SEATTLE CINDERELLA: FOUR-IN-ONE COLLECTION Page 18

  “I think the brochure said there were nearly four miles of paths. I forget how many acres, but it’s a lot.”

  Trevor looked from side to side. “Yeah. This is totally a-maze-ing.”

  Zella didn’t know whether to laugh or groan, so instead she reread the brochure. “There are two mazes here, and they’re connected by a bridge in the middle. The rules basically say we’re supposed to stay on the path, don’t pick the corn, and no smoking. There are posts we’re supposed to find that have paper punches to show we’ve completed the maze. And we should be prepared to get lost. But I can’t see that happening.” She stopped reading and looked at the other people near the entrance to the mazes. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of people here, but maybe that’s because it looks like it’s going to rain.”

  She glanced through the crowd, trying to guess how many people were doing the same thing at the same time. For a split second she saw a familiar pink, the same color as her mother’s favorite sweater, but then it disappeared.

  But that was ridiculous. Her mother would never come to a place like this.

  Trevor shrugged his shoulders. “We had better get going if we’re going to do both mazes.”

  As they trudged through, even though she expected to be following a crowd, the farther they went, the fewer people they saw.

  They stopped at a fork in the path, unsure of which way to go. She waited for Trevor to decide, but instead he stood looking up at the top fluffy part of the stalks. “I’m surprised at how tall the corn is. I thought I’d be able to see over it, like in my mother’s garden.”

  Zella also looked up. “I know what you mean. I thought this would be easy, but I don’t think it will be.”

  Trevor broke into a laugh. “You were expecting to see over the corn and cheat!”

  “I never said that.”

  At first the path seemed easy, but it wasn’t long before Zella realized that they’d taken many wrong turns.

  She stopped at another decision to go right or left. “We are so lost.” She held her palm up. “It’s also starting to rain.”

  Trevor took the map from her and studied it, pointing as he spoke. “We’re not lost. I think we’re here. Or maybe here. Or we could be here.”

  She took the map back from him. “Or you have no idea. All you know is which maze we’re in out of the two.”

  He took the map back, and his face turned into an evil grin as he tweaked an imaginary mustache. “Then the better to eat you with, my dear.”

  “What are you, the Big Bad Wolf? If you are, you’re supposed to show me your teeth first. Or you could…” Her voice trailed off as she realized what he was doing. They’d talked about his villain chasing one of his female characters through the corn maze. In that case, she would play along, especially since there weren’t many people here today. “Oh!” she squealed. “Don’t hurt me, you cad!”

  Trevor’s smile dropped. “Cad?”

  “You…uh…evil bad guy!” She almost called out the word help but realized they weren’t exactly alone. If she called for help, someone actually might. In order to get a head start, she took advantage of him standing there, all perplexed trying to figure out a better phrase, and turned and ran.

  Running through the short turns and small sections of path was harder than she thought, especially since the mulch on the paths had become slippery with the rain. A few times she passed small groups of people who stared at her open-mouthed then cleared the way when they saw Trevor running behind her.

  Once, she did what the brochure told her not to do and hid in the corn off the path. Since she didn’t want to damage the cornstalks, she didn’t go in as far as she should have in order for him not to see her, and she certainly wasn’t going to cut through. But when he saw her wedged in the corn row, he tried to stop too fast, sending pieces of mulch flying around him and causing a hole in the path.

  “You’d better fix that,” Zella called out as she ran away, knowing it would give her a minute’s advantage. She could make a lot of distance in a minute.

  She bolted past a few more groups of people, and just when she thought she had succeeded in escaping, she found herself in a dead-end path. Before she could get out, Trevor appeared, blocking her way.

  “I win,” he said as he walked toward her, slipped his arms around her, and pulled her in close for a hug. “Gotcha. You’re dead.”

  “I guess I am. That felt strange. I felt like a human Pac-Man, running through the turns and short paths, trying to escape,” she said in between pants as she caught her breath. The rain had picked up and it was now coming down hard. Her hoodie had blown off when she was running, and now her hair was quite wet and getting wetter. “I don’t think running through a corn maze is going to work in your book. If I was really being chased by someone who was really going to hurt me, I wouldn’t have hesitated to go off the paths and break through the corn.”

  “Same. If I were really meaning to catch you, I would have run through the corn to where you were going. You would have made a lot of noise, and you wouldn’t have been hard to follow.”

  When their breathing slowed to normal, Trevor didn’t let go. Not only did the rain help cool her down quickly, she was starting to feel cold.

  With Trevor holding her tight from head to toe, she felt him shiver. Then, in contrast to her cold skin, his warm lips pressed against her neck, just below her ear.

  It felt nice.

  Slowly he nuzzled a path to her mouth and gave her a gentle kiss on the lips. “The evil bad guy wouldn’t do this, but Trevor Jones would.” Not giving her a chance to reply, he settled in for a longer, deeper kiss.

  Heat zapped through her, completely canceling out the cold of the water running down her back.

  Until her cell phone rang.

  “Don’t answer that,” he whispered against her lips and kissed her again.

  She let it ring until it stopped, kissing Trevor back exactly the way he was kissing her.

