Driven to Distraction (Silhouette Desire S.) (9 page)

Ben shrugged and mimed, “Beats me.”

Then Perry leaned over and murmured something quietly to Ann, who slipped away, leaving the salad for Suzy to finish.

Knife in hand, Suzy turned to Ben. “Help out here, cowboy. Grab me an onion from that sack.” She did a perfect Mae West, complete with a modified bump and grind, the only difference being a few years, a few pounds and the paring knife in her hand.

Maggie managed to produce a passable vegetarian
chili, one she'd often served her father. Dessert was canned peaches, and as no one complained—at least not in her hearing—she felt free to relax. Ann never reappeared, not for the meal itself or for the clean-up after. Maggie was seriously starting to worry. If her allergies were that bad, she didn't need to be here.

Between finishing the dishes and assembling for the evening session, Maggie settled into the porch swing and gave it a gentle shove with her toe. The rain had stopped, leaving behind a layered fog that reminded her of the cover of a Gothic romance. All it lacked was a veil-clad heroine fleeing some unspecified evil.

Stealing a moment to brace herself before facing Perry's criticism, she shoved off with one foot. She wasn't really surprised when Ben appeared, caught the chain and held it still long enough to settle in beside her.

“You think Ann might be allergic to this house?” she asked.

“Could be. It's old, probably full of all kinds of mold spores. Now she's complaining about her hands, too.”

“Pretty young to be a hypochondriac.”

Maggie set the swing in motion again, needing an outlet for the restless energy that always seemed to assail her whenever he was near. All along the shadowy porch others were settling in the rockers and Adirondacks. One or two perched on the railing.

Ben inhaled deeply. “Something smells good.”

She opened her mouth to tell him it was the wisteria, but she heard herself saying, “Insect repellent.”
Anything to break the spell that was stealing away her objectivity. “Where's Suzy?” she asked brightly.

“Haven't seen her in the past few minutes.”

Feeling his gaze on her, she tried to act like the adult she was instead of the adolescent she had never quite left behind. “Maybe she's with Perry. I guess it's time to go back in.”

“Jealous?”

She planted both feet on the floor, causing the swing to jerk on its chains. “Of what?”

“Hey, just because the guy's a crook, that doesn't mean women don't like him. Part of the problem is that they like him too much.”

“Yes, well this woman thinks he's a creep.” And then, because she felt guilty for not leveling with him after he'd told her about his grandmother, she blurted, “If you must know, my best friend thinks he's in love with her.”

Long pause. “And?”

“Well…I don't think he is, that's all.”

“Because…?”

How could she explain tactfully? “For one thing, she only met him once for a few hours, and I'm pretty sure she hasn't seen him since then.”

“You don't believe in love at first sight?”

Maggie set the swing in motion again. As Ben wasn't ready, the movement was jerky. Well, shoot. With a moon creeping over the mountain, layering the valley with silver veils of fog, any woman with half a brain would know how to take advantage of the moment.

Not Maggie. Oh, no, not Maggie the klutz, Maggie the skinny kid whose hottest date in her senior year
had been with a certified nerd who'd taken her to a science fair.

“Look, my friend just happens to be rich, all right? I mean her father's this big pickle magnate and she's as sweet as she can be, and I don't want to hear any jokes about sweet pickles. With the name Dilys, she's heard every pickle joke in the book. The thing is, she doesn't know a lot about men.”

Some of her belligerence faded when Ben's fingers closed gently on the back of her neck, pressing ever so slightly. It hurt, but in a delicious way. He said, “And you know all there is to know about men, hmm?” Finger-walking along her tense muscles, he said, “Don't you ever relax?”

For a few heavenly moments she let him work at untying the knots at the base of her skull because it felt so good, and because his voice was murmuring abstract words that didn't seem to relate to anything. Before she could melt into a disgusting puddle of liquid desire, she cleared her throat and said, “Uh—where was I? Oh yes, Mary Rose. Well as I was saying, her father's so overprotective he still vets all her dates. She's twenty-five, for goodness sake! You'd think we were back in the Dark Ages.” Closing her eyes, she let her head roll forward as Ben worked his magic. “Ah, right there…”

Against the creak of the swing and the murmur of voices farther along the porch, a whippoorwill tuned up for his evening serenade. Maggie shifted slightly so that Ben's hand left her neck, his arm resting along the back of the swing.

