Good Works (Hero Hearts: Contemporary) Read online

  Good Works

  Hayley Wescott

  Copyright © 2018 Hayley Wescott and Sweet River Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  This is a work of fiction. Any references to names, characters, organizations, places, events, or incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  Do you love sweet romance with a Christian tone? Mysterious Ways is a story of childhood friends who learn they’re meant to be together when their paths cross again.

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  This story is for my dad, my brother, and my husband.

  I grew up in a household where sports were important. My dad coached my brother’s little league team and we were almost always at the ball park. Later, when my brother was in high school, spring and summer were consumed with baseball. I loved the atmosphere and the carefree times with my family. I grew to love the game. It’s still a big deal in our family and I’m good with that.

  Now my nephew enjoys baseball and we text all season long about our team. My dad calls to ask if I watched the game on television. My brother and I still have friends from our childhood we met through baseball. It’s another way to have connections about something we enjoy.

  My husband didn’t grow up in America. He missed playing baseball in his youth. But he loves the game today. He fits right in to our family with his love of the sport. Almost every time we go to a game - and we go several times each season - he tells me again how he wishes he’d been able to play baseball when he was a kid.

  So, baseball. Family. Childhood memories. The game can bring you together if you let it.

  INTRODUCTION TO HERO HEARTS

  Welcome to Hero Hearts, a historical and contemporary Christian romance series.

  Join Annie Boone, Hayley Wescott and Kate Cambridge in a world unlike any other; a world where Heroes are honored with unforgettable characters and beautiful, Christian love stories. The authors of this series are committed to writing stories of faith, hope and love centered in fictional heroes who sacrifice daily to protect and save. A mix of historical and modern-day.

  We hope you enjoy the Hero Hearts Christian romance series!

  Annie Boone, Hayley Wescott and Kate Cambridge

  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

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  More By Hayley Wescott

  About Hayley Wescott

  About Hero Hearts

  1

  I am blessed. I am blessed. I repeated the phrase to myself as I trudged through a foot of snow on Monday morning. I am blessed.

  And I really, truly am. I have a family who loves me. I’m starting an exciting new position at a place I love working. I have a warm apartment and roommates who only occasionally annoy me. I’m healthy. I’m able-bodied. And I have a delicious turkey sandwich packed in my lunch today. I can’t wait for lunchtime! A lot of people would happily swap lives with me.

  But ugh, I thought, as I stepped over a small snowbank the plow had left blocking the sidewalk when it cleared the roads earlier this morning, I would trade it all sometimes if it meant I could go live on a beach somewhere and not have to live through another Midwest winter. The hustle and bustle of Christmas was over, and now I was staring down the barrel of another three months – who was I kidding, probably closer to four – of cold and snowy weather with nothing to break it up except Valentine’s Day. Which, when you’re a single girl, is nothing to look forward to.

  I only lived a fifteen minute walk from the Hartley House, where I worked, but the day after a storm always took longer. Still, I had left home early, so by the time I walked up the welcoming front porch and stomped off the excess snow, I was still two minutes early.

  Hartley House was a special place. Everyone who set foot in there felt it. It was a safe space, a bubble of hope for the families who stayed there while their sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters were in the children’s hospital down the street. Some of them were recovering from accidents. Others were going through chemo or radiation.

  Right now we had a family whose little girl who was recovering from a car accident, a little girl with an autoimmune disorder, and a boy who was preparing to get a lung transplant. I’d start my day off by doing a quick catch-up with everyone individually to see what kinds of activities people seemed in the mood for today. Um, actually, no, I wouldn’t. That was my old job, Assistant Director of Programming.

  My brand new job, the one I was starting today, was Director of Public Relations. I wasn’t just going to hang around the house and make sure all of our residents had everything they needed. I would be reaching out to donors and trying to drum up some publicity for Hartley House.

  I knocked the rest of the snow off my boots and entered the house. The offices were in the back with a separate entrance, but Jerome hadn’t gotten around to shoveling a path to the back door yet. So I popped my head in to the kitchen to say hello to anybody who was in there. I remembered that Kaylee Stewart, the little girl who was recovering from a bad car accident, had started physiotherapy on my day off, so I asked how she was doing.

  “She did great,” her mother, Rachel, beamed. Her own face still wore shadows of bruises from the same accident that had nearly killed her daughter. “It’s going to be slow. But I really think she can do it.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that,” I breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ve got to go talk to Teresa now, but I’ll catch up with everyone later.”

  Teresa was the big boss at Hartley House. Everything that happened here, happened because of her. Somehow she kept the place running on our shoestring budget, cobbled together through grants, donations, and a bit of government funding. But the truth was that the house really needed some renovations.

