Bigger Than Beckham by V. K. Sykes

sad reality indeed, but succinctly and
nicely put, as one would expect from a fine lady scribe.”
    She rounded her eyes, deciding to give a
little of his own back to him. It was like poking a stick at a
sleeping alligator, but she couldn’t seem to resist. “If you don’t
mind my saying so, you speak awfully well for a working class lad
from a tough part of Middlesbrough,” she said in a sugar-sweet
voice.
    His gaze turned sullen and smoky. A look like
that shouldn’t be sexy, but it was—insanely so. Or maybe she was
just a complete moron.
    “Just because I quit school at seventeen to
play professional football doesn’t mean I’m some yob. I read books,
Martha,” he growled.
    She held up a hand defensively. “I was just
yanking your chain a bit. No offense intended.”
    One corner of his mouth—and it was a very nice mouth—twisted a bit. “None taken.” There was a hint of
apology in his voice. “I suppose I react that way because I still
get looked down on in certain quarters.”
    Martha raised a brow. “Quarters? Which
quarters? You’re a freaking superstar.”
    He shrugged. “You know. Quarters where they
love you as long as you’re running your arse off on the pitch and
heading balls into the net. But God help you if you don’t know your
place.”
    “Some people still resent your success as a
team owner?” She shook her head. “That’s nuts.”
    He shrugged again, like it didn’t matter a
bit. But she suspected it mattered a lot.
    “Ordinary Joes think it’s great. They like
the fact that one of them made it to the top.” His mouth flattened
a bit. “Or almost to the top, anyway. But, sure, there’s a lot of
resentment out there. And I can be a bit rough around the edges at
times.”
    “Like the time you socked that other owner at
a press conference?” she asked dryly.
    “The bastard had it coming,” he replied in a
hard voice. “He called one of my guys out for deliberately injuring
his star striker, which was a load of slanderous crap. Then he
called me an upstart and a disgrace to the game of football. I’m
not thin-skinned, but that was too much.”
    “I’d have slugged him, too,” she said,
getting outraged on his behalf. That kind of vile snobbery had no
place in sports.
    “It cost me more than a quid or two in fines,
I’ll tell you that. But I’m not sorry about it, and I’ll do it
again if I have to.” He leaned forward slightly, his gaze dark and
intent as it captured hers. “I take care of my own, Martha, and
I’ll never apologize for that.”
    She had absolutely no doubt that Tony Branch
took care of his own, and God help anyone who got in his way.
     
    * * *
     
    While Martha was getting dressed, she wracked
her brains trying to come up with an appropriate restaurant. The
menu didn’t matter, the price didn’t matter, the atmosphere didn’t
matter. She cared about one thing and one thing only—that no one in
the restaurant would see her with Tony Branch and put two and two
together about the future of the Thunder. Being seen with him in
public was insane, and she knew it. As she raced through a quick
change into a pair of skinny black jeans and a pink silk shirt, she
still couldn’t believe she’d agreed to it.
    But she had agreed to it because she
wanted to go to dinner with Tony. Truthfully, she’d wanted it since
the moment they met in England, and it had bothered her more than
she cared to admit that he hadn’t followed up. But the wheel had
now come full circle. The man had shown up at her door with an
armload of flowers—a grand gesture if there ever was one—and a
promise not to harangue her about buying the Thunder. Maybe this
was all about stealing the team out from under her, but maybe it
wasn’t.
    As she fussed with her hair and touched up
her makeup, the rational part of her brain lectured her that she
was being naïve. Maybe, but there was only one way to find out. Her
instinctive response to Tony came not from her brain but