by Rachel Lyndhurst; Carmen Falcone; Ros Clarke; Annie Seaton; Christine Bell
He sighed, but answered anyway. “Prada, I’m busy.”
Theresa folded her arms and perched on the edge of a stool. She wasn’t even pretending not to be listening.
“What do you think I’m doing at this time on a Sunday morning? I’m making love to a beautiful woman. I haven’t got time to chat.” He listened patiently to another bout of whining and eventually said, not unkindly, “I’m hanging up.”
Theresa was laughing at him. His shirt fluttered tantalizingly around her naked body. She took his phone and switched it off. “Poor Prada.”
“Why are you sorry for her? I’m the one being harassed.”
“Yes, but…” She ran her hand down the center of his chest. “She obviously hasn’t got anyone to make love to her on a Sunday morning.”
“This is true.” He slid his arms loosely around her waist and looked down at her. “But unless she stops chasing me, she will never find anyone else.”
“We should do something about that.” Theresa’s eyes suddenly gleamed with mischief. “I have an idea.”
“Does it involve you taking that shirt off?”
“No. Well, yes, but later.”
Emile sighed and let her go. “In that case, I will make coffee while you tell me your idea.”
The coffee machine was on the counter. He spooned the ground beans in and pressed the switch. Then he reached up for two mugs.
“We could get married.”
The mugs clattered onto the hard granite surface in the instant before he realized she had to be joking.
“Ha!” He shot her a grin. She met his gaze with a smile that said she was joking and a raised eyebrow that suggested she was half-serious, which was crazy. Unless she was one of those bunny-boilers that, until now, he’d assumed only lived in Hollywood movies.
“No,” he said firmly.
The smile became a laugh and she held up her hands in surrender. “Why not, though?”
She was insane. And sexy. And that glint in her eye was definitely a dare. But still. Emile closed his eyes and prayed for strength. “Just, no. We should not get married.”
“Think about it.” Theresa slid her arms around his waist and grinned up at him. “It would be the perfect way to get Prada off your back.”
Merde. This was why he needed to stop picking up random women in clubs. She hadn’t seemed like a lunatic last night, but that was because they’d barely exchanged more than a few words. Her eyes were twinkling and he had no idea whether that meant she was joking or not. He wasn’t going to take the chance.
“Still no. Do you always proposition guys like this after the first night?” It would explain why a woman as beautiful as her was still single, anyway.
“Only when my mother has finally pushed me to breaking point. You’d be perfect.”
He frowned. “She wants you to marry a footballer? Or a Frenchman?”
Her eyes lit up with laughter. “No, sorry. The opposite. She’d like me to settle down with a solidly respectable Englishman. You’d drive her crazy.”
Emile shook his head. “I feel sure you can do that yourself.”
“We could get divorced at the end of a year,” she said with a tilt of her head. “Trust me, I’m a lawyer.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Right. I think it’s my caffeine-deficiency kicking in.” She waved a hand in the direction of the espresso machine. “Give me coffee and I’ll probably go back to normal.”
He slid a mug in her direction and poured one for himself.
Theresa took a sip, taking her time to savor the deep, rich flavors. “That’s better. In fact, that’s the best coffee I’ve tasted in a long time.”
“It is the best coffee. It is French.”
“Bien sûr.” She nodded at him, mocking him gently.
“That is a truly terrible accent.”
“I know. My French teacher despaired of me.”
“She has my sympathies.”
Theresa grinned. “So, you don’t want to get married, then?”
“No.”
“Damn.” She said it without heat and now he could let himself believe she’d been joking all along.
“We hardly know each other.”
Theresa nodded. “And we don’t have anything in common. Well, we have one thing in common.” She tipped her head towards the bedroom door.
“Sex doesn’t count. People don’t get married just to have sex with each other. Not in the last hundred years or so, even in England.”
“Right. So we’ll just have to have sex and not get married.”
Finally the conversation had landed back on solid ground. “I haven’t got long. I need to be at the stadium in an hour.”
“They make you practice on a Sunday?”
He smiled and shook his head. “There’s a match this afternoon. Do you want to come?”
“No.”
Emile raised an eyebrow at her. There would be press photographers scoping out the players’ box. Prada, and all the women before her, had never missed a chance to get their faces in the tabloids and their names in the gossip columns. They might claim to be huge fans of the game, but he’d never kidded himself they were interested in anything beyond his celebrity. But Theresa wasn’t even pretending to care about the game.
He picked up her hand and kissed it, masking his hurt with the mock gallant gesture. “Ah, chérie, you wound me.”
“Shall I kiss it better?”
“What a good idea.”
He arrived late at the stadium, changed in record time, and went to warm up.
“Renaud.” The manager gave him a black look. Gatz had recently instituted a list of club fines in an attempt to keep the players in line, and Emile would be writing him a check later on to atone for his lack of punctuality. He grinned to himself. Theresa had been worth it.
The match was nothing special. Both teams were playing scrappily, making mistakes, and struggling to keep possession of the ball. At half-time, neither side had scored. They filed back into their locker room, knowing they should have played better and were lucky not to be down several goals.
