Catch Her If You Can

I picked up Catch Her If You Can because Tessa Bailey is my reliable fix when I want heat that still treats its people kindly, and a baseball catcher pining after a burlesque club owner sounded like her sweet spot. Published by Avon on January 20, 2026, a 325 page paperback with ISBN 9780063380882, it is book 5 in the Big Shots series, which follows sports world celebrities and the civilians who knock them sideways. The leads are Madden Donahue, the newest catcher for the Yankees, and Eve Mitchell, who owns a burlesque club and has been turning him down since high school. He has loved her for years. She has wanted him back for just as long and refused to admit it. Then her sister drops two kids on Eve indefinitely, and Madden shows up with a proposition that sounds practical and is nothing of the sort.

If you know Bailey, you know the drill in the best sense. Banter that snaps. Spice that talks. A hero who is gone for the heroine from page one and has to earn her anyway. This one leans hard on marriage of convenience and friends to lovers at the same time, which is a tricky combo, and I had a good time even where I raised an eyebrow.

Madden has waited a long time

Madden Donahue is the new guy behind the plate for the Yankees, which in Bailey colors means money, cameras, and a locker room full of veterans watching to see if the rookie catcher can call a game. He is good at the job. The book sells him as steady rather than flashy, a catcher who studies swings and takes foul tips off the shoulder without complaint. Off the field he is the same way. Loyal to the point of stubborn. He decided Eve Mitchell was the one back in high school and never really updated the file.

What I liked is that his patience never reads as passive. He appointed himself her protector years ago and kept the post. When guys bother her at the club, he appears. When her car makes a noise, he hears about it. Eve finds this both annoying and load bearing, which feels honest. Everyone has that person who helps without being asked and then stands there while you pretend you did not need it.

His flaw is the flip side. He wants to solve Eve, and marriage is his biggest solve yet. He frames it as health benefits and logic. It is love wearing a spreadsheet costume. Bailey lets you see the costume slip early, which keeps him charming instead of smug. He is not fooling anyone except himself, and himself only briefly.

I also liked that his devotion has a history the book bothers to show. Years of showing up, remembered birthdays, rides given without comment. That backlog is why Eve trusts him with the kids even while refusing him everything else. Trust built in small deposits over a decade reads stronger than any grand speech, and Bailey uses it well when the marriage starts asking more of them.

Baseball detail stays light but present. Spring games, travel schedules, the way a catcher learns pitchers one bullpen session at a time. Bailey does not drown you in stats. She uses the sport for pressure. A shiny new career means a shiny new reputation to protect, and Madden is about to risk it on a secret wife.

Eve keeps everyone at arm's length

Eve Mitchell owns and runs a burlesque club, books the acts, handles the money, deals with licensing headaches and the occasional drunk who confuses burlesque with an invitation. She is good at this work and proud of it. The club is hers in a way nothing else has been. She was raised by the local strip club owner, grew up fast around adult business, and learned early that people judge first and ask never. So she built a small life with thick walls. A few loyal friends. Her sister, unevenly. And Madden, hovering at the edge of it for years.

The sister situation is the engine. Eve's sister leaves her two children with Eve indefinitely, no firm return date, and suddenly Eve is a full time caregiver who still has a club to run. Bailey writes the kid logistics with care. School pickups. Bedtimes that slide. A fridge that needs actual food. Babysitters who cancel. Eve loves the kids and is flattened by them, both things at once, and the book respects that mix instead of turning the children into props.

Then there is Skylar, Eve's best friend, and the dibs pact. At fourteen, Skylar called dibs on Madden, and Eve has honored it ever since, because she was raised short on friends and treasures the ones she has. This is the part of the setup that will test you. Grown adults honoring a teenage claim reads silly until Bailey fills in the why. Eve lost enough people. Skylar stayed. Loyalty to Skylar outranked longing for Madden for a decade, and breaking the pact feels like risking the only steady friendship she has. I bought the emotion even as I side eyed the mechanism. Female friendship as a load bearing wall is real. A formal dibs system at thirty is comedy, and the book knows it is funny.

Eve's other wall is reputation. She assumes her profession will stain Madden's career if anyone connects them. This is where the secret marriage condition comes from, and it makes her feel both protective and self punishing. She wants him. She plans to want him quietly.

The proposal sounds practical

The marriage pitch arrives when Eve is drowning in new custody logistics. Two kids need a doctor, a dentist, coverage, stability. Madden offers marriage for the health benefits, plain and simple, a legal arrangement between friends. He can carry them on his plan. She gets coverage and a second adult in the house. Nobody has to know. It is the kind of offer that sounds sane at midnight in a kitchen full of lunchboxes.

Eve says yes with strings attached. Strictly private. No public dates as a couple. No club appearances together. She will not be the reason a sports radio host makes Madden a punchline. Madden agrees to terms he fully intends to outlast. He figures proximity plus honesty will do the work that speeches cannot. He is right, but it takes a while, and the while is the book.

