Driven to Distraction (Silhouette Desire S.) (10 page)

On Maggie, it looked good. Everything about her looked good.

In his usual place at the end of one of the long kitchen tables, Ben remembered his manners and
lurched to his feet. There was room to spare, but she bumped against his shoulder on the way past. “You're blocking traffic,” she muttered, her voice gruff with sleep. “Where's my mug?”

“Morning to you, too, sweetheart.” He sat down again, wondering what she'd do if he hauled her down onto his lap and stroked her until she purred. He might be tempted to try it if it weren't for a room full of chaperones.

“Has Ann been in yet?” Maggie asked the woman who was lifting bacon from a fourteen-inch iron skillet.

“Lord, yes, she was in here when I came down to start the coffee. She'd already made herself some instant—I think she might've taken it upstairs.”

Aware of him with every cell in her body, Maggie ignored Ben as she poured herself a mug of coffee, diluted it with milk and added two spoonfuls of sugar. One mystery was solved, anyway. Last night when she'd gone to the room they shared, Ann had been nowhere in evidence. According to Suzy, she was up on the third floor doing office work for Perry to pay for the workshop. “Ask me, she's not getting much for her efforts. I doubt if she's spent more than five hours in class since we started.” Suzy had gone on patting moisturizer on her throat.

“I don't know…that thing she painted yesterday looked pretty good to me. Better than Perry's, anyway.”

Shrugging, Suzy had said, “So maybe we should change teachers. By the way, when are you going to stop hogging our cowboy? Perry won't give me the
time of day, so I might as well have some fun while I'm here if you're not interested.”

Oh, Maggie was interested, all right. Which was not to say she intended to do anything about it.

That had been last night. Now, sipping her coffee, she tried to remember whether or not she'd answered. At the time she'd still been under the spell of that romantic, wisteria-scented fog, wondering what would have happened if the two of them had been alone instead of surrounded by fully half the class.

Disgusted, she dumped in another spoonful of sugar and reminded herself that, while imagination was a great advantage for a novelist, too much of the stuff could pose a danger for an objective journalist.

She stole a glance at Ben, caught him looking at her and lowered her flushed face.

Cool, Maggie—really cool.

Just then Perry made his entrance, pausing in the doorway to beam at his audience. “Morning, morning, morning! Remember the first day when I asked how many of you could touch your toes?” Without even looking around, he accepted the steaming pottery mug of coffee someone handed him.

General groans were heard. Several more people had wandered in during the past few minutes. “What is this, the inquisition?” asked a woman in a flowered muumuu.

“Methods, methods, methods,” Perry sang. “Loose, loose, loose!”

“Trick-y, trick-y, trick-y,” Suzy said, snickering just loud enough so that several people turned to look at her as she reached for a cup. She'd applied lipstick and eye shadow, but hadn't bothered to brush her
hair. On some women, Maggie thought rancorously, bed-head looked good.

Pointing at the far end of the long table, the instructor indicated a group of four women, all well past middle age, none with any noticeable degree of talent. “Remember yesterday when I told you that the object of art is not to copy nature, but to comment on it? To interpret what you see? A few of you seem to be having problems with the concept.”

“Does he mean we're supposed to color outside the lines?” Maggie whispered.

“Maybe he should practice what he preaches,” Suzy replied. “You see the way he interpreted that old barn hanging in the front hall? He even painted the splinters in the wood and the shadows under the rusty nails. Might as well use a camera with a close-up lens if that's the kind of interpretation he wants. Be a lot faster, that's for sure.”

One of the cooking team set a plate on the table before him and Perry took his seat and applied himself to breakfast. “Thirty minutes,” he warned, fork poised over the mound of scrambled eggs. “Everybody be ready to make great strides today.”

 

Yesterday's efforts were still spread out on the tables when the class straggled into the studio. Rather than face a critical review, Maggie tucked her drab, colorless blobscape under her tablet. As an artist, she was hopeless. Even Suzy was better. The only one worse was Ben Hunter, who didn't give a hoot. Maggie probably shouldn't, either, but then she'd always hated to fail at anything.

