Driven to Distraction (Silhouette Desire S.) (5 page)

B
y mutual consent everyone migrated to the side porch, where a tray of glasses and another pitcher of tea was waiting, compliments of Ann, who seemed to spend more time in peripheral duties than she did in class. Could there be another nonartist who, for reasons of her own, had enrolled in Silver's circus? No wonder Silver spent so much of his time with the older members of his class. Apparently those were the only ones who were serious about learning.

Maggie felt Ben's presence even before he reached past her to scoop two glasses into the ice bucket. He filled them with the sweetened tea and handed her one, saying, “Here you go.”

“Thank you,” she said stiffly. Then, with false conviction, “This is really nice, isn't it?”

His eyes sparkled with hidden laughter. The jour
nalist in her—not to mention the woman—wanted to ask him why he was pretending to be an artist when obviously he was no better at it than she was, and evidently no more interested in learning.

But then, he might ask a few questions she'd just as soon not answer.

He leaned against the porch rail, his gaze moving over the clusters of chattering women. She wanted to shout,
“I'm right here—look at me!”

Instead, she backed away to perch on the arm of an Adirondack chair. The chair tipped, tea splashed over her lap, ice cubes skittered across the porch floor and Maggie swore silently. If there happened to be a spill, a splash or a drip anywhere in the vicinity, her body would attract it like a magnet.

When Ben leaned forward and began mopping at the icy liquid with a handkerchief, she shoved his hand away. “Don't bother. It's only tea, it won't kill me.” Judging from what she'd seen of the facilities, any laundry equipment would probably consist of a washtub and a clothesline.

The older woman with the pretty pink hair strolled over. “Hi, you're Maggie and I'm Janie—I think we met yesterday. Are you having as much fun this morning as I am?” She held up her glass. “I don't think it'll stain. It's mostly sugar syrup.” She kicked a few ice cubes under the railing without making a big production of it.

When Perry Silver joined them, the temperature seemed to drop several degrees. It had nothing to do with a few ice cubes melting in the shrubbery, or even the clammy mess plastered to her thighs. As uncomfortable as she was, Maggie sensed Ben's hostility.
Which was odd, as she'd never before been particularly sensitive to the feelings of others.

Well, except for Mary Rose. And her father. And the elderly widow she visited two or three times a week with library books and treats from the bakery. And maybe a few others.

“Are you enjoying yourself, Hunter?” Perry asked with a smile that easily qualified as a smirk.

“I was,” Ben said. He hadn't moved a muscle. Maggie was reminded of a sleeping lion she'd seen at the Asheboro Zoo.

“Good, good.” Turning to Janie, the artist said, “And you, little lady? This morning's effort showed definite promise. We'll have you painting like a pro by week's end, I guarantee.”

Janie waited until he moved on to another group before murmuring a reply. “Sonny boy, if you're an example of a pro, I'll pass.” With a shrug, she added, “He really is a good teacher, though.”

“That's what everybody keeps saying,” Maggie said. “Sure can't prove it by me.”

When Janie wandered off to join Charlie and Georgia, Maggie turned to Ben, wishing she had half the poise of the older woman. Poise was tough enough when she was all dressed up in her Sunday best. Wet from the waist down, it was impossible. “Well…I guess I'll see you around.”

Ben stood. He'd stood when Janie joined them until the older woman had pressed him back down again. Someone, Maggie thought—his mother, probably—had taught him good manners.

“Maggie,” Ben said just as she was about to dis
appear inside. She glanced over her shoulder, and he grinned at her. “You're not all that bad. Honest.”

“As if you'd know.”

But she was smiling when she hurried to her room to wash off the stickiness and change clothes. Lord, the man was something. Trouble on the hoof. How was she supposed to concentrate on getting the goods on Perry Silver when all she had to do was catch sight of Ben Hunter for her knees to go weak and her brain to turn to gravy?

“Answer me that, Wonder Woman,” she muttered.

Suzy was just coming from the room they shared, having shed the shirt she wore over her halter top as the day warmed up. Today's top was blue, and even skimpier than yesterday's. “What'd you say?”

