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

by Krista Phillips

  “Leave. Now.”

  But the bride stopped between them and the exit, greeting the wedding guests next to Nick and Chelsea. “Yeah, Shawn’s taking some photos with his dad and grandfather really quickly,” she told them.

  If they separated from the crowd now…

  “Hi, I’m Amber.” She gripped Chelsea’s elbow. “Remind me of your name again?”

  Chelsea’s cheeks reddened, and she turned to Nick in a panic. “I—um.”

  “You see, there’s been a misunderstanding,” he supplied.

  “We’re in town for a convention and thought we were on a tour of Wrigley Field.”

  Amber threw her head back and slapped her thigh. “No! That’s hilarious!”

  “We’re so, terribly sorry.”

  “Well, you must stay and see the field!” Amber said on the tail of her laughter. “What are your names?”

  Nick’s hand found the small of Chelsea’s back. “This is Chelsea Scott, and I’m Nick Pearson.”

  “Oh!” The bride gasped. “That’s why I know you, love!” She reached for Chelsea’s hand. “I’m on my third Chelsea Scott planner, and I swear by them so much that I bought them for my whole staff.”

  A grin spread across Chelsea’s face, and Nick squeezed her waist. “Thank you. That means the world to hear you say that. We have to get back soon, but we’ll just look at the field real quick and stay out of y’all’s way, if that’s okay.”

  “You stay as long as you want.” Amber let go of Chelsea’s hand. “It was so nice to meet you two.”

  “Congratulations,” Nick said before she moved through the crowd.

  Chelsea turned to him, dropping her jaw theatrically. Wow, she mouthed.

  “I know. You’re kind of a big deal.” They walked with the rest of the crowd into the stands but passed the wedding congregation through a gate until they were standing in the Cubs’ dugout.

  “Do you know how many great ones have played here?” Nick sat on the bench and leaned back as if the place were his second home, glancing at Chelsea. Her dark eyes glittered as she looked out onto the field. Being here with her could probably compete with the awe-inspiring moments in this stadium, World Series victory or not.

  She sank next to him and rested her head in her palms, as if finally being still had made the weight she was carrying even heavier. “All of them, I’m sure.”

  “Hey.” Nick leaned forward until he was on Chelsea’s level. “No matter what happens with that lady, it’s your name on the door and your decision, not Rhonda’s.” He lowered his voice. “Whatever your team has done, you built this company. It was you.”

  “Thank you, Nick.” A corner of Chelsea’s delicate mouth lifted weakly. “But it’s not much to be proud of right now.”

  “Why? You just got recognized by someone in a random city. You—”

  “I don’t care about being recognized, Nick. I care about being able to pay my suppliers and make sure my staff doesn’t have to go job hunting, when I haven’t been taking home a check some weeks.” She slumped against the bench. “I can’t believe I just admitted that out loud.”

  “What happened, Chelsea?”

  She let out a ragged breath and pulled her knees to her chin before hastily returning her feet to the ground and smoothing her dress. “I spoke at this smaller convention last year, and I met a man.” She shook her head, eyebrows dipping. “He told me this story about building his printing business from the ground up and showed me some of his work, which was all super impressive.”

  No. It didn’t take a quiz bowl captain to know where this was going.

  “Then he gave me this awesome quote, and the proofs he sent back looked great, so when my current printer couldn’t match it, I pulled our product—from the company we’d always gone with, that we loved—and went with Paul.”

  Nick was going to need blood pressure medicine.

  “We opened the ones we were using for promotions, and they were fine, so I paid him in full. But when we went to ship the pre-orders for our entire yearly collection, almost all of them had backward pages, were bound out of order, the ink was fading in places, or something that made them unsalvageable. Then, when I called him to fix it, he told me he’d look into it and disappeared off the face of the planet with our money.”

  That guy had better hope he never came across Nick. Because if he did…

  “That’s messed up. So you had to eat all those orders?”

  Chelsea crossed her arms. “Our old printer took us back—yeah, you can imagine that conversation—but we had to pay almost double in rush fees.

  Nick wrapped an arm around her, and she leaned into him.

