Driven to Distraction (Silhouette Desire S.) (13 page)

“I don't want to slow down. Make love to me, Ben.”

With her small hands probing dangerously close to ground zero, he whispered roughly, “Neither do I.” Using his teeth and his free hand, he ripped the corner off the foil packet he'd had the forethought to put within reach.

“Sweet—creamery—butter,” he whispered roughly as he first gloved himself in protection and then in her warm, welcoming body. “Maggie, I don't want to rush you, but—”

“You're not.” She was moving restlessly, each shuddering breath clearly audible. Her hands fluttered
over whatever parts of him they could reach, igniting small brushfires along the way.

He pulled back, looming over her, his face tense with urgency. When she protested, he rolled over onto his back, carrying her with him so that she bracketed his hips with her thighs. He probably outweighed her by a good seventy-five pounds. He should have thought of that out by the waterfall, but he hadn't been thinking at all—at least not with his brain.

“Go, girl,” he directed, his voice so strained as to be unrecognizable.

She needed no prompting. Lifting her hips, she centered herself and settled down again with such exquisite slowness he died several deaths before he could even remember to breathe. Steeling himself against snatching control and racing for the finish line, he let her move at her own pace, every muscle in his body quivering with tension.

Her pace started out slow and easy, but then, as if she'd lost the rhythm and couldn't get back in step, it became jerky and fast. She started to whimper. Clasping her shoulders, Ben melded his pace to hers until suddenly she ground herself hard against him, her eyes widening.

“Oh, oh, oh!” The soft sound of discovery cascaded over him like a benediction.

He held her tightly in place as a million volts of pure energy shot through him, echoing repeatedly throughout every cell of his body.

Eventually she collapsed, damp and panting. “Oh, my goodness,” she whispered breathlessly.

“Yeah,” he said as blood began to filter back to his brain. “My thoughts precisely.”

 

The sky had mostly cleared by the time they ventured outside. Tufts of pink-edged clouds drifting overhead as traffic appeared to be running normally again, tires singing on wet pavement. The small parking area outside their cottage was littered with puddles and leaves from newly green trees.

“I'm hungry,” Maggie said, a note of surprise in her voice. “Do we still have time to get something to eat?” There was none of the awkwardness she might have expected.

“You operating on a deadline?” Ben opened the passenger side door and helped her up. Her legs were short, the 4x4 was high, the running board little more than a narrow chrome bar. It occurred to him that he really didn't need four-wheel drive any longer.

The thought was followed by a shaft of unease. Just because a man had sex with a woman a few times, that was no cause to start changing his lifestyle. Maggie sure as hell wasn't making an issue of it. Some women wanted to talk afterward. All he'd ever wanted to do was sleep, preferably alone.

Not that he'd have minded talking to Maggie, but she'd clammed up tighter than a tick on a shorthaired dog and headed for the shower. Then, while she'd dressed, he had showered. There hadn't been a whole lot of opportunity for conversation.

“Barbecue all right with you?” he asked casually as they turned off highway 52 toward Pilot Mountain. There was a sign ahead that promised Lexington-style barbecue, which meant lean pork in a light, tomato-based sauce. It took some getting used to after the heavy-bodied beef 'que he was used to, but it wasn't bad. Not half-bad, in fact.

“Love it,” she said brightly. A little too brightly, he suspected, but then he wasn't quite as relaxed as he was making out to be, either.

She sighed and continued to watch the scenery go by while he drove and tried not to think of either the immediate past or the future.

Neither of them did justice to the barbecue. Maggie nibbled on a sweet, greasy hushpuppy while Ben looked around for some hot sauce and used it liberally on his mild, eastern style sandwich. He said, “You put slaw on yours?”

She said, “You're supposed to.”

“Not where I come from.”

“So?”

And that settled that. East was east and west was west, and all the rest of it.

Outside a small independent grocery store a few minutes later, Maggie glanced over the list. Ben insisted on giving her a fifty-dollar bill and offered to help shop.

“Since I'm not used to help it would be more of a hindrance, but thanks.”

He was waiting outside the truck when she emerged with a grocery cart. Together they crammed the bags onto the back seat. Neither of them spoke more than a few words on the drive back to Peddler's Knob as for once, Maggie found herself incapable of filling in an awkward silence with mindless chatter.

Only when they pulled into the parking lot did she speak. Unclipping her seat belt, she peered up at the house. “It looks like every light in the house is on. I wonder why.”

