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

by Krista Phillips

  “How do you top that? Do you have to actually sign up for the mission trip to get a second date?”

  “As if a woman would ever make it that simple.” Maverick polished off the last of his burger. “I’m thinking about going on a mission trip at some point, but we already decided we’re better off as friends.”

  “No spark?”

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. She wants to spend her life in overseas missions, and I don’t feel God calling me to that. I’d like to go on an overseas mission trip, but I don’t think that’s the life God has for me.”

  “Gonna give me a name, or do I have to pry it out of you?”

  Color climbed Maverick’s neck. “Alexa.”

  Lia tapped his shin with her foot under the table. “You know I’m teasing, right?”

  “Tease all you want, but I’m being a gentleman.”

  Maverick’s idea of being a gentleman was to protect the names of women he’d met online. He only supplied a name once they’d gone out on a real, live date. Or apparently a mission trip informational meeting.

  She’d never tell him so to his face, but most women found gentlemanly to be a synonym for sexy.

  Lia took a healthy bite of bacon. “Only one date this week?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who said we should get to know people before we meet them in-person. Remember? You wanted to get off on the right foot at Holy Hearts and not jump straight into the deep end. I distinctly remember a lecture to that effect.”

  “I don’t lecture.”

  “Ha! Tell that to my baby sister.”

  “I was her babysitter! What did you expect? That I would let her lasso passing cars while wearing roller skates? And don’t get me started about the time she thought she’d jump out of her window during a lightning storm. If ever a girl needed a lecture, she did.”

  Maverick chuckled. “Yeah, well, that wild child is coming home on leave in a couple of days, and Mom wants you to come over for a barbecue after church next Sunday. Think you can manage?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Good. Because she says she has a surprise for you.”

  “Your mom or Watts?”

  “Watts, of course. Why do you think I’m warning you?”

  Lia swallowed her fear. The last time Maverick’s sister had presented her with a surprise, she’d ended up in the ER, and not as a nurse.

  Chapter 8

  Worst idea ever.

  Maverick stared at the throbbing vein in his supervisor’s neck. Then he closed his eyes and tried counting to ten, hoping he’d open them to find this meeting was a bad dream.

  He only made it to three before he peeked.

  Nope, not a dream.

  His supervisor, Mr. Planter, continued to stare daggers at him, and Butch Hutchinson, the other man in the meeting, seemed delighted by the strife he’d managed to stir up with his appearance.

  “I told you I would be filing a report.” Maverick wasn’t in the wrong, and he knew it. Why was his supervisor being so obstinate about the whole thing? “The system’s been hacked. There’s no way around it. The cybersecurity team can help us figure out what’s going on.”

  “I would have asked for help if I’d needed it.” Mr. Planter drummed his fingers on the conference room table.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen, there’s no need to argue. We all want the same thing, don’t we?”

  Maverick flicked his gaze toward the polished man with shrewd eyes and a big, shiny Rolex. “I don’t know. Do we? Because showing up unannounced and demanding a meeting where you drop a bombshell and sit back to see who’s going to throw who under the bus doesn’t give me the impression that you want the same thing I do.”

  Mr. Planter sputtered. “What he said!”

  Mr. Hutchinson leaned forward and steepled his fingers. “Very well. Why don’t we start over?” He ignored Mr. Planter and held out a manicured hand toward Maverick. “My name’s Butch. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Mr. Planter’s face transformed, becoming an alarming shade of purple, as Maverick reached his hand out and shook Butch Hutchinson’s. They might untangle this mess, but the chances of him still having a job when all was said and done were getting slimmer by the minute.

  “What brings you to the ER? More network trouble?”

  Maverick winced at Lia’s innocent question. “Something like that.”

  “Why the long face?”

  He shook his head. “Long story. Are you off soon?”

  She nodded. “I finished passdown, so I’m done for the night.”

  Dark circles under her grey eyes turned her normally pale skin ghostlike. “Do you work tomorrow?”

