Falling For You

Avalon Books
December 2004
ISBN: 0-8034-9682-6

Stephanie Martin, a single mom with a teenaged son, believes in hard work, not in fairy tales. So when she finds herself flat on her back on the ice at the local skating rink, she has no idea that it’s her very own Prince Charming coming to her rescue.

Martin St. Claire, ex-hockey star dubbed “The prince of the NHL,” cannot seem to convince Stephanie that he really wants to explore a relationship with her. Every time they are together, something seems to get in the way—a run in with his super model ex-girlfriend in a nightie, her fifteen-year-old’s joyride in her old mustang, a romantic ice skating lesson witnessed by her son’s teammates, and a date that seems more like a comedy of errors than a romantic evening.

It will take Stephanie’s son’s godmother, a lost shoe, and a Cinderella ending to convince Stephanie that Marty means what he says when he tells her “I’m FALLING FOR YOU.”

Reviews:

“FALLING FOR YOU is a feel-good story that is poignant, charming and humorous. The protagonists are outstanding and the secondary characters are well developed. Kathryn Quick writes with a pleasure and enjoyment that is contagious and heart warming.”

4 1/2 stars - Affaire De Coeur, January-February, 2005

“...FALLING FOR YOU is warm, funny, and enjoyable, and readers should not miss this captivating romantic comedy....From the first page to the last, FALLING FOR YOU will grab your attention as Stephanie and Marty meet, fall in love, and struggle to overcome the barriers for a future together. With descriptive dialogue and situations, FALLING FOR YOU is a wonderfully written story and one that I highly recommend.”

- Patti Fischer, Romance Reviews Today, January, 2005

Excerpt:

Chapter One

“Mom, are you all right?”

Through the fog beginning to clear inside her head, Stephanie Thomas recognized her son, Michael’s, voice.  Other things were coming into focus, too; the cold, the wet, the pain in her ankle and the one at back of her head.  She cracked open her right eye just a smidgen.  When the picture came into focus, she saw Mike looming over her, inverted, his forehead even with her chin.

“Mom, can-you-hear-me?” he said, spacing out the words evenly.

“I’m not deaf, just uncoordinated,” Stephanie replied.  She twirled her forefinger in a circle in the air.  “Do me a favor, Mike, do a-180.  Looking at you upside down is making me nauseous.”

“Are you hurt bad?” Mike said, circling her.

“I don’t think so.”

“Can you get up?”

Stephanie rose to her elbows and a sharp pain shot up her right leg coupling with another wave of nausea.  “Give me a minute,” she said, laying back down and closing her eyes.

“But you’re okay, right?”

“Basically.”

“Good, then let’s go,” Mike said.  “A crowd is gathering. Family time is over.  Let’s get out of here before some of the guys show up.”

Stephanie opened both eyes and turned her aching head to the right.  Eye level with a few dozen pairs of ice-skates, she followed the white laces of one pair up to the face of another adolescent.  He couldn’t have been much older than her son, but he wore a jacket with the words “Skate Guard” emblazoned across the front.

“You okay, lady?” he asked.

”She’s fine,” Mike answered for her.  He bent down and pulled on her arm, dragging her to sitting.  “Mom, get up now.”  His tone pleaded.

The sudden change in position made Stephanie’s head swim.  Refusing to give in, she willed the ice rink to stop spinning around her like an Olympic skater going for a perfect ten and put one hand onto the ice to steady herself before leaning against the wooden half-wall with Plexiglas on top that enclosed the rink.

“He’s right.  I’m fine.” 

She tried to stand, but the Skate Guard stopped her with a hand to her shoulder.  “Don’t move.  I hafta get some help and call the owner.”

“No,” Mike protested.  “You heard her, she said she’s fine. You don’t need to call anyone.  She does stuff like this all the time.  She tried to ski once.” He tugged his mother’s arm a few times, but she did not move.  “She managed to get to a tree about a quarter of the way down the slope and held onto to it until the Ski Patrol sent someone up to get her.”

“The slope was pitched at this steep angle…”  Stephanie started to explain, but Mike cut her off again with the look.

“Listen,” the Skate Guard said, “If I don’t follow procedure, it’s my backside that will be skidding down a slippery slope.  The rules say I hafta call the owner when someone falls this hard.”  He then turned his attention back to Stephanie.  “Dontcha know how to stop?”

“Stop?”  Mike said in a voice tinged with pubescent sarcasm.  “She doesn’t even know how to go straight. She’s never been on skates before.”

“Then why was she going so fast?”

Mike shrugged.

“Shoulda took a lesson, lady,” the Skate Guard said. 

Stephanie glanced at the clock mounted on the wall across the way.  Five minutes.  That’s the length of time she’d been on ice skates.  Just long enough for her to lose more points with her son.  She looked at him.  He appeared mortified.  

Her face burned with the heat of embarrassment as the voices around her grew louder.  This was another fine mess she’d gotten herself into.  Her sweatshirt was damp and getting clammy, her jeans were getting colder wherever the ice touched them, and she was sure she had what would be the beginning of frostbite.  She didn’t want anyone to fuse over her, but she could hear the muted wail of sirens and knew the First Aid Squad was only minutes away.  She wanted to go home, not to a hospital.  She tried to stand and another feeling of nausea swelled so she sat back down.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to melt into the ice.  All things considered, it appeared to be another typical day gone wrong in the Thomas household.