It was a good thing Theresa hadn’t come. She wouldn’t have seen anything to impress her so far. Emile grabbed his sports drink and a towel to rub down.
Someone yanked the towel out of his grasp. Emile turned around in surprise. Ernestinho, the new Brazilian midfielder who’d been signed for record amounts of money, was glaring at him, the towel discarded on the bench. Emile raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Just can’t keep your hands off other people’s property, can you, Renaud?”
Ernestinho had his hands on his hips and his dark eyes flared in hot anger.
Emile blinked. “I didn’t know it was yours.”
The Brazilian made a rude hand gesture, then swiveled on his heel and crossed the room.
“What was that about, mate?” Jason Woods, the team’s veteran goalkeeper, came to sit beside Emile. He jerked his head in Ernestinho’s direction.
Emile shook his head. “No idea.”
The team listened to Gatz’s diatribe on their mediocre performance in silence. On the way out, Emile chucked his empty drink bottle into the bin, tried to catch Ernestinho’s eye. The guy might be an arse, but they were teammates, and it would be better if they could sort out their differences off the pitch. Ernestinho pointedly ignored him.
Twenty minutes into the second half, Woolwich was awarded a penalty kick, and Emile lined up to take it. He eyed up the goal, sensed the direction of the wind, sent up a quick prayer, then began the run up he’d practiced thousands upon thousands of times before. He hit the ball cleanly, continued his follow-through, then heard the deep groans of the crowd when it edged the goal post and landed out.
He shook his head, fighting away the disappointment. The first and hardest lesson to learn on the pitch was how to block out the past and concentrate on the present moment. Too many players went to pieces after missing one opportunity. He needed a moment to center himse
lf again.
“Piranhudo.”
Emile’s head whipped round. That hadn’t been a quiet taunt from the opposing team to mess with his mind. That was Ernestinho. He stepped forward to confront his teammate, standing close enough to smell the sweat of his skin.
“What the hell is your problem?” Emile kept his anger coolly under control and hopefully out of notice of the referee.
“My problem?” Ernestinho flung his arms wide. “Hah! A school kid could have made that penalty.”
Emile shook his head. They clearly weren’t going to be able to deal with this during the game. “Whatever. Just stay out of my way.”
He jogged back into position, forcing his temper down with long, deep breaths. A long kick from the Woolwich goalkeeper was heading in his direction. One eye on the ball and the other on the field around him, Emile ran backward to meet it. He spread his arms out and angled his chest, ready to bounce the ball down to the field…
Fais chier! Someone had tripped him in an illegal tackle. And merde, that was Ernestinho looking down at him with a smirk.
He jumped up and grabbed a handful of Ernestinho’s shirt. “You’re supposed to tackle the other team, salaud. Didn’t they teach you that in the slums?” A fist collided with his jaw, making his head whip backward. Emile didn’t have time to remember where they were. His brain had already kicked into fight mode and he’d knocked Ernestinho down to the ground where he could pummel some sense into him.
It didn’t last long, but it took three players to pull them apart and hold them still long enough for the referee to book them both. Gatz met them at the side of the pitch, with a face as blank as his voice was cold.
“Ernestinho, to my office now. Renaud, at the end of the game.”
He’d showered and changed back into jeans and a light blue polo shirt. Thirty minutes after the end of the game, someone finally brought the message that Gatz was ready to see him. Ernestinho must have got the drubbing he deserved.
He knocked and entered the office. Ernestinho was still there, rising out of his seat like a tiger ready to pounce, claws barely sheathed. Great.
“Sit down.” Gatz turned to the Brazilian player. “Both of you.”
Emile took the empty chair and pushed it slightly further away from Ernestinho as he sat down.
“That incident was the most deplorable, shameful, ill-disciplined, inexcusable behavior I have ever witnessed from any of my players. If it were in my power, I would terminate both your contracts immediately.”
Emile opened his mouth to protest. He’d only retaliated to Ernestinho’s provocation and attack. Surely he couldn’t be sacked for that?
“As it is, you will both receive temporary bans from the Football Association. Three matches each. You will not be paid for the duration of your ban. Furthermore, you will issue a statement to the press, apologizing in full for your behavior and assuring the public that you are fully supportive of each other as teammates.”
“Foda se,” Ernestinho blasted out. “He is no teammate of mine.”
Emile shook his head in disbelief. “Are you ever going to explain to me what I am supposed to have done?”
Gatz gave him a sharp look. “You don’t know?”
He shrugged and held out his hands. “Apparently I picked up his towel by mistake at half-time.”
“Piranhudo.” Ernestinho was out of his chair and halfway across the room to Emile.
“Sit down,” barked the manager. Ernestinho glared at him but reluctantly followed the direction.
“He claims you are having an affair with his girlfriend.”
Well, that would explain it. Except… “I’m not.”
A torrent of Portuguese invective spewed out of Ernestinho’s mouth.
“She told him you were,” said Gatz.
“She’s lying.”
Eventually, he pieced together the story. Mariella had disappeared from a party they’d both been invited to on Friday night. When Ernestinho had asked about her absence, she’d told him she was with Emile.