  We dreamed of adding a second location, another house for out-of-town families to stay in while their children were admitted to the hospital long-term. We were getting applications daily, and there just wasn’t enough room for everyone. We needed money for a second location, and that was why I had my new job. From Teresa’s point of view, more publicity meant more donations, and maybe even a corporate sponsorship. Having someone to focus on just that would hopefully reap big benefits and give us the funding to do more good work.

  Teresa was already seated at her desk, typing away at an email, when I entered her office. “Morning, Natalie,” she said, not looking up. “Just let me finish this. Okay.” She hit send and looked up at me with a smile. “Right, so you don’t get your own office quite yet, but I’ve made space near Ryan.”

  I nodded. Ryan was in charge of accounting. To call the area where his desk was a room would be generous. It was more or less a very wide hallway. I was dying of curiosity about what Teresa had come up with, so I followed her
out of her office – the only one with its own door – through the wide hallway where Ryan’s desk was, and to my new spot.

  It was a closet. True, the door to the closet had been removed, so it was now more like an alcove, but it was a closet where we used to pile up junk. Jerome must have spent yesterday cleaning it out for me. A small beat-up wooden desk and a chair sat there now, but at least I had my own computer.

  “Looks great!” I said brightly. “I love it.” I set my tote bag on the chair.

  “I’ll give you a few minutes to get settled,” said Teresa. “Then you can come back to my office and we’ll talk about your new role. I’ve got a few exciting leads for you.”

  “Sounds good,” I replied, and went about getting myself settled in. I took off my boots and heavy coat and hung them up by the back door, then pulled out a pair of flats from my tote bag. I put the bag on the floor and sat in my new chair, testing it out. I winced. It was a terrible chair, lumpy and hard, but I would have to get used to it. There was no money in the budget for new office furniture.

  I turned on my computer and put my lunch in the staff fridge, and then when I couldn’t think of anything else to do to get ready for my day, I went back to Teresa. “What do you have for me?” I asked.

  Teresa was flipping through her day planner. “So, your job is going to be to raise the profile of Hartley House locally. Lots of people don’t even know we exist. I’ve got a list of phone numbers here for you, media contacts for the newspaper, and the local news. I also think we should try and pair with some local personalities, you know, charity work opportunities for them.”

  I winced. “Really? Remember what happened with Kelli Carter?”

  Last year, Kelli Carter had reached the semifinals of one of those national singing contests. She’d been filmed coming back to her hometown to be greeted as a star. The producers had wanted to show her doing something charitable, and so Kelli’s mom, a nurse at the children’s hospital, had suggested she do a concert for Hartley House. The concert had been a total disaster, with directors yelling at each other, Kelli snapping at the children when the cameras were turned off, and generally causing more stress for everyone rather than being something to take their minds off what they were going through.

  “We’ll choose more wisely,” said Teresa. “Kelli Carter possibly didn’t have the right personality to mesh well with our residents.”

  Teresa could be very diplomatic. “I think we need to set up a stronger social media presence for Hartley House,” I said. “We have a Facebook account, but it’s hardly used. With the families’ permission, of course, we can share pictures of things going on behind the scenes when you have a child in the hospital long term. Try and get a video or picture to go viral. You know those videos of a toddler hearing their mother’s voice for the first time? That kind of thing.”

  “Maybe,” said Teresa. “But even that kind of thing could be helped along by pairing with some local personalities.”

  “I guess,” I said, a little disappointed Teresa didn’t seem more excited by my idea.

  “Anyway, it’s something you need to at least consider, because we’ve got a meeting with a baseball player in an hour. I got a call yesterday that he’s interested in volunteering with Hartley House. Dominic Something. Rosetti, maybe? New to the team. He’ll be here at ten-thirty.”

  “What exactly does he want to do?” I asked.

  Teresa shrugged. “That’s something to discuss with him,” she said. “Establishing a relationship with the baseball team could be a great thing. You want a stronger social media presence, there’s at least a few hundred thousand people who follow the team on Twitter, Facebook, whatever it is the kids are in to these days. They share something about what one of their players is doing, bam. Exposure.”

  I exhaled. She was right. From a business standpoint, it did make sense. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll meet with this guy at ten-thirty.”

  As I headed back to my closet, I saw that Ryan, our accountant, had just come in and was settling himself down at his hallway desk. “Morning, Nat,” he said. “What do you think of your new office?” He laughed.

