Bigger Than Beckham (6 page)

“You wouldn’t even meet with the man? Tony
Branch says he wants to make you an offer, and you goddamn won’t
even talk to him? Have you entirely lost your mind?”

Martha repressed the urge to wince. “If you
must bellow, please save it for another time and place. Jane and
the others don’t need to hear us scrabbling away.”

She’d expected Geoffrey’s explosive reaction.
Earlier that morning, she’d briefly considered withholding Branch’s
call from him. But she’d quickly dismissed the thought. Her uncle
was a minority shareholder, and she had a duty to treat him as she
would anyone else holding those rights. And he was family, after
all, at least in name.

“Whatever,” her uncle grumbled. He flopped
back down into the chair facing her. “But I simply do not
understand why you’re being so idiotically hard-headed.”

“It’s unwise to get yourself so worked up,
Geoffrey,” she said. “One heart attack is more than enough, isn’t
it?” Her uncle regularly claimed he was dieting and exercising, but
never lost an ounce of weight as was evidenced by the way the
buttonholes of his powder blue dress shirt gaped open to reveal the
white of his underwear. Martha had even offered to exercise with
him, but he’d turned her down flat.

“Thank you for your concern, but let’s stick
to business, shall we?” he said in a thoroughly grumpy voice.
“You’re not keen to sell, but what would be the harm in listening
to what Branch has to say? The man’s one of the most successful
football men in the history of the sport. What if he were to make
us an offer we couldn’t refuse?”

She shook her head. “I doubt there is such a
thing, Geoffrey. And the reason I didn’t agree to meet him was that
I’m not about to waste a busy man’s time. What would be the point
of his flying all the way over here just to hear me say no again?
You know I won’t change my mind.”

Her uncle’s lips thinned as he gripped the
wooden arms of the faded wingback chair with whitening fingers.
“You’d rather see the team go bankrupt than give up control. That’s
about the size of it, isn’t it? But what about me? Do you ever
think about my situation, darling?”

She flinched at his utterly insincere term of
endearment. “Oh, Geoffrey, you know I do.”

As much as she hated his carping and
second-guessing he
was
her uncle, and her father wouldn’t
have wanted him to fall into an even deeper financial hole. A
series of misguided real estate ventures had decimated the money
her father had given Geoffrey after he sold the family business.
Unrepentant gambling had only added to his problems. Martha didn’t
have a handle on the full extent of her uncle’s financial troubles,
but knew he was deeply in debt. It didn’t take a psychic to see
that dollar signs had flashed before his eyes as soon as she told
him about Branch’s call.

“We’re not bankrupt,” Martha said with a
placating smile. “And it’s not about control. But, yes, of course I
think about your situation. I wish every single day that I could
buy out your share, but you know I can’t afford to.”

Maybe someday, but other than her share of
the team, all the assets she had to her name were the house on the
St. John’s River, the old family home in Georgia, now rented
long-term, her mortgaged condo in Philadelphia, and her three-year
old Audi sedan. Geoffrey was looking for a whole lot more than the
worth of all those assets combined.

He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.
“Right,” he said sarcastically.

Irritated, Martha fixed him with a cool
stare. “You know all this has to stay between us, right? We don’t
need the media latching onto some story about Tony Branch coming
after the team. Especially not before we meet with the bank.”

Geoffrey hauled himself up, buttoning the
jacket of his rumpled gray suit then shooting his cuffs. “Ah, yes.
I mustn’t forget to bring along a beggar’s cup. We’ll surely need
one.”

Sometimes, her uncle’s flair for the dramatic
made her want to reach for a bottle of aspirin. Or bourbon. “I mean
it, Geoffrey.”

He gave her a grim smile as he opened the
door. “You really should do something about those trust issues,
darling.”

* * *

Tony eyed the call display on his mobile and
jabbed the talk button. “Jesus. What now, Rex? Can’t a man have a
pint in peace?”

His golf buddies laughed and tossed off a few
rude remarks about his relationship with Rex, which Tony ignored.
He’d lost count of the number of rounds that had appeared on their
table since he and his friends had finished dinner two hours ago.
At least the beer seemed to have taken the edge off his aggravation
over the call with Martha Winston.

“You sound well over the legal limit,” Rex
said. “Tell me you’re not going to drive home in that state.”

“I’m not going to drive home in this state.
But didn’t you have a date tonight? Some model you were taking to
dinner at Harry’s Bar?”

“Indeed. But I just slipped away so I could
give you some
important information
. Now, if you’re too busy
raising a glass with your drunken mates to talk to me, I can—”

Tony switched the phone to his other ear and
turned his back on his noisy friends. “Remember, you were the one
who told me to get away from it all today, mate. Play a round and
have a few pints with the lads. But I’m all ears now.”

“Maybe you’d prefer to call me back when you
have some privacy?”

“Unless we’ll be discussing international
arms smuggling, I’d say we get on with it.”

Rex chuckled. “Suit yourself. As I was
leaving the office, Geoffrey Winston called from Florida.”

“Hold on, Rex.” Tony stood up and excused
himself, then strode out the front door of the club lounge and down
toward the practice green. A cold breeze riffled his lightweight
golf sweater, but he hardly felt it. “What did Winston want?”

“Basically, to be our spy, if you can believe
it. He wanted you to know he’s advised his niece that she should
consider selling the team, and that he doesn’t approve of her
resistance to listening to our offer. Mr. Winston appears to be
extremely motivated, and he’s prepared to work with us to make the
sale happen.
Whatever it takes
was the phrase he used, I
believe.”