  Lia gave a quick shake of her head. “Day off, thank goodness. It’s been a long couple of days.”

  “Let me take you out to dinner. You can listen to me complain about my job. Then I’ll give you a lift back to the hospital so you can pick up your car.”

  She inspected him for the better part of a minute. “Will nobody else listen to you whine?”

  Maverick almost reached out to tug on her ponytail. “Men don’t whine. We vent.”

  One of her eyebrows lifted. “You know the implication there is that women whine.”

  He took a step back and held his hands in front of him. “Women don’t whine either. Ever.”

  Her eyebrow stayed up.

  “Women…uh… Women share their feelings in a, uh, healthy and productive manner.”

  Seconds ago, Lia had looked ready to fall asleep on her feet. In an instant, though, the fatigue vanished, leaving laughter in its wake. “You men could learn a thing or two from us women.” She spun on her heel and headed toward the ER locker room. “Be back in a flash.”

  Maverick watched her go. The sway of her hips made him think of… Uh-oh. Not going there. He was firmly in the friend zone, and thoughts like that did not belong in the friend zone. Thoughts like that were for people in the dating zone.

  Had the Network Elf had those kinds of thoughts?

  Maverick gritted his teeth. Thoughts like that didn’t belong in the dating zone, either, then. They should be reserved for the engaged zone. If some random man Lia went out with entertained thoughts like he’d just had, Maverick would have to deck the guy. No question.

  So definitely not okay in the dating zone.

  Thoughts like that belonged in the engaged zone, at least. Or the married zone. That was the only safe place for them.

  He and Lia were neither of those, so those thoughts positively, absolutely didn’t belong in his head.

  At all.

  “Are you going to stand there all day, or are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

  Maverick blinked a couple of times before his vision cleared and he saw Lia standing there with her arms crossed. He tried to grin at her, but it felt as stiff as a ceramic drama mask. “Sure, let’s go.”

  Any other time, he would have draped his arm across her shoulders. They were friends. They’d known each other for eons. They were comfortable and familiar. Things between them had always been easy.

  Not now though. Suddenly, comfortable and easy were the absolute last words he would use to describe their relationship.

  Why’d he have to go and notice her hips? And in scrubs, for pity’s sake! Nobody was supposed to look good in scrubs.

  “Yoo-hoo.” Lia waved her hand in front of his face. “Are you going to open the door for me or not?”

  They were at the staff exit, and Maverick had no recollection of the walk there. “Sorry. A lot on my mind.” Maverick pulled on the door, but it didn’t budge. Drat. As if he hadn’t gone through this door hundreds of times, he’d forgotten to push.

  “Whatever you need to vent about must be important. Are you sure I shouldn’t drive?”

  Maverick tried to shake the weird not-friend-zone cobwebs from his mind. “Zoned out. Sorry.”

  He pushed the door open and held it for Lia.

  He needed to get the craziness in his head u
nder control before he completely ruined the best friendship he’d ever had. I could use some help here, God. I don’t know what happened back there, but could you wash that image out of my mind? Please?

  It wasn’t like it had been a dirty image or anything. But it hadn’t been a friend-zone image, either. Friends did not notice the sway of their friends’ hips. Period.

  Maverick stared at his burger. “Um… How was your day?”

  Lia reached across the table and nabbed one of his fries. “I’m starving. Don’t mind me. I got five minutes for lunch and barely took one bite before getting called back to work.”

  It was good to see her eating. Maybe she was finally over Plus-Size Jerk and Network Elf Jerk.

  He said nothing else, and she stepped in to fill the silence. “Other than that, the usual. I dove out of the way of someone vomiting only to end up with a trainee who had trouble putting in an IV. Blood went everywhere.”

  He winced. “Any sterilization protocols in place? Or whatever they call it?” He couldn’t remember everything about her nursing job, but he knew the nurses ran a risk whenever they came into contact with blood. No one could tell by looking at someone whether or not they had a blood-borne disease.

