For those of you who don't have anything to do this weekend, here's another chapter. I want to say 'Welcome' to Overpressure, who has been slowly catching up with all of the chapters and has reviewed a good many of them. It's so fun to watch the reviews and seeing how the story is still unfolding for someone else, like the angsty ending of chapter 22 but the Casketty goodness of chapter 23.

The usual disclaimers apply.

Enjoy! (I hope.)

They spent the remainder of their last morning and afternoon in Florida back at the house. They took their purchases up to the bedroom, and Kate, somewhat wistfully, put her suitcase on the loveseat in the room's sitting area and opened it up, preparing to start her packing. When she went into the closet, she stopped dead and turned around to Rick. "Oh, my God!" she exclaimed.

He looked up in alarm. "What's wrong?"

"After you got me drunk with your hangman game on the plane down here, I seem to have acquired a lot of new clothing."

He crinkled his eyebrows together in confusion. "Newsflash, Kate. You've been wearing those clothes for two weeks. You just now figured this out?"

She rolled her eyes. "No, Castle, I didn't just figure this out, but this is the first time I've thought about how I'm going to get it all home. There is no way I'm going to have room for all of this in my suitcase."

"Oh." She had a point. "Yeah."

She made a 'come on' gesture with both of her hands and told him "So that's it? Where's one of your brilliant ideas?"

"Hey, I've had plenty of brilliant ideas over the last couple of weeks! I got you here, didn't I?"

She put her hands on her hips. "So you're telling me that you used up all of your magic ninja powers of idea generation by getting me down here?"

"No!" he protested. "But...none of them happen to involve...a mechanism to haul a new wardrobe."

"Well, what should I do? I can't very well carry everything on hangers."

"You could wear some of it. Like the red bikini..." he finished, as he waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"Oh, sure. That'll be soooo appropriate for a New York winter. And you'd never survive seeing me in it for that long anyway."

He stared off into space for a moment with a dreamy look on his face. "But it would really be fun trying."

She walked over and swatted him on the arm, and he jumped a bit as his gaze abruptly found hers again as he was jolted out of his daydream, which was no doubt R-rated or worse. "Focus, Rick."

"Fine. Spoil my fantasy,"

She leaned over into his personal space and trailed a finger down his neck and onto his chest, trailing off where the first button was fastened. "Oh, Rick," she purred in a softly seductive voice, "If you find a way to carry all of these clothes home, there are just so many fantasies I could bring to life for you."

He gulped. Then he reached out to grab the back of the love seat. "Okay, you're right. I wouldn't survive it. But damn, what a way to go."

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They managed to get some of their clothing packed before Rick declared that he was hungry and wanted some lunch. They rummaged around for some leftovers in the refrigerator, and decided to take them out to eat them on the back deck overlooking the beach. It was a beautiful day; sunny with fluffy clouds in the sky, a gentle breeze, and not too hot. She was going to be sorry to not be able to experience this anymore.

As if he'd read her mind, she heard him behind her calling her name. She turned around to find him with her camera in his hands, ready to take a picture of her. "Smile!" he instructed and then snapped a couple of pictures.

After he snapped the picture, she got up and pointed him toward his chair, taking his place as she took the camera from him. She got the shot lined up and told him to smile, but then her jaw dropped as behind him, she saw several of the native birds swoop down. She couldn't even get a word out to warn Rick before they were coasting around and swooping here and there, trying to see what food they could scavenge from the humans' lunch. One of the birds narrowly missed Rick's head as it came in for a landing on the edge of the table, and feeling the bird by him, he jumped up and started frantically waving his arms around. Kate, through some presence of mind that she didn't know she had, kept her finger on the shutter button and the camera kept firing off shot after shot of the aviary anomaly. Rick was now yelling at the birds and was running around the table, arms flailing, trying to shoo them away. Luckily, they didn't actually land on any of the food, but that was probably only due to Rick's insane little dance. Finally, after what seemed like ten minutes but was really only about ten or fifteen seconds, the birds flew away, and he turned and looked at her with a shell-shocked look on his face. She still was snapping pictures, even at that point, and she knew she got one after he turned around with the bird-befuddled look on his face. Finally, when the birds were all gone and Rick was still standing there in the same spot, she put down the camera and walked over to him.

"Do you just attract odd wildlife wherever you go? I mean, first the alligator, then a hoarde of hungry, wild birds?"

"Wouldn't it be a flock?" he answered automatically, but still looking pretty shocked.

"Sure, a flock." She reached up to smooth his hair that had evidently gotten messed up when he was running around and doing his bird-shooing. "I got pictures," she told him with a little smile, hoping to snap him out of his stupor.