  “Don’t worry.” A glimpse of her normal, ornery self flashed in her voice. “There’s a punching bag with his face on it at home. I’ve forgiven him. We’re moving on, thanks to Rhonda. If I hadn’t hired her, we’d all be designing corporate spending reports in a cubicle somewhere right now.”

  He squeezed her gently. No wonder she felt so much pressure surrounding this meeting.

  Chelsea breathed a clean sigh, like the cathartic key change near the end of a song. “Thanks for taking me here.” She untangled from him and sat up. “It’s so calming being in an empty stadium.”

  “Isn’t it? It’s weird seeing the field from this point of view.”

  “I think you were always my favorite baseball player, Nick. Nobody could hit a ball harder than you.”

  The way she looked at him had always made him feel like a hero. He opened his mouth, fumbling for a reply, when Chelsea’s phone rang.

  “It’s Missy.” She lifted it to her ear, and Nick pulled his own phone out to get them another ride. “Hey! How was your flight? You’re at the convention center now? Okay—what?” Her gaze snapped to Nick. “Sounds good. We’ll meet you there in a bit.”

  She tapped the phone off and shook her head. “Nick Pearson.”

  He’d been found out.

  “When did you have time to set up our exhibit?”

  Walking into the convention center was a different experience now that more of the booths were filling in. It was as if the air were charged with something magical now that so many creatives and so much can-do spirit had convened under the same roof.

  Maybe some of it would rub off on Chelsea.

  “Oh, my goodness.” At the center of it all was her exhibit, even more glorious in this lighting than when they’d demoed it in the office. Perfect rows and angles of clean, white fabricated shelving with a custom LED Chelsea Scott Paper logo glowing in the middle. Oh, that lighting. It turned her planners into jewel-like prom queens in a sea of black and white. Exactly how she’d imagined it.

  “I still can’t believe you did this.” While she’d been bumbling all over Jewel Hargett and stuffing her face with cinnamon rolls, he’d set up their booth without being asked.

  Nick shrugged. “Yeah, well, you were kind of asking for it leaving this where I could find it.” He pulled a folded piece of paper from the top of a samples bin, the assembly guide she’d put together during their trial staging, complete with photo illustrations.

  Chelsea was definitely adding this into Nick’s compensation for the weekend. He’d nailed their mock-up perfectly, down to the bouquet of pencils on the island and the cascading prism of planners lining the shelves.

  Her coworkers wouldn’t stop fawning over him, as if he were the gate agent offering them free upgrade tickets on a plane to paradise. But to Chelsea, he was paradise in the midst of her concrete jungle, like one of those start-up companies’ break rooms she’d read about with infused water and virtual reality Hawaii simulations or something.

  Fortunately he kept his arms crossed and maintained a friendly but professional distance, only coming with her because she’d insisted. Otherwise, there would be no fooling her team where her feelings for Nick were concerned.

  “Oh, Chels.” Missy reached into her bag. “We brought you a new Plan.” She produced an embossed gray leather folio.
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br />   “Come to Mama.” Chelsea hugged it to her chest then flipped through the pages. “Thank you. It looks like, since our exhibit is already done, we’re…actually ahead of schedule.” Even after everything that had come from left field. Thank the Lord. For being so kind.

  She raised her eyebrows at Nick. And thank Nick Pearson.

  “Hey, look, you guys!”

  Chelsea spun around at a high-pitched voice.

  “It’s the Chelsea Scott booth! This is gorgeous.” The girl, whose face said she was no older than sixteen, but whose badge said she was press, lowered her voice to a mock-whisper. “You’re on Facebook Live with Queen Emmerlyn of YouTube. Is that okay?”

  “Um, uh, sure.” Chelsea shot a look at Rhonda, whose furiously blinking eyes told her it was most certainly not okay. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nick press his knuckles to his mouth, obviously savoring her torment.

  Oh, she’d make sure he’d get his.

