Free Laying Low in Hollywood by Jean Marie Stanberry Page A

my eyes miserably and went with it.
     
       “Please don’t quit Elena, I need you on my team.  Things will get better, I promise,” I pleaded earnestly.
     
       “You skate weeth heem.  I skate alone,” snapped Elena, and with that, she turned and skated away from us.
     
       I stood there numbly with my mouth gaping open as she skated away.  I was shocked and infuriated!  She was acting like the spoiled little princess I had left behind in Colorado Springs.  The big difference between Elena and the spoiled little princess I had left behind in Colorado Springs, was that the spoiled little princess was just fourteen, so there was, at least, a tiny bit of hope that she, might outgrow it!
     
       I skated slowly over to Ron, who was eyeing me warily.
     
      “Well, I thought that my days of working with adolescents were behind me, obviously I was wrong.  Mr. Brannon, will you skate with me?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at him playfully.
     
       “Okay, but people are going to talk,” he said, giving me a slightly seductive smile.
     
       I bit my lower lip in a sincere effort to concentrate.  I was suddenly single after more than twenty years of marriage, and Ron Brannon was way too good looking for his own good.  I could only hope that he wouldn’t be flirting with me a lot.  I was only human.
     
       “Umm...I’m sorry about that Ron.  When we went out to lunch, well...I should have realized...we’re in Hollywood...”
     
       “I’m kidding, it’s not your fault, it was I, who asked you to lunch.  I had forgotten how sneaky the media can be, I’ve been on the dark side for so long.  I completely forgot what it’s like to be the scrutinee,” he told me with a smile.
     
       “The scrutinee?” I asked, staring at him blankly.  It was a sincere effort for me to focus on the conversation and not just stare at him like a complete idiot.  His smile seemed to light up the entire arena.  I was completely mesmerized by it, besides, he was flirting with me!
     
       “Sure, if your not the scrutinizer, you’re the scrutinee.  Take it from me, it’s much better to be the scrutinizer,” he said, with a little shrug.
     
       “I can only imagine, I guess I’ve been mostly the scrutinizer myself, with my students,” I told him with a little smile.
     
       “I guess that’s what we both do for a living, huh?” he said, smiling back at me.  My heart was suddenly pounding crazily and I was struggling to fight off a feeling of giddiness that was overtaking my body.  I silently reprimanded myself.  I was a grown woman for God’s sake, not a teenager.  Ron Brannon is married, I told myself, no matter how charming he is.
     
       “Let’s get to work,” I told him, taking his right arm and wrapping it around my waist and taking his left hand in mine. 
     
       “All right, head up, back straight.  Keep your knees slightly bent at all times.  Imagine that your knees are shock absorbers, absorbing all the impact as you skate,” I told him, as we took a tentative glide forward. 
     
       We began to skate slowly down the length of the ice.  I was showing him how to match his strides to mine, which wasn’t all that hard for us, I was tall and I had long legs.  It would be much harder for him to shorten his stride to Elena’s. 
     
       When we approached the corner, I tried to help him with his crossovers.
     
       “Okay Ron, we’re going to make the turn now, shift your weight to your left and lean a bit, bring your right skate up off the ice, we’re going to place it slightly in front of our left foot and across, slowly now,” I told him.
     
       We both shifted our weight to our left foot and began to lean into the turn, Ron picked up his right skate to do the crossover, but he didn’t have a lot of control yet, the front of his blade caught the back of mine and suddenly we were both laying in a pile on the ice.
     
       He had flipped over