FAMILY FALLACIES (The Kate Huntington mystery series #3)

FAMILY FALLACIES

A Kate Huntington Mystery

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by Kassandra Lamb,

Author of
MULTIPLE MOTIVES

and
ILL-TIMED ENTANGLEMENTS

A
misterio press
publication

MULTIPLE MOTIVES

ILL-TIMED ENTANGLEMENTS

FAMILY FALLACIES

CELEBRITY STATUS

COLLATERAL CASUALTIES

ZERO HERO

(to be released Fall, 2013)

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P
ublished by
misterio press
, LLC

http://misteriopress.com

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C
over art by Rebecca Swift Artwork.

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C
opyright © 2012 by Kassandra Lamb

Family Fallacies
is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, groups and events are ALL products of the author’s imagination (as
are some of the places). Any resemblance to actual events, groups or people,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Real places in this novel have
sometimes been used fictitiously. No part of this book may be used,
transmitted, stored, or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the
writer’s written permission.

All Rights Reserved.

To my mother,

from whom I learned more about
psychology and writing

than I ever did in any classroom,

and who literally gave me the idea
for this book.

And to my cousin,

because she liked this one best.

D
arkness. What woke
her?

A shadow moves. Terror
freezes her throat.

Get up! Run!

She runs, knowing it
will do no good. The shadow will follow, will find her, no matter where she
hides.

It looms over her. She
screams.

Hands grabbing for her,
holding her down.

She tries to scream
again, but a big hand descends across her face. She fights against it. She
can’t breathe.

Big hands on her arms,
gently shaking her.

“Babe, baby...”

The shadow never calls
her that.

“Babe, wake up. You’re
dreaming.”

She opened her eyes.
The bedside lamp shone on Ted’s worried face.

“It’s okay. You’re
safe. It was just a dream.”

She nodded.

Ted sat up next to her.
He rubbed her arm. “Same one?”

She nodded again.

“Did you call Kate?”

“Yeah. I’ve got an
appointment next week.”

Ted nodded. “Can you
sleep now, do you think?”

“Yeah. Uh, Ted...”
Could
she make herself ask? Damn, she was such a wimp.

“What, Babe?”

“Could we leave the
light on, for a little while?” Her voice was just barely above a whisper.

“Sure. Come on, cuddle
up here. You’re safe with me.”

A
s Kate Huntington
fumbled with the button at the waist of her favorite slacks, she realized she
was nervous.

She was not an anxious
person by nature. Nor did meeting Skip Canfield for what she had jokingly
dubbed
non
-dates normally make her nervous. Today, however, was
different. She would be introducing him to her eight-month-old daughter, and no
matter how much she was attracted to the man, how he interacted with little
Edie would be a deal breaker.

At the thought of her daughter,
Kate felt a stab of guilt over returning to work. She had barely begun her
usual litany of reassurances–
it’s only three days a week, Maria’s a great
nanny
–when her late husband’s soft baritone broke in.

Now stop that, Kate.
You’re a great mom. Our little girl is just fine.

The guilt was replaced
by a much sharper pain that momentarily took her breath away. Kate sat down
hard on the side of her bed. She struggled not to cry as the familiar anger and
longing washed over her. It was so unfair. She and Eddie had tried to have
children for six years without results, and then after he was gone, senselessly
murdered, she had discovered she was pregnant.

One of the tears
building up in her blue eyes broke loose, leaving a track in the blusher she
had applied in an attempt to add some color to her fair skin. She gave her
cheek an irritated swipe with the back of her hand, then pushed an errant dark
curl off her face. “I miss you, Eddie,” she whispered.

I miss you too, love
,
his voice echoed in her head.

The only thing that had
made her grief bearable had been these little conversations with her dead
husband. Perhaps they were just figments of her imagination but they eased the
loneliness, made her feel that Eddie was still with her, in spirit at least.

Of course, she hadn’t
mentioned these internal chats to anyone, not even Rob Franklin, who was her
closest friend. As a psychotherapist, it would not bode well for her career if
it got around that she thought she could talk to dead people.

Her little girl wasn’t
the only stumbling block to the non-dates with Skip becoming true dates. As
long as she had moments like this, when she missed Eddie so much she could
hardly stand it... well, it just wouldn’t be fair to Skip.

He had reassured her
that he was a patient man.

