Driven to Distraction (Silhouette Desire S.) (4 page)

Darn it, why did she do that? She knew all about women who were their own worst enemy. So certain men wouldn't like them that they went out of their way to prove they didn't care. She'd written about
that kind of behavior. The thing was, she'd never before realized she followed the pattern.

 

As the first class began to take shape, each of the several long tables filled, some with three students, a few with four. Maggie, Suzy and the latecomer, Ann Ehringhaus, chose a smaller table near the back of the studio. Without intending to, Maggie looked around for Ben and found him setting up several tables away with two women and a guy who looked like G. Gordon Liddy—same bald head, same beetle brows, but a smaller mustache.

There were no easels. There were also no chairs. Suzy muttered something about a half-ass operation. Ann sneezed. Maggie shifted restlessly and considered giving up on this whole crazy idea. What had started as a simple rescue mission and expanded to a story op—M. L. Riley, embedded somewhere in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains—was looking more like an expensive mistake.

Hardly her first. She simply hadn't thought things through, and now she was about to be exposed as the fraud she really was. She could no more paint a picture than she could hop on a broomstick and fly. What on earth had made her believe she could pull it off?

From somewhere off-stage, music started up, screeched to a halt and then started again. To the strains of something vaguely Celtic, vaguely New Age, Perry made his grand entrance, scattering smiles all around. He was wearing his trademark beret, even though the temperature was already in the mid-seventies and the old house evidently didn't run to air conditioning. He took his place at a table in front that
had been set up with a child's plastic beach pail filled with water, a big, smeary palate, an enormous sheet of paper on a drawing board and an alabaster vase filled with at least a dozen brushes of all sizes and shapes.

“So that's what all the plastic pails are for,” Maggie murmured indicating the yellow one beside her stack of stuff.

“You'll have to fill and empty your own. Perry's the only one who gets serviced,” Ann whispered.

“Now,” the tall, willowy artist said, his mellifluous voice blending with the music, “I'll start off with a demonstration and then you'll all have half an hour to do your version of what I've painted. We want quick and sloppy today. This is just a loosening-up exercise. By the way, how many of you can still touch your toes?”

Maggie looked at Suzy, who shrugged. For the first time since she'd arrived the night before, Ann smiled. “Wait, you'll see,” she whispered.

Across the room, Ben wondered what the hell the guy meant by that question. And what was with all the flutes and harps? To cover up the groans from people who hadn't touched their toes in decades? Hell yes, he could touch his toes. He might be on the shady side of thirty, but he could still take down a cream puff like Silver with one hand tied behind him.

Only this time he was going to do it nice and legal. Scare the hell out of him so that nobody's gullible granny would get taken for a ride on Hi-Ho Silver.

Bracing his feet apart, Ben crossed his arms over his chest and waited for the show to begin. Beside him, Janie Burger planted her hands on her hips and
did the same. Georgia said something about not enough liniment in the world to make her try it, and Charlie chuckled.

Meanwhile, in the front of the room, Perry Silver had already started on the morning's masterpiece, working flat on the table. From time to time he pursed his lips, stepped back, tilted his head and muttered an unintelligible incantation, after which, while his audience tried vainly to see what he was doing, he would lunge forward to add another touch. Gradually a streak of muddy color appeared on the floor where he repeatedly slung wet paint from his brush.

“No wonder the floors in here look like sh—like sugar,” Ben muttered. “Why the devil doesn't he hold the thing up so we can see what the—so we can see what he's doing?” Out of respect for his associates, he was trying to cull the profanity from his vocabulary, but it wasn't easy.

“With watercolor, mostly you do it flat so you can tilt it whatever way you want the paint to flow,” Janie whispered.

“Oh. Right.” Going undercover as an artist might not be the swiftest idea he'd ever had.

Georgia nudged him and whispered, “Did the brochure say anything about having to pass a physical first?”

With a slow smile, Ben shook his head. The lady with the white buzz cut smelled like his granny. Combination of almond-scented hand lotion and arthritis-strength liniment. It reminded him of why he was here.