“I'm probably overreacting, but you see, she's al
ways let her folks run her life. I keep telling her, you don't learn anything that way.”

“Who runs your life, hmm?”

She had to smile. “Me. At least since I graduated from kindergarten. Okay, maybe from the sixth grade.” His fingers brushed her hair again. She would have moved away, but moving required too much energy. To cover what could only be called a stealth attack of lust, she said, “Mary Rose graduated from college with honors. Besides that, everybody always says she has the prettiest face, and she does.” If she sounded slightly belligerent it was only because she was trying to stay focused in spite of a major distraction.

“So where's the problem?” His fingers brushed her nape, then moved through her hair. Did hair have nerve endings?

Hers obviously did. That's what came from having the dead ends whacked off every six weeks. “The problem is—” she said, ignoring the urge to curl up in his arms and let nature take its course “—the problem is that I think Perry's only after her money. Maybe I'm doing him an injustice, but if she marries him and finds out he's not what she thought, it's going to break her heart.” As an advice columnist, she had heard the same sad tale too many times. About the way men changed after marriage. All the promises they made before and how quickly they were forgotten once the honeymoon ended. Broken promises that led to broken marriages and broken hearts, never mind the poor children left broken and bewildered in the wreckage.

Think about all that, Maggie Riley, and stop think
ing about jumping into bed with a man you've known for all of two days!

“Let me see if I've got this straight,” Ben murmured, his fingers slowly massaging the back of her head. “You're going to rescue this woman whether or not she wants to be rescued, right?”

Instinctively, Maggie pressed her head against his touch. “Isn't that what you're doing for your grandmother?”

“Nowhere close. I was too late to keep Miss Emma from getting snookered. Best I can do is spare other grannies from the same fate by reminding this jerk that there's a thin line between hyping a product and fraud, and he might have stepped over it when he started touting his pictures as investments.”

“Fine. You do your thing, I'll do mine. And I'm really sorry about your grandmother, but that's already done. If I can keep Mary Rose from being married for her money—and don't tell me he's truly in love, because from what I've seen, Perry Silver wouldn't know love if it jumped up and bit him on the keester.”

Ben's hand fell away as he started to laugh. Maggie could have sunk through the floor. Here she was sharing a swing with the handsomest man east of the Mississippi, with a big moon coming up over the mountain and wisteria blossoms perfuming the air, and what did she do?

She blew it, that's what. No wonder she'd never had a serious relationship in her entire life, if you didn't count the one that had ended in the back seat of Larry Beecham's Pontiac when she was seventeen.

Go with the flow, her mother used to say, espe
cially after she'd enjoyed one of her hand-rolled cigarettes.

Maggie had never learned to go with the flow. She'd been too busy fighting the waves. Hiding from her parents' noisy arguments. Keeping her father's spirits up after his wife left him—reading all those articles about depression and leaving them where he would be sure to see them. Studying hard so that in case she could scrape together enough money to go to college she'd be eligible. Taking courses in the local community college and working for a miserable little freebie paper for a pittance while she waited for a chance to get on with a real newspaper.

“Maggie?” Ben's raspy drawl crawled down her spine sending shock waves to the most vulnerable parts of her body.

“What!” she snapped. And then, letting her head fall back again, she closed her eyes. “I think I'm having a premature midlife crisis.”

“You'd be surprised what we could do if we teamed up.” The words were whispered. Just as the meaning sunk in, his face went out of focus, and then he was kissing her again. And not just any old kiss, but one of those magical Ben-kisses—incredibly soft, warm and moist—pressing, lifting, moving so that she wanted to climb onto his lap and have her way with him.

And he wanted the same thing, she could tell by the way his heart was thundering. Or was it hers?

She was in way over her head, drowning in a sea of desire. Without lifting his face from hers, he drew her onto his lap. She tugged at his shirttail, hungry to touch his body—to slide her hands over that broad,
warm chest. To press herself against him, to follow wherever he led—

To lead the way…

From inside came the sound of music from the old wind-up Victrola as someone opened a door. Maggie opened her eyes wide. Breaking away, she gasped, “'Scuse me,” and reluctantly pulled free.

He didn't try to hold her. She thought she heard him utter a swearword, but he might have been laughing, instead. She had no intention of hanging around long enough to find out. She wasn't rated for this much temptation.