“The squad’s here” a man in tennis shoes said sliding to a stop next to the Skate Guard.  “Is she all right?”

“I think she whacked her head when she hit the ice.”

“Who is she here with?”

“She’s my mom, Mr. St. Claire.”

Martin St. Claire turned to the source of voice.  “Hey, Mike.  What happened?”  The kid looked positively destroyed. 

“I wanted her to take a lesson first, but no, she had to do it her way.  Now look,” he pointed down at his mother, who was now lying back on the ice, “she looks like she’s trying to make frozen snow angels.”

“What happened?” Marty repeated.  He saw the young man’s mouth thin into a frown.

Mike shook his head.  “Went down harder than Nancy Kerrigan.”  He saw Marty’s forehead crease and answered the question before it was asked.  “1994 Olympic recap on ESPN.”

Marty nodded and turned his attention back to Stephanie.  He dropped to one knee.  “Can she tell us her name?”

“Probably.  I think it’s her ankle more than her head.”

“Do you think she can sit up?”

Stephanie cracked open one eye.  “Why doesn’t someone ask me?  It’s not polite to talk about someone in the third person when they’re right in front of you. Well, sort of in front.  More like straight down and to the left.  And to answer your question, when I try to sit up, the rink starts spinning, so you’ll have to come down here if you want to talk.”

“Sorry.”  Marty took off his jacket and gently lifted her head before sliding it underneath.  “I’ve seen too many concussions in my line of work.  There is always a chance for something serious like that when someone falls on the ice. I try to get down here as soon as something like this happens.”

“And just many times has something like this happened here?” Stephanie asked, turning her head toward him. 

“More than you can guess.  The insurance company has had to handle a few more claims projected lately and unless…” He stopped speaking when his gaze met hers feeling as though someone had sprayed liquid nitrogen on him, freezing him to the spot.  Her eyes were the palest shade of blue he had ever seen, the color reminding him of the offensive zone line in a hockey rink showing through the layer of ice covering it.  He somehow tore his gaze away from those eyes with their fringe of dark lashes to focus on the woman owning them.

Looking at the bigger picture didn’t help him much at all.  His senses began to react as though on autopilot.  Sight took action first, focusing on her dark auburn hair and the way it contrasted sharply with the grayish white ice beneath it, giving him an edgy, aware kind of feeling.   The light scent of her perfume somehow cut through the cold and hit his nose like an opposing player charging the net.

“Unless what?” he heard her say.

Hearing responded next, tuning into the rich timbre of her voice and masking all the normal sounds of the ice rink.  Her pleasing tone resonated through him like the sound of a finely tuned violin string vibrating through the air. 

“What I meant was that I’m usually not this…” Almost against his will, he touched her shoulder, his hand seeming to tingle as though he had come in contact with a low voltage wire.  It had never happened before, but for some reason four of his five senses had all converged on this woman at once.  “This scattered and…” Any shred of reason he had left suddenly launched an attack of its own and the urge to kiss her hit him like a 90-mile an hour slap shot hits the back of the net.  “Whoa,” he muttered in reaction,  “Five out of five and….”

“Do you ever actually finish a sentence?” he heard her say over the jolt of all his basic instincts firing at once. 

Still amazed at his reaction to the woman lying at his feet, he removed his hand from her shoulder and looked at it briefly before looking back at her.  “On occasion.  I apologize.  How do you feel?”

“Wet and cold,” Stephanie said.

“Totally bummed,” Mike chimed in almost at the same time.

Marty reached for the blanket another rink employee had retrieved from a ground level office.  He shook it open and covered her.

“That’s not what’s wet and cold.”  She started to sit up.

“Stop trying to do that,” he cautioned, a protective instinct causing him to touch her arm, “As I said before, you could have a concussion.”  Warmth again flickered on his skin.  He looked from his hand to her eyes and saw surprise.  He managed a half-smile.          

“I suppose so.  I do get a little sick to my stomach when I try to get up,” Stephanie admitted, smiling back at him.

“All the more reason not to.”  He looked over his shoulder in response to the sound of the oversized rink door being pulled open.  “The squad’s here.”

“Move aside,” one of two EMTs called out, weaving through the skaters still on the ice.  Marty stood and moved out of the way when one dropped a back brace onto the ice next to Stephanie. “Don’t get up,” he ordered. What happened?”

“She fell,” Mike volunteered. 

The EMT fastened a cervical collar around Stephanie’s neck. “Do you know your name?” one of the EMT asked, shining a light first in one of her eyes and then the other.

“Of course I do.  It’s Stephanie Thomas.”

“And what day is it?”

“Friday.”

“So far, so good.”

“I told you.  I’m fine,” Stephanie insisted as the EMT slid a backboard under her and strapped it around her.  “I don’t need to be trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. I just need to get home.”

