Bigger Than Beckham (22 page)

“Jesus Christ. A bloody conspiracy,” Tony
growled.

“I suppose you could think of it that way,”
Tate said. “But there’s nothing illegal about it, and that sort of
thing goes on every day. Companies get together and work out how to
cooperate in cleaning the remaining meat off some poor bastard’s
bones. Nasty stuff, but business isn’t for the faint of heart,
right?”

Tony didn’t buy it. “Maybe, but that kind of
gang-up is morally wrong, as far as I’m concerned.” He was not only
offended by the crappy ethics, he was infuriated on Martha’s
behalf.

“Any idea of what specifically is involved in
the deal, Cole?” Rex interjected.

Tate flicked a glance between Tony and Rex.
“For starters, I figure they won’t want Martha Winston to file for
bankruptcy because that would call into question the future of pro
soccer in Jacksonville. Steam Train would have to apply to the ASL
for a new franchise in that case. It would obviously depend on the
quality of their proposal, but if I were them, I wouldn’t hold my
breath waiting for league approval after what’s happened.
Jacksonville’s a small market, after all, and they’d be trying to
follow on the heels of a failed team.”

“Yeah, and the league is bound to be bloody
wary given the recent attendance numbers,” Tony said. “I’ve never
seen anything like it. Hell, a struggling League Two team back home
draws more fans than they do here. A lot more.”

Tate snorted. “My ten-year old kid’s league
practically draws as many fans. To have any hope of getting a new
franchise, Steam Train would have to hire somebody like you to run
the team, Tony. In other words, a credible leader and certified
miracle worker.”

Rex laughed out loud. Tony, with his wine
glass halfway to his mouth, glared at him.

Rex held up an apologetic hand. “I had a
vision of the two of us pitching their beer on the telly,” he said.
“Not pretty at all.”

Tate smiled, but Tony didn’t like a word of
what he was hearing. “Go on,” he said to Tate.

The consultant nodded. “Bankruptcy would mean
that First Coast National and the rest of the team’s creditors
would have to settle for cents on the dollar on their outstanding
debts, if anything at all. For a relatively small regional bank
like FCN, that could be a significant hit. Which, of course, they
will absolutely want to avoid.”

The server brought the salads Tony and Rex
had ordered, promising Tate that his Reuben sandwich would be
coming up at any moment. Tony eyed the gigantic plate of Romaine
lettuce in front of him and concluded that he’d lost whatever trace
of appetite he’d had. He didn’t even bother picking up his
fork.

He narrowing his eyes at Tate. “The bastards’
game plan is to make Martha’s situation so untenable that she’ll
have no choice but to accept Steam Train’s offer, because
bankruptcy would be ten times worse.”

“That’s the likeliest scenario,” Tate
agreed.

“Stretch out the pain for a while longer
until Martha snaps,” Rex said around a mouthful of salad. “When the
bank pulls the plug on the line of credit, she won’t be able to
make payroll and she’ll have to make a choice—sell to Steam Train,
or let the whole ship go down.”

“I doubt she’d let the ship go down,” Tony
said bitterly. “She cares too much about the staff and the players
to let the team implode.”

“But Steam Train and the others don’t know
we’re interested in buying the Thunder,” Rex said calmly. “They’re
probably thinking they can get the team for a song, but they’re
going to find out otherwise soon enough.”

Tony pressed on the bridge of his nose,
feeling a tension headache forming behind his eyes. Though he was
hardly about to complain, he hadn’t gotten much sleep last night
and his brain was sluggish as it worked its way through the
options. The last thing he wanted was to get drawn into a bidding
war with Steam Train because it would be all but impossible to go
toe-to-toe with them when it came to putting up money. As Tate had
already told him, the brewery had the means to outbid anything he’d
be prepared to offer. Anyway, he couldn’t afford to pay the moon
for the Jacksonville Thunder or any other team, no matter how badly
he wanted an ASL franchise. If he had more resources, he wouldn’t
be going after a small market team like Jacksonville in the first
place.