“It's the quality of your paints, Maggie,” Janie
said softly. “Too much filler. Let me give you a few tubes of artists grade paint, it'll make all the difference in the world.”

“Thanks, but it won't, not really. I shouldn't even be here.”

“I was wondering about that,” the older woman said with a lift of one carefully penciled eyebrow. “There are some excellent beginner's classes available in Winston. Had you thought about signing up for one at the Sawtooth Center?”

Before she could come up with a reply that wasn't an outright lie, Perry waltzed into the studio brandishing his brush as if it were a baton. “All right, ladies…and gentlemen,” he added as an afterthought. “Now, here's what we're going to do today, even those of you who don't need loosening up. It won't hurt and it just might help give you a different perspective.”

“The hell it won't hurt if it's that toe-touching crap.” Charlie's grumbling voice could be heard all the way across the room.

Perry glared at him. Then, lifting his drawing board from the table at the front of the room, the instructor dropped it onto the floor, a fresh sheet of three-hundred-pound d'Arches already taped in place. Beside it he set his water pail and his big messy palette. “Now, bending from the waist—” He swayed from the hip several times in case anyone was in doubt of the location of the waist. “I want you to
swe-e-eep
in the sky, using plenty of color in a big, juicy wash!”

He demonstrated with a few broad strokes, clearly visible to those at the front tables. Those in the back of the studio hadn't a clue.

“You, Mr. Hunter—are you amused at something I said?”

“Who, me? Amused? I was just wondering why anyone who wants to can't sit on a chair and straight-arm down to the floor. Get pretty much the same result, wouldn't we?”

“
Must
I explain all over again? We need
free
-dom of movement. That simply can't be had sitting down.”

But when three women left the room and returned with kitchen chairs, he only shrugged and went on with his demonstration.

Some forty minutes later as the class broke, some moving to the front of the studio to view the morning's masterpiece, others heading for the doors, Ben came up beside Maggie and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “You gotta admit, what he did this morning looks a hell of a lot better than these things he's got hanging on the wall. If that's an example of loose, I like it a whole lot better than tight.”

Maggie felt as if someone had touched her with a live wire. Somehow she was going to have to drum up some resistance before she did something foolish. “I wouldn't know, since I couldn't see past all his admirers,” she said, trying for blasé and missing it by a mile. And then, “Ben…” She looked up and found herself captured by his warm brown eyes. “Um—Charlie looks like he's coming down with something. You think he might be catching whatever Ann has?” She hated it when her voice sounded as if she'd just run a three-minute mile, but that was the way Ben affected her. Maybe she was the one with the allergies.

“He was out late last night. Probably just needs more sleep. C'mon, I want to show you something.”

“Out where? What about the next assignment?”

Ben just shrugged. “It'll wait.”

“Where are we going?” Not that she cared as she hurried after him. Obviously, mountain air had a deleterious affect on the immune system.

He led her out the back door, away from the house, to the vine-covered arbor. “If you're talking about the view,” she said breathlessly. “I saw it the other night, remember?”

What if he tried to kiss her again?

What if he
didn't?

So much for her powers of resistance.

“You put fifteen people—sixteen counting Silver—in one house, and it's damned near impossible to find any privacy.”

Her breath snagged in her lungs. He
was
going to kiss her again! Her lips softened in expectation.

And then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper that looked as if it had been crumpled, smoothed out and then folded. Without another word, he handed it to her.

Puzzled, Maggie stared at the scribbled words, all in pencil, all similar, but with slight variations. “What am I supposed to see?”

“What does it look like?”

Trying to hide her disappointment, she looked again, frowning. “Somebody practicing cursive writing?”

“Try again.”

“A…signature?”

“Bingo,” he said softly. “And who needs to practice a signature?”

“Physicians?” she said half-joking, still puzzled. She looked up to see him smiling down at the top of her head. The smile faded from his mouth, then from his eyes last of all, leaving in its place something edgier.