“Because it's dark outside? Come on, I'll get Charlie to help bring in the supplies.”

When they reached the steps, slick from the recent rain, he took her hand. Rather than make an issue of it, Maggie let him guide her up onto the porch. Was there a tactful way of letting him know she didn't expect anything from him? In case one of her readers ever asked her about the protocol for afternoon sex by a waterfall or evening sex in a rented room, she would have to refer them to Dr. Ruth or Dr. Laura. Miss Maggie hadn't a clue.

She slanted a sidelong glance at the man beside her and saw that he was frowning. She wanted to say, “Look, so we went to bed together a couple of times. We're consenting adults, a good time was had by all, and that's the end of that, period.”

Only it wasn't. Not for her, at least. So she didn't say it.

Charlie met them at the door. “Where the hell have you two been? Are you both feeling all right?”

Maggie darted another look at Ben, wondering if it showed. Had she buttoned her dress wrong?

Ben said, “We got caught in a cloudburst, that's all. What's going on?”

“You didn't eat supper?”

Ben nodded and Maggie said, “We had barbecue. We could have brought some back if we'd thought of it. The supplies are—”

Charlie said, “Heck with that, long's you didn't eat here. They're dropping like flies. Janie and Georgia and I did the cooking tonight, but it wasn't that, I swear.”

T
hank goodness she'd showered at the motel before they'd left, Maggie told herself, because the ladies' bathroom was not a particularly pleasant place. Three people so far had come down with symptoms of food poisoning. Two more were looking iffy.

Janie said, “I called a doctor. He said bring 'em in, but I don't know…”

“Pity they don't make house calls anymore,” said a brisk, white-haired woman named Bea who was cooking rice. Seeing Maggie staring at the pot on the stove, she said, “It'll help some. Cola's for them that can keep it down. With all this rain, the saltines are limp as raw bacon.”

Maggie said, “Oven. Crisp 'em in the oven.” Good Lord, what was going on around here? She'd left an art workshop and come back to find a field hospital.

Janie stood in the middle of the kitchen and waved a cooking spoon. “Attention, everyone. I'll coordinate for the duration, all right? Charlie, you see that there's a bucket beside every bed. Round up the water containers from the studio. You, Maggie—and you, Ben—go up to the third floor and see where Perry's hiding out. He hasn't been downstairs since all this started.”

“Probably on the phone with his lawyer right this minute,” said Georgia.

Following Ben up to the second floor, Maggie couldn't believe that little more than an hour ago she'd been lying in his arms, trying not to think about wedding bells—about riding off into the sunset on a white horse with the cowboy of her choice.

Actually, she was a lot smarter than that, only sometimes her imagination got in the way of her common sense. Despite his boots and his accent, Ben wasn't John Wayne, she reminded herself. What he was, was an unemployed Texan who happened to be visiting a relative, who happened to live in North Carolina.

Moans, groans and more ominous sounds greeted them as they hurried along the second floor hall to the attic stairway. The door was always kept closed. For all she knew, it might even be locked.

It wasn't. “Maybe you'd better let me go up alone,” Ben said.

“No way. You might need backup.”

“Maggie—” He shook his head, opened the door and set off up the narrow, steep steps, with Maggie two steps behind him. The only light showing was a dim glow coming from the far end of a long, slope-
ceiling room. It was the light they'd seen from the parking lot.

Two steps from the top, he paused. To steady herself, Maggie looped her fingers under his belt and tried to peer around him through the clutter of boxes, stacks of empty frames and what looked like a small guillotine. As there was no blood, only a few scraps of matte board under the wicked blade, Maggie managed to control her alarm.

Ann was seated at a desk at the far end. She glanced up and her eyes widened. “What are you two doing up here?”

Ben had to bend to avoid bumping his head. “Watch it,” he warned as Maggie followed close on his heels.

“One good thing about being height challenged,” she whispered. “I'm good with low clearances.” And then she said, “Why am I whispering? Ann, are you all right? You do know what's going on downstairs, don't you?”

Ann held a finger over her lips, casting her eyes toward a door that had been hidden until now. “Shh, Perry doesn't feel good. He's trying to get a nap before he heads back to town.”

Avoiding the eaves, Ben dodged the cartons and stacks. “If he's got the same symptoms as everybody else, he'll be better off on the second floor—that is, unless there's a john up here.”

Ann's frown was replaced by a look of concern. “Symptoms?”

“Food poisoning,” Maggie supplied.