"I'll look at them some other time. I don't think I want to experience that again anytime soon, even digitally." Then his eyes found hers. "Did that really just happen? Did a flock of birds just swoop down and try to eat our lunch, and me with it?"

She laughed. "Yes to the birds and the swooping, but I highly doubt they were trying to eat you. I think they're probably vegetarians."

She pushed him back down in his vacated chair as she put the camera in 'play' mode and scrolled through the pictures. She started laughing as she looked at them, and on one particular one, she zoomed in on his face and collapsed in her chair in laughter. Rick looked at her mirth and told her dryly, "I think I'm beginning to regret getting that camera for you."

"Are you kidding?" she asked when she could talk again. "I know I was skeptical at first, but after this, I have done a flippin' 180 on the subject of cameras. Look at your face in this one!" she told him, shoving the display side of the camera toward him. "And I love how clear it is!"

He looked at the picture hesitantly. "Ugh." He covered his eyes with his fingers, and then he put his hand down and looked at Kate. "I know I said that you-we-should start preserving some memories, but are you really sure that you want to preserve that particular memory?"

She looked at him, and the smile bloomed a little wider on her face. "Uh huh. Absolutely."

"And I suppose you're going to share these nice 'memories' with Lanie?"

"Of course. Well, not right away, because we have to maintain the ruse for a bit. But I'm sure that I'll have to work to get back into her good graces after we come clean, so I'm sure that showing her this little sequence of shots will do at least a little bit to soften her up."

"Glad to be of service. I think."

"Just think of it as taking one for the team."

"I might need to be consoled afterwards. A lot."

"I think by then, we can probably arrange something."

They shared loaded smiles as they looked down at the food. He gazed at it somewhat skeptically and said, "Are you sure none of the birds landed on this? I mean, I didn't see any, but I was running around and-"

"-screaming like a banshee with your arms flailing around?"

He glared at her and amended haughtily, "I was going to say 'trying to get the birds to leave us alone.'"

"But my version is soooo much more descriptive," she told him, smiling somewhat smugly. "You'd think for a writer, you'd give the more descriptive account."

"I think perhaps the correct word might not be 'descriptive', but 'embellished'."

"Rick, Rick, Rick." She shook her head in mock censure. "Don't forget I have the photographic proof. Anyway," she continued, looking back at the food, "I think it's fine. I think I only saw one or two of the birds land on the actual table, not the food, and the rest were just concerned with flying around and freaking you out."

He narrowed his eyes and gave her a sarcastic 'funny, ha ha' look before he said, "Okay, then. Let's dig in."

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After they ate, they changed into their swimsuits and took a frisbee down to the beach. They tossed it around for a little while and then Rick tossed it over by a chair before grabbing Kate's hand. "Come on," he said, "let's go for a walk."

He laced his fingers with hers as they walked, careful to avoid the large shell deposits because both were barefoot. They didn't talk for a while, just walked, sometimes in the waves and sometimes at the edge. The beach was pretty quiet, with it being a Saturday, and Kate remembered how he'd said that the Saturdays here were the less-populated days for the beach because it was a check-in/check-out day for the majority of the condo complexes on the island. They saw a few people here and there, but not many. By now, their eyes were unconsciously trained to look for shells as they walked. They alternately spotted some in the waves and would bend down to pick them up to see if they were worth saving, but their joined hands never parted.

Kated spotted a shell a little bit ahead of where they were walking, and jogged forward before it was swallowed by a wave, pulling Rick with her. She bent down to pick it up, and wasn't startled at all when she found an animal inside the perfect shell. After tossing it back into a little deeper water, she said, "Hey, wasn't it two weeks ago today that I found Marvin?"

He thought for a moment. "I believe you're right. That was our first full day here." Then a smile formed on his face as he remembered more. "And if I remember right, you were so scared of little old Marvin that you just jumped into my waiting arms, instinctively trusting that my rugged masculinity would protect you from the fierce and ugly sea creature." The smile grew larger as he waited for the eyeroll. He didn't get an eyeroll as expected, but he did get a raised-eyebrow glare.

"Rugged masculinity? Well, if I remember correctly, that rugged masculinity wasn't really good for anything. You pushed me away so quickly that I'm surprised I didn't hear a sonic boom."

He pulled her toward him with his other arm. "You know why I pushed you away."

"Not then I didn't. That was the first time we'd been that...close, especially wearing as little as we were. I felt some weird things; well, weird in relation to you."

"I was still reeling from seeing you in a swimsuit for the first time. Then you fell against me..." He tilted his face up to the sun and closed his eyes as if remembering, a contented, peaceful smile adorning his mouth.

She thumped him on the forehead with her finger. "You didn't look like that then. You looked anything but the picture of contentment and happiness. You didn't even smile. You didn't joke around. I thought that you thought I was some revolting bimbette who was trying to get an opportunity to hang on you and you were trying to extricate yourself from my clutches as quickly as possible."

