An Unlikely Match by Arlene James

Author:Arlene James [James, Arlene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
Publisher: Harlequin LI
Published: 2011-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

It didn’t take a sledgehammer to penetrate her thick skull—a brotherly kiss to the forehead managed that just fine. That kiss in her classroom yesterday had made it abundantly clear that Asher was not attracted to her, no matter what her runaway imagination wanted to say about it. Oh, she had thought for a moment that he had meant to give her another kind of kiss entirely, but reality could not be denied. She simply did not draw men like him. No, she attracted the kooks and goofballs.

Ellie turned away from the parking area where Asher, dressed in a black warm-up suit, was exiting his SUV. He had been so ambivalent about being at practice today that she had not expected to see him here, and for once she wished that he had stayed away. Looking down at herself, she sighed. This had seemed like such a fun, clever idea last night, but she could just imagine how Asher would see it. Too late to worry about that now. Determined to make the best of it, she put on a smile and ran toward her gaping team, her arms full of yellow tulle and caps. The wings on her head flapped and the tutu that she wore over her athletic gear fluttered as she moved.

Dredging up as much enthusiasm as she could, Ellie passed out the tutus to the girls, who slipped them on over their workout shorts as instructed, giggling uncertainly. The boys got bright yellow caps decorated with black felt wings like hers. Partially stiffened, the wings flapped as the wearer’s head moved. Once the laughing kids had donned their respective costuming, Ellie broke out the black cotton gloves. She’d sewn the fingertips of both hands together to remind the children not to use their hands.

“Okay, let’s line up for drills.” She demonstrated the proper technique of handling the ball, showing them how still her tutu and wings remained when she did it right.

The kids worked at it uncertainly at first but with increasing progress as the practice went on. Ellie was aware that the other teams on the field had stopped to gawk. She even heard one little girl run to her mother and whine, “I wanna soccer tutu!” Ellie smiled. Not only were her players the envy of their counterparts, they were developing greater dexterity and finer technique, too.

Blowing her whistle, Ellie signaled the start of a scrimmage. She rotated a different kid into the net every few minutes, reasoning that they all needed to know what they were up against on both sides of the ball. Before long, they were all pretending to be goalies making heroic saves. Ellie called them back to their purpose by reminding them that goalies did not score goals. She then pulled aside her best two goalie prospects and told them that goalies helped win games by keeping the other team from scoring. She rotated those two in and out of the goal while allowing the other kids to take one-on-one kicks before starting a new scrimmage.

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