Fix Her Up

The first installment in Tessa Bailey's Hot & Hammered series is set in Port Jefferson, a small waterside town on Long Island, New York. The story follows Georgie Castle, a 23-year-old children's birthday party clown and the youngest of three siblings, and Travis Ford, a 28-year-old former major league baseball shortstop whose career was cut short by a shoulder injury.

When the novel opens, Georgie breaks into Travis's apartment and finds him naked, hungover, and surrounded by filth. After his injury led to trades and premature retirement, Travis returned home and sank into depression. Georgie has been in love with him since puberty, but everyone dismisses her feelings as a childhood crush since Travis is her older brother Stephen's best friend. She throws rotten food at him, calling him a "wussy man" too afraid to try again. Travis reveals that baseball was his only way to prove he was better than his father, and without it, he feels like nothing. Georgie tells him he is better than this and leaves.

Motivated by the confrontation, Travis asks Stephen for a construction job at Brick & Morty, the Castle family's house-flipping business. Stephen sends him to a site directly across from Travis's childhood home, haunted by his parents' divorce and his father's neglect. That Saturday, Georgie hosts a brunch for her family, but her older sister Bethany cancels and Stephen forgets. Travis arrives unexpectedly, and they share personal moments over the meal.

As Georgie begins bringing leftovers to Travis's apartment, they fall into an easy routine of movies and growing honesty. Travis tells her not to stop demanding to be heard. He agrees to measure her fireplace but forgets after his agent reveals the New York Bombers want a new television commentator and Travis is on the short list. The catch: The family-friendly network needs a wholesome image, the opposite of his tabloid reputation as a womanizer nicknamed "Two Bats."

Devastated by the no-show, Georgie vents at a Zumba class alongside Bethany, a stager at Brick & Morty, and Rosie Vega, wife of Dominic, a Marine veteran who also works for the business. Bethany wants to lead her own renovation but Stephen has refused. Rosie's marriage has deteriorated since Dominic returned from Afghanistan, and she dreams of opening a restaurant inspired by her late mother's cooking. They form a support club that Georgie names the "Just Us League."

When Travis visits Georgie's house to make amends, he finds another contractor inside and reacts possessively. Georgie is furious, insisting she does not need his interference. Days later, she runs into Travis on Main Street after a makeover at Glitter Threads, the local boutique. Her car door slams into his injured shoulder, and she cancels a date to drive him home. At his apartment, she proposes an arrangement: They will pretend to date so Travis appears wholesome for the network while his association with her forces her family to treat her as an adult. They share a first kiss and agree the arrangement will end after Travis's dinner with the network executive.

Travis tells Stephen about the relationship and learns Georgie has been in love with him since middle school. He convinces himself these were a starstruck girl's feelings and decides not to raise the subject with Georgie, a decision that proves catastrophic.

Their public outings generate intense attention. When a man at a restaurant crudely implies Travis will discard Georgie, she fiercely defends him, telling the man Travis is "not like that. Not anymore." Photos of the confrontation and a parking lot kiss go viral. At a family dinner, Travis slams his fist on the table when Georgie's father, Morty, dismisses her, declaring she is "too important to be cut off or spoken to like a child." Emboldened, Georgie signs a lease on office space for her entertainment company and hires freelance performers.

Travis builds Georgie a fireplace mantel from a branch of the oak tree she climbed as a child in the Castle backyard. She cries into his chest when she discovers it. That night they have sex for the first time, and Travis stays overnight, sleeping beside someone voluntarily for the first time. The next morning, Georgie goads Travis into picking up a bat at the high school baseball field, describing how she watched his games with such intensity she left nail marks on her palms because of his joy. In the pouring rain, Travis hits balls into the outfield, his confidence growing with every swing.

At a dinner with Kelvin Fisher, the Bombers' network head, Georgie charms Kelvin and his daughter while Travis credits Georgie for helping him realize he is not a failure. Kelvin offers him the job. In the limousine home, Travis breaks their agreement, telling Georgie he cannot let her go and asking to be her real boyfriend. He acknowledges he lacks "the family gene" but says he needs her. Georgie agrees, privately overwhelmed by love she cannot voice.

Their new reality shatters when Travis's father, Mark Ford, returns to Port Jefferson after a real estate agent contacts him about the childhood house Travis arranged to sell. At a bar, Mark humiliates Travis and mocks the relationship. Desperate to keep his father from targeting Georgie, Travis calls her "a kid with a kid's crush" and claims he used her feelings to land the job. Stephen, arriving for a planned meeting, overhears everything.

At a Tough Mudder obstacle race, Georgie leads the Just Us League through the course. Afterward, Stephen reveals everything he overheard: that the relationship was fake, that Travis knew about her lifelong love, and that he dismissed her as a starstruck child. Travis insists he lied to protect her, but Georgie is shattered. She tells him her love did not pass but "became so much more" before her friends close ranks around her.

Travis spirals into depression, but Georgie's earlier words echo in his memory: "You're only him if you lie down and play the victim." He sets down the whiskey bottle and admits he loves her. For the first time, he imagines being a father, and the vision fills him with contentment. He gives Bethany the key to his childhood home so she can flip it as her own project, and he tells her he loves Georgie "in every way it's possible to love someone."

At the next Just Us League meeting, Bethany turns on the Bombers' home game. On live television during his first broadcast, Travis introduces the Port Jefferson High School baseball team, announces he will coach them in the off-season, and looks into the camera to propose to Georgie, promising her a home, a future, and children. Georgie runs for the door. Stephen offers to drive her to the stadium.

Stuck in traffic heading in opposite directions on the Northern State Parkway, Travis spots Stephen's minivan across the divider, leaps from his bus, hops the barrier, and sprints to Georgie. She throws herself into his arms, telling him she has loved him in the past tense and the present tense: "both." Travis promises to build the family she has always wanted. She says yes, and he slides a ring onto her finger as strangers cheer. The novel ends with Travis and Georgie kissing on the highway shoulder, long after the traffic has cleared.