Change Up Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  More Steamy Romance by Lacy Hart

  Change Up

  A Small Town, Single Dad Romance

  By Lacy Hart

  Love Hot, Steamy Romance?

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  Copyright © 2018 by Lacy Hart & Scarlet Lantern Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language.

  All characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  More Steamy Romance by Lacy Hart

  1

  Wes

  In years past, spring could never come around fast enough. I would spend all winter getting myself ready, staying in shape and prepping the new baseball gloves I would use that year. I’d watch out the window from my home in Pennsylvania as the snow and ice would slowly start to melt. Eventually the winter would give way to the signs of spring that erupted from the trees and ground. That joy has been with me since the time I was a teenager up until now.

  As much as I wanted the winter months to end, it was also the only time I would get to spend with my daughter, Isabelle. Time with family when you are a professional ballplayer can be fleeting, and I wasn’t even there the day Izzy was born. I was still young, only twenty years old, and was working my way through the minor leagues. We were on a road trip in Texas, heading to Round Rock or Corpus Christi, or any one of another dozen minor league towns that I passed through over the years, when I got the call that Rachel had gone into labor and was on her way to the hospital. Back then, players didn’t get the opportunity for paternity leave, especially if you were a minor league player. You hoped you would be nearby when it happened so you could jump home for a day and then get back on the road. With my luck, I was 2,000 miles away and didn’t get to see my daughter until weeks later when we had a day off.

  When I turned twenty-two and finally made it to the major leagues, I had a bit more security, could take better care of my family, and saw how important those few months in the winter were to be with my daughter. It became even more significant to me when Rachel left me after seven years of marriage, taking off with an old high school boyfriend and leaving Izzy in my care. Thankfully, my parents stepped up to help me out, caring for Izzy at their home in Pennsylvania while I was off playing. It took some real adjustment on all our parts, and Izzy went through some times of real resentment with me, hating that I was gone for months at a time, that she was uprooted from the life she knew to live with her grandparents, and to basically be apart from her parents all the time.

  I did my best to make up for it when I had the time to do it. Playing in the majors gave me a lot of perks, including a very good paycheck so I could provide well for Izzy and make sure she had everything she needed and then some. There were times when I clearly overcompensated, buying her things that she never really needed to make up for not being there, but I felt like it was something I had to do.

  Years go by too quickly for all of us, and it seems even more so when you are a professional athlete. Now I look around and see that Izzy is fifteen, growing into a young woman, and I am thirty-five, an old man by baseball standards. It takes a little longer for me to get going when spring rolls around now. It’s harder to get out of bed, my muscles ache after a workout, and coming off a second left knee surgery over the winter certainly didn’t make things easier.

  By the time I got to Bradenton, Florida for spring training this year (the spring home of my team, the Pirates), I knew things were going to be difficult. I had been the starting first baseman for the last thirteen years, putting up good numbers along the way. I was no Hall of Famer, but my bat and glove had done a steady job, and I even got to go to an All-Star Game one year. This year, however, things were different. The team knew I was coming off an injury, my contract was up at the end of this coming season, and all I kept reading about in the newspapers was how it was time for the team to move on from me and give some younger guy a chance.

  I tried not to let it all get to me – the constant hounding by reporters, the blog articles on the Internet saying I was done – but in the back of my mind, I could feel myself questioning whether they were right. Those feelings affected my play, and I had a terrible first few weeks of spring. Every time I was in the lineup, there were more strikeouts or soft outs, and more aches and pains to deal with afterward.

  When the end of March came, I had hit .150 for the spring with no home runs. Most of my playing time had gone to a couple of young kids that the team management was high on. Even teammates I had for years shied away from talking to me about it, unable to come up with the words of encouragement that things would be alright.

  And then the day came where I was called into the office. The manager, Tim Newhouse, who I had played with in the minors years ago, was there with the new general manager, Steve Goodson. He was a smug, young guy in his twenties who was glued to his laptop all the time, looking at figures and numbers that meant nothing to guys that played the game.