In fact, she'd do better to head for the studio so that Silver could tell her what a miserable failure she was as an artist. At least her ego wouldn't suffer, because it wasn't involved.

He chuckled, which was just as bad. The mere sound of his voice saying anything at all punched all her buttons, including a few she didn't even know she had. “Like I said before, why don't we team up?”

She turned to confront him and discovered that he was closer than he'd been only moments before. “How? You want to catch him selling a bill of goods to Janie and Georgia and the others. I want to catch him trying to seduce Suzy and get it on tape.”

“Which is illegal,” he reminded her gently.

“Whatever. I just don't see how we can do both, do you?”

H
alf an hour later, Ben glanced into the living room where Charlie was entertaining the ladies by playing disc jockey. Maggie wasn't there. Probably just as well. He had some thinking to do, and clear thinking wasn't an option as long as Maggie was anywhere around.

What the devil was it about the woman, anyway? Technically speaking, she wasn't particularly pretty. Over the years he'd arrived at certain standards, and Maggie Riley didn't meet a single one. So why was it that he could look at her from across the room and be so turned on he had to pull his shirttail out and hope it covered the evidence.

Not only that, but he liked hearing her laugh. Liked hearing her talk—got a kick out of her irreverent comments about Silver and his pretentions.

Hell, he just liked being around her. Trouble was, just being around her wasn't enough, and that was a distraction he didn't need.

The sound of laughter came from the large room they used as a studio. From somewhere else in the house he heard the strains of something jazzy and pictured Maggie kicking off her shoes, snapping her fingers and moving to the music.

Why not join her? Maybe do a little moving himself?

No way. Given a choice of hearing Silver blow him off as a no-talent jerk or making even more of a fool of himself with a woman he barely knew, he opted to use the rare privacy to sift through what little evidence he'd collected. So far, most of it was circumstantial, including the discreet sign announcing that signed and numbered prints would be available for sale at the end-of-the-workshop exhibit. Not signed and numbered copies, which might have given him something to go on.

Okay, so maybe he was crazy. Maybe he was totally off-base. But when Miss Emma had told him how much she'd spent, and he'd checked around and found out that her chances of ever recovering her investment were about as good as his chance of being elected president, he'd had to do something.

It boiled down to shades of gray. The ones here were paler than the ones he'd uncovered in Dry Creek, but people were still getting hurt. People like Miss Emma who had done nothing to deserve it.

Both in his law career and on the streets before Mercy had hauled his butt out of the fire, Ben had seen about every shade of gray there was. He didn't
like any of them, but only a fool believed the world was all black and white. That didn't mean he could quit fighting gray where he found it.

And then there was Maggie, whose face kept getting in the way of his deliberations. With Maggie Riley, what you saw was what you got, which might even be a part of the attraction. Because what he saw was a small, gutsy woman with an understated brand of beauty all her own. Whatever it was, it could sneak up on a man and zap him with a sucker punch before he knew what hit him.

Ben had a long-standing policy, based on the experience of his friends, of keeping his personal life impersonal. What he hadn't counted on was a small distraction by the name of Maggie Riley.

Lying there half-asleep, he pictured her as a skinny kid in wrinkled tights, a mask and a homemade cape, determined to save the world. She must have been a real handful growing up. Still was, come to that. Super Woman minus the tights and cape, determined to save a friend from being hoodwinked by a smooth-talking flimflam artist. Oddly enough that was also his goal. Trouble was, they might need to take different routes to get there.

Charlie came in while he was still picturing Maggie in different costumes, mostly filmy, lacy stuff that enhanced rather than concealed.

“Hi, sport, d'you get your message? You left your cell phone on the dresser. It was ringing when I came in before supper.”

Ben sat up and raked his hair back. “You're looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”

The older man grinned. “Here's hopin',” he said
cheerfully as he changed into a clean shirt, splashed on a palmful of Old Spice and checked his billfold. “You seen that moon yet? It's a doozy.”

A doozy? Right.

Ben levered himself out of bed and retrieved his cell phone. He'd quit wearing the thing since he'd come east. Didn't know of anyone who might try to reach him unless it was Miss Emma, calling to remind him to eat a good breakfast, wear a raincoat if it clouded over and put on a sweater if it turned cool.

