Chapter 11
Their first full week in the new house came and went in the blink of an eye, and Kate could barely see through the blur of hers when she slogged through the door of the firm that morning at the crack of dawn, her need of caffeine following little sleep and a standing three-mile date with her treadmill like an emergency siren blaring in her head.
With still wet hair and slippers covering her stockinged feet, she ducked first into the kitchenette and set to drip a pot of mud-like coffee that Turkish brewers would no doubt have applauded, then continued on to her office put down her things, and it was through that most routine act that a series of present and past mistakes began to kick off and to reveal themselves.
The first was simply her decision to sit. For, somehow, in just the minute between that one and the previous, she forgot entirely about having to go and retrieve the coffee her body had already suffered too long without. The second was realized only after she did sit, when she reached into her day bag to pull out her dress shoes. The dress shoes, it turned out, she'd neglected to pack.
Kate had shed a tear or two in that office over the years, the majority of them born of happiness or pride, a few of them otherwise, but she'd never cried of embarrassment. No, that was unique and special to that Friday, during which she was scheduled to meet with three clients, two existing and one new-the latter, somewhat worryingly, courtesy of a referral from Miranda Radner-and later to join Rick for dinner to celebrate their triumphant survival of the maelstrom that'd been the past seven days in their old Victorian on Oakdale Road.
They'd done well enough at tucking things away in drawers and behind closed doors, in making rooms cozy enough for their forthcoming partygoers so only the two of them and not their guests would know of what lay hidden beneath, but things weren't all Pottery Barn and polished.
There was the suspiciously noisy pipe behind the wall in their bathroom, light switches that didn't control the lights they were supposed to, a queer buzz originating from somewhere in their kitchen, and windows that slid shut on their own, no matter how vigorously they fought them, to name but a few items on Gus's list of fixes. To say nothing of the fact that Kate was still convinced the place was haunted, which, of course, brought her husband-and only her husband-unending delight.
But they were doing it. They were diving in and making it work as best they could, and in spite of all of the snags, she'd never felt a greater sense of belonging or more at peace in all her life.
Displeased and distracted, it took a good thirty minutes before Kate realized she didn't have a mug of coffee in her hand, and in an effort to rectify that only made it halfway across her office before Morgan appeared out of nowhere and scared her half to death.
"Jesus. What..." She flattened a palm over her heart, noted its pronounced thump. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Um, hi, I'm Morgan. Maybe you've seen me at some point over the past four years," she sassed, expectedly so. "I work here. I sit out front." She had her purse still settled across her body, a takeout cup from their go-to joint in each hand, and she snickered. "What the hell are you wearing here?"
In unison, their eyes dropped to Kate's feet. Nothing complemented a Tahari suit quite like a fuzzy pair of purple slippers.
Kate huffed out a breath. "It's been a very long week, okay? I'm going to have to borrow your clown shoes for my meetings, not that they'll be much better." Her assistant was a doll of a thing, petite in nearly every sense of the word, save for her feet, which seemed, comically, better suited to a lumberjack. "Seriously, what are you doing here so early?"
"You said you'd be here, so I'm here." Morgan extended one of the cups and Kate reached for it. "That's how I roll. That's why you pay me the big… holy shit!" Her gaze locked onto Kate's hand. "Talk about big. My god, is that what I think it is? Did Rick propose?"
And there was mistake number three.
Dammit, Kate thought. She'd been so careful. She'd nearly made it to the finish line without screwing up, but there she was, caught, and on the freaking day before she and Rick would finally be announcing the news.
She swallowed down a sip of the coffee then let her chin drop, her eyes close. "We wanted to wait and tell everyone together at the party tomorrow night. We flew out to Vegas a couple of-"
"You got married?" Morgan shouted like the two were conversing across a sea of chattering people.
"Christ, this has to be a nightmare," Kate muttered as Morgan stood there slack-jawed. "Yes, Morgan, we got married, and if you can't find a way to magically forget this information before I kick you out of this office in ten seconds, please, at least, promise me you won't open your big mouth and say anything to anyone else before we do."
Morgan recoiled as if she'd been slapped. "I know how to keep a secret, thank you very much, and I may have big feet, but I hardly have a big mouth." Kate hoisted a brow. "Whatever. Shut up." She turned on her offended heel for the door. "I'm going to work at my desk now. I love my boss and I'm so happy for her, but she can be really mean without her morning coffee."
She disappeared out the door and Kate looked down at the cup in her hand, smiled.
