Liz Tomforde’s contemporary sports romance Caught Up (2023) is the third novel in her interconnected Windy City series of standalone books. The novel follows Kai Rhodes, a single father and starting pitcher for Chicago’s Major League Baseball team, whose world is upended when he’s forced to hire his coach’s daughter as his son’s nanny. Miller Montgomery, an award-winning pastry chef on a summer hiatus to escape professional burnout, clashes with the overprotective Kai, but their forced proximity soon evolves into a deep connection that challenges both of their life plans. A New York Times bestseller and a 2023 Goodreads Choice Award nominee for Best Romance, the novel gained popularity on social media platforms like TikTok.

Tomforde, who previously worked as a private flight attendant for a professional hockey team, authentically portrays the high-pressure world of professional athletics. Caught Up delves into The Conflict Between Professional Ambition and Personal Fulfillment by examining the demanding travel schedule of an MLB player and the isolating pressures of a high-end culinary career. Through its protagonists, the narrative also explores The Courage to Be Vulnerable in the Face of Past Trauma and the theme of Redefining Home and Family Through Love Rather than Biology, presenting a chosen family of Chicago athletes who form a crucial support system.

This guide is based on the 2023 Entangled Publishing LLC paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain depictions of sexual harassment, bullying, substance use, cursing, sexual content, illness, mental illness, and death.

Plot Summary

Kai Rhodes, the 32-year-old starting pitcher for the Windy City Warriors, Chicago’s Major League Baseball (MLB) team, is a single father to 15-month-old Max. Max’s mother, Ashley, was a casual fling who never told Kai about the pregnancy. She appeared at his door when Max was six months old, handed over the baby, and left. Since then, Kai has fired five nannies. His field manager, Emmett “Monty” Montgomery warns him the revolving door must stop. Monty is himself a single father who left professional baseball years ago to raise his own child, and he understands the difficult tension between career and parenthood. Kai privately wrestles with the desire to retire, viewing every game as time stolen from his son.

Miller Montgomery, a 25-year-old pastry chef, is in crisis. Three weeks after winning the James Beard Award, the highest honor in American dining, she’s been unable to create a single new dessert. The pressure of the accolade has destroyed her creativity. When a line cook sexually harasses her in a Miami kitchen, she quits and calls her agent, Violet, to announce she’s taking the summer off before her next major project, a consulting job at Luna’s, the Los Angeles restaurant run by Chef Maven, paired with a cover feature for Food & Wine magazine.

Miller visits her father, Monty, at his hotel in Miami, and he proposes she spend the summer traveling with the Warriors as Max’s new nanny. The arrangement gives Monty time with the daughter he rarely sees, provides Kai with childcare he cannot fire, and gives Miller a break from her stressful career. Kai and Miller have already crossed paths in a hotel elevator, where her morning beers, tattoos, and bold personality clashed with his overprotective rigidity. When Monty reveals the plan, both protest, but neither can refuse him.

The first days of Kai and Miller’s arrangement are contentious. He obsessively texts her through team staff during games to check on Max, and she fires back sarcastic critiques of his pitching. After the first night, Kai’s coldness drives Miller to quit, but Monty intervenes. He tells Miller about Kai’s situation and draws a parallel to his own history. Monty isn’t Miller’s biological father. Her mother, Claire, died of cancer when Miller was five, and Monty, who had been Claire’s boyfriend for about a year, adopted Miller, left the league, and raised her alone. Miller carries deep guilt over this sacrifice, believing she owes her father a distinguished career to justify what he gave up. Monty asks her to help Kai find balance so he won’t retire the way Monty did.

Miller returns to Chicago and parks her renovated van in Kai’s side yard. Their dynamic shifts from hostility to playful banter. She discovers his kitchen and begins baking there, though her creative block persists. After finding her distraught over a failed recipe, Kai hugs her and listens as she opens up about the pressure she feels. A turning point comes when Miller and Max bake banana bread together using a childhood recipe. Max “helps” by mashing bananas and eating chocolate chips, and for the first time in months, Miller feels genuine joy in the kitchen. Kai’s simple praise fills a void left by years of working in restaurants where positive feedback was nonexistent. He buys her a professional-grade mixer and sets up a baking station in his kitchen.