While he was checking to see if he recognized the number, Charlie said something about not waiting up. Ben nodded absently. He recognized the area code. And then he recognized the number.

Charlie said, “Wish me luck, sport. It's been a while.”

“Yeah, sure,” Ben muttered. Now why in hell would Internal Affairs be calling him? He'd turned over everything he had, knowing it probably wasn't going any farther up the ladder. He might as well have buried it in a time capsule.

With one last glance in the mirror, Charlie said, “Nothing serious, I hope. I tried to find you, but you weren't in the house.”

Ben glanced at his watch. Even with the time difference it was too late to call back. He'd like to think it was only a glitch in the paperwork. He'd misspelled a name or failed to cross all his
t
's. He glanced up and said, “Yeah, sure—thanks, Charlie. Uh—you going out somewhere?”

The older man sighed and shook his head. “Ben, Ben, Ben—wake up and smell the flowers, boy. Life don't last forever.” He closed the door quietly behind
him, leaving Ben in a cloud of aftershave to ponder a few more imponderables. Like why I.A. would suddenly want to contact him. They'd grilled him thoroughly, going over and over every speck of evidence before he'd been allowed to leave Dry Creek. By that time, sick at heart and mad as hell, he'd felt like a traitor for turning in fellow cops he knew and liked and had once respected. He'd grilled steaks with several of the guys, even attended the christening of their kids.

But that was before he'd happened to see a couple of the older ones deliberately turn away at a critical moment so as not to witness a crime going down. Wondering what the hell had happened, he'd started to tackle them on it, but something had stopped him. That crazy sixth sense that warned an experienced cop when something was out of alignment.

Over the next few months he had quietly observed certain transactions taking place in dark alleys, in empty buildings—even on the damn country club golf course. That's when he'd realized just how high up the ladder the rot went. Feeling like a traitor but knowing he had no choice, he'd gone first to I.A., then to the chief himself. He owed him that much and more.

“Figgered you had us made, boy. Always was a smart one, that's why I hauled you out of that gang before you got in too deep.”

At fifteen, Ben had been running with a gang of jackers, doing body work—mostly disassembling and filing off VIN numbers. Another few months and he would have been in too deep. Alvin Mercer, called
Mercy by those on the right side of the law, had taken his age into consideration and gone to bat for him.

What made it worse when Ben had confronted his mentor with indisputable evidence was that the chief hadn't even tried to deny it. If anything, he'd seemed almost relieved. “Times a man goes along to get along, son, but it don't pay. Nosiree, in the long run, it's more trouble than it's worth.”

So now here he was, an unemployed ex-cop, more than a thousand miles from home, taking a damned art workshop in an effort to catch some creep who was ripping off senior citizens by mislabeling a product.

Old habits died hard. Some never died at all. One of the last assignments he'd worked before pulling the roof down on his own head was the classic borrowed-bank-account scam. Working with a veteran officer—one who'd been clean, incidentally—they had set up the scene. Three days later the mark had taken the bait. This good-looking kid had approached Abbie, who was dressed in civvies and sitting in her car in the bank parking lot pretending to be adding up a deposit before going inside.

The perp had walked up and introduced himself and asked if she could help him out, explaining that he was new in town and his mama had just sent him a check to live on while he interviewed for jobs. Trouble was, he didn't yet have an account and the bank wouldn't cash his check.

Eight out of ten times the women fell for it. The perp would hand over the check, the woman would deposit it in her own account, withdraw the amount—usually a few thousand—and hand it over. A day or
so later she'd hear from the bank that the check she'd deposited was no good. Not only was the account phony, the bank it was written on didn't exist.

Ben had warned his grandmother against the borrowed-bank-account scam, but he'd been too late to warn her against investing her life's savings in a bunch of pictures that were supposedly guaranteed to triple in value in a year's time.

He'd smelled a rat as soon as she'd told him what she'd done. Just to be sure—hell, he knew as much about art as he did about toe dancing—he'd gone online and checked out a few things. Then he'd placed a call to an art teacher he'd met when her fifteen-year-old kid got in trouble for shoplifting.

Mona Hammond had summed it up for him. There were legitimate prints, several different types whose names he couldn't recall—some of them extremely valuable, depending on the artist and the rarity. But if an artist painted a picture and then had copies made, then the copies were just that. Copies. Names and numbers scribbled on the margin didn't change the fact that they were no more valuable than the knockoff Rolexes peddled on street corners.