“Why the hell would she say that?”
“It’s not true?” Gatz’s pale blue eyes were fixed on Emile’s face.
“No! I spent the entire party trapped in a corner by bloody Prada.”
Gatz nodded. “Then you may wish to make a further statement to the press. Mariella has leaked the story already.”
Ernestinho was still looking like he wanted to murder Emile. There’d be another round of headlines. And a three-match ban without pay.
“The press department will write a statement. You will both be here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning to add your personal comments and show your solidarity. Ernestinho, go talk to your girlfriend. And don’t ever bring your personal life onto the pitch again, understand?”
Gatz was impressive, Emile had to admit. Even Ernestinho, still prickly with fury, was meekly nodding and apologizing as he left the room.
“As for you…”
“I didn’t do anything!”
Gatz nodded. “I agree, this was not your fault. However…” He opened the large binder on his desk and began to read. “October 2010: Mirror, Sun, Star, photographs of you leaving a strippers bar. November 2010: News of the World reports you in a drunken brawl at a nightclub. Also November 2010: News of the World, Mirror, Sun, Star, Mail, Telegraph, Times: your former girlfriend tells all on Channel 5 talk show. December 2010…”
“Bloody paparazzi.”
“Indeed. And yet, your life is particularly full of incidents that attract them.”
Emile shrugged. He’d stopped reading the papers years ago.
“While your unsavory antics remained part of your personal life, I was able to overlook them. Now, however…”
“It wasn’t my fault!”
“I’m afraid that the press and the public will not see things so clearly. No smoke without fire, I believe the saying is. And this time, your headlines will, quite clearly, bring the club into disrepute.”
“Mariella’s headlines,” he countered.
Gatz shrugged.
“I can’t stop them printing it.”
“True. I was thinking, rather, that it would be more beneficial to provide them with an alternative story.” Gatz flipped over several more pages in the thick file of press cuttings. “Prada de Lonzalles. You said she was at the party.”
“Yes.”
“She would like to resume your relationship?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Nevertheless, if the two of you were to announce today that you became engaged on Friday night, I believe that would effectively override Mariella’s version of events.”
“Not a chance.”
Gatz put the file down, pushed his chair back from the desk, and fixed Emile with a steely gaze.
“Let me be quite clear. If you don’t clean up your public persona, beginning with this current scandal, your contract will not be renewed at the end of the season.”
All the breath left Emile’s lungs. He could only stare at Gatz in total, speechless shock. He’d never dreamed that his career was in any danger.
“Call Prada.”
He shuddered with revulsion at the thought of it. The crocodile tears she’d shed when he’d refused to get back together with her on Friday, the whining pleas when she’d called earlier that morning…could he bear to live with a woman like that? Even for the sake of his career?
Gatz remained unmoved. The man was like a bloody stone.
There had to be a better alternative than Prada.
And there was.
Thérèse.
She’d been joking, earlier. But he’d thought then that if he’d wanted to go along with it, she just might have agreed. And at least she wouldn’t be expecting anything more than a convenient arrangement.
He took a deep breath and met Gatz’s unmoving gaze. “I have a better plan.”
…
“Spill.” Julie had brought wine, Theresa provided snacks, and both were curled up on squashy bl
ue armchairs ready to dissect the events of the night before.
“Why do I have to go first?”
“Because I asked first.” Julie helped herself to olives stuffed with feta cheese.
“Fine. He’s French and he plays football.”
Julie’s mouth fell open and her wine glass tilted alarmingly.
“He also has a great apartment and tattoos on his back,” Theresa said casually as she filled her own wine glass.
“We’ll get to the tattoos in a minute. He’s a footballer? Famous?”
Theresa shrugged. “I’ve never heard of him.”
Julie dismissed that. “You don’t count. One day you’re going to be one of those High Court Judges who’ve never heard of the Beatles. What’s his name?”
“Wrong kind of lawyer to become a High Court Judge. He’s called Emile Renaud.”
Somehow, Julie looked even more stunned at this news.
“I have to text my brother right now.” Julie reached for her phone, but Theresa put out a hand to stop her.
“Wait. There’s something else.”
“He’s impotent? He’s got a third nipple? Can we sell the story to the tabloids?”
“No, no, and absolutely no way. Not yet.”
“Not yet? Teresa, what the hell has gotten into you? You’re not seriously planning a kiss and tell on this guy, are you?”
“No, of course not.”
“He probably wouldn’t appreciate it just at the moment, to be honest.”
“Why not at the moment?”
“Didn’t you watch the game this afternoon?”
Theresa rolled her eyes. “It’s a football match. Why would I watch it?”
Julie pulled out her iPad and started clicking through to find the website she was after. “That’s why.”
Pitch Brawl Destroys Woolwich’s Chances
Ernestinho, Renaud Both Banned
The photos showed two men entangled in a fight. Emile was on top, fist pulled back ready to smash into the other man’s jaw.
“Christ. What happened?”
“I don’t know what sparked it, but it was the other guy’s fault. He’d been needling Renaud throughout the match, then he tripped him up and hit him.”
“I guess Emile didn’t just sit back and take it.”
