Driven to Distraction (Silhouette Desire S.) (7 page)

“Art police, you might say. Matter of fact, until about six weeks ago I was wearing a badge.”

That stopped her cold. By then they'd reached the porch steps, with Maggie leading the way as if she could outrun temptation. Mounting to the top step, she turned. Ben was two full steps behind her, which meant for once she could look him square in the mouth—that is, in the eyes. And from the light shining out the window, his eyes were…

Oh, hell, Maggie, eyes aren't magnificent! Bodies, maybe—even faces, but eyes were just…

He was probably nearsighted. Or farsighted. What
ever, no man was all that perfect. She said, “So you're a cop.” It sounded more like an accusation.

“Was. I resigned.”

“You're too young to retire.”

He looked away then, saving her from making a fool of herself—again. “Let's just say it was time to move on.”

Well, that certainly rang false, but she knew better than to try to pin him down, figuratively
or
literally. Her hands might itch to touch that crease on his cheek—or even the small scar on his jaw—but it was an itch she wasn't about to scratch. “You know what? Usually when someone begins a sentence with ‘Let's just say,' it means they're not telling the truth—at least not all of it.”

He turned to look at her again. “You know what? Whenever someone starts a sentence with ‘you know what,' I figure they're getting ready to dodge the issue.”

He moved up another step, which made her feel for the step behind her.
Uh-uh. No way. You're not going to draw me in with another kiss.

Turning, she headed toward the far end of the wraparound porch, where another wisteria-draped trellis enclosed an old-fashioned wooden swing. The place was booby-trapped!

Warily, she said, “You might as well tell me the rest of it.”

“Why I resigned?”

“That, too, if you want to, but I mean about teaming up. And your grandmother, and her being taken in by…whatever.”

“Bottom line—Silver might be a good painter, but
his real art is flimflam. I had a feeling something like that might be going on, but now that I've seen the way the enrollment shapes up, I'm dead certain. Didn't you notice anything unusual about it?”

“It's my first workshop, so I don't have anything to compare it to. If you're talking about the fact that six days of cooking your own meals and sleeping on a torture device costs almost as much as an ocean cruise, then yeah, I definitely noticed that.”

“Torture device, hmm?” There was a long pause, during which her mind took off on a wild tangent. Then he said, “What I'm talking about—Silver's culled the applicants so he has just the right mix. Mostly women, mostly retirees.”

She waited for the punch line.

“What's the most vulnerable portion of society these days?”

“Babies? Kids who do dumb stuff and think it's smart?” Women who get themselves kissed and are ready to send for the preacher? “I give up, who?”

“Senior citizens, that's who. Like my grandmother and all those other grandmothers he cons into signing up for his so-called art lessons. A captive audience, that's who. Give him a week to soften them up and he'll have at least two-thirds of them lining up to buy his pictures.” He shook his head. “And yeah, I know—if they're done by hand they're paintings, but the ones he sold my grandmother weren't. The only thing done by hand was his signature in pencil, so if it's his autograph he's selling, why not just say so?”

“Because he's not famous enough, so nobody would want it?”

“Bingo. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about
here. I didn't just walk into this thing cold, I checked it out with a reputable source.”

She nodded knowingly. “Reporters have sources, too. I could do some more checking if it would help.” Not even to herself would she admit to being disappointed. He'd led her out into the moonlight to talk to her about teaming up. Could she help it if her imagination had slipped its leash for a moment? “All right, so exactly what is you want me to do?”

“Just keep your ears open, that's all for now, and if Silver comes on to you, give him the brush-off. I want him to go after the older women, they're his real target. Before any damage gets done, I'll have him cold.”

Avoiding the shadowy swing, Maggie sank down into one of the cane rockers. It was already damp with dew. “That's it? You can actually arrest him for trying to talk people into buying his art?” She shook her head slowly. “I don't know, Ben…”

Ben didn't know either. It wasn't like him to jump on his horse and ride wildly off in all directions without so much as a roadmap. It's just that when he'd realized that his own grandmother had been taken in by a scam artist, he'd seen red. Not until he'd signed up for this wingding and written a hefty check did it dawn on him that he couldn't just haul the guy in for making a sales pitch, even if he caught him in a flat-out lie. Fraud could be tricky as hell to prove. Not only was he out of his element with this art business, he was out of his territory.

Didn't even have a territory, for that matter.

“It's a work in progress, okay?” he said. “I'll think of something.” He blew out a frustrated sigh,
then inhaled deeply, aware of the heavy scent of the purple blossoms and the lighter fragrance of the woman beside him. “So, will you help me out here?”

