Her Voice Drives Him …

For the past week he'd been driving her crazy, in fact, he was freaking her out. He'd been trailing around behind her, recorder in hand and asking her to say all sorts of irrelevant phrases in her Russian accented sultry voice.

When she'd tackled him about it on the third day with his "say 'I will turn right into a jelly, so you can eat all that is left and go back to work, right'" she'd refused. Nikki Heat might, according to Rick, be working with a Russian cop in the next book, and he might want to get the phonetics just right, but even a frozen-brained, dumbass politseyskiy from outer Siberia wouldn't come up with a crazy phrase like that!

He'd eventually convinced her … for the life of her she could think how … probably when he started trailing kisses down her neck and turned her brain into mush … which might explain the totally weird phraseology eventually sounding reasonable to her … and so she'd kept on doing her sultry, Russian accent whilst saying totally bizarre things.

Thank heavens that yesterday seemed to have been the end of it. Rick appeared to be happy with his accumulated recordings and had stayed in the loft to write his chapter up.

The clock on her screen was just a few minutes short of five pm. She was counting the minutes down and keeping her fingers crossed that the phone wouldn't go, that no body drops would be called in and she and Castle would be able to get off on their weekend to her Dad's cabin.

… 16:56 … 16:57 … 16:58 … 16:59 … 17:00 … Yes!

She quickly stood up, turned her computer off, grabbed her handbag and jacket off the back of her chair and with a wave to the boys, headed to the lift. Stepping out onto the sun-drenched pavement, the warm September sun lifting her spirits, she had to smile even more as Castle pulled up at the curb in the Ferrari.

Pulling the door open she dropped into the passenger seat, pulled the door closed and leant over to kiss him before buckling her belt and settling back.

"Ready?" Asked Castle

She gave a happy nod and watched him as he switched on the sat nav. Her smiling face turned into an icy glare as she heard her own sultry, Russian-accented voice tell them to

"Pull out vhen you are ready Rook, and turn left in vone point two miles"