One More Home Plate

He has spent his career learning how to leave. She has built her life around giving everyone else a reason to stay.

Desiree Rivas knows exactly where the line is.

She is Harbor Lights Baseball's community director.

Kimutai Gitau is the team's first baseman.

And, more inconveniently, he is her brother's teammate.

For nearly three seasons, their sharp conversations and unwanted chemistry have remained safely on opposite sides of that line.

Then one rivalry game changes everything.

A confrontation at first base becomes a viral scandal. Reporters begin targeting the club's community programmes. Host families who have opened their homes to young players suddenly find cameras outside their doors, and Desiree is forced to protect a network built on trust before public attention tears it apart.

Kimutai should be part of the problem.

Instead, he becomes the person standing beside her while they try to fix it.

He listens when frightened families need space.

He gives a displaced young player somewhere to sleep.

He shows up when Desiree expects him to leave.

And every hour they spend together makes ignoring their attraction more impossible.

One kiss becomes another.

Secret dinners become nights neither wants to end.

Professional boundaries become increasingly difficult to maintain when the relationship behind closed doors starts feeling more real than either of them planned.

But Desiree has spent years making sure nobody can dismiss her career as access gained through her baseball family. If anyone discovers she is sleeping with one of the team's most visible players while she controls community appearances, every decision she has made could be questioned.

Kimutai understands why she needs secrecy.

He just does not know how long he can keep acting as though touching her is something they should hide.

As the media pressure grows and the host-family crisis becomes connected to something larger inside Harbor Lights Baseball, Desiree and Kimutai must decide whether protecting what they have means keeping it private or finally refusing to treat the truth like evidence against them.

And for a man who has spent years making sure everything he owns can be packed before lunch, falling for a woman rooted deeply in Riverbend may be the most dangerous decision of all.

One More Home Plate is a high heat contemporary baseball romance featuring a secret relationship, first baseman hero, community director heroine, teammate's sister, forbidden workplace attraction, sharp banter, found family, host families, media pressure, emotional vulnerability and open-door chemistry.

Book One of Harbor Lights Baseball, a continuing-couple trilogy. Desiree and Kimutai choose to pursue something real, but their complete happily ever after arrives later in the series. Their story continues in Book Two, Before the Ninth Inning.