  Until a hard shiver racked his body, causing a mutual separation.

  Zella swiped one hand over her hair in attempt to brush off some of the cold water. “It’s really pouring. We should leave. Maybe we’ll come back another day.”

  “If you’re promising more of the same, you can count on it.” He slipped his hand into hers, and they finished off the rest of the maze at a fast walk instead of running out, since they couldn’t get any wetter. Just as they got to the car, a police car pulled into the lot with lights flashing.

  Zella watched it go straight to the maze entrance. An officer got out and started talking to the attendants. “I wonder what that’s about?”

  Trevor shrugged his shoulders. “The brochure warned people not to steal the corn. It looks like they were serious.”

  As they drove out of the parking lot, a familiar blue car in the last spot caught her eye. “That’s strange. That looks like my mother’s car. When we first got here, I thought I saw her favorite pink sweater. I wonder if she’s here, but I don’t understand why. This isn’t her kind of entertainment.”

  “Lots of people own blue cars, and lots of women have pink sweaters.”

  “I guess so. But while I’m thinking about her, before I left today, she asked me if I thought it was safe to come here with you.”

  Trevor grinned. “Why? Did she think you’d be forever lost in the never-ending labyrinth of killer corn?” He broke out into a full belly laugh. “Or maybe she thinks there’s a corn monster, like Bigfoot, who might jump out and get you. A monster tall enough to see over the corn. With big yellow eyes.”

  Zella glared at him. “Stop it. I have no idea what she was thinking. Maybe she knew it was going to rain and thought I would catch cold or something.” She shivered again, giving the idea of catching a cold more credibility. “I think we both need to change into dry clothes before we have supper. Your place is closer. We can go there first.”

  They made good time, and before she knew it, Zella was standing in Trevor’s living room, listeni
ng to the sound of his blow-dryer while he fixed himself up.

  She’d never been to his house before, and it felt a little awkward to be left alone in his living room. The place was a mess, not dirty but untidy, made worse that he had books piled everywhere. He appeared to be reading three books at the same time, something she could never do, plus he had two nonfiction books on the craft of writing out, one on the corner of the coffee table nicely bookmarked, but the other hung haphazardly on the arm of the couch, facedown, marking his spot.

  Zella shook her head and picked it up. She only had one of such books and had been amazed when she went to the bookstore at how many she had to choose from. She kept her finger in the page to hold his spot and started paging through. If he recommended it, she could buy herself a copy.

  “Sorry about the mess.” Trevor’s voice came from behind her. “As you can tell, I wasn’t expecting company.”

  “Don’t worry about it. At least you don’t have boxes of half-eaten pizzas lying around.” She flipped a few more pages of the instructional book. “This is so overwhelming. I don’t know how you do it. There’s so much to learn.”

  He stepped beside her, removed the book from her hands, tucked in a napkin for a bookmark, and set the book on the coffee table. “Yes, there is, but you can do it. I know you said you haven’t been writing long, but you’ve got a lot of potential. Your name would also look great on a book cover.”

  She glanced around the room. “Speaking of names on book covers, I’ve tried looking you up online and at the bookstore, and then I remembered you saying you didn’t write under your real name, that you use a pseudo. What is it?”

  “I…uh…”

  She could barely believe that Trevor picked such a moment to be bashful. Instead of looking at him, she turned and stepped closer to his dining room wall, where he had a number of book covers framed and on display. She’d heard that since having a book published was such a major accomplishment, many authors had their covers framed, like a kind of trophy. “Don’t be shy. I know you’re quite good. You write almost like…” Her voice trailed off as she looked at Trevor’s book covers. She’d read every single one of them, except for the last one, which she was only halfway through. “T. J. Zereth. All these covers hanging on your wall are T. J. Zereth books.”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  Her own words that she’d said just the night before at their Friday night book club meeting echoed through her head. But Trevor didn’t write merely like her favorite author, he wrote exactly like her favorite author.

  She spun to face him. “It’s exactly what I think. You’re T. J. Zereth. Why didn’t you tell me? I’ve even said a number of times, right in front of you that he’s—you’re my favorite author.”

  A mix of emotions flitted across his face, from surprise to embarrassment to confusion. “I”—he dipped his head forward and pinched the bridge of his nose—“I don’t know.”

  “For someone who makes a living at words, you sure don’t seem to be able to come up with any good ones right now.”

  “I don’t make a living from it. I replace windshields.”

  Zella swung one arm through the air to encompass the display of covers on the wall. “You could have fooled me. Why did you lie to me?”

  He stood straight, bringing himself to his full imposing height. Or at least a height that would have been imposing to most people. But not her. “I didn’t lie to you. I just didn’t tell you.”

  She stomped closer to him. “But everyone else knows, don’t they? Sheila, Sasha, Jorg, Patty, all of them on Friday night know, don’t they?”

  “Well, yes.”

  Zella covered her face with her hands. “I look like an idiot with you stringing me along like that. Everyone must have had a good laugh when I said how much I wanted to have my picture taken with T. J. Zereth.” She lowered her hands and glared at him. “You!”

  “No, I don’t think they did. I think—”

  “Don’t bother. I’m leaving.”