"I know what you thought. And I'm sorry. More miscommunication. Or really, just lack of communication."

"Even if we did communicate, I'm not sure that we would have known what to say at that point anyway."

"There's probably some truth in that." He leaned down to kiss her lips. "But there's no miscommunication between us now, is there? You know exactly where I stand." The unspoken look between them spoke volumes, though silently, of the question from two nights ago and the piece of jewelry tucked away in their bedroom. But he didn't want to dwell on that, because he told her he wouldn't, so he just smiled down at her. "And you know that I find you anything but revolting."

"Yes, and yes. I've had many demonstrations in the last week of exactly how unrevolting you find me." She gave him a quick kiss and then turned around to start walking again, pulling him with her. "Let's keep walking."

They resumed their walk, sometimes stopping to inspect shells, sometimes kicking water at each other, and occasionally stopping to steal a kiss. One time, when Kate had stopped to look for a shell in about a foot of water, Rick gave her a casual little hip bump that almost made her lose her balance. But she recovered quickly enough to run after him, and intending to tackle him, she jumped on his back as he ran. But to her surprise, he didn't fall over, but somehow caught her under the backs of her legs and hoisted her into a piggy-back ride and took off with her. She was laughing and telling him to put her down, and he was running and laughing and making 'vroom vroom' noises as he raced around the wet sand by the water's edge. Finally, partially because he wasn't really in shape for piggy-back beach running and partially because he was laughing so hard, he ran down into the water and collapsed, sending them both splashing into the surf.

Through tired breathlessness brought about from running and laughing, he said "We...need to just...walk normally...for a while."

"Don't have the stamina, Castle?" she teased, although she did sound slightly winded herself.

"Hey, when you..." he pointed at her tiredly, "can give a...high-speed piggy-back ride to me, on sand, no less, without getting...winded, then...you can talk."

They got up and went a little further down the beach, where they encountered a man fishing with a boy who looked to be about nine or ten years old. The man was just casting out into the surf. Rick thought it was a futile exercise, after all, he'd never seen any fish worth catching any of the many times he'd been swimming in the ocean. So he nodded at the man as he and Kate greeted him politely as they passed him. But then, they weren't very far past him when the man called to the boy, telling him to get the net, that he had a fish. Rick turned around, curious to see what the man hauled in. He was really pulling as he reeled in the fish. He looked up and when he saw Rick, he said off-handedly, "This guy's really putting up a fight."

So they stayed to watch, with the man hauling the fish in far enough to where the boy could get the net under it. The man brought it up out of the surf and took it out of the net. "Wow...that's a beauty!" Rick and Kate went over to look at the fish, and the man appeared to be eager to show it off. He was telling the boy, "It's a spanish mackerel, and a nice sized one."

Kate bent over the fish, and couldn't stop herself from saying "Are those teeth?"

"Yes, ma'am," the man answered. They were all looking at the bright whitish fish with the orange-colored spots. But what they couldn't get over were the teeth.

"I don't think I'd want to be swimming with him when he's hungry," Rick told them.

They oohed and ahed over the fish-and its impressive teeth-for a while longer, and chatted with the man a bit. Then he unhooked the mackerel and threw it back in the ocean, and rebaited his hook for another try. They were still chatting and watching the waves roll in when the man felt another tug on his line. Rick couldn't believe that he had another fish so soon, but he did. This time, the fish was different...the man said it was a snook. They chatted for a few more minutes, and then Rick and Kate decided to turn around and walk back to their house.

They'd never walked so far down the beach before, and while it was fun to see a new section of the beach, they did need to start heading back. Rick had some more quiet togetherness planned for their last day, and while the fish were definitely interesting, he wasn't going to use another minute of his remaining time with Kate to look at scaly aquatic creatures. She was much better to look at. As they started their walk, he unconsciously took her hand again, which she willingly let him do as she turned her head sideways and kissed his shoulder as they walked. She smiled that brilliant smile up at him, and he grinned down at her, thinking that he must be the luckiest guy in the world to be here, with her, like this. He picked up their joined hands and gave the top of hers a kiss as they walked slowly back to the beach house.

That's it for now! There are still several more chapters, so for those of you who are my devoted followers, don't worry, you'll still have more reading material. And by the way, have I thanked you lately for being devoted followers? No? Well, THANK YOU!

And triple thanks if you leave a review!

Oh, and the fish? Definitely stolen from my vacation. And the teeth on the mackerel? Yes, I have photographic proof of that. Would not want to meet one of those things in the water!

By the way, I heard 'I want to know what love is' on the radio yesterday. Now I think of this story when I hear that song. Is that weird?

As always, thanks for reading!