Love at First Laugh: Eight Romantic Novellas Filled with Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever After

by Krista Phillips

  Sweat started to form at the back of his neck, an irritating reminder that he didn’t like confrontation. Ignoring it, he placed his hands on his hips and watched as she did the same, lifting her chin before she spoke again.

  “I don’t know who gave you permission to trot your mower across the grass, but you’re not welcome.”

  The skin between his shoulder blades began to prickle. “What are you, some crazy tree-hugging grass whisperer? Save the nut show for somebody else, lady. I have work to do.”

  “You will remove your lawnmower from my property at once.”

  Sassy little weirdo. He pulled his sunglasses off his face so he could look her in the eye. “Jimmy O’Neil hired me to do his landscaping, and when I spoke to him yesterday, I’m pretty sure this was still his property. So if you don’t mind, I’m gonna get back to it now.”

  Her arms clamped over her chest as her eyes shot fire in his direction. “Over my dead body.”

  So basically the same way the whole situation started. With a quick shrug, he returned to his lawnmower and settled into the seat. Instead of admitting defeat or continuing her argument, she sat cross-legged in front of him, or as his niece liked to call it, “criss cross applesauce.” The woman’s arms still remained across her chest in that defensive posture, her backbone straight as a board. Narrowing his eyes, he started the mower. When she didn’t move, he reversed the machine and rolled backwards, swinging to the right and mowing around her in a large circle. To his surprise, she didn’t jump up and refuse to let him continue. She sat in that one spot, unmoving, while he mowed the rest of the yard.

  Thirty minutes later, he loaded his mower onto the trailer, taking a quick look back at his work. Not great, but the best he could do under the circumstances. It was only after he started his pickup and began to pull down the gravel driveway that he saw her stand up in the middle of that swath of taller grass, content that she had succeeded in whatever loopy mission she was spearheading.

  Chapter 2

  The more Arabelle saw of the world outside her fairy village, the greater accustomed she became to disappointment. #willowfairies

  Her knees were stiff and threatened to upend her as she stood from her perch on the grass, but Willow wasn’t about to show weakness. She stood like a sentinel, guarding her territory, until the black pickup with the rusted fender began to pull away from the cabin. The instant he was out of sight, she stumbled in the direction of the house, staring up at the door that was still ajar from her hasty exit earlier.

  Talk about a close call. Her fingers shook as she took the doorknob in hand, quietly shutting the door. Lifting her foot behind her, she peeked over her shoulder to inspect the bottom of her sock. As she suspected, it was soggy and dirty. Groaning aloud, she pushed the bulky wool away from her ankle and off her toes completely before leaning down to remove her other shoe as well.

  That guy called her an oddball. A nut.

  She tossed the second sock into the middle of the room and suppressed the urge to huff. Creative people were often maligned for their idiosyncrasies, she reminded herself. The ones with the lasting genius were usually not understood.

  But she wasn’t a nut.

  Turning to her left, she strode down the hall until she reached the bathroom. Twisting the knob on the faucet, she waited for the water to warm and then splashed her face, glancing up at the mirror as the water dripped from her chin. Her hair had slipped from the improvised bun she’d formed when she woke up, and now it frizzed out on the left side of her head, except for the area where it was smashed down by the headband for the magnifying glass. Knowledge of her appearance caused her blood to heat inside her veins, and she allowed her gaze to drift down her body past the tank top to the boxer shorts, all covered gracefully by the threadbare sweater.

  Okay, so she looked a little like a hobo in need of a straightjacket. But not a nut. An artist.

  Not that she’d always been treated as an artist. Her hobby had been a source of contention early on in her life as she bounced back and forth between the homes of her mother and father. Mom would complain that she was ignoring her studies to doodle in class, and Dad would say that she was wasting her time on foolishness. Then both would blame the other for her lack of focus. Neither one of them realized that she actually had laser-focus, it was simply on something they didn’t understand.