  Chelsea walked the video blogger—Emmerlyn—through a few of the current planners, along with some of their customized paper products and office supplies, purposefully avoiding Nick’s attempts to distract her. Resisting the urge to yank his muscled forearm into the shot and ask him to take over the tour on the spot. Fortunately Emmerlyn made it easy, particularly fascinated by a hand-lettered Scripture notepad and coffee mug collection they’d designed with an artist-friend whose talent made the perfect deflection.

  “I think we can all agree that paper lovers and coffee go hand in hand,” Emmerlyn said into her smartphone with a giggle. “Ooh, Tori from Lincoln is asking if you can give us a sneak peek of the new line?”

  Chelsea opened her mouth to reply, but Rhonda stepped in front of her. “The 2017-2018 lines will be debuted at the International Stationery Show gala tonight, available for wholesale purchase at the Chelsea Scott Paper exhibit tomorrow.”

  The Frost Queen’s sister? Nick mouthed over Rhonda’s head.

  Chelsea bit down on the inside of her cheek, but her laugh was still audible. All eyes in the booth landed on her, and she coughed. “Excuse me.”

  Emmerlyn smoothly ended the feed and moved on to her next conquest, casting major side-eye at Rhonda, who’d immediately taken a phone call.

  Oh, Rhonda. Brilliant business mind, she was, but her tact was cut from chain mail. She came across much too stern—even when trying to be diplomatic—to ever do PR, bless her heart.

  “Speaking of the gala,” Missy said. “Miranda called and said something isn’t working right with the payment plugin for the new line.”

  “What?” Could anything else possibly go wrong?

  Please. Don’t answer that.

  Missy shrugged. “The developers are working on it as we speak, but she, um, doesn’t have all of the product information they need.” The way her words came like a magician pulling knotted handkerchiefs from his sleeve told Chelsea exactly what was coming next and the motive behind this obvious ruse. “It’s no big deal, but I should probably take care of that tonight before we go live with the pre-orders, huh?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Missy sounded like her own mother, who brought up her future grandchildren with the same sugarcoated sneakiness. Ever predictable, her sister-in-law’s gaze shifted to Nick. “You know, you could go along to the gala. Chelsea’s giving the keynote address—did she tell you?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t know that was tonight.”

  “Yep.” Chelsea shot a glance at Missy. See if I go out of my way for her fancy espresso every morning after this.

  Her sister-in-law had been around the summer Chelsea and Nick were together. She knew their history, even if it was the summer after Brandon and Missy’s only year apart at college and they’d been preoccupied by a little kissing of their own. Gross.

  “Nicholas doesn’t want to put on a suit and take orders all night.” Chelsea motioned for Nick to back her up. “He’s done enough for us as it is.”

  He was silent for a few seconds, probably gauging how to politely say no.

  “It would mean getting to see Chelsea walk in heels.” Missy planted her hands on her hips.

  Nick’s head swiveled toward Chelsea, the corner of his mouth lifting in his devilish, irresistible way. “Then that alone would be worth it.”

  “You couldn’t even begin to handle it.” Chelsea said. “Besides, Rhonda will be there. She can help me.”

  “I’ll be busy.” The older lady covered the microphone on her mobile. “You don’t want me running your orders, do you? Not when I can be trying to track down that Jewel Hargett woman.”

  “It’s not a problem.” Nick rubbed his palms together. “I mean, there will be good food there, right? And it’ll probably save us an emergency room trip with you in those shoes.”

  Missy grinned. “The man has jokes.”

  “You’re in luck. I even packed my clean pair of jeans.”

  Even Rhonda bared a humored smile as Chelsea rolled her eyes.

  “At least there’s that.” The devastating vision of Nick in a suit fleeted through her mind, snuffing out all further arguments. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have him there. He’d certainly been helpful thus far.

  Now that she thought about it, maybe Chelsea would have to bring her sister-in-law a giant breakfast burrito every morning with her espresso.

  Chapter 7

  Spanx? Check.

  Smoky eyeliner? Check.

  Hideous-leg-abrasion-concealing dress? Check.

  Hair expertly curled and pinned by the sister-in-law? Check.

