Seattle Cinderella Part 20

Zella turned to Trevor and grabbed his forearm with one hand, squeezing so tight he was sure she was leaving the imprint of her hand. "Did you hear that? He's secretive. I bet he's just as mysterious as his books."

"And one more thing," Sheila said. "He doesn't really look like that picture on his website, unless he's trying to hide something."

Trevor glared at Sheila. "I know one more piece of information. I hear he's thinking of killing off Mrs. Rubenstein in the next book."

A hush fell around the table, and everyone turned to look at Sheila.

Zella squeezed his arm even tighter. "How do you know that?"

"I don't know. I just kinda get that feeling."

Sheila cleared her throat and tapped her pen on the table. "Enough. We don't want to run out of time. Let's start with Sasha's chapter."

The meeting seemed to drag on forever, and Trevor had never been so glad to see a meeting end as he was tonight.

This weekend he was going to tell her, before it got past the point of no return. If it wasn't already.

After they'd finished packing up, he walked with her to her car then stood in front of her door so she couldn't get away without talking to him first.

"How would you like to go to the corn maze at the Carpinito Brothers farm tomorrow? I need to do another chase scene, but chasing a woman through the forest and dodging trees is getting a little old. I need something different."

"That sounds like fun. I've never been to a corn maze. It's supposed to be a nice day, so-"

Zella's cell phone stopped her words.

She muttered something he couldn't hear as she dug it out of her purse. "I can't believe how many times this stupid thing has interrupted me today. Why did we ever think cell phones were a good thing to have?" She checked the display then flipped it open. "Hi, Mom. What do you need?"

Trevor watched as her brows knotted and she raised her wrist and checked her watch.

"Now? Are you serious?"

She nodded and listened, her lips drawing into a tight frown.

"I suppose I could. I'll see you soon."

She flipped the phone closed with a sharp flick of her wrist and rammed it in her purse.

"I don't believe this. My mother picked now to bake a cake, and she says she's halfway through and just realized that she's out of eggs. I can't go out for coffee. I have to go to the Fred Meyer and hurry home. But what was even stranger was that she said that she wants me to meet the son of a friend of hers from bingo, and she said he's much more handsome and nicer than you. What have you done to my mother that she's trying to replace you?"

Trevor struggled to remember the only time he'd met Zella's mother. He'd thought everything went well. She'd even primped and tried to flirt with him, as if he would be interested in the mother of the woman with whom he'd already fallen in love.

His heart nearly stopped.

Love.

He'd finally admitted it to himself, even though he already knew that he'd given Zella his heart. He'd always thought love at first sight was just something that sold romance novels to women, but it really was true, because it had happened to him. Zella was his friend and soul mate, and it just occurred to him that he wanted her to be his wife. She was perfect for him in every way.

"You've got a strange look on your face. Don't let your mind wander. You do that a lot, you know. Think of what you said to my mother."

"Oops. Sorry. Give me a minute." While Zella stood before him tapping her foot on the pavement, Trevor searched his memory for the details of the short conversation he'd had with Melissa, or something that he might have done to make her think he wasn't good enough for her daughter.

Aside from not being entirely up front about who he really was, he couldn't think of anything. In fact if Melissa had found out before Zella that he was T. J. Zereth, then the opposite of what was happening would be more likely. Most people thought authors made much more money than they really did. So far, he was considered mid-list, but he was on the brink of reaching the big-time placement and royalty statements he could live on.

"I don't know. But whatever it is, I don't want to make it worse. I'll go with you to the Fred Meyer because there's a few things I need for myself. Then I guess I'll see you tomorrow. Do you think it would help if I bought a dozen corn on the cobs for your mother as a makeup gift?"

Zella shook her head. "No. My mother really hates corn. Let's get going. I don't want to make whatever she's going through any worse."

Chapter 8.

Wow. This is a lot of corn."

Zella dragged one hand down her face and sighed. "We're standing at the entrance to a corn maze. What did you think we'd see here? Oats?"

Trevor's cheeks darkened, which Zella thought adorable. She didn't often see a man blush. "I guess that wasn't a very intellectual observation. I think what I was trying to say is that I hadn't imagined it being quite like this."

"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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+ver. 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 s.h.i.+ver 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 flas.h.i.+ng.

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 s.h.i.+vered 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, listening 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 embarra.s.sment 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 winds.h.i.+elds."

Zella swung one arm through the air to encompa.s.s 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."