“We’re in a hole here, gents,” he finally
said. “Steam Train doesn’t know we want to make a play for the
Thunder. Martha knows we do, but doesn’t seem to be aware that
Steam Train is after her team, too. If this rumor is true, and
everything finally comes out into the open, it’s inevitable she’s
going to play us off against each other.”

He remembered how Martha snuggled in his
arms, and the way her eyes had lit up when he’d told her that he
liked every damn thing about her. Remembered the way she’d cradled
him gently as he dozed. His gut told him that when the rubber hit
the road, she’d rather see the Thunder sold to him than to the
conspiring pricks determined to bring her down. But what would
happen when Steam Train’s bid passed beyond—maybe even well
beyond—what he was able to offer? He’d be a fool to think she could
turn down that kind of deal.

On top of that, he feared there could be
media and fan preference for a local company over a British
interloper, too. The pressure on Martha to sell to Steam Train
might come at her from every quarter.

“You’re right,” Rex said. “All we can do, if
and when this scenario plays out, is to make our offer as
attractive to Martha as it can possibly be.” He stared directly
into Tony’s eyes. “Financially, and in every other way.”

Tony stayed silent as he took another gulp of
wine.

* * *

When Geoffrey waddled out of her office,
followed by finance director Bob Arnott and then Kieran—who turned
on his way out and gave her a half-hearted smile—Martha stayed in
her chair at the small conference table. Her insides still churned.
As she’d feared it would, the meeting had produced nothing but more
stress and heartache. A devastating reality check was the best way
she could describe it.

All her excitement over the crazy-great night
with Tony and the prospect of a whirlwind trip to England had
collapsed in minutes under the onslaught of Arnott’s grim financial
numbers and their cruel implications. Her mental energy sapped,
Martha felt physically drained, too—a stark contrast to the way her
body had pulsed with life as she fed breakfast to Tony mere hours
ago.

Martha’s unseeing eyes were locked on the
pile of treasonous papers arrayed in front of her when Jane knocked
on the open door. “Are you okay?” her assistant asked.

Martha met her concerned gaze, but couldn’t
seem to force words past her tight vocal cords.

“Oh, God, you sure as hell don’t look okay.”
Jane rushed around the end of the table and plopped down in the
executive chair next to her boss, reaching for her hand.

Martha gave Jane’s cool fingers a light
squeeze and fought the tears she’d struggle through most of the
meeting to suppress. A second later, when Jane put her arm around
her shoulders, Martha finally gave in to her emotions with a choked
sob.

“Easy, sweetie,” Jane murmured, tightening
her embrace. “You’re going to be all right.”

Martha shook her head, pulling back so she
could look straight at Jane. “Sure,
I’ll
be all right, hon,
but I can’t say the same about everyone else on the payroll.”

“Am I fired, then?” Jane said in a
semi-joking voice.

“Hell, no. You know I can’t brew a decent cup
of coffee to save my very soul.” She could kid Jane, because her
friend knew exactly how important she was to Martha and to the
team.

Jane gave her a lopsided smile. “Or do much
of anything else around an office, if we’re speaking truth here.”
Then she turned serious. “But you know you don’t have to worry
about me, sweetie. Martin will have me back at the
Post
in a
New York minute, same as he will you.”

Martha simply nodded. Martin had made his
commitment on that score crystal clear to both of them when they
gave their notice. She was glad her pal would have a soft landing
if the worst case scenario really came to pass, but the outlook was
a whole lot different for most of the other Thunder employees.
Their landing could be damn hard.

“Kieran and Bob looked like death when they
left the room,” Jane said, “but Geoffrey sauntered out like the
meeting was just business as usual.”

Martha’s uncle had barely said a word during
the tense, hour-long session. Even when Martha had asked him point
blank for his opinions, he’d shrugged his shoulders and carped that
no one listened to his views on anything, anyway, so why should he
bother? She didn’t completely get his passivity because a
bankruptcy scenario would be a disaster for him personally, too.
She had to conclude that he was so confident that the team would be
sold, and for a decent price, that he had little interest in the
cost-cutting exercise the bank had mandated.

Or, perhaps he was simply certain it would
fail and didn’t want to waste his breath.

