, wet-cheeked and hunched up against the door.

***

When I woke, fourteen hours had passed. It was the first uninterrupted night’s sleep I’d had since the shooting. My mind was full of half-remembered nightmares that I’d been too drugged to wake from but at least I was rested. It gave me enough energy to make a decision.

I had to beat this thing.

Therapy might help and I’d try that, too, but I knew myself and I’d watched this thing progress over the last month. The longer I hid away, the worse it was going to get. I had to get out there and face my fears: that’s what a President’s daughter should do, no matter how much my mom and dad tried to reassure me it was okay. Me being weak weakened
them.

What I needed was to feel safe. What would make me feel safe?

I ran a deep, hot bath, climbed in and sat there with my knees bent and my arms wrapped around them, staring down into the water. I kept reliving the previous night. Clearly, crowds were a trigger. So were the press and their cameras. But what I kept remembering was that point just before the panic had fully taken hold, when I’d reached out for someone.

I’d reached out for Kian.

That’s stupid.
I’d met the guy for the sum total of less than ten minutes. I knew almost nothing about him. And yet, at my darkest moment, it was him I’d wanted.

He made me feel safe.

Oh, get real!
I pushed the thought away.
Come up with a real solution!

Medication, maybe. Millions of people were on some pill, for something. There was nothing wrong with it. But I had the horrible feeling that that would just disguise the problem, not fix it. Maybe I’d be able to sleep through the nightmares, as I had the night before, but they’d still be there. I’d still wake up each morning with the sick feeling that I’d died in the night, over and over.

Kian.
Even back in the park, as soon as he’d covered me with his body, he’d made me feel safe. And yes, I wasn’t denying there was attraction there, too, deep and powerful. But it was more than that. I felt
safe
in the White House because of the thick walls and security but Kian made me feel
protected,
like an animal guarded by her mate.

I squeezed my arms tighter around my knees. This was no time for infatuation. I needed a proper solution. My dad had asked if I’d be more comfortable with a female bodyguard, someone I could talk to. But I’d never had a problem with the men before—I didn’t in any way blame Hudson for what had happened, it was all on me. The Secret Service were fine: they looked after me.

But they didn’t make me feel
protected.

Shut up, Emily!

There was only one force on earth that did, right now. Whenever I thought of him, the fear receded a little. I remembered that whiskey-and-rock voice telling me it was going to be okay... and I believed it even now.

Kian O’Harra.

And finally, I just stood up, the water sluicing down my naked body, and said, out loud, “Okay.”

If that’s what it took for me to get back to being
me,
if that was really the only option, then I’d do it.

I dried off and dressed, went to my computer... and started hunting down Kian O’Harra.

Kian

I was nursing my fourth drink.

Four is one too many, the tipping point. Three and the memories stay walled up. Four and they start to ooze out. Then I tend to need five to drown them out: sometimes six. And going down that path too often leads to problems.

So normally it’s three drinks. But tonight it was four because I was mad. I’d been about to leave the bar when the TV had flicked to a recap of last night’s clusterfuck outside the concert. I’d watched as the Secret Service agents tried to calm Emily down and then finally bundled her into the car, watched by about a million people. It wasn’t that they’d reacted particularly badly, given that they’d been taken by surprise. It was that they’d been taken by surprise at all. Why couldn’t they see that something was wrong the second she climbed out of the limo?
I’d
seen it written all over her face. Hell, why was she even
at
an event like that? Clearly she wasn’t ready. I imagined how terrified she must have been, to bolt like that, and my guts twisted.

Hence the fourth drink. It helped me slide away from a sensation I didn’t want to ever feel again: the feeling of watching someone you care about get hurt.

Stupid.
I barely knew her.

So why hadn’t I been able to get her out of my head since the park?

I lived a pretty simple life. I got up—usually not before noon—met the asshole who thought he needed protection, stayed by his side all evening and saw him back to his five-star hotel room and then went down to the bar. Sometimes it was DC and sometimes it was New York and sometimes it was even Sao Paulo or Paris or London. But five-star hotels are pretty much five-star hotels the world over. So are their bars and so are the women I found in them. Female executives traveling on business: single, lonely, with no time to date outside work and terrified of dating someone inside work and risking “complicating things.” Sex with me was
un
complicated. They knew they’d never see me again, that I wouldn’t show up at their corporate headquarters and embarrass them. There was never any pretense that it was anything other than a one night thing. We hooked up, had fun and I was gone long before the sun rose. That had always done me just fine until this last month.

Now, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about soft, mahogany hair. About a body that was just the right combination of hard and soft with a rounded ass my palms had caressed a million times in my mind. I only had to think of those soft pink lips and I was instantly hard. All of which at least kind of made sense: Emily was hot as hell.

What didn’t make sense was that I kept thinking about her energy, too, that spark that lit up rooms. I wanted to see her smile again. I wanted to see her laugh. I wanted to
make
her laugh. When I’d seen her on TV, outside the concert, she’d looked not just deathly afraid but
different,
as if the life had been sucked right out of her. That bothered me on a much deeper level, one that I hadn’t felt in years. One I hadn’t thought I even still possessed.

It killed me that she’d been hurt. Not just the physical wound: that would heal. But the damage I could see all too clearly when I watched her freeze, turn and finally run. I recognized that sort of damage.

I was intimately familiar with it.

And the fact it had happened to someone as sweet and good as Emily tore me apart. I’d failed her. If I’d gotten to her sooner, if I’d been able to get her out of the park instead of being forced to take cover….

I downed the fourth drink and got a fifth. But I still clocked the Secret Service agent as soon as he walked in. I didn’t recognize him but I knew the suit, the coat, the earpiece. Then his buddy joined him and they came over to my table.

“I’ve already given a statement,” I told them. “More than one. The cops, the FBI, you guys... how many times do you want me to go through it?”

“That’s not why we’re here, sir,” said the first one. The
sir
confused me because they were Secret Service and they must have known who I used to be... and what happened to me. I looked closer and...
yep
, their faces were carefully neutral but I could see the barely-contained sneers in their eyes. They hated me, as I’d expected. The fact they were being polite must mean they were here under orders....

No way.

“She’s outside, sir,” confirmed the second one.

Part of me wanted to tell them where to go, just to piss them off. But the chance to see her again easily overrode my ego. I slowly stood and followed them to the parking lot.

Three black SUVs were there. They searched me and confiscated my gun: I glared at them but didn’t argue. And then they opened the rear door of the center SUV and there she was, sitting in the middle of that huge backseat looking even smaller and more vulnerable than I remembered her.

“Hi,” said Emily.