Bigger Than Beckham (13 page)

“Well, it’s just this,” she said. “Because
I’ve been covering sports for years—I won’t say how many, of
course—I know an awful lot of former athletes. Guys who retired at
the top of their game after making tons of money. Guys a lot like
you, Tony.”

“I’m not hearing a question,” he said as she
paused.

“It’s coming, Mr. Sarcasm,” she shot back.
“Okay, then. Guys who do that rarely stay in the game. Oh, they
might do a little color commentary on TV or radio for a little
while, but the dudes who made the really big bucks want to kick
back and enjoy when they’re done playing. They live the high life,
and maybe focus on charity work if they get bored,” Martha said,
thinking specifically about some tennis stars that virtually
disappeared from public view after their retirements. “But you’re
not like that at all, Tony. You charged right into a new career the
day you hung up your cleats, starting at the bottom by taking over
that League One team. And I can’t help wondering what drove you to
do that.”

He didn’t seem all that surprised by what
she’d said. He’d probably been asked a similar sort of thing so
many times he had an answer down pat.

Taking a long drink of his beer, Tony’s dark
eyes locked on hers again, as if he was in some way assessing her.
Martha shifted nervously in her chair. Had she pricked another
tender nerve? Maybe it was time to just back off and start acting
like a businesswoman instead of slipping back into her natural
reporter mode.

Except she was kidding herself on that one.
It wasn’t just her reporter’s instincts that kept prompting her to
probe more deeply. It was her rampant curiosity about the private
Tony Branch.

“I get asked that question a sometimes, and I
always give the same answer,” he finally said. “I say that I just
love football so much that I couldn’t leave it. If I wasn’t a team
owner, then I’d be managing or coaching, even if it was a kids’
team back home in Middlesbrough. The game’s in my blood. It’s all I
am.”

He shrugged. “That sort of thing always goes
down well with the media and the fans.”

Okay, his little add-on
did
get her
reporter’s instincts firing on all cylinders. “But that version’s
not quite true, is it? Or, at least it’s not the whole truth.”

He gave her a sly smile, and warning prickles
danced along the back of her neck. Darned if she wasn’t beginning
to feel like a fish on the end of his line, about to be reeled
in.

“No, it’s not the whole truth,” he said. “And
somebody as smart and experienced as you would see through it if I
tried to leave it at that.”

Martha dramatically wiped the back of her
hand across her brow. “Whew! Darlin’, where have you been all my
life? A world-class jock and soccer titan calling a little old
reporter like me smart and experienced?” She raised her eyes to the
ceiling and spread her hands in mock supplication. “You can take me
right now, Lord.”

She’d hoped to lighten the mood with her
down-home drawl and drama, and it seemed to work. Tony’s smile
morphed into something genuine and playful, sending a rush of
delicious heat through her body. Hell, the man was so charming he
should come with a warning label.

“Okay, here’s the whole truth,” he said. “I
had a great career on the field, no doubt about it. I’d more than
achieved all the personal goals I’d set. Most importantly, I’d been
fortunate to be able to help my teams win championships in both
England and the European Champions League. So, I had nothing left
to prove, as far as that went.”

“But?”

“But I still didn’t want to quit, because I
couldn’t abide the thought of having to sit on my arse watching
other lads play when I knew I could still perform at a very high
standard. In fact, I thought I could play forever, as long as my
legs held up. I could still run, still keep up with the
youngsters.”

Martha nodded eagerly, surprised at how
anxious she was to hear the end of his story.

“But then I tore up my left knee again, and
it took a painfully long period of rehab to get back to playing
form after surgery. I knew I could still come back, and I worked my
ass off. But it didn’t matter to the bosses. They shunted me aside,
saying I wasn’t going to be a hundred per cent ever again, so it
was time for them to “move on,” as they put it. It was like they’d
suddenly forgotten everything I’d done for them all those years.
Like it was ancient history, no longer of any significance.”

“Ungrateful bastards,” she exclaimed. Yes,
she knew older players were shunted aside all the time, but she
couldn’t help feeling outraged on his behalf.