  She frowned. “I’m fine, but the trainee ended up with blood in her mouth, which of course led to more vomiting that I managed to dodge.”

  Blood in the mouth… Maverick shuddered. Computers were so much safer than people, even if he did have to put up with a supervisor that would rather protect his job than sort out a serious problem. “Is she going to be okay?”

  Lia frowned. “They’re doing a complete blood workup on the patient to determine if the trainee has anything to worry about. She was sent home for the day, too, but that was mostly because she freaked out. We have so many safety protocols in place as it is that even if she did somehow get infected, there’d be no way for her to pass it on to a patient. But it is what it is. She’d already scheduled some vacation time for a trip with her family. The test results should all be in before she returns, even if it’s just for her own mental well-being. Hopefully she’s fine because I can tell you, this is one lesson she won’t ever forget. No point going through the lesson if you’re not going to return to the job.”

  Maverick was in mid-chew when Lia pointed her fork at him. “We’re here so you can vent, and you’re quiet as a church mouse.”

  A picture of Mrs. Peabody swinging her purse at one of the ushers flitted through his mind. He put his burger down and wiped his hands on his napkin. “Remember when the ER got cut off from the main hospital network?”

  She nodded.

  “It may have been intentional. The router port for the ER failed, but it wasn’t a hardware issue. It looks like someone turned it off via software.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Why would someone do that?”

  “No clue, but that’s not the problem.”

  She stabbed a piece of hardboiled egg with her fork. “Seems to me like that’s quite a problem.”

  He took a long draw on his water. “I filed an incident report, and the hospital’s cybersecurity team has been called in to investigate the situation.”

  “We have a cybersecurity team? Then how could something like that happen?”

  “The team’s not ours. It belongs to Ferito Technology, the corporation that owns the hospital.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Yeah.” Maverick reached for the salt and added more to his fries. “A cybersecurity team owned by a global technology company. These guys are no lightweights, and the fact that they’re here has transformed my supervisor from someone who’s perpetually irritable and lazy into someone who’s angry and looking for anyone he can find to take the blame.”

  “And since you filed the incident report…”

  “Yep. I’m sure the cybersecurity team will get to the bottom of things, but I’m equally sure that once they move on from here, I’ll be out of a job.”

  “What’s your supervisor’s name? Planet?”

  Maverick shook his head. “Planter. Mr. Planter.”

  She waved her fork again. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Planter. Whatever. What makes you so sure Mr. Planter will fire you once the dust settles?”

  Maverick exaggerated the wince that came naturally. “I was leaving today when he told me I should spend the evening polishing my résumé.”

  “Ouch.” Lia ate the last bite of her salad and leaned back in the booth. “Can’t you just go to HR and explain the situation if he tries to fire you?”

  “He’d still be my supervisor. It’s a hospital. A nurse who’s unhappy with her job can go to work in another department. Switch to cardiology or something. There’s only one IT department, though, and that department has all of one supervisor. Unless I want to start taking people’s temperature, I can’t escape Mr. Planter.”

  “Hm. Doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Yeah, well, this is the real world, right? I find a way to make it work, or I find another job. Those are my two choices.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Maverick popped the last fry into his mouth. “I want to stick around long enough to see what the cybersecurity team uncovers.”

  “You’re really interested in that stuff, aren’t you?”

  “I’m curious.”

  “Maybe you should apply for a job with Ferito Tech. I’m sure they have openings all the time.”

  He frowned. “I’ll wait for the investigation to wrap up. If they find gross negligence on the side of the IT department, then I’m pretty sure any application I submit will be summarily ignored.”

  Lia stretched her hand out across the table and rested it on his. “God’s got this. Whether you stay at the hospital or not, it’ll all work out.”

  His job situation might be okay eventually, sure. His heart was another story altogether. The second she’d touched his hand, his heart had gone into double-time and mocked every friend-zone lecture he’d given himself on the drive to the restaurant.