“Nothing,” Maggie snapped.

“I saw you drooling over our cowboy. Hey, there's going to be dancing tonight. Wanna draw straws for him?”

“This isn't drool, I spilled my tea.”

“Whatever,” the younger woman said with a knowing grin.

“Yeah, whatever,” Maggie muttered as she hurried past to clean off the sticky mess. She'd do well to keep her mind on her mission.

 

A critique was no worse than the average root canal, Maggie told herself some forty-five minutes later, coolly admiring her own objectivity. Silver found something kind to say about almost every single work until he got to the last three examples, namely, hers, Suzy's and Ben Hunter's. After a lot of hemming and hawing, he called Ben's effort problematic, and to be
fair, even Maggie could see that Ben's was easily the worst of the lot.

Silver would set up each student's work on his easel in turn. Then, using a brush handle as a pointer, he would indicate the parts that “worked” and those that didn't, and explain why. While Suzy's sky was nicely done and Maggie's colors weren't
too
muddy, evidently nothing in Ben's painting worked. Not a single thing.

Maggie put it down to jealousy. Both men were attractive, but there was really no comparison. Without lifting a finger, Ben attracted women of all ages. Maybe he was the son or grandson the older ones wished they'd been lucky enough to have, but there was nothing even faintly maternal in Maggie's feelings. Never having experienced it before, at least not to this degree, she recognized it as sheer, unadulterated lust.

“I don't know about you, but I kinda like my picture.” Ben murmured in her ear, his warm breath sending tendrils of hair tickling her cheek—not to mention certain other ticklish parts of her body. “Reckon my granny would like to have it?”

“As a Halloween decoration, you mean? Tell me something—what is that wiggly streak across the front of the page? A rusty train track?”

“Now you're deliberately trying to hurt my feelings. It's a—”

Maggie never did find out what the jagged streak was supposed to be, as Ben glanced up just then and saw Silver in a huddle with the two women he had seemingly adopted. “'Scuse me,” he said, and sauntered off.

Sauntered was a word Maggie rarely had an opportunity to use in her general advice column, but it came closest to describing that easy, loose-limbed way Ben Hunter had of moving, as if he were so comfortable in his skin he might actually fall asleep in transit.

Watching him make his way through the crowd, she could think of several methods she might employ in an effort to keep him awake.

Suzy sidled up beside her. “You think he's got a mother fixation, or whatever they call that thingee? Some kind of a complex?”

In Maggie's estimation, Suzy's four years at Chapel Hill had left her largely untouched, education-wise. But then, sometimes a college education took a while to filter through. As with whiskey, maturity often made a difference. She'd used that little gem of wisdom in one of her columns just last month.

“You mean Janie and Georgia? They're nice, aren't they?”
Be generous, Maggie—he could be going after Suzy or Ann.
“I wouldn't mind having either one of them for a mother.”

When Suzy lifted one penciled eyebrow, Maggie shrugged. “My mother was never your standard cookie-baking, PTA-meeting, do-your-homework type of mother, if you know what I mean.”

Suzy nodded, indicating she understood, then said, “Not exactly.”

“Never mind. Look, how about doing me a favor? Remember what I told you about my friend, Mary Rose Dilys.”

 

It was hardly a promising beginning, Maggie thought a few hours later as she dressed for supper—
starting with having to expose her total lack of talent, followed by a lapful of cold, sticky iced tea. After that came the afternoon session, which only confirmed what the morning class had hinted at. She'd bought the wrong kind of paint, the wrong kind of paper and her one and only brush was about as useful as a secondhand Q-Tip. Add to that the fact that of the only two men enrolled, the only attractive one—devastating, really—attractive didn't begin to describe him—preferred older women. As in about forty years older.

Catching sight of Ben and Janie wandering around outside while she tried to tame her hair, she thought, maybe if I were to use a rinse…

Her brush-hand fell still as she stared out the tiny window at the pair highlighted by the setting sun. Ben was definitely a saunterer, but Janie's walk defied description. Viewed from the back, with her pink, shoulder-length hair—which was really more of a peach-color—she didn't look a day over twenty-five. Maybe thirty. Even with those ugly cross-trainers. Heads together, the two of them were as chummy as a pack of Nibs.