He couldn't have felt more helpless if he'd been fifty miles out in the flats with a lame horse and no cell phone. Not that he hadn't worked with a partner before—he had. But this time his so-called partner wasn't a cop, and he didn't actually need her help. What he'd wanted to do when he'd led her out in the moonlight was kiss the living daylights out of her and go from there. Fortunately, after one brief sample, he'd had sense enough to back off. There was something about Maggie Riley that didn't add up. Whatever it was, it shorted out his brain and sparked a major reaction below the belt at a time when he needed all his powers of concentration.

Whatever else she was, Riley was a major distraction.

Touching his toe to the porch rail, he set the rocker in motion. A month ago he'd been holed up in an unused lineshack on a friend's ranch, firing off letters to the Attorney General's office, half expecting a sawed-off shotgun to poke through the door at any moment. Shoot, shovel and shut-up. It wouldn't be the first time a lawman had disappeared when he'd stumbled into something he wasn't supposed to see.

Maggie's voice came out of the shadows, yanking him back to the present. “The thing is,” she said, “I sort of have my own mission.”

“You're covering it for your paper? You said you were a journalist, right?” He was sitting far enough away so that there was no danger of touching her. It didn't help a whole lot.

“Well, that, too. I mean, I'd planned to write about it, but that's not why I'm here.”

“If you're wanting to learn how to paint, Janie says Silver's a better teacher than he is a painter. She says he's even a pretty good painter if you happen to like his style. From what I've seen, he paints the same scene, just rearranging the parts and changing the sky a little.”

“She's your special friend, right?”

Was that a wishful question? Ben stopped rocking, wondering how he could find out. They'd only just met. With some women, all you had to do was buy 'em a beer and it was off to bed, but Maggie was different. In spite of that impulsive kiss he'd stolen, she really wasn't his type. He usually went for long legs, big boobs and lots of bleached hair. Dolly Parton on stilts. Women who were good for a few laughs, a few rolls in the hay, but nothing more serious, because he was nowhere near ready to settle down.

Trouble with Maggie, the more he got to know her, the more he wanted to know. Whatever the attraction, it sure as hell wasn't her legs or her boobs. Although her hair was nice, even if it wasn't piled up like a bleached blond helmet. He had a sneaking suspicion she had brains and heart and all those other organs he tried so hard to steer clear of in his relationships with women.

“Yoo-hoo, y'all want some dessert?”

Saved by the bell, Ben thought. Good thing, too, because he didn't particularly like the way his thoughts were wandering all over the road. He was definitely losing his edge.

He said, “Sure, Janie, what're you offering?”

D
essert was store-bought cake that was too dry and too sweet. Maggie ate it anyway, because it was something to do and she was feeling edgy. Ben poured himself a glass of cold coffee, iced it, and stayed with her while the other stragglers left the kitchen and wandered into the large front room where someone was playing records. Not CDs, or even audiotapes, but vinyl.

Tapping rhythm on his glass with the blade of a table knife, Ben hummed along while Maggie finished her cake. He had a deep, gravelly voice—nice, actually, and only a few notes off-key.

“Care to join 'em?” he asked.

“Might as well,” she allowed, feeling a shimmer of tension at the thought of dancing in Ben's arms. Slow dancing, not line dancing. Then maybe they
would wander out onto the porch and he would kiss her again.

Several of the women were dancing together while Charlie looked over a selection of records, including some old 33 1/3s and even a few 78 rpms. Janie was dancing alone, clicking her fingers and swaying to the tune of something Maggie remembered her mother singing a long time ago.

Perry was nowhere in sight, nor was Ann.

Suzy came up behind them and said, “You wouldn't believe this record collection. If they weren't all scratched up, they'd probably be worth a bunch.” She touched Ben on the arm and said, “Dance with me, cowboy. You don't mind, do you, Maggie?”

Maggie minded more than she cared to admit, but she smiled, nodded and knelt beside Charlie, who said, “Look at this, will you? I haven't heard this one since I was in grad school.”

Maggie must have said something appropriate, but disappointment ate at her. Ed Ames tried to remember and the Mamas and the Papas went through their repertoire while Ben danced with Janie, with Georgia and with half the other women in the room, apparently having a wonderful time. She refused to look over her shoulder, but she could hear their laughter over the sound of the scratchy old records.

Someone called out, “Play ‘Moon River' again, will you? It was my husband's favorite.”

All dressed up and nowhere to go, Maggie thought, dismally amused. The dress she'd worn tonight was one of her favorites, bought on sale last fall. She
hadn't been sure it would still be in style this year, but it was.

For all the good it did her.

Janie hadn't even changed for supper, much less for dancing. She was still wearing tights and a sweatshirt, but she'd slipped off her shoes. She had bunions, Maggie noticed, and then felt horribly guilty for being jealous of a woman who was more than twice her age.

Charlie was still making discoveries in the stack of old vinyl when someone tapped her on the shoulder. “My turn,” Ben said. “Charlie, stop hogging my woman.”

