Kate's head rocks back on her neck as though he's just slapped her across the face. "Excuse me?"
"It's perfect," Rick says, still caught up in the brilliance of the plan as it unfurls inside his mind. "You don't want to be set up on boring blind dates by your friend, right? And I don't want to be set up with intellectually challenged ingenues by my mother. So we -" he waves hand between them, knocking over his mostly empty coffee cup - "just date each other. Problem solved."
All the tension he'd watched leak out of her muscles over the last ten minutes comes rushing back, pulling her spine up into a steel beam. "I don't even know you."
Realizing suddenly how he must look to her, Rick lifts his hands in a gesture of surrender and leans back in his chair. "Sorry," he says, working to make the words come out at a normal speed and pitch. "I got a little carried away."
"Obviously," Kate says, legs uncrossing as she perches on the edge of her chair.
"But," Rick continues, a little desperate to explain before she can make the exit she's planning, "I think if you hear me out, you might agree that this is a good idea."
"Dating you?"
"Pretend dating me," he says, unable to control the lift of his voice as the excitement takes back over. "Just for the next month. It's perfect."
"I don't know you," Kate repeats, eyes narrow and mouth a thin line.
"Sure you do." Rick lifts one hand, uses his fingers to count off the facts. "You know my name is Rick. You know I have a daughter. You know I'm a writer. You know I have a meddling mother, an ex-wife, and a deep dislike of the holiday season. See," he says, holding his right hand out toward her, fingers splayed, "that's more than a single hand's worth of things you know about me."
"And you're crazy. You can add another finger for that one."
Rick does, letting his grin come back out to play. "Now we're up to a hand and a half."
"Which is an entire hand more than you know about me."
"We can fix that," Rick says, closing his fingers down into loose fists. "Watch. Your name is Kate." He lifts his right thumb. "Your best friend is Lanie and she's desperate to get you married off." Up goes the index. "You hate Christmas more than I do." Rick lifts his middle finger, waggling all three digits. "See, we're halfway there."
"You're ridiculous," Kate says, high heels clicking against the slate floor as she shifts her weight onto one foot. "This is ridiculous."
"Kate, wait," Rick says, half-rising as she does. "Please just hear me out and then if you still think I'm crazy, you can leave and never have to see me again."
"I can do that anyway."
"True. But you're intrigued," Rick says, still hovering over his seat, eyes locked with hers. "I can tell."
Mariah Carey warbles about what she wants for Christmas over the cafe speakers as they stare at one another. Kate's eyes flit across his face and Rick puts on his most innocent and trustworthy smile, tries to make himself look as un-crazy as possible.
"Come on," he cajoles, quads quivering with the effort of holding himself up.
Her coat makes a soft fwump against the wooden seat of the chair when she drops down. "You have three minutes."
His knees give out and Rick plops into his chair with far less grace. "Thank you."
She nods at him, eyes still narrow and assessing. Her right hand flits back to her hip and questions overrun his mind like shoppers on a Black Friday sale. Rick pushes them away, determined to stay focused on the task of convincing her to agree to his plan.
"It's the holidays, right? What does that mean? Parties. A ton of them. I have at least half a dozen to attend and I'm sure you do too."
"I have a couple of work functions," Kate admits, the muscles in her jaw loosening a bit.
"Of course you do. Who doesn't? Now," Rick leans forward and lowers his voice, aware that the woman at the next table has been eavesdropping on their conversation, "wouldn't it be nice to have yourself a handsome and charming date lined up -" he jabs a thumb at his own chest - "rather than trying to fight off your matchmaking friend or have to deal with pitying looks and snide comments from busy bodies when you show up alone?"
"What kind of awful people do you attend parties with?"
Rick laughs. "The publishing and entertainment industries aren't known for their warm and welcoming attitudes."
"Clearly."
Kate turns her head toward the door, her profile backlit by the late afternoon sunlight spilling through the windows of the cafe. The sharp lines of her nose of and chin fascinate him, make him want to reach out and run the tip of his finger over the angle of her jaw until he reaches that soft roundness at the apple of her cheek. Rick curls his hands around his knees to keep them in place, chews on the tip of his tongue as he waits her out.
"This is crazy," she says again, turning back to him. "Look, Rick -" Kate tucks her phone away again and leans into the table, a softness in her eyes that makes some strange place inside his chest start to ache - "I'm sure you're a nice guy. Insane but nice. I just don't think -"
"Kate!" A voice trills and they both look around.
A woman, her round face split wide in a smile and one hand resting on the gentle curve of her belly, waves from just inside the door. A man, tall and with a perfectly styled head of blonde hair, stands next to her, an overly toothy grin making him look a little too much like Christian Bale in American Psycho for Rick's comfort.
"Is that Lanie?"
Kate nods without looking back at him.