  Her “stylists” had picked a dark teal chiffon dress with an asymmetrical hemline that fell to her knees on one side and conveniently swooped to cover the skin-colored wrap on her lower leg. Its high, jeweled neckline and drop waist did wonders for her athletic figure, but Chelsea kept the slimming undergarments for fear that, if uncontained, the caffeinated butterflies doing the Cha-Cha in her middle would fly straight through her skin.

  “Oh, no.” She took a deep breath and side-eyed her shoes. They’d somehow grown taller, spikier since she packed them. All the girls had told her to practice walking in them to break them in. She wanted to punch Past Chelsea in the face for always telling herself she’d do it later. Didn’t she know she’d be required to walk in them while speaking to hundreds of people?

  “Ready?” Missy emerged from their hotel room’s bathroom, smoothing a stray piece of Chelsea’s hair near the top of the pile.

  Chelsea nodded and slid her feet into the smoke-colored leather. When she looked up, some of the color had drained from Missy’s face, and her sister-in-law drifted back into the bathroom. “Hey, are you okay?”

  “I’ve been feeling really worn out around this time every night when I get home from work.”

  And when she returned, Chelsea knew, even before Missy flicked her wrist to reveal an unmistakable white stick.

  “I guess now I have the answer.”

  “Missy!” Chelsea let out a squeal and ran to hug her sister-in-law. “Are you literally just finding out right now?”

  “You’re the first to know—well, I guess the second.” She gave a shaky little laugh. “I’ll, uh, call Brandon after you leave.”

  “He’s going to pee his pants with happiness, Miss.”

  She shook her head, eyes glazing in shock. “It just happened so fast. We literally just started trying last month.”

  “You’re going to be a mom.”

  Finally, Missy’s expression of shock-terror melted into a grin. “You need to go. You have a big night ahead of you.”

  “This is wayyyy important than that.” This changed everything.

  “Well, I’m sure Nick’s waiting for you.” The conspiring-mother Missy reappeared. “You can tell him about it. We know we can trust him.”

  Chelsea rocked on her heels. Did they, though?

  “Stop. I can see what you’re doing and just stop. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Something twisted in Chelsea’s chest, and she
nodded. “I don’t want to mess anything up with the company again. Especially not now.”

  “What happened with Paul wasn’t your fault, Chelsea. You know none of us think that.”

  Chelsea picked at a rogue thread on her dress.

  “Anyway, you and Nick have always been amazing together. And I see you two. You guys have kissed already, haven’t you?”

  “What?” Chelsea’s jaw dropped. “No.”

  “C’mon. But almost, right?”

  Busted. “How did you know?”

  Missy pulled back the covers of her bed and crawled in. “I knew the second you two walked into the convention center together—the second you told me he was driving you to Chicago, really.”

  “Maybe it was the motherly intuition kicking in.”

  “You don’t need any kind of intuition to know that the guy’s crazy about you.” Missy pulled her laptop from the bedside table. “Anyway, go. Baby and I will hold down the fort here.” She patted her flat stomach.

  “Oh, I have no doubt.” Chelsea grinned. “I love him or her already, you should know.”

  Missy beamed, her eyes watering. “He or she is proud to have you for an aunt and knows you’re going to rock that speech.”

  Chelsea took a deep breath and shouldered the bag that contained The Plan, her notes, and mints then wobbled out the door. Why did women choose to wear these again? It was like walking on toothpicks. Pushing her weight to the balls of her feet helped a little as everyone had said it would, but now she just walked like a T-Rex in a dress.

  Baby. Her brother was going to be a dad. Hopefully a lot better than the one they had. This changed everything. It at once calmed her nerves because her keynote was trivial compared to impending new life and it also made the speech the most important thing in the world. Her little niece or nephew needed to see what could happen if you went for your dreams.

  The second the elevator opened, Chelsea’s gaze locked in on Nick as if it had a homing beacon programmed with his exact coordinates. She almost staggered into the metal frame. There he was, looking at something on his phone with his knee leaning on a chair.

  For the love of understated pinstripes, the man looked good in gray. His blond hair was darker, slicked back with product in a way that turned his blue eyes to an iced-over pond glinting in the sun.