Her phone vibrated against her desk, alerting her to a new text message.

You. Me. Dinner tonight. 7:00?

Kate glanced to her left to watch Castle return to the bullpen after picking up some lunch for them to eat while they worked. Suddenly unsettled, she took her takeout container from the tower he carried and waited until he'd returned to his normal perch before speaking.

"Did you just ask me out on a date, Mr. Castle?" She shoveled a french fry past her lips and tried to act nonchalant when she really was feeling anything but.

His jacket rustled as he shrugged it from his shoulders while juggling his own lunch and what was quite possibly the largest soft drink Kate had ever seen.

"Oh – did I send that to your phone? Sorry… that was supposed to go to your twin."

She shot him a tolerantly fond glare and took a bite of her sandwich, looking around at her desk as though something were missing. "Where's my drink, Castle?"

"I thought we could share. It was cheaper this way."

"Since when have you cared about 'cheaper'?" Kate retorted, stealing the gargantuan Styrofoam cup from his hand and eyeing her coffee cup from that morning with consideration.

"Okay," he freely admitted, grinning boyishly as he stuck a whole handful of fries into his mouth and then tried to talk around them. "I really just wanted my lips to be somewhere yours had been."

"Sorry to disappoint you." She didn't try to sound apologetic though, catching the comically crestfallen look on Castle's face while she poured part of his soda into her coffee cup. Handing the large vessel back to him, she whispered, "You'll just have to wait for that until later."

Secretly loving the way he stammered a semblance of words strung together, Kate skimmed through a set of reports and hoped she appeared unaffected. "Yes," she said quietly after a moment.

"Yes – what?" he questioned around a bite of his hamburger.

"You. Me. Dinner tonight. 7:00," she parroted his text back to him.

His eyes lit up, and she let herself get lost in his delight for the briefest of smiles. "I'll pick you up," he murmured, fighting the urge to reach out and tuck some wayward hair behind her shoulders.

"What should I wear?"

He smirked flirtatiously. "Well, of course, my personal preference would be nothing, but they tend to frown on that in fine dining establishments here."

"Ha. Ha. Castle." Just for his smart aleck orneriness (and not because her mouth was suddenly devoid of all moisture), she confiscated his soda again and topped off her share.

They ate in silence for a few moments until Castle leaned in under the guise of stealing some fries from Kate's lunch. "The kind of dresses you've worn to my book parties, movie premieres, stuff like that – those should be fine for where we're going tonight."

Swatting his hand away, she stole back a few fries and nodded to let him know she'd heard his soft words.

"Personal preferences are funny things," she began, her fingers tapping out a reply to an email at her computer, her eyes fixed to the monitor. "Sometimes, they backfire on us."

He sat up straighter. "Like how?"

Her desk phone rang just then, and Kate answered it. Speaking to the person on the other end, she glanced across the room toward the fax machine to see it begin to spit out an incoming report. "Yep, I see it coming in now," she said into the receiver. "Thanks."

When she returned to her chair, he asked again. "Like how?"

Leaning back a bit, she swiveled casually to face him. "Like… I just might decide that I don't have a thing to wear. And since you said 'nothing' was your preference anyway…" She shrugged and let her voice trail off, leaving him to fill in the blanks.

One look at his face, and she had to bite her lip to stifle a laugh. "Oh Castle, you're so easy."

She turned back to the reports on her desk and jumped slightly when his gravelly voice tickled her ear. "You have no idea."

Recalling the time that she'd been the one to say those words to him, she fondly shoved him back to his seat and didn't try too hard to hide her smile.

I'm going to like being your girl, Castle, she thought to herself. Probably more than I should.