I found these chapters the most fun. Marriage paperwork as flirting is very Bailey. Joint forms. A ring she keeps taking off before work and putting back on at home. Sleeping arrangements negotiated like a treaty, then renegotiated nightly. Madden learning where the kids keep their shoes. Eve learning that a catcher who calls pitches for a living also calls the morning routine like a game plan. The domestic stuff lands because both of them are competent. He can run a household when he decides to. She can run a business and a bedtime.

The kids earn their pages too. They test Madden the way kids test every new adult, with noise and selective hearing and sudden attachment. One good scene has him practicing patience he usually reserves for rookie pitchers, and it works on a six year old about as well, which is to say slowly and then all at once. Eve watches him become furniture in her home, steady and everywhere, and her private marriage starts leaking into her face where anyone can read it.

A secret is a plot with a timer

Every secret marriage book runs on the same fuel. How long before someone notices, and who gets hurt when they do. Bailey spends the middle stretching that wire. They dodge photographers. Madden bites his tongue when teammates joke about his quiet home life. Eve introduces him at the club as an old friend and hates how the lie tastes. The sneaking adds charge to the romance and cost to everything around it.

Skylar's happiness is the permission slip Eve waits for. With Skylar paired off and settled, the ancient dibs claim loosens, and Eve has to face that the obstacle was partly Skylar and partly herself. I liked this beat. It says something true about how we outsource our fears to other people. Eve blamed loyalty for years. Loyalty was real, but so was terror of being seen clearly by the one man who kept looking.

The ballpark and the club make a nice contrast engine. Madden's world is bright, regulated, corporate approved. Smiles for cameras. Charity events. Eve's world is dark, loud, cash tipped, judged by people who never walked in. Bailey does not pretend these worlds merge easily. Eve's fear that she will cost him his shine is not paranoia. Athletes lose endorsements for less. Madden's answer is that a shine you have to hide your wife to keep is not worth much. Easy to say from inside love. Harder to live when the headlines start.

The turn, when it comes, is about choice rather than exposure. Someone always finds out. What matters is what the couple does with the finding. Eve has to decide whether private love is enough or just another wall. Madden has to decide whether pursuing her in public is devotion or selfishness. Bailey gives them both a real say, which I appreciated. Too many books in this lane let the hero decide and the heroine adjust.

Heat with feelings attached

Readers come to Bailey for spice and she delivers, chatty and explicit and thick with checking in. What starts as convenience catches fire fast, and the book treats their physical pull as evidence rather than inconvenience. Every slammed door in the secret phase leads to a wall conversation that leads to a bed. Madden is skilled and verbal. Eve stops performing and starts asking, which Bailey frames as the real intimacy milestone. Being watched for a living taught Eve to manage how she looks. Madden wants how she feels. That gap closing is the romance in miniature.

I also liked that the heat never pauses the parenting plot. They are tired. They get interrupted. They schedule around naps like criminals planning a job. It keeps the fantasy tethered. Hot people with health insurance forms and permission slips.

The friend group and team orbit add texture without stealing focus. Teammates razz Madden about settling down. Club staff cover for Eve and tease her about smiling at her phone. Skylar gets scenes with actual weight instead of saintly background duty. Nobody feels like furniture. A couple of club regulars shade into caricature, leering a little too neatly, but they serve the theme. Eve navigates judgment daily. Madden finally watches it happen up close instead of hearing about it after.

What worked and what dragged

What worked starts with the pairing. A steady catcher and a guarded club owner fit Bailey's strengths, devotion on one side and witty self defense on the other. The kid logistics give the middle weight. The Skylar pact, silly as it sounds in summary, pays off emotionally. And the consent talk stays explicit throughout, which matters in a premise where power could tilt fast. Madden has money and fame. Eve has more to lose socially. The book keeps the asking visible.

Criticism is fair too. The secret marriage condition requires everyone to act dumber than they are. Ballplayers marry civilians constantly without career collapse, and Eve's club is legal performance work, not scandal. The book needs the secrecy for structure, so it inflates the risk past what I could buy. A few late conflicts also recycle. Eve decides to trust, then un-decides on thinner evidence, then re-decides. The loop eats pages the epilogue could have used.

Pacing dips around the two thirds mark when sneaking logistics crowd out feeling. How many close calls at the club can one couple have. And Madden's Yankees life stays oddly smooth. No slump, no injury scare, no teammate drama with teeth. For a Big Shots book, the sports plot is mostly backdrop. Readers who want game day tension should calibrate.

Who should grab it. Bailey fans, obviously, plus anyone who likes marriage of convenience with the pining front loaded instead of slow built. Readers who enjoy sports heroes without play by play will be comfortable. If secret relationship plots make you grind your teeth, this one will test you, since secrecy is the whole middle. If you want burlesque texture, club business detail, and kids written like kids, there is plenty to hold.

I closed it thinking about Eve taking the ring off before her shift and Madden leaving it on the bathroom sink where she brushes her teeth, two small habits doing the arguing neither of them can say out loud yet. Bailey has written louder couples and funnier setups, but the quiet domestic beats here stick. A catcher who calls the morning like a game. A club owner learning that some spotlights are warm. The marriage started as paperwork. The home is what made it true.