The two grow closer during road trips. Miller brings Max to a game for the first time, arranging a seat near the bullpen so Kai can see his son while he plays. On a late-night rooftop swim in Houston, they exchange vulnerable histories. Kai reveals that his mother, Mae, died when he was young. Afterwards, his father developed an alcohol addiction and abandoned Kai and his younger brother, Isaiah, the team’s starting shortstop, leaving 15-year-old Kai to raise Isaiah alone. Kai and Miller’s shared losses forge a deep emotional bond.

During a team night out at a country bar in Dallas, Kai’s teammates take turns dancing with Miller to provoke him into making a move. He watches from the bar until Dean Cartwright, a rival player from Atlanta whom Kai once punched during a game, grabs Miller on the dance floor. Kai charges in and dismissively calls Miller “just the nanny” to deflect Dean’s taunts. Miller storms off, but Kai chases her to a stairwell and kisses her for the first time. When she reminds him she’s leaving soon, he pulls back.

Their relationship deepens through shared hotel stays, intimate conversations, and Kai’s introduction of Miller to his friend group, including a professional basketball player named Ryan and his fiancée Indy, a professional hockey player named Zanders and his fiancée Stevie, and Rio DeLuca, Zanders’s teammate. Kai’s friends quickly embrace Miller. He moves her belongings from the van into his guest room, refusing to let her sleep outside any longer. After weeks of escalating tension, they sleep together in a Boston hotel. Miller establishes rules: No sleepovers, no casual kissing, no public displays of affection, and the arrangement ends the moment she leaves Chicago. Kai agrees while privately knowing he can’t keep things casual. That night, he throws his second career no-hitter, which he jokingly attributes to their sexual encounter.

As their summer together nears its end, Miller finds joy in baking for her new found family but continues to struggle with the idea of returning to her old life. The Food & Wine photoshoot takes place in Kai’s kitchen, and Miller is shaken when the sterile, child-free set clashes with the life she now wants. She consciously realizes she loves Kai and Max. On Miller’s 26th birthday, the night before she’s scheduled to leave, Max looks up at her during bedtime and calls her “Mama” for the first time. Miller sobs, terrified she’ll devastate him by leaving. Kai confesses that he’s in love with her and tells her that, if she ever decides to stop running and make a home, she should make it with him. The next morning, Miller drives away in her van while all three of them cry.

Kai spirals over the following two weeks, pitching poorly and barely functioning. In Los Angeles, Miller runs dinner service at Luna’s but sleeps in her van because the empty rental house underscores her loneliness. Maven asks Miller what her “why” is in the kitchen. Miller immediately answers that feeding the people she loves motivates her. Maven advises her to leave the high-pressure culinary world if it no longer brings her joy.

Miller leaves an emotional voicemail on her father’s phone, prompting him to fly to Los Angeles. He explains that raising her was a privilege, not a sacrifice. Miller finally understands: She would never expect Max to repay her for loving him, and Monty never expected that of her. During her Food & Wine interview, she announces she’s leaving the high-end industry and features three personally meaningful recipes, including one dedicated to Kai’s late mother.

Miller drives back to Chicago, arriving at Ryan and Indy’s wedding. Kai discovers an advance copy of the magazine and reads her announcement. Miller appears double fisting champagne, echoing their first meeting, and tells him she loves him. She declares that she wants to open her own bakery, watch Kai’s games, raise Max, and have more children with Kai. Max spots her through the back door, calls out “Mama,” and races into her arms.

Six months later, Miller has opened M’s Patisserie on Chicago’s North Side, a bakery named for Max, Malakai, and Monty. She teaches baking classes and works four days a week. Kai has retired from playing but joins Monty’s coaching staff, finding the work-life balance he’s sought. At Max’s second birthday party, Kai proposes using the ring Monty kept for over 20 years, the one he planned to give Miller’s mother. Miller says yes. In a bonus chapter, Miller reveals to Kai that she’s pregnant with their second child, and the adoption paperwork making her Max’s legal mother arrives in the mail.