Tony let out a low whistle. “Work with us?
What the bloody hell does that mean? He only owns twenty percent of
the team, and I gather he has no clout with Martha. He’s an
insignificant part of this, isn’t he?”

“That’s true except for the part about him
being insignificant. The man says he’s prepared to provide us with
inside information, Tony. Fully detailed financial data, insight
into insider discussions, and so on—whatever we want.”

Tony gripped his mobile tightly. “You mean
he’s prepared to go behind Martha’s back, screwing her over to help
us pry the team loose from her.”

“That’s certainly one way to put it. Look,
Tony, I didn’t encourage him. I just said I’d discuss it with you,
and that we’d consider his proposal.”

“Okay, we’ve discussed it and I’ve considered
it,” Tony growled, anger clawing at his gut. “Call him back and
tell him to shove his so-called offer up his traitorous arse.”

Rex sighed loudly. “I don’t much like the
prospect of working with him either, but perhaps it would be best
to think about it overnight. We can talk again in the morning. I
don’t have to tell you how helpful it could be to have a man on the
inside if we’re really going to do this.”

Tony paced right around the broad practice
green, now long deserted. He stopped and turned, staring blindly
back at the glaring lights of the clubhouse. Normally, he had few
scruples about using an insider to leak information to him. It
happened all the time in business. The world was awash in
sleazebags that would sell out their company for money, or as a
means to otherwise advance their interests. But he didn’t have to
think about this one. He wanted nothing to do with a man who could
screw over his own kin. His bloody brother’s daughter, for God’s
sake.

Besides, he’d already come up with an
alternative plan to convince Martha to sell. While it might well
end up with him getting into bed with someone, that someone sure as
hell wasn’t going to be Martha’s backstabbing uncle.

“Sure,” Tony said, “but we both know that
kind of thing can just as easily backfire. I have a feeling
Geoffrey Winston’s about as subtle as a Liverpool home crowd. And
the minute Martha caught wind of that kind of treachery she’d never
speak to me again.”

“I don’t disagree. But since you’re still
bound and determined to get that team, do you have a better
idea?”

“I think I do,” Tony said, impatiently raking
a hand back through his hair after a gust of wind blew it into his
eyes. “Get out your passport, mate. We’re flying to Jacksonville
tomorrow.”

Martha elbowed open the heavy wooden door and
dropped her keys into a metal dish replete with forlorn mates to
various locks scattered about the vast house and attached garage.
Kicking off her heels, she headed straight to the kitchen. As it
had since the day her father entered the hospital for the last
time, the house breathed a cool, quiet emptiness. Full of heavy
furniture and gloomy art, it spoke of his loneliness after the
death of his beloved wife, and of his profound bereavement.

Since moving to Jacksonville to be with him
during his last weeks, Martha had parked herself in her old
room—the one she’d used during her frequent visits. Technically,
while she owned the property now, she still felt like a squatter.
The big, Spanish-style house in the fashionable San Marco district
had never felt like home to her and never would. Home was her cozy,
high-rise condo in Philadelphia’s Society Hill.

And before that, the red brick colonial near
Marvel, Georgia where Martha had spent her childhood and teenage
years. Her mother was buried on the grounds of that estate, having
been mowed down by a drunk driver at only fifty-five. Her dad had
almost succumbed to the weight of his grief after Mama’s death, and
Martha figured he’d battled his depression only because he had a
fifteen year old daughter to care for. Somehow, they’d managed to
survive and go on, but it hadn’t been easy.

Years later, her father moved to Jacksonville
after buying his soccer team—the one thing in his life other than
Martha that gave him real joy—and bought this formal, cold house.
If she decided to stay—a prospect shrinking by the day—she would
sell the house and buy a condo near her office downtown, close to
the river. Daddy’s team had brought her to Florida, and it was the
only thing that would keep her there. She’d vowed to fight to keep
the Thunder going but she wasn’t delusional. The odds were stacked
against her.

Grabbing a Rolling Rock from the fridge, she
popped the top and drank straight from the bottle, leaning against
the high granite counter that was intended to serve as a breakfast
bar.

Tony Branch.

She hadn’t been able to get the blasted man
off her mind all day. The southerner in her regretted that she’d
been so coolly brusque with him. At the same time, her girly side
chastised her for dismissing the opportunity of seeing the man
again. Just a few minutes on the phone had forcefully reminded her
of the impact of their brief meeting in London.

Truth time
. She wanted to see him
again. She could admit that to herself, but she was only too aware
of how dangerous it would be. Probably even too dangerous for her
to handle in these circumstances. She had a hunch—no, a
certainty—that Tony Branch could be utterly persuasive in person,
and she didn’t want to be persuaded by him. Couldn’t afford to be.
She had a promise to keep, and she couldn’t take a chance that her
thoughts and her stupid, sex-starved body might betray her into an
irreversible mistake.

She headed up the wide staircase to her
second floor bedroom, the one place in the house where she could
escape its pervasive gloom. The spacious room, painted in bright
pink with glossy white trim, overlooked the St. John’s River, a
still swath of azure over two miles wide at that point of its
meandering trajectory northward to the Atlantic. Basketball and
golf trophies from her high school and college career remained
pristine in glass-fronted cabinets her father had built
specifically to house her memorabilia. A formal portrait of Martha
and her mother by a famous Atlanta artist hung on the opposite
wall. Only eight at the time, she had already nearly matched her
mother in height. A gangly, wafer-thin blond girl with blunt-cut
hair stared back at her as she took in the portrait. Folks had
always said she looked just like her mother, but every time Martha
gazed at the picture, she saw only an ugly duckling beside the
exquisitely beautiful, almost regal, Catherine Bowles Winston.