  If she was being honest with herself, nobody understood her in those formative years. Like a lot of artists and flat-out creative geniuses, if she dared to label herself such, she had harnessed all that childhood and teenage angst into a successful venture. Not at first, and there were quite a few lean years. But once Disney decided to tap into their fairy series, the interest in the topic led people to her drawings. The drawings led people to her stories, and the stories had turned into a complete fairy universe.

  A universe which, only about thirty minutes before, was dangerously close to being down two mushroom huts, a miniature rosebush, one highly detailed mailbox, and a ladybug doghouse.

  Returning to her original task from which she had been so rudely interrupted, she settled onto the chair and tapped the screen of her phone until it was ringing on speaker. With her hands free, she picked Arabelle up once more and began inspecting her wing.

  An unintelligible grunt emerged from the other end of the phone, and Willow didn’t waste any time before launching into her story. “This renegade horticulturist appeared out of nowhere and attempted to decimate Willowdale.”

  A louder groan came through the speaker while Willow brushed at the glitter fleck on Arabelle’s wing.

  “You do realize it’s six-thirty in the morning?” Sammie’s voice was gravelly and sounded rather irritated, which made Willow glance at the clock on the microwave and grimace.

  “Sorry. I forget that there’s so much space between us.” Actually, she hadn’t forgotten about the space between Gatlinburg and Los Angeles. The time, perhaps.

  “So this is the new storyline you’ve got going?” Sammie asked with an exaggerated, prolonged, and very noisy yawn. “Abandoned the whole love story angle already?”

  Willow shook her head at Arabelle, as though the inanimate fairy perched in her hand could hear the conversation. “No, the Pride and Prejudice theme is still going strong. I’m determined to help Arabelle find her Mr. Darcy, although at the moment I can’t even begin to picture him in my mind.”

  Sammie placed her phone on speaker too, which Willow might not have known if she hadn’t heard the noisy padding of footsteps through the phone. “So who’s destroying Willowdale?”

  A sigh broke loose as Willow reached for the glue one more time, lowering her head to peer through the magnifying glass. “I scoped out the perfect place to set up the huts, and while I was inside preparing my subject, this mouthy hillbilly showed up with a lawnmower intent on causing maximum destruction.”

  “So a guy tried to mow your lawn.”

  “Your ability to make things sound unimportant is legendary.” Using tweezers, Willow set the glitter flake in its proper place. “My props were in the direct path of his machine of death. I had to throw myself on the ground in front of him to get him to stop.”

  The shuffling came to a halt. “Please tell me you’re being dramatic.”

  “No! And then he hopped off his lawnmower, acting like I gave him a heart attack, bending at the waist like he needed to put one of those paper bags up to his face to breathe in and out. When he was done …” She felt her neck heating again just thinking about the confrontation. “When he was done freaking out, he called me a nut.”

  “Probably justified.”

  “Traitor.”

  “And while we’re on the subject, if you’re going to brand people mouthy hillbillies, you might as well point the finger at yourself, sweetie.”

  That little jab meant it was Willow’s turn to groan. Sammie liked to remind her that she hailed from the great state of Mississippi. To be more specific, the rural parts of Mississippi. They met several year
s before when they were almost literally starving artists in New York City, and it was only recently that the two had decided to part ways. Sammie landed in Los Angeles where she could create soundtracks for movies, and Willow was in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Could she have photographed her fairies in L.A.? Probably so, but there was something enticing about the scenery she found in the Smoky Mountains. The way the fog lifted over the trees, the moss covered the rocks, and the forest acted like a thick barrier. It was practically a fairy heaven, if ever one existed.

  “The guy should not have been on my property without my permission.”

  Sammie let out another groan, which probably meant she plopped back down on her bed. “But do you have lawn mowing in your renter’s agreement or something? Maybe your landlord sent the guy.”

  That statement hit a little too close to home.