Kate glanced at her
watch. If she didn’t get a move on she would be trying that patience further by
keeping him waiting at the restaurant.

~~~~~~~~

W
ith Edie on her hip,
Kate negotiated her way through the crowded room, trying not to bump people
with the diaper bag hanging from her shoulder. When she was two tables away,
Skip Canfield stood up.

Despite the noise in
the restaurant, Kate heard the woman at the next table suck in her breath. At
six-five and well over two hundred pounds of mostly muscle, Skip was
impressive.

Kate still marveled
that he was attracted to her. Of average height and build, she considered
herself a reasonably attractive woman, but she was not in his league. Skip had
assured her that he was interested in the whole package–brains and personality,
not just appearance. And he’d made no bones about the fact that he preferred
her whole package to those of the more classically beautiful women he attracted
on a regular basis.

He reached out and
snagged the strap of the diaper bag as it was about to slide down her arm. Even
that light touch on her shoulder sent a jolt through Kate’s system. She covered
her embarrassment by fussing over Edie as she settled her into the highchair
the waitress had brought to their table.

Kate needn’t have
worried about Skip’s reaction to the baby. As he did with most things, he took
the distractions and minor mishaps of dealing with an infant in stride. Kate
had no sooner sat down than Edie made a grab for the tablecloth. Water sloshed
out of their glasses as Kate struggled to pry pink chubby fingers loose from
their death grip on the fabric.

Skip dismissed her
attempt to apologize, then added, “She’s cute as a button, just like her mama.”

Kate produced a toy
from the diaper bag and Edie played with it in contentment, until their food
arrived and they had taken their first bite. Then she began to fuss.

“Sorry,” Kate said, as
she brushed her napkin across her lips and started to get out of her chair.
“She’s the Energizer bunny. Doesn’t deal well with inaction.”

Skip reached toward the
highchair. “May I?” he said.

Kate unbuckled the
strap holding Edie in the chair and Skip scooped her up in his big hands. “Go
ahead and eat. Your soup’ll get cold. My sandwich will keep.”

The little girl, now
perched in the crook of his arm, had stopped crying and was giving Skip a
solemn look. He balanced her on his knee and started bouncing her up and down,
making quiet giddy-up noises. Kate tried to hide her relieved smile as she ate
another spoonful of seafood bisque.

When she glanced up
again, he was watching her from across the table, a longing look on his face.
Kate dropped her eyes back to her bowl of soup. And almost choked on her next
spoonful, when he said in a low voice, “I know we’re not supposed to talk about
it, but I gotta tell you that I’m
not
just looking for a romantic
fling...”

He hesitated, not
wanting to spook her. “Let’s just say that I’m... interested in a serious
relationship, and I know you and Edie are a package deal.”

Kate froze for a long
moment, staring at her soup. When she finally brought her eyes back up, he was
grinning at her. “I know,” he said. “It’s too soon, Skip!” The pitch of his
voice rose to a high falsetto.

“Good heavens, I hope
my voice doesn’t sound that screechy.”

“Darlin’, your voice is
pure music to my ears,” he drawled, his native Texas creeping into his voice.

Edie started
complaining that Skip was neglecting his horsey ride duties. He resumed
jiggling his knee.

Kate hastily ate three
more spoonfuls of soup, then pushed the half-empty bowl away. “Here, let me
take her awhile so you can eat.”

“What, Kate Huntington,
the woman with the appetite of a grizzly bear, isn’t finishing a meal?” Skip
teased, as he handed the baby to her.

“Comes with the
territory, I’m afraid.”

As Skip picked up his
sandwich and took a bite, Kate asked, “So what can I give you to celebrate the
opening of your own private investigating agency?”

It was Skip’s turn to
almost choke on his food. He carefully swallowed, then grinned across the
table, the gold flecks in his hazel eyes flashing at her. “You might want to
rephrase that question, Kate, ’cause I’m real tempted to say a congratulatory
kiss.” Actually that wasn’t the
first
thing that had popped into his
mind.

Kate blushed a little. “Well,
actually I was thinking more in terms of a small investment to help you get
things started. I have a good bit of money tucked away, from Eddie’s life
insurance. I’d like to make things a little easier for you...” She trailed off
as Skip’s face darkened.

“Thanks for the offer,
but you keep that money for the baby’s education. I’ve got a good reputation
established. Already have a half dozen clients lined up.”

Kate decided not to
push, realizing she had just found the male ego that he kept well hidden behind
his easy-going grin.
Yet another stumbling block,
she thought. She
hadn’t told Skip yet that she was a moderately wealthy woman, thanks to her
late husband’s forethought. That insurance policy had been for a million
dollars.

“Well, I’m treating you
to lunch, at least,” she said. “Now tell me about these clients.”

After another Edie
exchange so Kate could finish her soup, which was delicious even cold, she paid
the bill and gathered up baby and diaper bag.

As they walked outside,
the late-August heat felt good at first, after the aggressively air-conditioned
restaurant. But by the time they reached Kate’s car, she was perspiring.
Fortunately she had managed to snag one of the few shady parking spaces. As she
started to juggle the baby around to her other hip so she could get to her
keys, Skip lifted the child out of her arms. This time Edie blessed him with a
big smile and started bouncing up and down in his arms.

“I do believe you’ve
made another conquest, Mr. Canfield.”

As he smiled down at
her, Kate resisted the urge to reach up and brush back the straight brown hair
that fell across his tanned forehead. With the baby now in the crook of one
arm, Skip leaned toward her. “Don’t suppose I’m gonna get that congratulatory
kiss, huh?”

Kate picked up a hint
of citrus from his aftershave and the faintest whiff of male sweat. She found
that oddly reassuring. He might look too good to be true but he perspired like
ordinary men. She dropped her eyes, which turned out to be a mistake. On the
side where he was holding the baby, the loose hem of his shirt had hiked up,
revealing a glimpse of taut flesh above the waistband of his slacks.

“That would be against
the four-foot rule, wouldn’t it?” she whispered, mesmerized by that thin wedge
of skin.

Skip silently cursed
himself for suggesting that rule a few weeks ago, when she’d insisted they just
be friends for awhile. He’d thought that keeping some distance between them
would make it easier to resist the urge to kiss her. It hadn’t helped all that
much. And not being able to touch her at all was agony.

“How about a group hug
then.” Not giving her time to respond, he handed the baby back to her and
wrapped long arms gently around both mother and child.

Kate let out a sigh. It
felt so good to be held by a man again.

It didn’t take long,
however, for the baby to get restless. As Kate reluctantly started to pull away
from him, Skip suddenly dropped a kiss on the top of her head. In a strangled
voice, he said, “I’ll call you later.”

Before she could
respond, he had turned to lope across the lot toward his truck.