Ann sat down again. “You're kidding. I thought it
was just his wrist. He takes all this herbal stuff and sometimes it makes him feel, you know—yukky.”

“Did either of you eat here tonight?” Ben asked.

Maggie was distracted by the label on several of the boxes. Good heavens, Hong Kong again? She was pretty sure Perry had said his three-hundred-pound watercolor paper was French, not Chinese.

“I haven't had time to eat since breakfast. Perry's been in his room since the late session. He stays over sometimes, but he's got an apartment in town.”

“Did either of you go down for supper?”

Ann shook her head slowly. “I made a sandwich and brought it up with me while I was…” She glanced at the cluttered desk and looked away.

“Where is he, through here?” Ben was halfway to the inconspicuous door when Ann blocked his way.

“Let me,” she said. “I'm pretty sure he's okay, but like I said, he takes all this herbal stuff. I doubt if any of it's ever been FDA approved, but you know Perry—you can't tell him anything.”

Maggie moved slowly around the angular room, eyeing the stack of prints—reproductions or whatever they were called. Still with her hand on the doorknob, Ann said, “He's got that carpal tunnel thing now, but the truth is, he's always had some excuse to keep from doing whatever he doesn't want to do. He's my cousin on my mama's side, so I've tried to help—you know how it is with family—but honestly, there's times lately when I feel like telling him…”

Shaking her head, she quietly opened the door. “Perry? Are you awake?”

 

It was a subdued group that met in the kitchen later that night. The worst of the sickness was evidently
over. “They'll live,” said Charlie, “but they're feeling pretty drained.”

Groans could be heard around the table, where an array of safe snacks had been set out. Charlie, who hadn't been affected, said, “Sorry. No pun intended. Stuff acts like salmonella. I figure it had to be either the raw cider or the sprouts. Not everybody put sprouts on their salad, and not everybody drank the cider, but I tossed the leftovers just in case.”

“Godalmighty.” After emptying pails for the past few hours Ben was too tired to watch his language. The brow-soothing and hand-holding had been left to Janie, Georgia and Maggie, while the woman called Bea had manned the kitchen, brewing tea, serving up warm ginger ale and oven-crisped saltines.

“How's Perry doing? Is Ann looking after him?” Bea asked.

“Evidently his stomach's fine,” Maggie told her. “It's his carpal tunnel that's acting up.”

“Just in time to keep him from being pressed into service in the bucket brigade,” Ben commented.

Charlie slathered mustard on a corned beef sandwich. Evidently his appetite hadn't been affected. “Carpal tunnel? Must come from painting all those thousands of picket fences and dead twigs.”

“That's what Ann says anyway, and she's known him all her life. They're cousins.”

Nobody seemed to know what to say after that. Georgia twisted her wedding rings. Janie handed Charlie a paper napkin when his sandwich dripped mustard on his shirt, and Ben wheeled his chair around, stretched his long legs in front of him and
sighed. “What now? We break camp, shut down and go home?”

“He can still talk. He doesn't have to use his wrist to teach,” Georgia offered.

Maggie leaned forward, arms crossed on the long wooden table. She didn't want to go home. They were all exhausted, but if they packed up and left, where would Ben go? To his grandmother's house? Back to Texas? She felt like crying, and not only because it was late and she was bone tired.

“I left something in the truck,” he said softly. They'd brought in the supplies earlier. “Maggie, how about a short walk to help you sleep?”

“I don't need a walk, thanks. I don't even need to be horizontal, all I need is to let my eyes close.” Her lids were already drooping, but she got up and followed him to the door. Dead and in her grave she would probably follow him if he so much as crooked his little finger.

As Perry was fond of saying, Faugh!

Once outside, Ben told her he'd be leaving the next day. “First thing tomorrow, matter of fact.” He eyed her uncertainly. When she didn't react, he said, “So I was just wondering…will you be all right?”

Stunned, she took only a moment to recover. “I think I'll stay on for the last couple of days. I'm really getting into this—this art stuff.” It was a lie and they both knew it, but it was the best she could do on short notice.

“Maggie? You're sure you're okay?”

What had he expected her to do, throw herself in his arms and beg him never to leave her? She might look like a weakling on the outside, but inside she
was tough as nails. “I'm sorry about your grandmother, but at least maybe she'll enjoy her prints—reproductions—whatever.”

