Holiday Home Run

by Priscilla Oliveras

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

HOLIDAY HOME RUN
 
Event planner Julia Louisa Fernandez dreams of a life in Chicago. But her family in Puerto Rico expects her to take over the catering business. Former pro baseball player Ben Thomas knows what that’s like—and when they meet, he might be the one to inspire a winning strategy, just in time for the holidays . . .

Previously published in A Season to Celebrate.

Release date: October 27, 2020

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 100

Sample

“He’s here! He’s, like, in the building!!!”

Julia Fernandez winced at the squeal of hysteria that punctuated her coworker’s announcement as the college coed pushed open the glass conference room door.

At the impressionable age of twenty, Carol Prescott practically vibrated with excitement, her gray eyes wide with elation. Her normally pale complexion was flushed from a combination of her race down the office hallway and the reality of finally meeting the “man of the hour.”

At least, that’s how many of the gala committee members often referred to Benjamin Thomas.

The former big league baseball player had agreed to serve as the Holiday Soiree’s emcee for the third year in a row. Much to everyone else’s relief.

While this was Julia’s first year on the committee—the first of many, she hoped—for years she’d seen Ben giving interviews on one sports TV channel or another. Over the past couple of months working with the committee, she’d heard rave reviews about Ben’s ease in front of a live audience. Not to mention his charismatic, friendly personality and chiseled good looks that enticed donors to give a little more for a worthy cause like the Chicago Youth Association.

In fact, with him at the mic, the soiree had raised record amounts for area youth centers.

Julia might not have been living in Chicago during those events, but she’d done her homework. Had spent countless hours researching the organization and its past fund-raisers. In fact, she’d studied several other organizations along with multiple event-planning companies in the Chicago area in the last six months. All with an eye on making the move from Puerto Rico.

Of course, she’d kept this hidden from her parents and three brothers. No one knew about her ultimate goal.

No one except her cousin Lilí, here in Chicago. But that was only because Julia had to confess her plan to someone.

The guilt. The doubts. The excitement.

They all thrummed in her chest like a swarm of picaflores hovering. Tiny wings flapping at race speeds as the hummingbirds readied to dive-bomb into her belly when doubts sprouted.

She’d come to Chicago over Labor Day weekend on the guise of visiting her three primas. Two of her cousins were married now, popping out babies like all their tías expected them to do. Especially Julia’s mami.

Lilí was the youngest of the three sisters. Since Julia was barely a year older than her, they’d always been pretty close. Or, as close as social media, WhatsApp, and occasional visits back and forth between Chicago and the Island facilitated.

Both were still single and approaching their midtwenties. Both working on finding their niche in their respective fields, Lilí as a victim’s advocate and Julia as an event planner. Both ignoring the pressure from members of their familia to “find a good man and settle down already.”

For Julia, those cries were tied to the never-ending questions about when she planned to take over the catering business her parents had started years ago. No one ever asked if that’s what she wanted. Somewhere along the way it had simply become a given.

The expectation was that she’d find a nice man on the Island. Marry. Start a family. Continue in her mother’s footsteps. And eventually take over the family business.

The problem was . . . while she admired her mami’s tenacity in building the catering company from a small venture, preparing food for neighborhood and church parties, to the well-recognized and respected business that handled large corporate affairs, Julia wanted something different.

Somewhere different.

Some place a little less suffocating.

Never mind that no one had ever assumed one of her brothers would step in. Dios mío, not when their whole lives revolved around baseball. A good chunk of her childhood had been spent on her way to a ballpark, at a ballpark, or leaving a ballpark, thanks to her three brothers.

In Puerto Rico, baseball was like a religion. One her parents and brothers faithfully worshipped. She’d been baptized in the sport’s waters, raised on the catechism of Major League Baseball and Puerto Rico’s winter ball. Knew all the stories of the greats, like Roberto Clemente and Orlando Cepeda and so many more.

Frankly, she was relieved to be missing the start of winter ball this year. If she did things right with this temporary assistant position she’d lucked into, thanks to Rosa’s mother-in-law, Julia might be staying in Chicago for good.

She’d deal with how to deliver that news to her parents and brothers when the time came.

For now, she was focused on helping to plan the best-attended, highest-earning Holiday Soiree the Chicago Youth Association had ever held. If that meant dealing with yet another baseball player, one whose mere name caused grown women to swoon and whose career stats drove grown men to envy, she’d keep her personal qualms to herself and “just do it.”

She’d dealt with big-name players in the past. Many whose big bank accounts and prowess both on and off the field created inflated egos that left much to be desired.

Down the hallway, the elevator doors dinged.

Carol visibly shivered with glee. The young intern patted her long blond hair, then ran a jittery hand down her wool skirt.

“How do I look?” she stage-whispered from her perch near the glass door.

Julia pushed back her rolling chair, rising to stand at her place at the long conference table. “You look fine. What’s the big deal?”

“What’s the big . . . ? Um, it’s Ben Thomas.”

If Carol’s bug-eyed expression didn’t scream “What’s wrong with you?” her outstretched hands certainly did. “Chicago’s most eligible bachelor? Probably the best baseball player who’s ever lived?”

“Bueno, I’d have to counter that last statement,” Julia answered, holding up a hand to stall the girl’s rant. “But no matter what, I’ll tell you this—”

She broke off as Laura Taylor and several others came into view through the glass conference room walls. Standing a full head taller than everyone else was Ben Thomas.

Even though he was dressed in a navy, ribbed turtleneck sweater to ward off the mid-November chill, rather than a baseball uniform and cap, she immediately recognized his square jaw, straight nose, and piercing blue eyes.

Not because she was a groupie. Por favor, no.

More so because her youngest brother Martín had the guy’s rookie season baseball card stuck on the wall over his bed. Martín’s main goal in life was to pitch as well as Ben did. Or rather, as well as Ben had before injuries took him out of the game way too soon.

Ben had been a pitching phenom. One for the record books. Every baseball executive had clamored to get his arm on their team. Players had raved about his leadership in the dugout and the locker room. His coaches and managers always wanted him in the game. That desire to have him deliver on the mound had led to him blowing out his arm. Needlessly, if you asked her.

However, pitching phenom or not, to her, Ben Thomas was simply the emcee of the Holiday Soiree that could be her ticket off the Island and a huge help to setting her on her way to starting her own independent life. Nothing more.

Admittedly he was definitely a papi chulo, as her cousin Lilí liked to say when describing a hot guy. But Julia wasn’t in the market for a guy. Not right now anyway.

“Tell me what?” Carol prodded.

Straightening her shoulders, Julia looked her new friend in the eye, hoping to calm Carol’s nerves. “Remember this, famous pitcher or not, . . .