  She turned, grabbed her purse off the coffee table, and stomped toward the door.

  “Wait. Don’t go. I can explain. I didn’t tell you because I wanted to get to know you first, before you found out who I was. I wanted you to get to know the real me first.”

  She skidded to a halt, spun around, and pointed at him. “The real you is a liar, and I don’t want to know that person.” She turned and continued to the door.

  Trevor raced in front of her and splayed his palm on the back of the door to stop her from opening it. “We need to talk about this. Besides, I brought you here. I have to drive you home.”

  “No you don’t. I will never get in a car with you again. Or a room. I’ll catch the bus. If you try to follow me or stop me, I’ll scream and someone will call the police.”

  He pulled his hand away from the door. Zella yanked it open and stormed out, leaving him standing in the doorway.

  The second her foot touched the sidewalk, the tears she’d been fighting streamed down her face. She should have thought about it sooner. After reading Trevor’s chapter, she knew the title—Till Death. And she’d seen on T. J. Zereth’s website that same title was his next upcoming release.

  Words that she’d heard very recently, twice, at Cindy’s wedding and again at Annie’s wedding, rang through her head. Wedding vow words. “Till death do us part.”

  She thought she had been falling in love with Trevor and that maybe one day in the future there could be a wedding. But not now. The words till death now had them parting for a very different reason, and maybe it was just as final.

  She got on the first bus that came by, not caring where it was going, only that it was taking her away. Just like in every make-believe story, this was The End.

  Chapter 9

  Trevor sucked in a deep breath to gather his courage and knocked on the door.

  He knew that the relationship between Zella and her mother wasn’t great, but for the moment, she was his only connection to Zella.

  He’d been a mental wreck all day Sunday, and even going to both the morning and evening church services hadn’t helped. He’d nearly broken down and cried like a wuss, and the few people at church whom he’d told about his writing already thought he was a bit mentally unstable.

  Every time he’d called, she hadn’t answered. She hadn’t replied to a single text.

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know she wasn’t going to go to the book club meeting on Friday night. Even if she did, he couldn’t wait that long.

  He couldn’t visit her at the pharmacy where she worked, nor could he wait by her car to try to talk to her in the parking lot. He didn’t like being a public spectacle, and he knew she wouldn’t either.

  His only option was to talk to her in the privacy of her home. It probably wouldn’t be all that private with her mother home, but her mother was the only way he was going to get in the door.

  The door opened. Melissa gasped, and then her face hardened into a tight mask. “Go away or I’m calling the cops.”

  “The cops? But—”

  Melissa stood back, with the obvious intent of slamming the door in his face.

  Before she could do that, he went for the proverbial foot-in-the-door trick.

  Often people were nervous around him because of his size, but he’d never thought anyone would be afraid of him to the point they needed protection from law enforcement. Especially a woman.

  Especially the woman he loved and would die for. Or her mother.

  He grimaced, waiting for the pain. He had just told himself he would die for her. A broken foot was nothing in comparison.

  All he felt was a small nudge, but he heard a large string of curse words that would do any sailor proud spewing out of Melissa’s mouth.

  Trevor looked down and grinned. He’d forgotten that since he was coming straight from work, he was still wearing his steel-toed, CSA-certified, size fourteen safety boots. Not only good for falling windshields, they were also good for
solid oak doors wielded by angry women.

  Without moving his foot out of the doorway, he leaned forward. “I really need to talk to Zella when she gets home.”

  Melissa had the door gripped so tight her knuckles were turning white. “She’s not going to talk to you. I don’t know what you’re up to or what you’re trying to get Zella involved with, but I won’t allow it. If you don’t go away, I’m calling the cops.”

  “I’m not trying to get Zella involved in anything. Please let me in. We need to talk.” From the look of Melissa, he needed to talk to her almost as much as he needed to talk to Zella.

  “No. I don’t allow criminals and hit men into my home. I’m warning you.”

  “Hit men? What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I know you’ve been getting Zella to do your dirty work. I heard her asking about poisons and noxious compounds. Whose brake line are you planning to cut and make it look like an accident? I know you’ve been threatening her. I won’t let my little girl get involved with a scumbag like you. Now go away.”

  “Dirty work?” Trevor’s head swam. “I’m not a criminal. I’m a mystery writer. The world knows me as T. J. Zereth. I know you’ve got all my books in your house.”

  “No we don’t. Zella threw them all in the fireplace last night and burned them.”

  Trevor cringed. Along with his books, he felt his heart go up in flames.

  He cleared his throat then lowered his voice to sound as nonthreatening as possible. “If I wanted to I could push the door open and barge in right now, but I would never do that. I’ll wait for you to voluntarily open it and let me in. I know I’ve hurt Zella. It’s just a misunderstanding, but it’s a pretty big one and I want to make it better. I need your help and your blessings. Please let me in.”

  He held his breath and waited. He felt himself about to pass out from lack of oxygen when slowly the door opened.

  “Thank you,” he said, inhaling deeply.

  “How can you be T. J. Zereth? He’s Annie’s and Zella’s favorite author. I thought you were her new boyfriend, the man she met at the book club.”