“That's not to say that some of them aren't lovely,” Mona had told him. “But even when they're printed on all rag paper using the finest quality inks, they're still technically reproductions, copies of the original painting.”

“What about as an investment?” he'd asked, and she'd just laughed.

“No way, hon. I might buy one if I liked it and wanted to live with it, but then, that's the best rationale for buying any art. I wouldn't recommend buy
ing one as an investment, though. So, when are you coming back home? We miss you here. Mike was asking about you just the other day.”

He'd told her his plans were still on hold and hung up, wondering just when his life had taken a turn for the bizarre.

Unlike Maggie, Ben hadn't grown up with a save-the-world complex. Instead, he'd grown up on the streets of a small town that had started out as a farm community more than a hundred years ago and grown when a big manufacturer had moved in. He barely remembered his father, although he clearly remembered driving all the way to North Carolina with him in a pickup truck with a busted muffler to meet Miss Emma. Just him and his old man. He must have been about eight or nine.

It had been like dropping in on another world. They'd stayed about a week before heading west again. His father had been a long-haul truck driver, gone more than he was at home. One day he was gone for good. Just forgot to come home.

Ben's mother hadn't been much on discipline, either her own or her son's. When she'd been arrested on a drug charge a year or so later, a social worker had called Miss Emma, who had paid his fare east. He'd stayed with her until his mother was released. A few years later when she'd skipped town with one of her boyfriends, Ben had stayed on in their trailer until it had been repossessed, then moved into an empty warehouse, which was how he came to get mixed up with the jackers.

If he hadn't been bailed out by Alvin Mercer, a heavyset, soft-voiced cop who went on to become
chief of police, he might have ended up doing hard time—or worse. Instead, he'd ended up going back to school and eventually wearing a badge.

Years later he'd been compelled to rat out his mentor and most of his friends on the force. God, he'd hated that! He happened to know Mercy had been trying to hang on until retirement, fighting prostate problems and a few other symptoms that had him pushing more pills than a backstreet dealer. Ben would like to think he'd done the chief a favor, but some days he still felt lower than pond scum.

He wondered what Maggie would say if she knew about him. About where he'd come from and what he'd done back in Dry Creek. He wondered if she'd consider him a traitor or just a guy trying to do the right thing in a situation that was neither all black nor all white, but too many shades of gray.

He finally drifted off, half-thinking, half-dreaming of a crime-fighting duo wearing midnight blue capes, uncovering scams and writing them up in comic book format.

Sometime in the night he roused enough to roll over, aware of the faint sweet, spicy scent and the sound of someone humming softly. At that point his dreams took a decidedly different track. Just after daybreak he woke drenched in sweat, his pulse pounding like a jackhammer. Charlie was snoring in the bed across the room. Without arousing him, Ben collected a handful of clean clothes and tiptoed down the hall to shower and shave before going in search of caffeine.

The first class wasn't scheduled until nine, but the new cooking team was already in the kitchen when
he followed the tantalizing aroma of dark-roasted coffee. The pot was institutional size. A few hardened addicts would be drinking the stuff all day, but after the third reheating, Ben couldn't handle it.

“Yes, ma'am, three strips if you don't mind, and however you're cooking the eggs this morning, that'll be fine, too.”

The cook-of-the-day patted him on the shoulder. “Sit down, honey, I'll have it for you in a minute.”

Breakfast and lunch were served in the kitchen; dinner in the dining room that also served as a gallery for Silver's art and a few select pieces of student work. Ben was still musing on what it would have been like to grow up in a home with a mother who cooked breakfast and called him “honey” when Maggie wandered in, looking as if she hadn't slept any better than he had.

Considering the part she'd played in his early morning dreams, Ben thought it was no wonder she was looking kind of used up. Wearing her clunky toering sandals with a shapeless blue dress that covered her down to the ankles, she still managed to look sexy as hell. Wet hair had left damp patches on the shoulders, as she hadn't bothered to dry it, much less use those fat rollers and sticky sprays his last lady friend had used. Maggie's hair, roughly the color of desert camouflage, usually looked like she'd stepped outside in the wind and forgotten to brush it when she came back inside.