“Well, you can’t go home.  Not just yet,” Marty cut in.  “You need to get checked out.”  He felt his mouth kick up in a grin.

“What are you smiling at?” Stephanie asked when she noticed.

“I’m sorry, but you do look a little like Hannibal Lechter.”  He tried to suppress it, but the grin grew wider.  He covered his mouth with his hand.  A fall was no laughing matter even though, from past experience, it appeared as though Stephanie Thomas would probably be all right.

“Keep that up and I’ll bite your face,” she warned, noticing his losing attempt to keep from grinning.

“Miss Thomas, can you move your arms and legs?  Any pain here or here?” the EMT examining her asked.

“Yes, first question, no, second.  I’m fine,” she insisted.

 “You really can’t make that determination,” Marty chimed in.  “You said yourself that you feel a little sick when you try to get up.”’

“Could be the hot-dog I had at the refreshment stand.”

“Could be a lot of things.”

“Whatever it is, I can take care of myself.”

“I hope better than you can skate,” Marty said with a decided spark of bravado in his voice.

“What are you, a comedian in the off-season?”

“No, nervous chitchat I suppose.  Sorry,” Marty conceded before stepping back but keeping his gaze on her face. 

Cripes, this man-woman thing was giving him an itch he wanted to scratch.  Any woman who could make him sit up and take notice in a situation like this could be dangerous.  Interesting dangerous that was.  Maybe even worth checking out more closely dangerous, especially since he hadn’t reacted this strongly to any woman in years. But to read anything into all the eye contact and spunky bantering seemed out of place right now.

Stephanie blew out a long breath of air as Marty helped the EMT hoist her up onto a waiting stretcher.  “Who are you anyway?” she asked him, “and why all the interest in me?”

“I’m Martin St. Claire.  I own the place.”

She studied his face as he walked alongside her.  “Oh, right.  The hockey player.”

“Ex-hockey player,” Marty corrected.  “I’m retired.”

“I should have recognized you.  Looking at you up from the ice, you look different than you do on the poster on the wall of my son’s room.”

Marty pointed to his lips.  “No mouthpiece or cage across my face.”

Stephanie laughed.  “And you said I looked like Hannibal Lechter.”  He laughed, and this time, she liked the sound. 

She studied him as he walked along side the stretcher.  Martin St. Claire.  How many times had she heard that name from her son?  A million, at least.  At around five hundred thousand, she thought she conjured up a pretty good picture of what Martin St. Claire must look like.  But this Martin St. Claire wasn’t anything like she’d imagined; not as big, not as brooding.   From the stories and descriptions, and way her son talked about him, she had pictured a tough, thuggish jock with missing front teeth and a burly body.  Instead, she was staring up at a six foot toned and tapered hunk, with hair the color of a field of wheat and a pair of dark, spicy brown eyes that looked like trouble to her.

There were many times she wouldn’t have minded meeting an attractive man like him, but this wasn’t one of them.  She had a headache the size of Alaska, a condition much too distracting to have fully functioning female hormones kick in properly.  She did, however, feel a jolt of something as a few wayward ones took notice when her gaze met Marty’s incredible eyes as he loomed over her on the way out of the arena.

“Are you feeling dizzy or something?”  Marty asked.  “You look a little funny. You’re not going to do something that requires a bucket, are you?” 

"No," Stephanie assured.  She must have been staring at his face like some sort of crazy woman, but she could explain that away. She was obviously unhinged by the knot on her head and not in her right mind.  She looked at his broad shoulders to avoid staring at his handsome face.  “Sorry we had to meet like this.  I’ve heard so much about you and your hockey career from my son. He has an autographed puck in a plastic protector on his dresser.”

Mike bent down, his mouth near his mother’s ear.  “Don’t the paramedics on TV always say ‘try not to talk right now” to their patients?”  He straightened and looked at Marty.  “She’s delirious.  She doesn’t know what she’s saying.  She needs quiet.”   He turned back to his mother.  “I really am worried about you, so shhh.  Lie still, okay?”

“I’m just trying to figure out what happens next,” Stephanie reassured.

Marty furrowed his brow.  “You’re not thinking about suing me already.  You just woke up.”

Stephanie jerked her attention back to Marty.  “I wasn’t unconscious.”

“Your eyes were closed.” 

“I was thinking.”

“About suing me?”

“Not until now.” 

He saw her blue eyes flash.  “You’re angry.”

“You think?  I could be having a major medical infarction  here and you’re worried about a lawsuit!”

“What kind of medical infarction?”

“You know what, Hockey Boy,” Stephanie said closing her eyes, “I think I’m just going to let you worry about that one.”

Mike rushed over and put his body between Marty and his mother.  “Hockey Boy?  Mom, that is so not cool.”

Stephanie opened her eyes in response to her son’s voice.  “Nothing about this day has been cool.  My head hurts, my stomach is tossing lunch around and my jeans have frozen to my backside like a wet tongue on a metal pole.”

Mike saw another smile slash across Marty’s face.  “Aw, geeze.”  He turned back toward the rink as the zamboni rumbled by on the ice.  “Maybe I can get that thing to run over me and put me out of my misery.”

***