by Alison Bond
She could tell he was arrogant just by looking at him. But that must be forgiven. It would surely be impossible to look like he did and be humble.
He held her gaze as she approached. She was ashamed of the way her heart quickened. This was a business meeting; he was practically a child.
And yet he had the eyes of a Russian philosopher, suggestive of unfathomable depth. So, an old soul? In such a smoking-hot young body?
Get a grip.
‘Mr Lubin? I’m Samantha Sharp.’
Those eyes locked on to hers like magnets. ‘You’re far more beautiful than I expected,’ he said.
‘You were expecting a man.’
‘And I am delighted to be wrong. Believe me, it doesn’t happen often.’
‘That you are delighted? Or that you are wrong?’ she quipped.
He didn’t laugh. Instead he studied her curiously for several seconds until she felt the blush rise on her cheeks. She waited for him to invite her to sit down, but he did not. She stood and felt absurd, and then annoyed. She remembered back some years ago, sharing a house with two men. She would often ask them for their opinion of what she was wearing and they would stare at her just like this, judging her appearance.
Abruptly she sat in the chair opposite him and summoned the hovering waiter with a flick of her wrist.
‘A glass of water please,’ she said.
‘And perhaps a small beer? They are known for it here. I thought because you are English …’ He shrugged. ‘But then perhaps I was also wrong about the English and their beer?’
‘I don’t drink,’ she said.
He said something rapidly in Polish to the waiter and he disappeared.
‘Tell me about Gabe Muswell.’ The Russian accent made his blunt words sound virtually menacing. And, she noted with a degree of shame, sexy.
Straight to business.
It was probably for the best. Between Jackson’s accusations and this manchild’s body, practically trembling with sheer sex appeal, she was glad of something to force her to focus.
She rattled off Gabe’s playing history, trying desperately to make more of it than there was. Perhaps this man wouldn’t know enough about English football to know that she was faking it. After all, she had read in the highlights package that Leanne prepared for her that White Stars was little more than an expensive toy to him. With a bit of luck, she thought, he was a star fucker. It was the only thing that made sense. Lubin could have approached a hundred strikers so he must either be a fan of English football or want the attention a gimmicky deal like this would bring him. She suspected it was a little of both.
‘Gabe is a celebrity right now,’ she effused. ‘The most talked-about man in England.’
‘But for how long?’ said Lubin. ‘Soon he will be back to his pissy little team, no? He will be a nobody once more.’
So he knew that much at least. This was all true. And it would be a waste of time to pretend that big-name clubs were beating a path to her office door. This was Gabe’s moment, but it wouldn’t last for ever.
‘I know enough about the player, what little there is to know,’ he said. ‘I want you to tell me about Gabe the man. It is just as important to me, to the game I think. The true strength of a player, Samantha, is in his heart.’
The waiter came back with her water. She sipped. Her throat was unusually dry, and the cold water felt as soothing as honey. She fancied he could see the heat rising off her like steam. He made her burn.
Stop it.
She wasn’t a fool. She knew that the searing attraction she felt must be in part some kind of revenge thing. After all, the man she was sleeping with had just slapped her in the face. Metaphorically, that is. Suspending her from work was the worst punishment she could imagine. And this from a man who said he loved her. He could have stood by her and to hell with Carl Higham and his judgemental snorts. It was a betrayal. Was it any wonder she was looking for retribution? As revenge fucks went, Lubin would be an excellent choice.
Stop it. Right now.
She was here to do a job, to make a deal.
‘I like Gabe a lot,’ she said, deciding to be honest. ‘He has a brain, which you can see in the decisions that he makes in front of goal. He may not be young, but surely that means he would bring a measure of maturity to any team. He’s a responsible player. And if he glimpses goal then he will do his best. I believe in him.’
‘Does he have passion?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sleeping with him?’
She couldn’t hide her shock. ‘What? No!’
‘Would he thank me?’ he said, moving smoothly to his next question as if his last hadn’t been at all provocative. ‘Would he be grateful?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He would be loyal to the team, to you.’
It was the right answer.
‘Then perhaps we can come to an accord.’
Mmm, maybe we can. But she dragged her mind back to the kind of accord he meant.
‘He’s under contract at St Ashton,’ she said, ever cautious of the regulations safeguarding the transfer market. The very regulations she was being accused of flouting.
‘They will let him go on loan. Then during the transfer window they will sell him. I saw their stadium on the television. They will be glad of the money. Perhaps they could afford seats, no? Or a roof to keep the rain off the fans? Some of the fans at least.’
He was a snob. But, these days, who wasn’t? The people that lived where she lived would vote for the right people and say all the right things about socialized medicine and education, until they got ill or their child went off to school, then values would be thrown out with the recycling and forgotten. She was exactly the same. Aleksandr Lubin would be too, only more so. One day he would inherit billions. She found this hugely attractive.
