Driven to Distraction (Silhouette Desire S.) Read Online Free

rocky.”
    Maggie’s eyes flashed a warning. She had heard similar warnings all her life. Don’t climb up on that table, Margaret Lee. Don’t run up the stairs! Watch your step, sugar—oops!
    Her entire life had been filled with “oopses,” but that didn’t mean she was going to change the way she dressed just because some whiskey-eyed cowboy didn’t like her style.
    Suzy looked from one to the other like a spectatorat a tennis match. “Hey, I’m wearing flip-flops,” she said brightly.
    Both Ben and Maggie ignored her. Maggie tried to come up with a smart comeback, but before she could think of anything really clever, Ben turned away to join a group of senior citizens.
    One of whom, Maggie noticed with interest, wore her pink hair in a single braid along with gold ear hoops, black tights, a peasant blouse and cross-trainers. “Now there,” she said softly to Suzy, “is my idea of what an artist should look like.”
    So saying, she turned, tripped over a pair of big feet and flung out her arms. The elderly gentleman whose feet had been in her way said, “Steady there, little lady.”
    Smiling weakly, Maggie didn’t bother to tell him she was a congenital tripper. Everything from potholes to campaign posters. If she’d heard the words, “Look where you’re going” once, she’d heard them a million times. Once she’d even skidded on grains of rice while she was backing up to take a picture and landed on her keester in front of an entire wedding party. Graceful, she wasn’t, but after twenty-seven years she had learned to live with her shortcomings.
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    What was it with women and their crazy shoes? Ben wondered as he edged through the crowd, sizing up the likely candidates for Silver’s pitch. He’d seen women dance all night on ice-pick heels and then limp for days. Somebody should’ve warned her that on anything rougher than a dance floor, stability was more important than style.
    On impulse, he worked his way past a gaggle ofgray-heads until he was standing behind her again. Leaning over, he said softly, “You ready to rumble?”
    Startled, Maggie Riley spun around. He grinned. “Ready to commit art, that is.”
    â€œThat’s what I came here for,” she said defensively.
    â€œRight. Me, too.”
    The way she looked him over, from the toe of his good-luck boots to the scar on his chin, compliments of a dirtbag armed with a beer bottle, Ben got the idea she was somewhat skeptical about his artistic abilities.
    Smart lady. Granted, he was working at a slight disadvantage here, but having once gone undercover with a ring of transvestites who were drugging and robbing businessmen at a restaurateur’s convention, he’d considered playing the role of an art student a cinch.
    Besides, under the mattress of the room he was sharing with a retired biology teacher was a newly purchased book entitled Watercolor Painting in Ten Easy Lessons. He intended to have at least one of those lessons under his belt by the time the first class was called to order.
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    â€œI heard somebody say the maestro’s supposed to be here for supper,” Suzy James whispered as they found a small table with their names on it a few hours later. “Oh, hell, they’ve put us right next to the kitchen again. Who do they think I am, Cinderella?”
    â€œAt least the food should be hotter.” Maggie glanced around the dining room. She made a point ofnot looking at Ben Hunter, but evidently she wasn’t fooling anyone.
    Suzy said soulfully, “Is that prime stuff, or what?”
    Maggie shrugged. “Good-looking men are always so vain.” As if she had firsthand experience. On a scale of one to ten, she was about a four. The best she could hope for was another four—at most, a five.
    â€œSo he likes mirrors. I can live with that. I’m not into kinky, understand, but a few