Gimme an O! (2 page)

Anthony Beals shot to his feet, slammed his hands down on his lawyer’s desk and bellowed, “What do you mean there’s nothing I can do?”

“Sit down, please.”

“I don’t want to sit. Not until you tell me how my wife can get away with this.”

Keith Alabaster sighed, as if to say he’d explained this a million times already and didn’t want to do so again. “Your prenuptial agreement is explicit. It says that if you cheat, she gets five million.”

“But I didn’t cheat on her!”

“Calm down, Anthony.”

Anthony stood to his full six-foot-three-inch height. “Calm down? You tell me my wife is about to take a good chunk of my cash, and you expect me to calm down?”

Keith simply stared at him. “This is a…
tricky
situation. If this was simply he said she said, I’d say we fight it in court. But with this whole situation being very public, I’m not comfortable leaving it up to a court of law. I think it’s wise to meet with Ginger and discuss an offer.”

“No way.” Anthony planted both hands on his hips and began to pace.

“Anthony,” Keith said firmly. When Anthony looked his way, Keith continued. “With everything that’s happened in the media, I wouldn’t trust this case to a judge.”

“But I didn’t cheat on her.”

“The world thinks you did.”

Damn the media and the way they manipulated the facts.
“I wasn’t charged with anything.”

“No, but—”

“But you’re telling me that doesn’t matter?”

“It should matter, yes. But who’re we kidding? With television and the Internet replaying only the sordid details of any given case, people are convicted in the court of public opinion. The truth gets lost, assuming it mattered in the first place.”

In this case, once those damn pictures of him had circulated, the media had touted the image of the womanizing ball player, which was a stereotype if ever there was one. He was far from a womanizer. Sure, when he’d been single, he had his share of good times. His share of women. But he had changed as he’d grown older. Matured. Even before he got married he stopped hanging out with the boys every night, chasing a piece of ass. He’d stopped that crap in college, long before he started playing pro ball. And he had most definitely sworn off all other women once he’d said “I do.”

“Let me set up a meeting with Ginger’s attorney to discuss some type of settlement.”

“Making an offer will be the same as admitting guilt,” Anthony protested.

“It’s a moot point. The question is, do you want to lose five million in addition to half of everything you own? Let’s meet with Ginger and her lawyer. I’ll get her to settle for a million.”

“A million bucks? We’ve barely been married for five months.”

“I won’t start the negotiations there. If she says yes at $250,000, great. If not…” Keith ended his statement with a lame shrug.

Gritting his teeth, Anthony crossed the carpet to the floor-to-ceiling windows and stared outside. Stared, but didn’t see a thing other than the blur of buildings in downtown Los Angeles.

He couldn’t believe this was happening to him. His life had taken a turn for the worse and everything was spiraling out of control. A cruel twist of fate had him meeting that hooker on West Hollywood, and as pathetic as it sounded every time he heard the story on the news, he
hadn’t
known the woman was a prostitute. He had truly believed her to be a woman in trouble. A woman in trouble who had flagged him down for some help. By the time he got a clue that she wasn’t down on her luck that cool May evening, the time bomb on his life had been about to explode. Literally. Just as he had been ready to head back to his car, several sudden camera flashes blinded him.

The woman shrieked and ran off, and so did the photographers.

Anthony had stood there in shock.

No one was more proud than he of his success—except, perhaps, his mama. He’d led the Oakland Raiders to the playoffs this past season with an incredible 3,008 yards passing and 351 passes completed. His best game had been against the Miami Dolphins, when he completed twenty-five of thirty passes for 333 yards. He also rushed for sixty yards for a touchdown that game. Since being traded to the Raiders the year before he’d set them on fire. Voted the league’s MVP, he had achieved fame not only in the Bay Area, where he
played, but in L.A., where he chose to live, and wherever he traveled. Never in his wildest dreams, however, would he have thought himself popular enough to have the paparazzi trailing him.