Silver glanced up with a boyish grin and said, “I know, I know, it seems like forever, but this little bit
over here just simply isn't working. Give me another minute, dears, all right?”

Dears?

There was a general shuffling of tired feet. Someone sneezed—the latecomer with the allergies, probably.

Someone snickered. Had to be Maggie. He glanced around, and sure enough, her hand was covering her mouth and her eyes were alight with mischief. Today she was wearing a sleeveless blue chambray thing with what looked like a man's undershirt underneath. On her, it looked just fine.

Ben winked at her. Last time he remembered winking at a woman he'd been about fifteen, all beered up and looking for action.

Found it, too, if memory served.

God, he'd had some narrow escapes. This just might turn out to be one more in a long list, unless he could keep his mind on his mission.

“You're at the wrong table, hon,” Janie whispered. Her pastel-colored hair was held back this morning with a twisted scarf. She was wearing black tights again along with a baggy pink sweatshirt sporting a risqué slogan. It occurred to him that maybe no one had told her she was pushing seventy.

You go, lady, he encouraged silently.

“Did you say something, Miss…Riley, isn't it?” The maestro looked up, light from the north-facing windows emphasizing the bags under his eyes. Ben figured the picture on the cover of the brochure had been either heavily retouched or taken quite a few years earlier.

“Sorry. I was just—just eager to see what you've done.”

Bless her heart, she was lying through her pearly whites. Ben winked again. It had to be a twitch. Maybe an ingrown eyelash.

Then Silver whipped out a hair dryer, switched it on and waved it over whatever he'd just done. Probably another “investment” like those Miss Emma had paid a whole slew of social security money for. If there was any way he could squeeze a refund out of this cheesy bastard he intended to do it.

“Oh, my, he's done it again,” murmured Georgia as Perry propped his drawing board up on the easel so that it faced the class. She applauded. A few others picked it up, but Silver waved his hand and the applause quickly faded.

“Now, using my feeble attempt as an example, let's all see what we can come up with. Quickly, quickly—let the medium know who's boss.”

Let the medium know who was boss? What the hell was
that
supposed to mean? Ben glanced over his shoulder and happened to catch Maggie's eye. She shrugged. He shook his head. At least this time they were in agreement. A regular meeting of the minds. He could think of several other areas where he wouldn't mind meeting her.

“You have thirty minutes,” Silver said. “Impressions only, we'll get to details later in the week.”

Charlie, on the far end of Ben's table, asked if there were any chairs. Perry lifted his eyebrows, but Charlie, a high school biology teacher a year away from retirement, was not intimidated. “In my classroom I
stand,” he stated. “On vacation, I sit unless I've got a golf club in my hand.”

Ben wondered what the hell the older man was doing here when he could be outside in the fresh air beating the stuffing out of a little white ball?

“Is anyone else unable to stand for more than fifteen minutes? If so, you might want to consider dropping out now.” Adjusting his beret, the instructor surveyed the room as if daring anyone to take the challenge.

“Do I get a refund if I drop out?” Charlie asked.

“I believe the terms were clearly stated in your application.”

“I guess that means no.”

Sounds of disapproval moved through the room on the pollen-laden breeze, drawing a variety of responses. Janie uncovered what she called a watercolor block—a stack of rough pages glued together on the edges. She leaned past Ben to smile at Charlie.

Ignoring a few murmurs of discontent, Silver pointed out first one area and then another in his landscape, over which he had quickly taped a white mat, as if to lend it legitimacy. “Note the contrasts,” he instructed. “Dark against light, light against dark.”

Hard to get one without the other, Ben thought, but then he wasn't feeling particularly charitable.

“Gradation, there's your sense of depth. Note the sharpest areas—in other words, the greatest contrast—falls near the center of interest, while everything else seems to soften. Blended washes. Do we see this?”

“With or without my trifocals?” someone asked, to the accompaniment of a few snickers.

And then, Lord bless her, Maggie spoke up. “Which part wasn't working…sir? If you don't mind my asking.”

