Driven to Distraction (Silhouette Desire S.) (6 page)

Ann shook her head. “Read the fine print. Meals are provided, some assembly required. Words to that effect.”

“If worse comes to worst I guess I could microwave,” Suzy admitted.

Maggie sighed. “I can cook. Plain country, nothing
fancy. I've been doing it for years, else my Dad would have cholesterol up the wazoo.”

Without cracking a smile, Ann said, “I didn't know there's where cholesterol settled. Live and learn.”

“You probably didn't know Maggie was jumping off tall buildings to save the weak and helpless by the time she cut her permanent teeth, either,” Suzy said dryly.

“Then I vote we elect her chief cook, you can do the serving and I'll do the bottle washing,” Ann said. “Maggie? Okay with you?”

Maggie shot her a telling look. The fewer people who knew about her covert mission, the better.

They talked about men and about food and about the best shops in Hanes Mall. And about men again. “You know what?” Maggie said quietly. “I don't think he's all that great.”

“Who, Ben Hunter? Trust me, he's great.” The observation, not surprisingly, came from Suzy.

“I was talking about our leader,” Maggie said. “Do you like his work?”

“Actually, he's considered quite good if you like realism—and lots of people do,” said Ann, who seemed surprisingly knowledgeable considering she'd skipped most of the day's classes.

Maggie was about to mention a certain calendar in her father's office that reminded her of Perry's work when Suzy held up a hand. “Save it, we've got incoming.”

He came up behind Maggie's chair. She didn't have to look around. Couldn't if she'd wanted to, not without brushing against him. Seated, her head was at belt level—or slightly lower.

“Hi,” drawled Suzy. “You know everybody here, don't you, Ben? Ann, this is Ben—Ben, Ann. She came in late yesterday.”

“We've met, thanks.” Ben touched Maggie on the shoulder and she stopped breathing. “Got a minute? Something I'd like to talk over with you, if you'll excuse us.”

Ann said, “Sure.”

Suzy smirked.

Maggie was having trouble regulating her air intake, but she raked back her chair and followed him out onto the porch.

Fool, fool, fool!

T
here was still enough of an afterglow from the spectacular sunset to cast shadows. “This really is a beautiful place,” Maggie said brightly. She was nervous. Maggie was
never
nervous.

“Yeah, it's kind of pretty. Green, at least. Big change from where I came from.” Ben sounded oddly distracted. He wasn't looking at the scenery, he was looking at Maggie.

“Which is?”

“Hmm? Oh—West Texas. Little town nobody ever heard of. It's pretty much flat if you don't count the anthills.”

If anything could make her clumsier than she already was, it was feeling self-conscious, and the intent way he was staring at her made her wonder if the label at the back of her neck was sticking out. “I'm sure it's lovely,” she murmured.

What she was sure of was that Ben hadn't brought her out here to talk about geography, his or hers. Why
had
he brought her outside? What could he possibly have to say to her that couldn't be said in front of the others?

“Maggie?” Was it her imagination, or did he sound as if he had a sore throat? He lifted his hands and dropped them.

She stopped breathing.

He lifted them again, and this time they made it all the way up to her face. Clasping her cheeks, he tilted her face up and lowered his own. Her eyes remained open until he went out of focus, and then all she was conscious of was the incredibly soft feel of his lips on hers.

Soft, warm, moist, they moved over her mouth, back and forth—undemanding. He didn't try to taste her, to involve her in anything more than a simple kiss.

Never—
ever
—had anything so simple been so complex.

He lifted his head and she wanted to pull him back, to lick his lips and then go from there—to follow this crazy thing that had blossomed inside her to wherever it might lead.

He cleared his throat. His hands rested loosely on her shoulders and his eyes, those warm whiskey-brown eyes, looked dark as night under his half-lowered lids. She couldn't have spoken if her life depended on it.

“How about you and me teaming up?” he rasped.

She blinked in confusion. It was the last thing she expected to hear. “You mean—cooking?”

He laughed, and it was as if someone had trailed a feather duster from the sole of her foot to the tip of her ear. “No, not cooking, although if you insist, we might give that a shot, too.”

Omigod, he really was hitting on her. Teaming up. Was he talking switching roommates or…or something more permanent? “I'm not sure what kind of team you're talking about,” she said cautiously, her head already reeling with possibilities. Would she or wouldn't she?

Well, of course she wouldn't. Where could they go for privacy? Besides, even without Mary Rose's example she knew better than to “team up” with a man she'd known for less than two days.

She stepped away, hoping she could think more clearly if he wasn't touching her. It helped…but not very much. Her lips still tingled and she wanted to feel it again—that incredibly soft pressure. She'd been kissed before, plenty of times—well, enough times so that she knew most kisses were pretty much alike. Open mouth, probing tongue, thrusting pelvis—the whole works.