She used to think she was attracted to money because money equalled success and drive, but here was a boy who had done nothing to be rich except be born. So it would seem that she was just attracted to money, full stop. Perhaps she should have been ashamed of that, but she wasn’t.
They ordered dinner and talked for a while longer about English football in general, about Polish football.
‘They have no hunger here,’ he said. ‘At the World Cup the national coach called his own team average. Can you imagine any England manager saying such a thing and not being killed for it?’
She laughed. ‘Gabe has hunger,’ she said.
‘Then he is just what I need.’
The food was delicious. Perfectly cooked steak and pommes dauphinoise, not a shred of cabbage in sight. Her face felt flushed and she couldn’t stop playing with her hair. She momentarily loathed herself for this.
She could easily imagine the scene if Richard Tavistock were here wooing the Russian heir in her place. He would be competing, trying to out-drink him, asking about Polish women’s sexual preferences and bringing out the cigars. Richard would swan back into Legends boasting about his hangover and his conquests, and telling anyone who would listen about his new pal Alek. He would have probably tempted him with a couple more players he thought would benefit from some first-team action or a European sojourn, and he would have sealed the Muswell deal with a wink.
Richard was no better than her, even though he might think that he was. She was a grown woman; she could deal with a boy like Aleksandr Lubin. Animal attraction or no animal attraction.
‘Do you have to rush back?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said recklessly.
‘Excellent. Do you mind if I complete my meal with vodka? It is traditional.’
‘I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of tradition.’
Warning bells were clanging in her head, but she resolutely ignored them.
‘In this part of the world we drink shots,’ he said. ‘You are sure you won’t join me? This bar serves over three hundred kinds.’
She giggled. And she was not, as a rule, a giggler. ‘How do you choose?’
‘It must
be Polish,’ he said.
‘Not Stolichnaya then?’
‘She speaks Russian.’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Stoli, Smirnoff, um, glasnost.’
‘You know what it means, “glasnost”?’
She shook her head. He smiled. It was the first time she had seen his smile. She liked it.
‘It means openness,’ he said. ‘Shall we drink to that?’
From nowhere a bottle appeared between them, with two straight-edged shot glasses. He filled them both to the brim.
‘To openness,’ he said.
‘Glasnost,’ she said.
Then he reached across and he drank hers too.
It was an hour later. He was telling her about his apartment. The wonderful views, he said; she should see them.
‘I have to leave soon,’ she said. Her voice seemed to come from far away and she shook her head to pull herself back into the here and now instead of thinking about the things he might do to her if they were in this wonderful apartment of his.
‘A shame,’ he said, and poured himself another shot. ‘You are married, Samantha?’
‘Everyone calls me Sam.’
‘It is a boy’s name,’ he said, dismissing her nickname of thirty-four years with a wave of his hand. ‘You are married?’
‘No.’
‘Ever been married?’
‘No.’
‘But you have a boyfriend waiting for you at home?’
‘I do,’ she said. Do I? If she was suspended from Legends what did that mean for her and Jackson?
‘And he is a nice man?’
‘A very nice man.’
‘And does being with your very nice man make you long for nasty sex?’
That snapped her back into the here and now all right. ‘Excuse me?’
He shrugged. ‘Some of the women I sleep with, they have boyfriends, husbands, but they are not happy. You are a very sexy woman, Samantha. We are told that women want to be made love to on a bed of rose petals by candlelight, but I find many of them just want to be fucked.’
‘I’m very happy, thank you,’ she said, dimly aware that she sounded like a prim school mistress.
‘I have offended you?’ he said.
‘Not at all.’ Unbidden, her mind was suddenly full of sexual images, the best sex of her life, some with Jackson, but some not, filthy and erotically charged, without a rose petal in sight. A ball of fire took hold between her legs and slowly suffused the rest of her body with the warm flush of desire. The memories in her mind were replaced in an instant with an image of this man, the Russian boy, forcing her against some cold brick cellar wall and having her roughly and without any grace or forethought. Her skin prickled with excitement.
‘I have embarrassed you,’ he said. ‘Forgive me.’
‘I’m not embarrassed,’ she said. Though she might be if she left a damp patch on her chair when she stood up.
She couldn’t look him in the eye, and yet she couldn’t seem to avoid his stare. Her thoughts were twirling frantically between real life and this crazy snowy place where she was propositioned and called sexy. Where she felt sexy. The blood was pounding in her temples and she felt dizzy, she felt drunk, but she liked the feeling; it was like a hug from an old friend.
Should she sleep with him? For there was no doubt in her mind that was what he was asking. Should she go back to see these magnificent views with the impossibly handsome young gun? Should she have one wild night of delicious nasty sex and to hell with the guilt, the shame, the consequences? Perhaps it could help her forget the mess that was waiting for her back home. Jackson would never know. And, if he did, then so what? He had let her down. He had hurt her far more than she would have thought possible. For all her self-preservation he held her career in his hands, her most precious thing. To doubt her in business was far worse than to doubt her personally, yet for Jackson she knew the reverse was true and that infidelity would be a greater betrayal.