“How about forgers?” he said softly.

“Y
ou're kidding, right?” Still holding the scrap of paper, Maggie searched his face. “You're not kidding,” she said softly. Thunder echoed in the distance. Neither of them noticed.

“On a scale of one to ten, this probably rates about a two. This art scam, I mean.” A slight breeze ruffled his hair, tempting her to smooth it back from his brow.

“If it is a scam.” Regardless of what he'd said, Maggie, as an objective journalist, tried to keep an open mind. Marrying a wealthy, inexperienced woman for her money was one thing, but art forgery? She didn't have a clue. “How can it be forgery? Those prints hanging on the walls are obviously Perry's work. We've both seem him painting pictures that look almost identical. They've all got his signa
ture. In fact, come to think of it, on the prints—reproductions, whatever—he's written his name twice, once on the picture itself and once in the margin. So what's the problem?”

“I'm not quite sure, but I intend to find out,” he said grimly. His face softened and he continued to look at her.

Her breath quickening, Maggie waved away a bee that seemed more interested in her hair than in the nearby blossoms. Another rumble of thunder rolled across the valley. Forcing herself not to stare at his mouth, Maggie said, “So what do you think? He's practicing bending over from the waist to sign his name?”

“Hold still,” Ben murmured.

She froze, her eyes darting to the nearby arbor, half expecting an armed forger to be lurking in the shadows.

Armed with—what, a loaded fountain pen? All this talk of forgers and scams was distracting her from her primary mission.

Slowly, Ben lifted his hand to her head. He said, “Shoo.” And then he growled, “Scat, dammit.”

A bee lifted off and droned away, moving heavily, as if it had pigged out on nectar. Ben went on staring at her hair. He said, “Raw sienna.”

She blinked. “Raw what?”

“Your hair. I've identified three of the colors, but this one right here…I'm not quite sure.” He fingered the tendril of hair she had tucked behind her ear as it dried. “There you've got your burnt sienna, your burnt umber and your yellow okra—it's this one right here I can't quite identify.”

“Ochre,” she corrected absently. The class had not entirely been wasted on her. “It's called yellow ochre.”

“Yeah, that's what I said. I figure you've got all the colors they used in the desert cammy uniforms.”

“Am I supposed to thank you for the compliment, or whack you and march off in high whatchamacallit?”

“High gear?”

“High dudgeon. It's what ladies and English butlers are known for in regency romances.” And then, before he could come back at her, she closed her eyes. “Forget I said that, will you?”

He laughed, and just like that, all thoughts of forgers, gold diggers and desert camouflage evaporated.

But not romance, regency or otherwise. For one tingling moment Maggie's world narrowed to include only the man who was standing so close she could see the shards of gold in his whiskey-brown eyes, the iridescent gleam in his crow-black hair and the crease in his left cheek that was almost, but not quite, a dimple.

Without thinking, she reached up and touched it. He caught her hand and held it against his face. Heat sizzled between her skin and his. Just before he lowered his lips to hers, she heard him whisper, “This is crazy…”

This time there was nothing tentative about the kiss. It was carnal right from the start. And it felt so good, so right in the cool, fragrant morning air. She only wished she were taller so that everything would fit better. It occurred to her that if they were lying down, everything would fit perfectly.

But misaligned height had nothing to do with taste, and he tasted like coffee and mint and something wildly intoxicating. When his hand moved up and down her back, cupping her hips, she wanted to rip off her clothes to allow him better access. Her meager breasts swelled eagerly as his hands moved over her body.

And then he discovered that she wasn't wearing a bra and the exploration expanded. His thumbs feathered across her hardened nipples, zinging messages to the place between her thighs, preparing her for what was about to happen…

Only it wasn't. It couldn't. Not in broad daylight, in plain view of anyone who happened to glance out the window. Maggie could have wept with frustration. Never had she been kissed so thoroughly, so deliciously. Never before had she realized what a potent instrument a tongue could be.