Ben's kiss was totally different. The wild optimist hiding deep inside her pragmatic exterior wanted to believe he was reaching out to the woman she really was instead of simply reacting to a marginally attractive, marginally available member of the opposite sex.

He was no longer gazing into her eyes. Using the toe of his boot to dislodge a small rock from the red clay matrix, he said, “You might have noticed, I'm sort of out of my league here.”

With his looks, he could hold his own in any league. He couldn't possibly be talking about…

“Oh…you mean art-wise?”

“Art dumb would be more like it.” When he smiled, he had a crease in one cheek that almost qualified as a dimple. “You might even say I'm here under false pretenses.”

The lawn immediately surrounding the house was unkempt—a little chickweed, a little grass and a lot of exposed rock. They reached the edge of the cleared area and Maggie waited for him to continue. Okay, this wasn't about sex. That kiss had been merely a—a bonding gesture. Like a handshake, only more personal.

It occurred to her belatedly that she might not be the only one here with an agenda that didn't include qualifying for membership in the Watercolor Society. Something was going on—something that probably didn't involve diving into the nearest bed.

Well…shoot!

She let him talk, trying not to notice the way he stood, with his feet braced apart in those well-worn boots and thumbs hooked into his hip pockets. Sort of an ‘I-shall-not-be-moved' stance, with overtones of ‘But-I-can-be-tempted'.

Yeah, right. Obviously she didn't have what it took to tempt him.

“See, I have this grandmother,” he said.

Her jaw fell, and she snapped it shut. How did he get from a kiss that was like nothing she had ever experienced before to telling her about his relatives? Was he inviting her home to meet his family?

“Miss Emma—she likes for me to call her that—she's in her late seventies and lives alone. Not that she needs a caretaker or anything like that. I mean,
she still does all her own housework, gardening—you name it. Gets involved in local politics, goes to these arts and crafts affairs. She just finished taking a computer class with some friends.”

Back to earth with a dull thud. “So that's why you're here, right? You're checking this workshop out for your grandmother? Aren't there any workshops in Texas?”

“She lives in North Carolina.”

“Oh. Well, that's stretching family obligations, isn't it? Bringing a grandson all the way from Texas just to be sure a course is suitable? What was she afraid of, nude male models?”

He looked away, and she was tempted to grab that rock-bound jaw of his and force him to look at her.
I'm here—your granny isn't! Look at me, darn you!

“See, she's taken all these classes in fancy sewing, lace-making, stuff like that. She goes to a lot of exhibits, too. Something to do with her time, I guess.” He raked his fingers through his hair, dislodging a lock that fell across his brow. Maggie had already noticed that he did that when he was shaping his next statement. “Anyway she told me about this guy she met at an art show last fall and how she came to buy a bunch of his pictures.”

“Paintings,” Maggie corrected absently. “When they're painted by hand they're called paintings.”

“Well, sure, I knew that.” Ben rocked on his heels like a kid with a guilty conscience. Maggie thought it was endearing in a big, tough-looking guy from West Texas…or wherever.

“Thing is, these weren't real paintings, they were some kind of prints, I guess, but he wrote his name
on them and sold a bunch of 'em. Miss Emma shot her wad buying one of everything. Things weren't even framed, just matted and sealed in plastic. Most of 'em looked pretty much like that thing Silver did this morning. Not much color, mostly browns and grays. Dead trees, log cabins, cornfields and patches of snow, maybe a mountain or two in the background.”

Now that she'd finally got her feet planted firmly on earth again, Maggie wondered where he was going with this. She didn't find Perry's work particularly exciting, either the one he'd done as a demonstration or those she'd seen hanging on the downstairs walls. But then, she was no art critic. Not yet, at any rate.

And neither, if his own effort was any example, was Ben Hunter.

“So you see where I'm going with this,” he said.

“Uh…not really.”

Just then something small and dark swooped silently out of nowhere. Maggie flinched and hid her face. Ben grabbed her arm. “Steady there,” he cautioned. “Some of those rocks are slippery—easy to lose your footing.”

Breathless, she said, “It's not my feet I'm worried about. Was that a—a bat?”

“Not a bloodsucker, just the ordinary bug-eating kind. You didn't twist your ankle, did you?”

She was shaking her foot. “I'm fine, stop fussing.” She staggered slightly. She was wearing her clogs again. She'd packed only two pairs of shoes, not counting the old pair she kept in the trunk of her car for emergencies that were practical, but ugly as sin.

“I've got a pebble in my shoe,” she admitted when the thing refused to fall out.