The camera flashes had been startling, but he’d written the whole thing off as some overzealous photographer or even a fan hoping to get a candid shot of him. Until the next morning when Ginger plopped the
Daily Blab
onto his stomach while he lay in bed. He had popped open an eye, seen her tearstained face, and quickly gotten up. His stomach bottomed out when he saw the front page. A large color photo showed him turning, a stunned look on his face, while he stood beside a dark-skinned woman who wore far too much makeup and wild hair to
not
be a prostitute. Of course, he had been turning to head back to his car, and because it was so dark, he hadn’t noticed all the makeup on the woman’s face right away.

He had gone on to tell Ginger that, but she wasn’t interested in anything he had to say. At least not until she had settled down after a good hour or so of crying. He finally had the chance to talk then. But after listening to his truthful although admittedly lame-sounding explanation, she threw every piece of his clothing onto the lawn of their Beverly Hills home, then started smashing the glassware in the kitchen. There was only one thing he could do to make anything better—leave the house. At least until Ginger had cooled down.

He’d moved into the presidential suite at the Raffles L’Ermitage Beverly Hills. Equally as elegant as the Regent Beverly Wilshire, Raffles L’Ermitage had far fewer rooms, which meant he would have more privacy. More than anything, he had wanted to keep a low profile until he and Ginger smoothed things over.

That was two weeks ago, and he still hadn’t been back to
the house. No, that wasn’t true. He had gone back, only to be dragged off the property by the police. Another embarrassing photo of him appeared in the papers the following day.

Ginger had gotten a restraining order against him. She wouldn’t take his calls. She wouldn’t leave a message for him. The only thing she wanted to do was end the marriage and get what she said had been promised to her in the prenuptial agreement. That much Anthony knew because of his wife’s lawyer’s correspondence with his lawyer.

One thing had become clear. She hadn’t turned out to be the stand-by-your-man kind of woman he’d initially thought her to be. Not the through-good-times-and-through-bad wife he’d expected.

He could hear his mother’s words:
Child, why are you marrying this girl? How well do you even know her?

“You knew Dad two years before you married him,” Anthony had replied, watching his mother’s face crumble at his words. “I’m only trying to say—”

“I know what you’re saying. And believe me, I don’t want the same for you that I’ve had. You’re a good son. A decent man. You deserve a decent woman.”

“Ginger
is
a decent woman.”

“Then why haven’t you met her kinfolk?”

“She’s had a rough past,” was all Anthony had said. He hadn’t felt it was right to discuss the deeply personal things Ginger had told him in confidence.

“Something’s not right, son. I feel it.”

He had ignored his mother’s warning. After all, it only made sense that she was wary when it came to marriage. Her husband had cheated on her like it was a sport, and she’d been miserable. That was bound to make anyone distrustful.

“Anthony.”

At the sound of his lawyer’s voice, Anthony snapped back into the present. He dragged a hand over his face. “Sorry, Keith. What did you say?”

“I said, do you want me to schedule the meeting with you or without you? I know we have the restraining order to consider, but I think I can persuade Ginger to revoke that.”

Anthony could hardly believe this conversation was actually taking place. “This is a nightmare, Keith.”

“It happens every day.”

“Great. So I should just get over it?”

“Sorry,” Keith said, standing up. “This is L.A. I tend to forget that
some
marriages do last a lifetime.”

“That’s what I was hoping for me and Ginger.”

“I know. But it doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen. She’s already served you with divorce papers.”

“You don’t have to remind me.”

“Sorry,” Keith said again.

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. You’re only doing your job. It’s this situation that’s frustrating me.” He had sworn that when he walked down the aisle, his marriage would last forever. The last thing he’d wanted was to follow his father’s disgusting path. His father had been married six times. Divorced six times. He’d had countless lovers, almost from the moment the bastard married his mother. And his poor mother—she had cried herself to sleep for years. In the beginning, Anthony hadn’t understood why, but on more than one occasion he had left his bedroom to crawl into her bed and wrap his little arms around her when he had heard her sobbing. Later, he understood the reason for his mother’s tears. The day she had finally told his father to leave, Anthony had vowed he would never hurt a woman the way his father had hurt his mother.

To his lawyer, Anthony said, “I always swore I’d get married and stay married.”

“That’s what I said the first time I got married. Doesn’t always happen that way.”