Ben nodded. It wasn't Miss Emma's so-called prints he wanted to talk about. He'd already made up his mind to buy them from her, offering her twice what she'd paid. It would just about wipe out his bank account, but what the heck. He could tell her he knew of a man back in Texas who'd be glad to take them off his hands.

He would deal with Miss Emma tomorrow. Right now he had another problem that would never have become a problem if he hadn't suffered a major lapse in judgment. “Maggie, I have to go back to Dry Creek for a few days—maybe even a few weeks—but—”

“That's great! I mean, you must be getting homesick. I know I would be if I had to—well, anyway, just drive safe, all right?”

He'd be flying, not driving. Not that he bothered to correct her. Before she turned away he saw a suspicion of tears in her eyes.

Sweet Jesus, he didn't want to hurt this woman, but if he told her why he had to leave, he'd have to tell her the whole ugly story. He'd just as soon not leave her with that impression. Until he dealt with the past, though, he couldn't afford to think about the future.

“It's been a long day,” she said with quiet dignity, and he watched her walk back to the shabby old mansion. She stumbled only once on the steep, graveled path.

“Damned shoes,” he swore softly. She wasn't
fooling anyone, and he had a feeling she knew it. Maggie wasn't a pretender. She was a straight-shooter. She expected the same of the people she let herself get close to, and God knows, they'd been close. So close it was threatening to undermine everything he'd always taken for granted. Such as being married to a cop was a high-risk position for any woman.

He waited until she was inside, then he called on his cell phone and booked his flight. Packing wouldn't take long. He had a few more goodbyes to say, but those would wait until morning. Whereas with Maggie…

Had she believed him when he said he'd be back?

Had he believed himself?

 

“Damn Ben Hunter, anyway.” Maggie stumbled over the sandals she'd just kicked off. Why couldn't he have had the decency to ignore her? So what if she'd been attracted to him? What woman with a viable hormone wouldn't be? She should have known better than to sleep with him though, especially after dealing with the very same kind of heartbreak practically every week in her column.

Although admittedly, some of the letters were from Mary Rose.

And that was another thing, she thought as she rummaged through her suitcase for some of the snack foods she'd brought with her. Angrily, she bit into a Moon Pie, scattering crumbs down her nonexistent bosom. All things considered, this whole week had been a waste of time. She should have stayed home where at the very least she could have seen that her
father ate decent meals and didn't smoke more than the one cigar a day his doctor allowed him.

 

After a largely sleepless night, Maggie had been tempted to throw her things into her car and take off, but sheer stubbornness prevailed. If she left first, Ben would know why, and that she couldn't have borne. If he'd even greeted her this morning with a smile instead of a wary nod, she might have felt better, but he hadn't. She watched as he spoke to Charlie, to Bea and a few others, and hugged Janie and Georgia.

Not so much as a smile in Maggie's direction.

She stirred a third spoonful of sugar into her breakfast coffee. Fine. They'd said their goodbyes last night, nothing more to be said. She would damn well show a little class if it killed her.

And then Perry showed up in the kitchen. Was it only her imagination, or did he look a bit apprehensive? Probably spent the past few hours poring over the fine print in his liability policy.

Ben cornered him and the two men stepped out into the hall. Maggie strained to hear what was said, but others were talking and she caught only a few words. Ben was speaking quietly, but Perry's voice suddenly cut through the desultory conversation.

“Don't threaten me, dammit! What do you know about anything? You wouldn't know a giclee from a serigraph, you're nothing but a—a security guard!”

Oh ho, she thought—this isn't about last night, after all. Way to go, Texas! She made up her mind on the spot to write a column exposing—

Exposing what? The truth was, she still didn't know enough about the subject to write about it.
Maybe she'd better stick to writing advice to the lovelorn. She definitely knew about being lovelorn, if “lorn” meant being depressed, discouraged and angry all at the same time. If it meant wanting to kick something or throw something, or just curl up and cry until she ran out of tears.

A thin-lipped Perry marched into the studio and slammed the door. Maggie remained in the kitchen, ignoring her cooling cup of coffee. Ben collected the two small bags he'd set by the front door and headed out to his truck.

Maggie watched from the house, her throat aching the way it did just before the hurt spilled over into tears. At least one of them had accomplished something. From now on Perry might not be so quick to offer his pretty pictures as investments. Personally, she couldn't tell the difference between a zircon and a diamond, but if she ever needed money in a hurry, a zircon wouldn't do her much good.

As for Mary Rose, she might just have to learn her lesson the hard way. Any rescuing Maggie did from now on would be strictly through her column.