Ben squatted and took her foot in his hand. She grabbed his shoulder for support while he ran his finger between the platform and the sole of her foot.

“That's got it. I'm fine now, honestly,” she said breathlessly. She'd be fine if he would remove his hands from her ankle and stop tickling her foot. On the other hand, if he wanted to kiss it and make it all better, she wouldn't complain.

When another bat swept past, she hardly even noticed.

Ben said, “You're sure?” He levered himself up, all six-feet whatever of lean, clean-smelling male. He really wasn't the handsomest man she'd ever seen, but there was something about him…

Maggie decided on the spot that starting tomorrow she would dig around in her car under the accumulation of junk and retrieve the hideous shoes with the thick soles, the padded tongues and the stripes on the sides. She'd tossed them in along with her space blanket, a flashlight and a first aid kit in case she ever got stranded on the road and had to walk. With her skinny legs, they made her look like Minnie Mouse, but then, even Minnie would have better sense than to go all mooney-eyed over a long-legged Texan.

“Could we get on with whatever it was you brought me out here to discuss? Something about teaming up?”

“Right,” he said slowly, as if he were mentally skimming down a long page, trying to find his place. He was probably as rattled by that bat as she'd been, only being a man, he'd never admit it.

“You were telling me about your grandmother and her taste in art,” she prompted when he stood there staring down at her as if he'd forgotten who she was, much less what he'd been about to tell her.

“Oh yeah. Well, like I said, Miss Emma's big on independence and all that. Once she retired, she bought herself an annuity and a bunch of CDs—not the music kind, the ones you get from a bank.”

Maggie only nodded. There was probably a point here somewhere. Being a slow-talking, slow-walking Texan, it took him a while to get to it.

“Right. But then along comes this slick hustler, tells her one-percent interest or whatever she was getting, was peanuts. What she needed to invest in was art. In other words, his stuff. So bless her sweet, gullible heart, she cashes in a few CDs, throws in a couple of Social Security checks and buys herself a bunch of bad wallpaper, thinking she can resell it in a year or so at a huge profit.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Maggie murmured. Any man who would sweet-talk a woman he'd just met with one eye on her trust fund would definitely do something like that. The old-fashioned term “gold digger” was usually applied to women, but it was definitely an equal opportunity appellation. Given enough material, she could write an exposé that might earn her a place on a real newspaper instead of a few double-column inches between Belk's white sale and the weekly specials at Mount Tabor Food Market. “How much did your grandmother, uh—invest?”

Why don't we try that kiss again? As long as I'm going to be remembering it for the next hundred years, I want to be sure I've got it right. Oh, and this
time, put your arms around me. As long as I'm remembering, I might as well get the sizzle in all the right places.

“Get taken for, you mean? Not a fortune, but percentage-wise it was still way too much. Things cost a couple of hundred bucks apiece, depending on the numbers scribbled in pencil on the lower left-hand margin. His autograph—”

“Signature,” Maggie supplied. “You mean he actually puts the price right on the painting, or whatever?” She was finding it hard to concentrate on art, much less on her personal mission—much less on
his
personal mission—when he was standing there, looking so sexy and appealing. She didn't need the distraction, she really, really didn't.

“It's not exactly a price, but the numbers in the left-hand corner have something to do with how valuable the thing is. Lower the numbers, the higher the price, according to my source.”

His
source?
This was sounding more and more serious.

“The one she paid the most for was marked eleven-slash-one-twenty. Means there were only a hundred and twenty of the things printed, issued, whatever you call it—and hers was number eleven. Don't ask me why it matters.”

He took her arm and steered her toward an old-fashioned wooden swing under a vine-covered arbor. The fragrance of blooming wisteria was almost too sweet. Maggie started to sit, thought about bees, and stepped back, bumping into Ben. Excusing herself, she sighed. “Look, could we just go inside where
there aren't any rocks, bees or vampire bats? I really can't concentrate when my life's in danger.”

When it came to distraction, bats, bees and pebbles couldn't hold a candle to the man who towered over her. It wasn't enough that he was a supermagnet for any woman with a viable hormone in her body and that he could kiss like an angel—he had a granny he cared enough for to go the extra mile. That was like triple chocolate mousse—with nuts and brandy-flavored whipped cream.

“Sure, if you'd rather. I just didn't want to take a chance on being overheard.”

“This is beginning to feel like a spy thriller,” she said as she matched her short stride to his longer one. If he could ignore that kiss, than she could ignore it, too. It never happened. “You're not undercover for James Bond, are you?”

At the sound of his deep, rusty chuckle, she sighed. Okay, so it had happened. The guy was worse than an epidemic of Spanish flu. She was definitely going to need a booster shot, and the sooner, the better.