Driven to Distraction (Silhouette Desire S.) by Sheri Whitefeather, Dixie Browning Page B

Honest.”
    â€œAs 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?
    â€œAnswer 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?”
    â€œNothing,” Maggie snapped.
    â€œI saw you drooling over our cowboy. Hey, there’s going to be dancing tonight. Wanna draw straws for him?”
    â€œThis isn’t drool, I spilled my tea.”
    â€œWhatever,” the younger woman said with a knowing grin.
    â€œYeah, whatever,” Maggie muttered as she hurried past to clean off the sticky mess. She’d do well to keep her mind on her mission.
    Â 
    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 befair, 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.
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œAs a Halloween decoration, you mean? Tell me something—what is that wiggly streak across the front of the page? A rusty train track?”
    â€œNow 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.
    â€œYou mean Janie and Georgia? They’re nice,