  “The point is, it was annoying the way he kept mowing around me in a giant circle while I sat there protecting my belongings.”

  Laughter. Not the encouragement she was looking for.

  “No wonder he called you a nut. Why is this bothering you so much? It’s almost like…oh.”

  Willow twisted the magnifying glass so it stuck out to the left and was no longer in front of her face. “Oh? What is the ‘oh’ for?”

  “You’re attracted to him.”

  Willow’s chair tilted and she found herself hanging onto the side of the table as she righted herself. “Far from it.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “You know, country-ish.” She reached up and scratched the part of her hair directly under the headband, where her head was starting to feel a little numb. “He had a beard, Sammie. A beard.”

  “The horror.”

  “Not like one of the sleek beards you see walking around L.A. or New York. I’m talking about a full-out, Hatfield and McCoy, we-should-be-duck-hunting pelt of some kind of fur on his chin. Like a lumberjack.”

  “Hmm.” Sammie released a quick chuckle, followed by a sigh. “And here I thought you might have met someone worthwhile.”

  Willow leaned back in her chair as she inspected her lonely, very single fairy one more time. “Keep dreaming,” she muttered, but even as the words crossed her lips she couldn’t force a certain pair of striking blue eyes, or a deep voice with a hint of a southern lilt, out of her mind.

  The familiar squeaking of the brakes made Clint stop what he was doing and stare out the kitchen window. The bus sat directly in front of his house, and with the window open to just the screen he could hear the laughter and loud conversation taking place inside the vehicle. Emily appeared at the front of the bus after a few seconds, skipping as she swung her lunchbox back and forth by her side.

  “Bye Em!” a high-pitched little voice yelled through an open bus window. Emily waited until she was safely in the grass, then turned and gave a big wave.

  Clint grabbed a nearby dish towel and wiped the engine grease off his hands, then strolled to the front door and opened it while he waited for his niece to make it to the porch. She offered a big smile as she stepped inside the house, and he couldn’t help but notice the pink ring around her lips. Leftover from the fruit punch she had for lunch, he imagined.

  “How was school?” he asked casually as she slid her backpack to the ground and went in the direction of the kitchen.

  “Fine,” she muttered. The standard after-school kid answer that he’d come to expect by now. “Can I have a snack?”

  “Sure.” The phone started to ring, and he moved to the coffee table and picked it up, spying O’Neil’s name. Finally. “Listen, Em, not a big snack because I don’t want you to ruin your dinner.” He hit the button to accept the call. “Hey, thanks for calling me back. I just wanted to let you know that I had to skip mowing a section of the grass at cabin nine because that woman you have staying there went a little crazy on me.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence, only interrupted by the sound of a chip bag crumpling in the kitchen.

  “Crazy how exactly?”

  “Now, that’s hard to explain.” Clint grabbed the bottom of his beard and held it in his fist, watching Emily drop a chip on the floor. With a quick shrug, she picked it up and popped it into her mouth anyway. “It was kind of like one of those sit-ins you see on TV. Like she was protecting the grass from murder or something.”

  O’Neil muttered a string of profanity that made Clint glance at Emily to make sure she didn’t hear, even though he was the only one close enough to the phone. “You just can’t tell what you’re getting with those city slickers. I tell ya, I had my reservations about her, but she paid for the whole month upfront. Plus, she had good character references.”

  The front door opened, and Clint nodded at Ruth as she stepped into the living room, hair still up in a rather droopy light brown ponytail at the back of her head. She brightened a bit when she met his gaze, and he took a second to take in her appearance. Her tan uniform had a spot at the waist where it looked like she’d tried to clean something off and made it worse, and her name tag was crooked near the top of her shoulder. She’d probably had a long day.

  “Well, I have no idea about her character one way or the other,” Clint continued, “but I know she just about gave me the fright of my life. I’m minding my own business, listening to the radio and mowing, and all of a sudden there she is, on the ground in front of my mower.”