Anthony inhaled and exhaled slowly. “I still don’t get it. She barely even spoke to me, then she’s serving me papers?” How could Ginger have turned on him this way? “You know whose fault this is?” he went on, wagging a finger as the answer came to him. “That Dr. Love woman. The last time I tried to speak with Ginger, she told me that Dr. Love advised her to put me in the past and move on with her life.”

Keith’s face paled. “What do you mean, you tried to talk to Ginger? When?”

“Two days ago.”

“For God’s sake. Do you want her calling the cops again? You barely escaped a trespassing charge two weeks ago.”

“It’s my house.”

“Yeah, but she’s got a restraining order.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Someone needs to remind you. This situation is bad enough. You don’t need a stalking charge on top of everything else. You want to spend time in jail?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then let this go. I know you love her, but you’ve got to cut your losses and move on. Before you’re really sorry.”

Cut his losses, as if they were talking about a bad stock or something. But he knew Keith was right. Things could potentially get much worse. “Fine. Set up a meeting.”

“Given what you just told me, I doubt she’ll okay a meeting with you there, so it might have to be on the phone. But I’ll do my best. I’d like everyone to meet face-to-face if at all pos
sible.” Keith groaned softly. “But please, no more calls to Ginger. Let me handle this.”

“All right,” Anthony agreed grudgingly.

“I’ll call you as soon as I have the details.”

Anthony left his lawyer’s office in a foul mood and was still fuming when his cell phone rang a couple hours later. “Yeah?” he practically barked as he answered it.

“T?”

T
was the nickname that those in Anthony’s inner circle called him. “Yeah, this is T.”

“Hey, T, it’s me. Ben.” Anthony heard a soft chuckle, as if Ben were relieved. “You’re finally answering your phone.”

Shit. He was in no mood to talk to his agent. “Ben, can we chat later? This is a bad time.”

“I’ll make this quick. What do you say I swing by your hotel at two o’clock to pick you up? We can grab a quick bite—”

“Pick me up? For what?”

There was a pause, then, “What do you mean, ‘For what?’ The
Tonight Show
. Your guest appearance today. Remember?”

“Aw, shit.” He hadn’t remembered. It had been that kind of day. “I’m sorry, Ben. A lot’s going on.” He glanced at the Lincoln Navigator’s digital clock. It was three minutes after twelve. “It totally slipped my mind.”

“That’s okay. We still have plenty of time. As long as we’re at the NBC studios by four—”

“I don’t know, Ben.” Anthony looked out at the waves. He’d driven to Huntington Beach hoping to clear his head, but all he had for his efforts was a migraine. “I’m not feeling up for it. It’s early, though. I bet if you call them now, they can find a replacement for me.”

“A replacement?” Ben sounded truly perplexed. “Oh, I get
it. You’re joking, right?” The older man chortled as if to make his point a reality.

“Naw, man. I’m serious. I’m having a very bad day. I saw my lawyer this morning and things went right down the toilet. He suggested I offer Ginger some type of settlement rather than go to court. It’d be one thing if I’d had sex with that prostitute, but I swear to God I didn’t. But no one gives a damn about the truth, and I just wanna—”

“Wait, wait,” Ben said quickly. “I hear what you’re saying, believe me I do. And I know you feel like crap right now. But T, life goes on. I don’t say that to be crude, but it’s the truth. Ginger’s moving on, and trying to clean you out in the process. In the meantime, you’ve already lost one endorsement. I don’t want you losing any more. The world needs to see you as the good guy again. That’s why I set this appearance up. We talked about this, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember. But I’m in no mood to smile all evening for a national audience.”

“It won’t be
all
evening.”

“Even half an hour is more than I can handle.”

“Whoa. Okay, now I know you must have forgotten our conversation. This whole issue with Ginger is exactly why you
have
to go.”

Anthony knew Ben had worked his butt off to get him this appearance, after he had rejected Ben’s suggestion to smear Ginger in the media. Ben had figured if they made Ginger look bad—with real or imagined dirt—then he would come out of the entire mess smelling a whole lot better. Anthony refused, but agreed to do the talk show circuit to prove that he was still the decent guy people had come to know and love. But he wasn’t in the mood to play smiley-face on television tonight. He needed to speak with Ginger.