Which was so totally absurd Maggie felt like taking a poke at him. Instead, she melted into his arms and they circled the small area that had been cleared for dancing. She couldn't think of a thing to say—nothing that made any sense, at least. She wasn't about to ask why he had danced with practically every woman there—with Suzy twice—before he'd remembered to ask her.

He was a surprisingly smooth dancer. Nothing fancy, just holding, swaying and shuffling, mostly, but she still liked the way he moved. The disparity in their heights should have made it awkward. Instead, she was in a perfect position to rest her cheek on his chest and hear his heartbeat.

Pa-bum. Pa-bum. Pa-bum, pa-bum, bum, bum, bum!

Evidently exercise got him all…exercised, she thought, savoring the thought that holding her in his arms might have something to do with his accelerated heartbeat.

His warm breath stirred her hair and when her left arm got tired of reaching up to his shoulder, she looped it around his waist. The record—one of those old LPs that had half a dozen different songs on each side—shifted into something with a jazzy beat, but Ben's rhythm never changed. Slow and slower, feet barely moving at all, they swayed in place.

Maggie was aware of little outside the feel of his lean, hard body, the scent of one of those fresh-smelling soaps, and the thump of his heart under her cheek. She was pretty sure the shape of his hand would be branded on her back for weeks. She could have drifted this way forever, not thinking beyond the moment.

Ben started to hum again. The sound—more a vibration, really—triggered a response in parts of her body that had no business responding to sound. Under her dress she wore only a pair of briefs and a silk camisole. Her breasts, as small as they were, seemed to swell as if begging for attention. Her nipples actually throbbed.

When the record finally came to an end, Ben led her toward the French doors that opened out onto the porch. His breathing was audible, even over the murmur of conversation coming from three of the women in the corner who had set up a table under a yellow bug-light and were playing gin rummy.

Suzy had evidently given up and gone to bed. Maggie wondered if she should feel guilty for hogging the most attractive man on the premises for so long.

No way. Regardless of what happened next, the last hour was going to be tucked away in her memory box
for a long, long time. Her life wasn't exactly a hotbed of romantic moments.

By silent mutual consent they headed for the swing this time. Ben's arm was still around her as if he'd forgotten where he'd left it. She hadn't forgotten, not when every cell in her body was dancing the cha-cha-cha. Nearby, a whippoorwill tuned up. Through some trick of acoustics, she could hear the sound of sporadic traffic out on highway 52, several miles away as the crow flew.

Pausing in the shelter of the wisteria vines, Ben turned her in his arms. “Maggie, there's something you need to know.”

I already know everything I need to know, she thought. I know I'm in serious trouble if you're not feeling the same way I am. I know I've never been so attracted to any man before, not this soon. I know I've got no call to accuse Mary Rose of—

“Hey, do you two
mind?
”

The sound of Charlie's voice was like a dash of ice water. Ben tensed, but didn't release her. Maggie, her face burning, tipped her head forward to rest on his chest.

Ben said, “Sorry, man. I didn't know the swing was taken.”

Maggie said, “It's late anyway.” She pulled away, fighting disappointment. “I'd better—that is…”

At first she thought he wasn't going to release her, but in the end he let her go with a quick kiss on the top of her head. “Tomorrow,” he promised. Actually, he only said it, but she wanted desperately to believe it was a promise.

She didn't slam the door. She didn't even stomp as
she made her way though the house to the glorified pantry where she was billeted. She had long since outgrown childish tantrums, but that didn't mean she'd outgrown being disappointed, much less being sexually frustrated. She
wanted
the man. She hadn't actually wanted a man since…

Since never.

Suzy was adding another coat of polish to her toenails. Glancing up, she raked back her short hair and grinned. “I thought by now you two would be getting down to some serious kanoodling.”

Maggie slipped off her sandals and reached for the shirt she wore to sleep in. “Try finding any privacy in a house with fifteen people.”

“There's always the basement or the attic.”

“Forget it, I didn't come here to waste time kanoodling.”

So much for all her splendid plans to spare Mary Rose from heartbreak and poverty.

“Wanna talk about it?”

Maggie hung up her dress, and without turning around, said, “I don't even want to think about it.”

 

She slept like a log and woke hearing the sounds of laughter coming from the kitchen. Evidently, Suzy and Ann were already up, dressed and ready to start cooking breakfast for anyone who wanted something more than dry cereal. Feeling guilty, Maggie dashed upstairs, waited for a shower to be free, and then hurriedly dressed, this time in her oldest jeans and a yellow camp shirt that was wrinkled from being crammed in her suitcase under a box of graham crackers. She tucked her damp hair behind her ears and put
on a tinted lip balm. If anyone thought she was going to take any special pains with her looks on account of last night, they were sadly mistaken. Anyone being Ben Hunter.