~~~~~~~~

B
y lunchtime of her
first day back at the Trauma Recovery Center, Kate was beginning to wonder why
she’d been so eager to return to work.

Leaving Edie that
morning had been harder than she had expected, even though she knew her little
one was in good hands. Family or not, her friend, Rose Hernandez, never would
have recommended her cousin for the job of nanny/housekeeper if she didn’t have
total faith in her abilities and trustworthiness.

Still it had taken Kate
several false starts before she had successfully gotten out of the house. Maria
Hernandez had only recently immigrated from Guatemala and spoke very little
English, but she had found other ways to communicate, through gestures and facial
expressions. She had used one of those eloquent facial expressions when Kate
was heading back from the front door, for the
third
time. “Did she just
cough? Do you think she’s coming down with a cold?”

The plump little woman
had stood, arms crossed, between her and Edie, who was playing on the living
room rug blissfully unaware of her mother’s attempts to leave her. Maria’s face
was set in the no-nonsense look she gave Kate whenever she was being an overly
anxious mom.

Once at work, the
morning had been a mixed bag of experiences with clients. There were the things
she had always loved about being a psychotherapist–the sense of connection with
her clients, the intriguing task of sorting through what people said, and
didn’t say, to get to the heart of what was bothering them, and the
satisfaction when she saw the dawning of an important insight on a client’s
face.

But she had
conveniently forgotten about the negatives. One of her morning clients had
neither shown up nor bothered to call to cancel. Then Kate’s last client of the
morning had been Tammy Wingate, the financially pampered but otherwise
neglected wife of a well-to-do businessman. Sally Ford, the center’s director,
had taken over her case while Kate was on maternity leave.

Today, when Tammy had swept
into the office–her slender figure clothed in a chic designer dress and her
honey-colored hair pulled back in a French braid–she had thrown Kate off
balance both figuratively and literally by dragging her into a hug. Expensive
perfume had wafted around Kate’s head as the young woman had aimed air kisses
in the direction of her cheeks.

Tammy was basically a
nice person but she often did not deal well with anger. Today had been no
exception. The smiles were quickly replaced with passive-aggressive barbs.
Sally, of course, was a great therapist, but Tammy felt that the director’s
blunt style was not really quite right for her. She hadn’t made much progress
in the last few months. And of course she understood how important it was that
Kate stay home with her baby, after all she was a stay-at-home mom herself...
But it had been so disruptive to her healing process.

Kate wasn’t sure that
her concept of stay-at-home motherhood and this woman’s were quite the same.
Tammy had a household staff of five people and she rarely mentioned her
three-year-old son, with whom she seemed to spend very little time.

Don’t get defensive,
go with the resistance
, Kate had reminded herself. Clients often felt
abandoned and angry when their therapists got sick, took vacations or went on
maternity leave. It was illogical but somewhat understandable, since the
therapist was a major source of support and sometimes their main lifeline to
sanity. And the very nature of the one-way therapeutic relationship encouraged
clients to
not
think about their therapist’s life or needs.

Ignoring the barbs,
Kate had told Tammy that she was glad to be back at work, and then had asked
how the young woman was dealing with her dysfunctional extended family.