He gave her a wry smile. “I have to agree
with that assessment, Martha. Look, I’m not going to bore you with
chapter and verse, but let’s just say that the ownership and
management treated me like a troublesome clod of dirt stuck to
their boots. Like I was nothing more than a drag on the team and a
drain on their bank account.”

“They traded you, didn’t they? Before your
final season?”

“Gave me away, more like,” he said with a
snort. “And those sodding bastards were no more patient than the
others. I told them I just needed a little more time to round back
into shape, but…”

He pressed his lips together, as if he had to
throttle the angry words that threatened to emerge.

“It bloody well sucked,” he finally said with
a fair imitation of a casual shrug. “It just wasn’t right to treat
a veteran player like that. So that started me down another road.
Because I knew in my gut that if I ran a team—if I could make the
big decisions—I could do it a damn sight better than those wankers.
I’d treat my players right, and they’d play their hearts out for
me. And they have.”

Martha nodded in understanding. “You needed
to show those owners how wrong they were, which explains why some
of them still don’t like you.”

“Call it some kind of revenge on my part, I
suppose. Or maybe some kind of affirmation.” He chewed that over
for a few seconds. “Yeah, I like that better. Affirmation that it
didn’t have to be the same stupid old way everyone just accepted as
normal. I proved that a player could run a team, and do it a hell
of a lot better than a bunch of suits who can never think past the
bloody bottom line.”

She leaned across the table and punched him
lightly on his rock-hard shoulder. “Well, you sure have, haven’t
you? You should be really proud.”

He gave her a self-satisfied but genuinely
boyish grin, one that said
Yep, I did it
. When he looked at
her like that, she finally thought she saw at least a little part
of the real Tony peeking through.

“I
am
proud, Martha, but there are a
lot of people in the business who still think I’m rubbish. I feel
respect and even love from the fans at every single match, and the
players play their butts off for me because they feel like I’m
still one of them. Hell, I
am
still one of them where it
counts.” He thumped his fist against his heart. “But the old guard
of English football? Oh, they loved me as a player, all
right—especially when we were winning for England—but they think
I’m not good enough to have a place at their sodding table. And
they make that known in dozens of ways.”

“Jerks,” Martha said.

“Arrogant jerks,” he agreed.

Martha understood the kind of need Tony had
for professional recognition, and she was beginning to suspect it
was part of the reason he was so determined to get into American
professional soccer. In the States, he could have a new start,
leaving the prejudices of his homeland behind.

“I sure get where you’re coming from. You can
imagine what the good old boys over here think of
me
,” she
said. “A woman running a pro sports team. Worse yet, a woman with
zero management experience. And even worse than
that
, a
sportswriter, of all things. That particular group of gentlemen—and
I use the word loosely—had a pure hissy fit when I took over the
club.”

Tony’s lip lifted in a snarl. “Sod them all,
Martha. You’ve earned your way.”

She almost asked him why, if he really felt
that way, would he want to displace the only woman owner in the
ASL? That, however, was not a conversation she wanted to have. “But
I guess we’re close to stepping into dangerous waters, aren’t
we?”

“Right. No business tonight,” he said,
crossing his heart and trying to look solemn. Too bad he just came
off looking rakish and utterly…kissable. Yeah, kissable. Not that
other thing that would pitch her directly into a deep, dark sea of
trouble.

Way to kid yourself, girlfriend.

“I’d like to know how you hooked up with Rex
Daltry,” she said in a perky voice, trying to distract herself from
even more inappropriate mental images of all the fun she could have
with Tony. “He sounds like one smart dude from what I’ve read.”

“Not a dummy like his partner, right?” Tony
countered. Fortunately, there was a twinkle in his eye when he said
it.

Martha glared at him in mock outrage.
“Believe me, Tony Branch, I don’t think you’re a dummy. If I did, I
wouldn’t be scared half to death by you.”

“Bollocks. You’re not afraid of me,” he
scoffed. “Or, at least you shouldn’t be.”