Slowly, Ben lifted his face to stare down at her, his breath as ragged as her own. “Come on,” he whispered roughly, and before she could protest—not that she would have—he led her through the patch of mountain laurel down a narrow path.

“Where?” she panted, barely able to keep up.

“Waterfall,” he said. He stopped, turned, and drew her into his arms again. This time when the kiss ended there wasn't the slightest question of where they were headed.

Someplace private. Someplace
very
private.

Someplace where they wouldn't shock anyone who stumbled across their naked bodies. Because sure as the sky was blue—well, gray at the moment, and getting grayer—they were going to be naked and all over
each other the minute they found a patch of level ground.

It was level only by comparison. Covered with dark green moss, surrounded by rocks worn smooth by time, it was barely wider than her cot. Ben lowered her and followed her down. Somewhere nearby, Maggie could hear the sound of moving water, but she had eyes only for the man kneeling beside her. With a soft oath, he ripped his shirt off over his head. Cloud-filtered sunlight splintered off his powerful shoulders.

He said, “Maggie…?”

“Yes.” Just that one whispered word. It was all he needed; all either of them needed.

Buttons and zippers were dealt with, and Maggie waited impatiently while Ben tugged off his boots in order to pull off his jeans. Wearing only a scrap of yellow lace—lingerie was her one secret indulgence—she lay back on the velvety moss and watched as he finished undressing.

His hands were shaking. For some odd reason, which she didn't even bother to explore, that made her feel empowered. Mighty Maggie strikes again. Weak men fall to their knees; brave men quail in terror.

There was nothing faintly weak about Ben Hunter. Even in areas where the sun couldn't reach, his skin was the color of a rich latte. Flat black curls T-ed across his chest and arrowed down toward his groin, where…

“Oh, my,” she whispered as he tossed his jeans aside and came down over her.

“Don't talk—don't think.” His voice sounded like torn canvas. “Just let me…”

She couldn't have spoken then if her life depended on it. So she let him…and he let her. Coals that had smoldered since the first time she'd noticed him when he'd been leaning into the cab of his truck quickly burst into flames. In a single moment, Maggie went from being a mature, sensible woman to being a wild, irresponsible creature, heedless of all but her own burgeoning needs. Oblivious to the warm breeze that played over her naked body—to the cool moss beneath her, she was conscious only of Ben's arms, his hands—his fiercely aroused body moving over hers.

Her hands fluttered over his back, urging him on.
Now, now—please!

He took his time. His mouth drove her wild with a series of soft, maddeningly gentle kisses before tracing a path of wildfire down her heated body.

“Please?” she managed to squeak when his lips moved over an exquisitely sensitive place.

“I—wait a minute,” he said gruffly, and pulled away.

Frantic with need, she clutched at him as he reached over to drag his jeans closer. “Don't you dare leave me now,” she cried softly.

“I used to carry—not sure it's still there, but—”

And then he was back, and she closed her eyes.

Ben suited up swiftly, his hands unsteady, his heart thundering visibly. He knew something about explosives, but never had he experienced anything as incendiary as the touch of this one small woman. If they'd both been dressed in asbestos it wouldn't have
mattered. One kiss—one touch, and he would have gone up in flames.

He moved over her again, parting her thighs to kneel between them. “Beautiful,” he whispered raggedly. “So beautiful.”

He kissed her eyes and her throat, inhaling the intoxicating scent of soap, shampoo and aroused woman. He kissed her breasts, paying homage to the small pink nipples that rose hungrily to meet his lips. He placed kisses in the hollow beside each hipbone and one on her soft belly before moving on. By the time he lifted himself over her again, her heels were softly pounding the earth. She was whimpering with need.

And he was trembling with it. “I want it to be good for you, sweetheart,” he said huskily.

“Yes!” she exploded, pulling him down to her with small, but surprisingly strong hands. Those were the last words either of them uttered until the wildfire died away.

As soon as either of them was able to move, Ben rolled onto his back, taking her with him. She lay draped over him like a damp blanket. If she was anywhere near as replete as he was, neither of them would be moving for the next few days.