  O’Neil let loose a few unintelligible sounds before his words began to make sense. “… could have been killed. Insurance … sky high.”

  “Relax, nobody’s getting killed.” Clint glanced at Ruth, whose eyes widened as she stood by the doorway. “I just wanted you to know, and to ask what you wanted me to do about it next time.”

  “Do you think it’s drugs?”

  Clint twisted his mouth to the side and gave that some thought, but eventually shook his head. “Naw, I don’t.”

  “Okay.” The sound of a truck door slamming punctuated O’Neill’s words. “Just do whatever you need to do next time you’re out there, and I’ll see what I can manage from this end.”

  “Ten four.” Clint hit the end button on the phone and placed it on the arm of the couch, turning his attention to Ruth. “Em’s in the kitchen eating chips. Hope you don’t mind.”

  She gave him a weak smile, looking far more worn than a woman should at twenty-five. “It’s fine. Anyway, it’s not like I would complain when I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

  “Anything for my favorite niece.”

  He averted his eyes from Ruth, because every time he saw her looking worn out, he wished things were different for her. She had been one of the prettiest girls in his brother’s class, which was probably why Doug took up with her in the first place. By the time Em was born, though, he had already moved on to another girlfriend.

  Clint had been stationed in Southeast Asia at the time, so he hadn’t seen it all playing out in real time. He returned home in time to see Emily celebrate her first birthday, his brother decide to go work on an oil rig in the gulf, and his parents move to Florida so they could stay with his grandmother. He alone had been left to carry on in the house his grandfather had built decades before, old-fashioned and always in need of repairs. But it fit him. He fit the house, more accurately.

  And Ruth … She’d been just desperate enough in the beginning to try flirting with him, and that had been awkward for the both of them. Her nearing eighteen, fawning over him every time he looked at Emily. Him twenty-six, trying not to find himself alone with her. He might have seemed like the more responsible Kirkland brother, rightly so, but he didn’t feel inclined to step into shoes Doug should have filled voluntarily. Not as a father for Emily, and not for Doug’s standin with Ruth either.

  Uncle he could manage though, and he’d focused on that, doing as much for Emily – and in turn her mother – as humanly possible. He’d become friends with Ruth, which had turned into his longest and best relationship with a woman to date. Probably because there were no expectati
ons on either side.

  “So, who jumped in front of your mower?” Emily asked, a chip crunching as she spoke the words.

  It was impossible not to smile, just a little. “This lady who’s staying at one of O’Neill’s cabins, apparently a ‘city slicker’ who really likes grass. All I know is, she’s really tiny, she has multicolored hair, and I didn’t run her over today.”

  “I think I know who you’re talking about,” Ruth said, leaning down to grab Emily’s backpack. “Someone like that came into the restaurant a couple days ago. Real noticeable, because she looked like a rainbow threw up on her head.”

  “That’s her,” he agreed, that unexplainable tickle of sweat starting to appear at the base of his neck again.

  “She was real friendly.” Ruth pulled her dirt-smudged denim purse to the front of her body and began rifling through. “Gave me a book to give to Em.” Her fingers dragged out a small book with a colorful design on the front, and Emily crossed the living room to take it from her mom.

  “Willow Fairies!” Em yelled through a mouthful of chips. “These are the coolest.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Clint cautioned as he reached over to tug on one of her caramel-hued braids. When he was close enough, he peeked over her shoulder to take a look at the book. Fairies, just like Emily said. Nothing to get all excited about.

  Emily wiped the chip crumbs from her palm and turned the page of the book. “My friend Bella has Willow Fairies all over her room. The pillows, the blankets, the rug, the walls.”

  Clint raised his eyebrows as he perused the drawing of a fairy flying into a yellow-hued sunset. “Fairies all over her room, huh? Probably time to call the exterminator.”

  Chapter 3

  Arabelle might have felt guilt for her reaction towards him, had he behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner. #willowfairies