“Oh, you know Geoffrey,” Martha said
evasively, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. There was no point in
slagging the man to Jane. “My make-up is wrecked, isn’t it?”

Jane shrugged. “Who cares?”

Martha managed a smile at her friend’s
honesty.

“So, we’re going to lay off how many people?”
Jane asked.

“We don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t look
pretty.” Martha stretched her neck and slowly twisted her spine,
trying to work out the kinks that had formed as her body tensed up
during the brutal meeting. “But we do know that what the bank and
the sponsors have asked us to do is impossible—that we cut enough
to balance our income and expenses. That notion’s all very fine in
theory, but the projected income stream for the rest of the season
is pretty much just a guess at this point. Who the heck knows how
many fans are going to stick with us for the remaining games? Two
thousand? Fifteen hundred?” She paused, swallowing. “Five
hundred?”

With the team in disarray on the field and
the ownership situation in turmoil, Martha wouldn’t be entirely
surprised if the players outnumbered the fans some evening
soon.

“You’ll have to use a conservative estimate
for attendance or the bank won’t buy it,” Jane said.

“Exactly, and that makes the situation that
much worse. On top of that, now we won’t even have Steam Train’s
sponsorship money in less than a month.”

“Bastards.” Jane’s lips curved into such a
fiercely protective snarl that Martha wanted to hug her.

“You know what that all adds up to, hon? What
this little cost-cutting charade shows?”

“That we’re thoroughly screwed?” Jane
ventured.

Martha gave a little snort. “Let’s just say
instead that if we were to cut spending down to the level of our
projected income, we’d have to axe almost all the front office
staff—basically, every one of them except you, Kieran, and Bob,
plus one or maybe two in marketing. Then we’d have to move to
smaller, cheaper office space, and slash our advertising and
promotion spending by at least two-thirds.” Martha’s stomach gave
another wrench as she saw the faces of all the hard-working men and
women she would have to let go under that dreadful scenario.

“Sure, because you can’t cut a dime from the
big-ticket item—the salaries of the players, coaches and trainers,”
Jane said.

“Right again. Those guys are all under
contract except the trainers, and Kieran made it clear that the
players would kill us if we tried to fire any of the training
staff.”

“So, what are you going to tell the bank,
then?”

Martha shook her head sadly. “Since chopping
expenses to the bare bone would effectively kill the team, I’m
going to tell them that they have to come up with some kind of a
compromise. They just have to give us more breathing room. We’ll
cut cost as much as we can, but not the way they’re demanding.
Hopefully, they’ll take a hard look at our numbers and see we’re
right.”

Jane shot her a skeptical look. “I admire
your optimism, but do you really think there’s any chance of that
happening?”

“We’ll just have to see,” Martha said with a
little shrug. What point would there be in depressing Jane even
more with her truthful opinion?

“Well, on a happier note,” Jane said, “I was
able to cancel your appointments for tomorrow and Monday.”

Earlier, Martha had fessed up to Jane about
hitching a ride on Tony’s plane to London so she could meet up with
Colton Butler and talk about the feature story she’d been offered.
Jane had been over the moon happy for her, and had confessed to a
healthy dose of envy. Martha could hardly blame her for that
reaction. Here she was, jetting off to spend the weekend in London
with an awesomely hot man. Who wouldn’t be envious?

“Thanks, hon,” she said.

Jane shifted in her seat—a little nervously,
Martha thought.

“Martha, last night…you and Tony…did you…”
Jane let her question trail off. Then she shook her head, her
ponytail flying back and forth. “No, forget I said that. None of my
business.”

“Thanks, hon,” Martha said, rising to her
feet. She avoided meeting her assistant’s eye, turning to look out
the window until Jane left the room.

Normally, she and Jane shared almost
everything. But it hadn’t felt right to Martha to be spilling
everything to Jane earlier this morning. So, she’d told her about
the situation with Colton, and explained that Tony had kindly
offered a lift to London so she wouldn’t have to fly commercial. It
had been shading the truth a bit and she regretted doing that to
her friend, but it hadn’t felt right to reveal what had actually
happened between them at the stadium and later at her home.