As early as it was, several people had gathered in the front hall to watch a uniformed man laboring up the front path carrying a large carton. Charlie said, “If that thing's as heavy as it looks, we're going to have a seriously herniated brownie here.”

Ann had already brewed the coffee and Suzy was staring at the big iron skillet as if she'd never seen one before.

“Hey, can somebody take this thing and sign for it?” the deliveryman called through the front screen door.

Ben came in from the side porch and said, “Sure thing. Let me help you set it down.” If he noticed Maggie's presence, he ignored it.

She shrugged off a stab of disappointment, although she didn't know what else she could have expected. Nothing had really happened between them last night. Occasionally she got swept away by her own creative imagination.

As Silver had yet to put in an appearance, Ben signed for the delivery and tipped the deliverer, which Maggie considered generous of him. Charlie said, “Don't try to pick it up. Those guys know how to carry stuff like that. You can throw your back out without half trying.”

“What is it?” Janie murmured from halfway down the stairs. She looked fabulous. Maggie made up her mind on the spot that if she had to grow old, she was going to use Janie Burger as a pattern.

Charlie obviously liked her style, too, she thought, remembering the two of them swinging away on what she'd come to think of as her and Ben's private place.

Janie leaned over and studied the label on the carton. “Hong Kong? Jeepers, who does he know in Hong Kong?”

But by then the first batch of bacon was starting to burn. Suzy yelled for help and Maggie hurried back to rescue it and to start whipping up eggs. The delivery was forgotten as talk turned to today's assignment and other esoteric topics, such as whether or not Ginko biloba improved the memory, and the lack of anything but white bread.

Perry arrived late. He seemed distinctly put out on finding the front door partially blocked by the delivery. “Leave it,” he snapped when Ben offered to set it out of the way. “Where's Ann?”

“She made the coffee, but she was sniffing and sneezing. She's probably gone back to the room,” said Suzy. “Have you had breakfast yet?”

Instead of replying, he stalked off in the direction of the room the three youngest class members shared. Maggie nearly scorched the eggs, wondering what was going on. It wasn't the first time she'd noticed the interaction between Ann and the instructor. She'd even asked about it, but Ann had brushed off the question and asked, instead, what being a reporter was like. Not that she'd seemed particularly interested in the reply, but then, when Maggie got onto a topic that interested her, she tended to lapse into essay mode.

Janie and Georgia offered to help clear up after breakfast so that they could all get started on today's assignment, which was painting on location. “I'm
sorry, dears, but they're predicting rain starting late tonight, so I've decided to push things along a bit,” Perry had said by way of explanation.

“I could've told him it was going to rain. My bones gave me fits last night, I couldn't sleep a wink,” remarked one of the retired teachers.

Maggie had had trouble sleeping, too, but more on account of painful thoughts about Ben than painful joints.

Painting on location turned out to involve dragging all their gear from the studio outside. A few students produced clever contraptions that appeared to be a combination stool and easel, but most, including Maggie, were assigned card tables which were neither large enough nor steady enough to be practical. The second time her water pail sloshed over, Ben suggested she either dig holes for two of the legs or prop up the other pair.

“Smart, aren't you?” She flashed him a nasty look that had him grinning. “I already thought of that.”

It would probably have occurred to her sooner or later, but she enjoyed sparring with him. At least it helped dispel the awkwardness after last night.

Ben helped Georgia find a place that was more or less level, helped her set up her equipment, and then helped Charlie wrestle a heavier picnic table into the shade for the two librarians. For all he looked like the hero of one of those action movies—rough, ready and more than slightly dangerous—Ben Hunter was a genuinely kindhearted man. He would make some woman a wonderful—

Don't even go there.

“Ann's going to work inside today,” Suzy said
when Maggie asked about their roommate. “Pollen count's too high.”

One of the blue-haired ladies mentioned that the coming rain would probably help reduce the pollen count, never mind how it affected various joints and sinuses. Soon they were all busy rendering the mountain scenery in a medium that had Ben cursing and Maggie muttering about paint with a mind of its own.

“Look at that!” she snarled after some twenty minutes had passed. “The blasted paint refuses to stay where I put it! The sky keeps washing away my mountain and when I try to push it back up where it belongs, the darned stuff fights back!”

“Here comes Perry, he'll tell you what you're doing wrong.” That from Georgia, whose sky was behaving the way a sky should instead of trickling down the mountain where there wasn't even a valley, much less a blasted waterfall.

“This is for the birds,” Ben growled. He stepped back, hands on his hips, and glared at the buckling sheet of thin watercolor paper.

“That reminds me, we'd better watch out for dive bombers.” Charlie nodded toward a flock of grackles squabbling over a stand of pokeberry bushes.

“Purple, right? Couldn't hurt. Might even help.” Ben happened to catch Maggie's eye. He winked and gave her a thumbs-up, his thumb stained with what she now recognized as alizarin crimson.