"Is that her husband?"
Her head shakes.
"Oh."
Her hair catches at her collar as she looks back at him over her shoulder, hazel eyes almost golden. Gracefully, she stands, hand slipping into her pocket only to come right back out with a cream colored business card tucked between two fingers.
"I'm in."
The card flutters to the table as she turns to walk away and he snatches at it, palms a little sweaty. Rick watches her greet her friend, the stiffness in her spine belying the lilt in her voice. He flips the card over, an orchestra of childlike glee striking up inside his chest.
Captain Kate Beckett, New York Police Department
Hot damn.
The card burns a hole in his pocket all the way through dinner with his mother and a download about her day from his kid. He fingers the sharp corner of it, standing at the bottom of the stairs and watching Alexis and Martha as they go up, chattering away about the contents of the shopping bags hanging off his daughter's arms.
"Alexis, you still have school tomorrow," he calls after them. "Don't stay up too late playing fashion show with Gram."
"I won't," Alexis shouts back. "G'night, Dad."
Rick listens to them for a moment longer, his teenage daughter and far from teenage mother giggling over clothes and makeup. He'd had his doubts about Martha moving into the loft, but watching the relationship between her and Alexis blossom has put them to rest.
"So, tell me about this charming young man you met today," his mother says, her musical voice floating down the stairs. "Is there a holiday romance brewing?"
Mostly.
Huffing out a sigh, Rick flips off the lights in the kitchen and entryway. He makes his way into the office, the loft lit only by the gentle twinkle of white light from the tree. The card comes out of his pocket easily, the thick paper left soft and pliable by the heat of his body. A number marked as her cell sits sandwiched between the line for her office and her NYPD email address. Rick types the numbers into his own cell phone, a giddy smile he doesn't even try to reign in spreading over his lips.
She answers on the third ring.
"Beckett."
Yeah, that's awesome. He's totally going to start answering the phone with just his last name.
"Kate? It's Rick. From Starbucks."
Smooth. Real smooth.
"Hello, Rick from Starbucks," she says, the sharp edge of her greeting softening a little on his name.
"So how was the setup?" He asks, dropping down into his leather desk chair. "Has Lanie found you the one?"
Her answering snort spreads his smile even wider. "Hardly. He was about as boring as a human being can be while still breathing."
"Wow," Rick says, voice shaking with amusement. "And that's the best Lanie can do?"
Rick rocks back in the chair, swinging his feet up onto the desk. Ankles crossing, he looks through the makeshift viewfinder of his big toes at the illuminated skyline outside his office window. His mind wanders and he pictures Kate - Captain Beckett - in a similar position, her slim body swallowed by an oversized black leather chair tucked behind an antique wooden desk. His eyes flick to the armchair where he dropped his computer bag, the edge of his laptop just visible where the flap has slid open, and the fingers of his left hand start to tap phantom keys against his thigh.
"She's getting pretty desperate," Kate says on a sigh. "I've shot down every other man she's found. She's going to start setting me up with her patients eventually."
"That doesn't sound too bad," Rick shrugs. "Patients are people too."
"She's a coroner."
Laughter explodes from the back of his throat like buckshot and Rick slaps a hand over his mouth in a useless attempt to control the scatter.
"Well," he mumbles through his fingers, "I guess it's good you met me then."
"That's yet to be determined."
"Oh come on, Captain," he says, trying her title on for size. "I have a pulse and a personality. That's better than the other options currently filling your dance card."
Kate lets out a resigned sigh and he gives in to the urge to pump his fist in victory.
"I cannot believe I'm agreeing to this," she says and he hears the soft rasp of skin against skin, imagines her rubbing her fingers against one pounding temple.
"Neither can I," Rick admits, his cheeks starting to ache from the grin he can't turn off. "But you are. And who knows, Captain Beckett, you just might end up enjoying yourself."
"I sincerely doubt it will come to that. This is just a way to make it through the next month with our sanity intact," Kate says, a firm proclamation in her tone. "And we need rules. Guidelines."
"Such as?"
"We keep this surface level. No deep dives into each other's personal lives or histories."
"I'll agree to that but we are going to have to share some things," Rick points out, "in order to pass as a believable couple. A few facts aren't going to cut it."
Kate sighs again and he hears the pop of a cork releasing from glass. "Maybe this isn't -"
"Kate, listen," Rick cuts in, feet falling from the desk as he sits up. "I know this is crazy and probably really stupid. And I understand that you have reservations. I do to, believe it or not. But I promise -" his hand tightens around the phone until the tips of his fingers tingle - "I'll make this work. For both of us."
Her lips smack softly and he hears the bob of her throat as she swallows.
"You better," she says, voice as dry as the wine he imagines she's drinking. "Because I have a gun, Rick, and I will use it."
Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always appreciated.