Oh, well, Maggie rationalized, she hadn't come here looking for romance. From now on she'd pay strict attention to her mission, she vowed as she fished through her suitcase for something suitable for supper and dancing. Dancing was one of the few sports in which she excelled.

Lifting out her stiletto heels, she remembered the last time she'd worn them. She'd got one heel jammed between the boards in the deck of a nice
couple who'd invited her to supper to meet their nephew.

No point in courting disaster. She'd be just as tall in her everyday platforms.

Suzy breezed into the room, still wearing her high-cut skintight shorts and the skimpy low-cut halter. “Hi, you getting ready for tonight?”

“For supper. I thought maybe—”

“Right. You thought maybe you'd get dressed up for the big diesel.”

“The big—” Maggie felt her face grow warm.

Suzy said dryly, “You need to keep your eyeballs on a shorter leash. I mean, the man's a serious stud muffin, but he has this hang-up about older women. You said so yourself.”

Maggie dropped back onto the cot. It threatened to tip and she grabbed the wooden sides. This was not her lucky day. “Are you going to do it?” she asked, referring to their earlier conversation.

“What, troll my bait in front of Silver?”

“Well, yeah…sort of. Nothing outrageous, but just let him know you might be interested. See how he reacts. In a house full of people you'll be safe enough, and I'll be standing by to rescue you if it comes to that.”

“Now if we were talking about the mighty Hunter, I'd be way out ahead of you.” She rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay. If things get too tense I can always take a cue from Ann and sneeze real loud.” Their roommate had serious allergies.

Maggie sighed heavily. “It seemed like such a perfect plan when I started out. Now I've blown all this money—my dad's home alone eating junk food and
smoking too much, and I'm not sure that even if I get proof that Perry's a—a philanderer, it will make a speck of difference.”

“A philanderer?”

“Skunk. The two words are interchangeable. My dad says I'm a meddler, but honestly, I'm not. It's just that I get these brilliant ideas that occasionally don't work out quite the way I'd planned.”

“Okay, I'll try my hand at being skunk bait. Beats working in an unair-conditioned office that smells like turpentine. I keep telling my dad that a window unit wouldn't exactly bankrupt James and James Lumber Company.”

“Who's the other James?”

Suzy grimaced. “Moi. He hopes. You wearing that?” She indicated Maggie's ankle-length, button-front, straight-line shirtwaist. “Hate to tell you, but if you're looking for any action tonight, that dress has to go. Sexy, it's not, and besides, the skirt's too tight for line dancing. If those boots are anything to go by, that's probably all our cowboy knows how to do.”

Maggie tossed a Perry Silver Watercolor Workshop brochure at her. It sailed under the cot.

 

Seating arrangements had been slightly modified for the second night. Seated at the head table, Perry Silver had the only chair with arms, thus denoting his rank. Janie was on his right with Ben beside her, Georgia to his left, with Charlie beside her, with a retired public health nurse at the far end.

“How come all the men have to be at one table?” Suzy asked as they made their way to the small table
by the kitchen door. “Why can't we share the goodies?”

“Ask whoever arranged the seating.” Maggie wondered, too, but she wasn't about to make an issue of it. Charlie, she wouldn't have minded—at least he had a sense of humor, but either of the other two would have made her too nervous to eat, for entirely different reasons.

“I wonder how I'd look with pink hair,” Suzy mused as she dug into the entrée, which tonight was pork chops and sweet potatoes with bagged coleslaw and biscuits from a tube, compliments of the two librarians and a retired accountant.

“If you mean like Janie's, it's more peach than pink.”

“Whatever. Our cowboy sure seems to like it.” She shot Maggie a sly look.

Our cowboy?

“So?” If she sounded preoccupied, it was because she was. Preoccupied with trying to keep her mind focused on the reason she was here.

Ann slid into the empty chair beside Maggie, her allergies apparently subdued. “I signed the three of us up for tomorrow, is that okay?”

Maggie said, “I thought when I signed up that meals were included.”