‘I have to go,’ she said, and she stumbled up the stairs and through the first door she saw, out into the fresh air, hoping that it would blast away the devilment playing inside her.
She was in a courtyard that looked like something out of a Shakespeare play. In the centre was a fountain, its water frozen into an impromptu ice sculpture. Lubin was beside her.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ she said, without really thinking.
‘Krakow is the most beautiful city in the world,’ he said.
‘More than any in Russia?’
‘Russia is a hole in the ground where people shit,’ he said. ‘You’ve been?’
‘Never.’
‘Don’t bother.’
There was much bitterness in his voice. She wondered why he hated the country that had made his family a fortune.
He gently touched her elbow, guiding her forward. ‘Your car will be waiting at the front, this way.’
She allowed herself to be led.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said.
11
‘So,’ said Liam, leaning in close enough to whisper, ‘did you do it?’
‘Of course not,’ she said.
‘Three hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money.’
She couldn’t say it, not here, not in this place, but it really wasn’t. The truth was that it was a small sum in the context of the game. Just half of one per cent of the Welstead deal, hardly enough to buy a one-bedroom flat in London, the kind of money Salvatore Salva would spend on a car, and hardly the sort of sum you would risk your career for. But enough to jeopardize everything she had struggled to achieve. But how could she say that to Liam without sounding ridiculous?
‘Could you go to prison? Wouldn’t it be funny,’ said Liam, ‘if you went down just as I got out?’
On Thursday mornings the only thing that kept her feet moving towards the miserable, soulless visiting room was knowing with absolute certainty that no matter how intimidating and depressing it was for her to be here it was a thousand times worse on the other side of the bars. So, no, she didn’t think it would be funny at all.
‘You know I’d stand by you, right?’ he said with a smile.
Her eyes filled with sudden tears and Liam immediately regretted trying to make light of his sister’s dilemma.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m an idiot.’
She pressed her lips together and tipped her head upwards to make the tears retreat. ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ she said.
He reached across the table and held her hand in both of his. She tried not to grimace when she saw the homemade prison tattoo on the web between his thumb and forefinger. It wasn’t offensive, just two simple shapes that were supposed to be birds flying, like a child would draw in a sky, but every time she saw it she wished he hadn’t done it. It was like a brand.
‘Even when we were kids you wouldn’t take a bribe,’ said Liam. ‘Do you remember the time that me and Steven Whittaker stole those yo-yos and we offered you fifty pence to keep your mouth shut?’
‘I got you up to two pounds.’
‘Each.’
‘But I still told.’
‘Grass.’
‘They weren’t yours,’ she said. ‘They were Sharon Mander’s and she was crying about it all day. She was one snotty tissue away from telling the teacher. Meanwhile you and Steven Whittaker are having yo-yo wars out the back of the music hut thinking nobody would notice. I didn’t grass you up, I saved you.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’d hate to think what would have happened to my life if you hadn’t saved me from a life of crime.’ He smiled grimly. ‘I should have listened to you more often.’
They were quiet for a while, thinking of when they were kids. The lives they had imagined for themselves kept them close on the same track. Now they were irreconcilable.
‘What about Jackson?’ said Liam. ‘Can he help you?’
Liam was the only person who knew how deeply her feelings for Jackson ran. If she started to tell him the truth about how
things were between them now she knew that she would start to cry for real.
Jackson had called. She hadn’t called him back. He wouldn’t call again. That was his way.
‘Have you heard of Aleksandr Lubin?’ she said, to change the subject.
She told him about the peculiar Russian and their meeting, without revealing the simmering attraction there had been between them. It stopped her having to think of her insecure future. It wasn’t until later that Liam referred back to that.
‘You’ll be okay though?’ he said. ‘It will all get sorted out?’
‘Sure,’ she said, with far more confidence than she felt. ‘It’ll all be fine.’
‘Good.’
Around them people started to hug and cry and say goodbye as the morning session drew to a close.
‘As long as you can still get me tickets if I’m out in time for the FA Cup final,’ said Liam. ‘That’s the main thing.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, with equal dryness. ‘That’s the main thing.’
Secreted in her basement office she could still hear the hammering at her front door above. She was lost in paperwork, the detritus of a glittering career. She was spending her first week off work in almost three years tending to the piles of A4 that had gathered in her home office, reading all the articles she had clipped but never found the time to read, filing all the notes she had never had time to file. Buried in paper and numbers, with her phones turned obstinately to silent, she felt temporarily in control. If only she had been able to turn the front door to silent too.
Go away.
By the end of yesterday she had successfully convinced herself that this was one of the most valuable weeks she had ever had. Once the investigation into her finances had concluded that this mess was one enormous mistake, once Jackson had reinstated her, she should take a week off annually to do exactly the same thing. She was feeling organized and informed, and confident that when she returned to work her game would be sharper than ever.