Thunder rumbled across the mountains. A cool draft stirred the treetops around them. Once his breathing returned to normal, Ben whispered, “Maggie…I think it's about to rain on us.”

“Mmm.”

“You want to head back?”

She shook her head—managed to do that much, at least. “Uh-uh.”

Eyes closed, he grinned. “Me, either.”

She felt a drop of rain on her bottom. Just one, though. And she felt him stir to life beneath her. This time, since she was already on top, she took the line of least resistance.

 

Neither of them spoke on the uphill trek to the house. Maggie probably because she was too winded, Ben because he knew better. Anything a man said at a time like this was apt to land him in trouble.

He thought it, though.
What the devil have you done to me, woman?

If she had any idea he was thinking things no cop, ex-or otherwise, should be thinking about, she'd high-tail it down the mountain. The odds were lousy. Four of the seven men he'd worked with over the past ten years had at least one busted marriage behind them. A couple more were in counseling. Hell, even in a small town like Dry Creek, where most of the problems were either drug-related or domestic, the stats were lousy.

And he was due back there on Monday. Barely time enough to throw a wrench in Silver's smooth little operation and say goodbye to Miss Emma. No time at all to figure out what was going on with Maggie, much less to try and explain why it would never work.

Who was it who'd said something about east being east and west being west, and the trains never running? One more pothole in his formal education.

Maggie marched past him without a word. Probably had a head full of second thoughts herself. Pure
devilment made him call after her. “Hey! See you in class this afternoon, right?”

No reaction.

Just as well.

Charlie was in the men's john trying to wash a spot of something off one of his shirts. “You missed lunch,” he said. “I don't know who made the last supply run, but we're already running short of a few things. I put down rye bread. You showering now? Didn't you shower this morning?”

“Poison ivy.”

“Bad stuff. They got a washing machine in the basement if you want to use it. Be sure you use hot water, though, else it just spreads the oils.”

Ben stepped in the shower stall and turned on the water to keep from having to lie any more, either by omission or commission. He had a feeling that if he were to look the older man in the eye, Charlie would be able to see right through him.

 

Maggie had never been so confused in her life.

Actually, she had, only not about sex. She was hardly promiscuous, but neither was she wildly experienced. Of all the men she had ever slept with—all three of them—no one had ever made her feel the way Ben had. Just thinking about him made her feel warm and gushy all over.

Class was already in session by the time she showered and changed into her last clean outfit. She should have packed more clothes and fewer snacks, but then, live and learn.

She slipped into the studio just as Silver was winding up a demonstration. Suzy made room for her and
whispered, “Where've you been? Do you know where Ben is? Janie was asking.”

Maggie's gaze flew to the left side table near the front of the room. One peach-colored head, one white one and one bald one. She'd heard Charlie laughing last night telling someone that that circle of skin on top wasn't a bald spot, it was a solar panel for a raging love machine.

No Ben. Speaking of raging love machines. Maybe he'd tossed his things into his pickup and fled, leaving Janie and all the other grandmothers to fend for themselves. A clear case of committal-phobia. She tried to think of all the advice she'd ladled out for her readers about men who were afraid to commit, but failed to come up with a single piece of wisdom other than that some men—maybe even most men—were.

Opening her watercolor pad, she stared at the blank page and tried to remember if she'd said anything that would lead him to believe she expected anything of him. She didn't, not really. Not to say she wouldn't have considered some sort of a relationship, but not every relationship had to end in marriage. That was foolish idealism, and while she had her ideals, she was nobody's fool.

Somehow she managed to get through the class without attracting any further attention. Suzy was doodling on the back of a horrible watercolor. Janie waved at her, but didn't come over. Charlie looked at her, smiled, turned away and then turned back to look some more.

Merciful Heaven, did it show? Men talked…

Of course women talked, too, but Maggie would curl up and die if she thought anyone knew where
she'd been for the past hour, much less what she'd been doing. For two cents she'd throw everything in the car and go home, mission unaccomplished.