  “I have some shelves above it, at least,” I said. “And I’m kind of tucked away from everything, so that’s a good thing.” I paused, noticing that amongst the papers and lists tacked to the board next to Ryan’s desk was a pennant for the baseball team. “Hey, you like baseball, right? Do you know who Dominic Rosetti is? I think that’s his name, at least.”

  “No idea,” said Ryan. “He play for the Tigers?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” I said. “Teresa might have his last name wrong. He’s supposed to be coming in for a meeting soon, to see about doing some work with us.”

  “Oh, let me think,” said Ryan. “We just called two new players up from Triple A. Right handed pitcher, maybe? Just adding some depth in the bullpen.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I turned the corner and sat down at my computer to Google him.

  There wasn’t a whole lot. There was a short news article from a week ago, saying the 30 year old right handed pitcher had recently been called up to the Tigers after spending the past two seasons in Tennessee. It included a string of numbers and letters that I assumed were his baseball stats, but I had no idea what they meant, so I skipped over them. It also included his salary. The number was unbelievable. I couldn’t believe playing a game paid so well.

  My jaw dropped open and I let out a squeak of disbelief. I knew that professional athletes made piles of money, but seeing the numbers on the screen right there in front of me as I sat in my closet/office, on my uncomfortable chair, I felt a fire light inside me. It wasn’t fair! With that much money we could buy a house for a second location and hire staff for a year. And for that big paycheck, Dominic Rosetti was going to sit on a bench and come into an occasional game to give the other pitchers a break. It wasn’t fair.

  “What’s up?” Ryan called out, from his desk around the corner.

  I pushed my chair out so I could see him. “Ryan, do you know how much money this guy Dominic Rosetti is going to make this year?”

  “Well, no, but they’re very well paid. No doubt about that.”

  “That’s insane,” I said. “He’s throwing a ball. Not even that often. Can you imagine what we could do with that amount of money around here?”

  “I definitely got in to the wrong business,” Ryan chuckled. “But then, I can’t throw a ball over about forty miles per hour. That’s not fast enough to do the job Dominic Rosetti’s going to do. Seriously, though, I do see your point. We have to remember we do good work here. What we do matters.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “But still.” I shook my head, then clicked the X to close the page and headed to the kitchen to make some coffee and catch up with some of our families before my meeting.

  2

  Usually during the day, the house was a bit quieter, with most of our families spending time at the hospital, but today with the snowstorm there were a few people hanging around a bit longer until the sidewalks and roads were all cleared. I said hello to the Wachowskis and the Maycombs, pouring myself a mug from the big communal coffee pot.

  “What a storm, right?” asked Tiffany Maycomb, filling up a large travel mug with coffee. “It’s killing me that I’m not there with Jayden when he wakes up but I just couldn’t get the stroller through the snow on the sidewalks.” She looked down at her small toddler, Jackson, playing with a toy car on the kitchen floor.

  “I walked over, but it definitely wasn’t clear enough for a stroller,” I said. “I’ve got a meeting with a baseball player this morning and I hope he isn’t too delayed. It looks like he’s coming to the team from Tennessee. They don’t get snow like this down there.”

  Tiffany’s face lit up. “A baseball player? A Tigers player? Oh, Jayden would freak out! He worships anything Tigers. He memorized the whole team’s stats last season. Who is it?”

  “He’s new to the team, Jayden probably wouldn’t know him. Domi
nic something, I forget his last name.” I don’t know why I said that. I remembered his last name.

  “Still,” said Tiffany. “If he wears a Tigers jersey, Jayden’s gonna love him.”

  “Right,” I said. “Well, I’ll definitely let you know if we work out a visit of some kind. I’d better take this coffee back to my desk and get ready for the meeting now, though. I hope they clear the sidewalks for you soon!”

  “Thanks,” said Tiffany, giving me a wave. I took my coffee and hurried back to my desk. I was already irritated with Dominic Rosetti and I hadn’t even met him yet. Jayden Maycomb had cystic fibrosis and we’d all been working so hard to keep his family as comfortable and happy as possible while he prepared to get a lung transplant. Dominic Rosetti hadn’t done anything to deserve Jayden’s worship, besides signing with a baseball team.

  That was selfish. I chastised myself immediately. We were here for the kids and the families. Why did it matter if it was a random baseball player who made them happy? I shook my head, drank my coffee, and headed in to Teresa’s office for the meeting.

  I thought I was early, but I had barely settled myself in to one of the extra chairs in Teresa’s office and pulled out a notebook and pen when there was a knock on the back door.

  Teresa jumped up to open it, and was back a minute later with a tall, dark haired guy behind her. He was shaking the snow off his hooded parka. “Sorry, I’m getting snow everywhere,” he laughed, in a deep, very masculine voice.