  “Have a seat, Wes,” Tim said to me, pointing to the single chair positioned in front the small, wooden desk that was crammed into his office. Steve Goodson stood, his laptop resting on the file cabinet in the office. He stared at the screen, glancing over at me after I sat down.

  “We’re coming to the end of spring training Wes,” Tim started, barely able to look at me as he spoke.

  “I know Tim,” I said to him, hunching forward, closer to his desk. “I know where things are at. You know what I can do and have done for the
team for years now. Spring training numbers don’t mean anything.”

  “You’ve always come through for us Wes, year after year, and I’m sure you could do it again with more time…” Tim’s voice started trailing off before Goodson interrupted.

  “The fact is Wes that from a numbers standpoint, Bill Thomas is a better investment for us at this time, so we’re going to have to release you today,” Goodson said to me bluntly.

  “You feel that way too, Tim?” I said, trying to get Tim to look me straight in the eyes while he spoke. I saw him rubbing his hand over the stubble on his chin, searching for an answer that would appease Goodson and me, but we both knew there wasn’t one there.

  “It’s alright Tim, I get it,” I said to him, standing up from the chair. Goodson walked over and stood in front of me.

  “It’s nothing personal, Wes,” he said to me with a grin that I wanted to punch off his face. “The organization thanks you for all the years you have given us.” Goodson extended his hand to me, and I just stared at it.

  “Nothing personal?” I said angrily. “It’s personal to me since you just took my job away.”

  I stormed out of the office and went to my locker. I began to clean everything out while the few teammates left in the locker room watched on. Hank Swan, a pitcher that had come up just a year after me in the organization, walked over to me as I packed the last items away in my duffle bags.

  “Wes, you okay?” Hank said to me, putting his arm on my shoulder.

  “It’ll be fine Hank,” I told him, giving him a hug.

  “I’m sure you’ll land someplace,” Hank replied, trying to lift my spirits. “I’ll be pitching against you in no time.”

  “We’ll see,” I said to him as I carried my bags out into the hot Bradenton sun and over to my Lexus SUV. It was the only luxury car I ever bought with the money I made. I tossed my bags into the back and slammed the trunk closed. A couple of kids ran up to me, holding baseballs in their hands, asking for autographs. I gladly signed the balls.

  “Thanks, Mr. Martin,” one of the young boys said excitedly to me as they looked at the ball with my signature scrawled on it. “I can’t wait to see you playing up in Pittsburgh this year.”

  I just smiled and nodded at the kids as I climbed into my car before heading out towards the hotel I always stayed at during spring training so I could collect the rest of my things. I reached over and pressed the autodial button on the steering wheel and called my parents’ house. The phone rang once before it was answered.

  Hey, Wes,” my father said cheerfully. “What’s going on? You usually don’t call until the evening.”

  “I’m coming home Dad,” I said to him as I pulled out of the stadium lot for the last time.

  2

  Kristin

  Springtime in Western Pennsylvania still carries quite a chill, so the walk to the library from my apartment on Main Street was a bit brisker than I would have liked. It was days like this that made me long for the warm weather I always felt growing up in Georgia. In Georgia, it never seemed to matter what time of year it was; you could always count on it being warm, even sultry. Many times when I was younger there were days in March where we wore our shorts to school. Life in Pennsylvania was proving to be much different.

  Working as a librarian in a small town like Chandler has certainly had its perks. I only started here back in February, when the previous librarian decided to retire. I had found the job online as I scoured both job search websites and forums for libraries that might be looking for librarians. Being a librarian may not seem like the most glamorous job, particularly for a young woman today, but I have always been drawn to books, reading, and libraries since I was a little girl. Growing up in a small town in Georgia where we didn’t have a lot of money to spend on things meant spending many days at the library. I was able to borrow books, read, and take part in the programs they offered. The library gave me things to do that didn’t cost anything. My sister Lucy and I spent more time at the library than at home just so we had something to do.

  When we started to get older, Lucy came with me more as an excuse to leave the house and go and meet boys. I, on the other hand, had fallen in love with the library by then. I volunteered there, helping with programs throughout the year and working there during the summers all through high school. When the time came to graduate high school, Mr. Driscoll, our local librarian, pushed me to search for programs offering library science degrees. I did, and I was accepted at Valdosta State University. With the help of some scholarships, and hard work, I was able to put myself through and graduated in January.