  Chapter 9

  Lia slid into a seat on the far right side of the sanctuary.

  Maverick always sat in the center section near his family, so she stayed away from the middle seats altogether. Every breathing person in the congregation — and their brothers, uncles, cousins, and long-lost imaginary friends — thought she and Maverick should date. Sitting anywhere in his vicinity threw oil on that particular, combustible fire, so she avoided him like the plague at church.

  Everyone knew the best way to remain friends with someone was to avoid being seen with them.

  At least, that was how it worked when the two friends were of the opposite sex.

  Lia chuckled. Even her mom thought she and Maverick should date. Her not-so-subtle hint-dropping was now in its third year.

  Look at that Maverick. Bought his own home and he’s not even thirty.

  A stable man like Maverick is going to make some woman a fine husband one of these days.

  I can picture Maverick with a couple of cute kids in tow. How many kids do you think you want?

  If Lia couldn’t get her own mom to understand she and Maverick weren’t meant to be anything more than friends, then convincing other people was out of the question. Better to avoid him and bypass the whole discussion.

  A blond ball of energy threw herself into the seat beside Lia. “I’ve missed you!” Watts wrapped her arms around Lia’s neck and gave her a tight squeeze. “You’re coming to lunch today, aren’t you? I brought a surprise for you. You have to come. Tell me you’re coming.”

  Lia resisted the urge to ruffle Watts’ hair. What was acceptable when Maverick’s sister had been eight, no longer went over particularly well in public. Hair ruffling was a thing of the past. Besides, they were in church, and she didn’t need the other congregants to see her treating Watts like a little sister. The way her luck ran, people would get all kinds of crazy ideas from it.

  The last time Watts had been home for church, she’d given Lia a herculean hug. The next day, t
he church’s event coordinator had emailed to ask if she should reserve the church. For the Promise-Hoyt nuptials.

  Nope. No hair ruffling today.

  At least at church.

  It would be fine later at the Hoyts’ house. Lia had known Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt since her first grade year. They wouldn’t get any weird ideas if she ruffled Watts’ hair. They were decent, solid, sensible people. Unlike her mother, who’d lost her last shred of sensibility when Lia had welcomed her twenty-eighth birthday without any marital prospects on the horizon.

  “Lia, it’s so good to see you!” Mrs. Hoyt pulled Lia into a hug and squeezed tight. “I see you every Sunday, but it’s always from such a long distance. I miss visiting with you.”

  Guilt stabbed Lia’s middle. “I know. It’s just that… Um…”

  The hug ended, but Mrs. Hoyt rested her hands on Lia’s shoulders. “I know. Mav explained. You don’t want people to think you’re dating each other. Nobody’s going to ask my opinion, but I think you could fix the whole problem by doing exactly what you don’t want people to think you’re doing. Date one another and get it over with.”

  “Wh-what?” Great. Now Mrs. Hoyt had jumped off the cliff, too. On the bright side, at least Lia’s mother wouldn’t be alone on the jagged rocks below.

  “If avoiding him makes people think you’re dating, maybe you should try dating him. Who knows? Maybe then people will think you’re just friends.”

  The woman got an A for effort. The argument made sense. In an unhinged, kooky kind of way.

  “Lia!” Watts came running up. “Come on, come on, come on. I have a surprise for you.”

  Maverick’s younger sister tugged Lia out to the back patio. “Lia, meet Jacob and Wesley.”

  Lia peered from Watts to the two giant men standing by the outdoor grill. What on earth was that girl up to? “Nice to meet you.”

  One of the men looked like he’d rather crawl under a bed of nails than be stuck talking to her. The other had eyes that danced and twinkled in the noonday sun. Lia didn’t know which was which, though. Watts hadn’t bothered to elaborate before running off with a shout of, “Ferris!”

  The smiling one quirked an eyebrow. “Ferris? Who’s that?”