Janie bit her lip. Charlie said something about his feet not working, plus a few other parts he could mention, but wouldn't. Georgia dipped a brush that could easily be used for window trim into her plastic pail and dragged it over a pan of colors that looked as if it had been caught in the middle of a paint war.

By the time they broke for a glass of sweetened iced tea, everyone had committed their thirty minutes' worth of art. Ben had done his share of cursing, but fell silent after the first remonstrative look from Georgia. “Sorry,” he said. “I'm trying to break the habit, but the damn paper—darned paper keeps puckering.”

Charlie offered a few euphemisms, several of which were biological terms which, translated to street parlance, wouldn't pass muster. Janie called him a dirty old man, but grinned when she said it. She handed Ben a couple of clothespins and showed him how to use them to control the swelling of wet paper. All three of his tablemates commented freely, the comments for the most part flying over Ben's head.

Washes, bleeds, drybrush? Hell, he couldn't even manage the lingo. How the devil was he supposed to learn how to paint a picture?

Answer? He wasn't. No point in getting too caught up in the action. That wasn't why he was here.

He added a long squiggle of red across his mountain just because he'd always liked the color. It turned brown. “Well, shi—ucks,” he grumbled. “I know damned well I dipped my brush in red.”

Janie laughed and pointed out that mixed together, the colors he'd used make mud.

And then Maggie was there, peering over his shoulder to see how badly he'd embarrassed himself. He felt like covering it up, but he had too damn much pride.

“Oh, wow,” she breathed reverently. “You're almost as good as I am. Does either of us really need to be here?”

“I'm seriously startin' to wonder,” Ben growled.

Maggie felt like patting him on the head—or maybe somewhere more accessible. It made her feel better about her own charade to know that she and Suzy weren't the only two in the room without a clue. Mr. Spainhour wasn't bad, and the two ladies were actually pretty good, not that she was any real judge.

But Ben Hunter was awful. Purely awful! For some reason, that delighted her.

“I understand we're going to have a student exhibit at the end of the week,” she said softly, leaning closer to Ben so that Perry the Paragon wouldn't overhear. He was wandering from table to table, scattering his pearls of wisdom. “Word of advice,” she murmured. “If you enter this morning's effort in any exhibit, sign somebody else's name to it. That way nobody can hold you responsible.”

He glowered at her, but midglower, his eyes warmed into a smile. “Yeah, it's pretty ugly, isn't it?”

“I wouldn't say it's exactly ugly…but then, I was taught that if you couldn't say something nice, it's better not to say anything at all.”

He turned to reexamine his morning's work
while Maggie stepped back to study the man himself. If ever a man looked out of his element it was Ben Hunter with his bristly jaw, his honey-colored eyes and a pair of shoulders that threatened to burst the seams of his shirt. Not that artists couldn't be manly, but if Hunter had the slightest bit of artistic talent he was working hard not to let it show.

He raked his fingers through his hair, causing it to flop back on his brow. “Warm up exercise,” he said gruffly. “I haven't painted in a while, so if you don't mind, I'll take a few days to get back in practice.”

Yeah, sure you will. She thought it, but knew better than to say it out loud. No point in issuing a direct challenge. For all she knew, he might be really good, only not in any style she recognized. It looked like someone had dumped a bowl of scrambled green eggs on his paper and then tromped through it with muddy boots.

But then, her effort didn't look much better.

One of the women said something about the music, which was pretty cloying. “A little Vince Gill would suit me better,” Maggie said.

“That reminds me, I understand there's dancing after dinner,” said the woman with the pink hair. “There's a stack of old records, some of them 78s. Does anyone else remember those?”

Dancing, with a dozen women and three men to go around? That ought to be interesting, Maggie mused. They talked about music for a few minutes, and then a thoughtful Maggie wandered back to her own table. Not for the first time, it occurred to her that something
about Ben Hunter didn't quite ring true. An artist, he wasn't. So why was he here?

The man would bear watching, she thought, and for some idiotic reason, found herself smiling.