No, be
very
afraid, her common sense
whispered.

“So, what about you and Rex?” she said, not
pursuing that particular sidetrack. “How did all that happen?”

Tony gave her a brief but entertaining
history about his partner, and what their fruitful business
relationship had yielded over the years. Not for the first time,
Martha felt a wave of regret that she couldn’t do a feature story
on Tony and Rex, and their intriguing careers in soccer.

“Fascinating story. How did you two actually
hook up with each other?” she asked after he left out those
details.

He shrugged. “Chance, really. Through a
mutual friend at the time.”

When he didn’t elaborate, Martha knew the
mutual friend had to have been a woman. That piqued her curiosity
even more. “And?” she said. “What else?”

He gave her a sly grin, ruthlessly ignoring
her underlying question. “Rex talked me into giving him a job, and
I’ve been exploiting him ruthlessly ever since.”

“I hope you’re joking about that.”

Tony raised a very Spock-like eyebrow in
answer.

Well, two could play at that game.

She gave him a sugar-sweet smile. “Would you
say you were friends, too? Or does it have to be strictly big boss
and obedient minion for you?”

Now that she’d asked the teasing question,
she realized how curious she was to hear the answer. She’d already
had trouble with that distinction herself. Certainly with Jane, but
also now with Kieran McLeod, who she’d come to regard both as
friend and mentor. Some days she found herself even thinking of him
as something of a substitute father figure, which was not a good
habit to be falling into. Martha knew she had to sink or swim on
her own, and not pull anyone else down with her.

Tony frowned, tapping his chopsticks against
the edge of his now-empty plate. “We’re good mates, Rex and me. But
in the end, it always has to be about business. He and I both know
that, and I just hope to hell it never comes down to having to make
a choice.” He lifted a shoulder. “So far, it hasn’t. I credit Rex
with that a lot more than I do me.”

Martha liked that under his sometimes brash
demeanor Tony was pretty self-effacing, and easily gave credit
where credit was due. And since he was being so open with her…

“I don’t know what I’d do if I wound up in
that position,” she said. “What
would
you do if it
ultimately had to come down to a choice like that?”

This time both eyebrows went up. “You want me
to say that I’d abandon Rex if I had to?” Despite his working class
roots, his voice went dark and haughty. “Or maybe that I’d push my
own granny off a cliff to get what I wanted? Would that fit your
preconceived notions of Tony Branch?”

Well, kind of, although her ideas about him
were evolving minute by minute. She almost said that but stopped
herself at the last second. It had been a surprisingly pleasant
evening and, like an idiot, she was in the process of wrecking it
with so many intrusive questions.

“I was just curious to know how you would
handle it, since I find myself in kind of the same position,” she
said in as casual a voice as she could manage. “But forget I
asked.”

He shook his head. “No, be honest, Martha.
What you really want to know is how far I’m willing to go to get
your team away from you. You might as well just come out with
it.”

Feeling a bit desperate that he’d scored such
a close hit, she tried to laugh it off. “We weren’t going to talk
about my team, remember?”

Suddenly, his face transformed again and the
rakish, charming Tony was back. “Martha, you’re so right. There’ll
be a time and place for that, won’t there? And that being the case,
what would you like to do next?”

* * *

“Tony, you
do
realize that I’m not
going to have sex with you.”

She said it in a whisper, since they were
surrounded by other people, but Tony heard Martha loud and crystal
clear. He shouldn’t have been surprised by the brutally blunt
volley, but he was. Enough that he choked on the bourbon he was
enjoying at the bar in the Hyatt.

Martha laughed softly and reached around to
pat him gently on the back.

“Not right now? Or not ever?” he managed to
croak after a couple of seconds of gasping.

After she’d surprisingly accepted his
impulsive offer of a nightcap when she drove him to his hotel, he’d
felt a glimmer of hope. Well, more than that, since the power of
her sweet, almost shy smile had rocketed straight to his groin.
She’d been sending him mixed signals during dinner, but his dick
had been clear and consistent on how it wanted the evening to
progress.