  At that point, I was willing to accept the first job that was offered to me just to get my foot in the door somewhere. Weeks of searching, sending applications, conducting interviews on the phone and online, and even driving hundreds of miles to different locations for interviews had led to nothing… until I spotted this job in Chandler. I had never even heard of Chandler, Pennsylvania, and had to Google it to find out where it was. I saw it was a small town about an hour north of Pittsburgh with a population of just under 2,000. It might not have been the ideal fit for me, but it was an opportunity, so I applied. I heard back right away from Marion Harris, the director of the library, and soon had a phone interview that I worked my way through nervously. Surprisingly, just a few days later, I was asked if I could come to Chandler for an in-person interview.

  I flew into Pittsburgh and drove the hour to Chandler, shocked to see that it was even a smaller town than where I had grown up in Georgia. There was plenty of snow on the ground and cold in the air, something I was woefully unprepared for as a lifelong southern girl. After parking nearby, I walked quickly to the library, wearing my thin coat and braving the wind that whipped up the skirt of the navy suit I had bought for interviews.

  Marion Harris was impressed by my education and background, and loved the ideas that I had for a library that was a bit outdated and crying out for a new space. She offered me the job on the spot, though admitted she was a bit embarrassed that they could only offer me a starting salary in the $35,000 range, but I was eager to jump at it and said yes.

  I quickly uprooted my life from Georgia, packing my belongings from my parents’ house and driving up to Chandler. Marion helped me find an apartment that was both right down the street from the library and very affordable. While it was a modest place at best, it suited me just fine. With the help of some borrowed furniture from family and finding deals from local sources, my one-bedroom place was a nice, comfortable home in no time.

  Starting a new life so far from home was not easy. I had learned to become somewhat more outgoing thanks to my library experiences when I was younger, but I still thought of myself as shy and quiet. I was just as happy reading a book at home as I was going out with friends or going on a date. That doesn’t mean I never had boyfriends. I had a few steadies in high school and then again in college, but nothing I would ever call serious. Since I had arrived in Chandler, I had not seen too many eligible bachelors in the area. There isn’t a lot of industry going on around here, with mostly retail stores filling the town. Most of Chandler’s residents were employed at either the hospital or college that were nearby, just outside of town. There was also plenty of farmland around that people worked. With a small, mostly aging population, I had not come across anyone that seemed like good dating material.

  My companion at the library was Karen Manning. She had worked as an assistant here for a few years and was now in her late twenties. She didn’t have the degree they wanted for the head librarian job, so she never applied for it, but Karen was more than welcoming to me when I started, and we became fast friends. Karen was tall, much taller than my short stature at 5’4”, and she carried herself well. She kept in great shape, running every day that she could as well as walking to work every day from her place. Karen was perhaps the most confident and outspoken person I had come across in Chandler. More than once when Marion would be in the library with us I could see her shaking h
er head at the things that would come out of Karen’s mouth. Nevertheless, she was a good friend that took me out and around town, as well as introduced me to everyone that came in the library so that I quickly became familiar with the community.

  When I had arrived at the library, Karen was there at the front door waiting for me to open things up. I could see her breath in the cold air of the morning as I approached, and her red cheeks indicated to me that she had been there for a few minutes waiting for me.

  “It’s about time you got here!” she chastised, hopping up and down as I unlocked the front door. I quickly went inside and shut off the alarm system we had installed recently. In the past, the library never had the need for an alarm, but I had recently obtained us some funding so that we could add a couple of new computers. With the new technology, Marion felt the need for extra security.

  Karen and I walked in and went through our morning routine: switching on the lights, checking the return bin, checking books and materials back in, turning on the computers and the like. I went into the small office I had just behind the front desk and turned on my computer to check my email. Most days, the email was just questions about books and when they would come in. Karen came into the office and handed me a cup of coffee she made at our coffee maker and sat across from me.

  “How was your night?” she said to me as she flipped her short brown hair back.