"She loves you, too," she called out after her.
xxxx
Because they neither wanted to deal with the time and hassle of meeting and coordinating with catering teams nor with preparing food themselves, Rick and Kate opted to go the route of the potluck for the housewarming party, inviting their guests to contribute anything that might well accompany the lasagnas her mother had graciously offered to bake.
What the hosts did themselves provide, however, was the booze, and there was a lot of it, so much, in fact, that one of their beautiful, hand-crafted concrete kitchen counters lay almost entirely hidden beneath the collection of bottles, and Morgan, it seemed, had already sampled a couple of rows deep.
"Hey, Mom and Dad Kate!" she whooped at Jim and Johanna when they wandered into the kitchen together to discard their dinner plates. "I'm pouring, if you want." And she was: vodka, a good bit of it on the counter rather than in her cup.
Johanna gave her husband a nudge.
"Uh, why don't you let me do that for you, Morgan?" he said taking the hint and she bounced away, threw her arms around Johanna while he stealthily substituted water for Grey Goose.
"I love you guys a lot. I wish I could see you all the time." Morgan wasn't quite slurring, but the distance to it was shortening by the second. "You must be the happiest parents." Suddenly and inexplicably, she clamped her hand over her mouth then swiftly pulled it away. "Oh, no, I wasn't supposed to tell anyone about the wedding." She'd done nothing of the sort, in actuality. "Kate's gonna kill me. Then she's gonna fire me. Oh, no. Please don't tell."
The Becketts exchanged a look, an implied wink of their eyes, and set to consoling their fuddled friend.
Meanwhile, Rick had succeeded in sneaking Kate away from the crowd and upstairs for a moment alone. He'd been jonesing for it for nearly two hours, since their first guest had arrived, and the steady infusion of wine had only worked to elevate the craving.
"Can we kick everyone out yet?" she asked, sucking in a breath when his mouth opened against her neck for another taste and sent a bolt of heat through her. Already knowing the cruel answer, she tugged him away with the fistful of hair she'd seized. "Then you have to stop doing that. My parents are downstairs and I can't think when you do that."
"Thinking is overrated," Rick countered and attempted again to advance, only to be rebuffed. "Okay, fine, I'll stop, but the second we're alone-"
Kate grabbed his shirt with her other hand, used it as leverage to thrust herself forward and capture his lips. "The second," she whispered in promise. "Right now, we need to get back down there or Morgan might end up taking her top off. You know she can't be left unsupervised."
Rick puffed the air out of his cheeks while he assessed the arising situation below his belt.
"See what you do? I'm going to need another minute." He walked in a tiny circle. "So, what do you think about sharing our thing now? We probably should've just handed out informative flyers when people came in. I doubt a few of them'll even remember anything anyone says at this point."
She glanced down, remarked with a smirk. "Yet one more reason to appreciate being a woman. Take your minute then come down. We can tell them now." Before going she stepped into him. "Trust me, I want it, too," she told him. "You can't see it but I can feel it."
That only stretched out his intermission, but Rick rejoined the party a few moments later, heading first to the kitchen to retrieve the special bottle of champagne he'd tucked away for the occasion, and then excusing Kate out of a tête-à-tête with Lanie.
"Friends, everyone, hello," he hollered before punctuating the attempt with a necessary whistle to win the buzzing crowd. "Thank you all for your attention, especially you, Judge Johanna and Hillary," he threw in amusingly. "I promise you two party animals will be able to return to your game of flip cup here in just a few minutes."
Hillary, who'd long had a crush on him the size of Texas, all but shot hearts out of her eyes just hearing him utter her name.
"First of all, Kate and I want to thank you for being here with us tonight, and for not pointing out all the things you've found that need to be fixed. I assure you, despite how gorgeous she looks after these months under the knife and these weeks of cleaning and staging, we know how long that list still is. Believe me, we know."
He turned to Kate and their eyes met, smiled.
"Tonight is, um, well it's actually a celebration of more than just this place. I know a lot of people say what I'm about to, but none of them has ever meant it as much I do. When I met this incredible woman standing here beside me, it was only a matter of seconds before I knew she was going to be the very best thing that ever came into my life. I knew that loving her was going to be the easiest, the most rewarding, and the most transformative experience I'd ever live, and I wasn't wrong."
Kate looked out into the group, found Morgan who appeared on the verge of popping and her mother who had glistening tears in her eyes, and her jaw clenched as her fingers, woven with Rick's, unknowingly squeezed his like a vise.
Rick raised the bottle of Dom into the air, and everyone with their glasses did the same. "So, here with our families and closest friends, Kate and I want to first toast to many years of happiness in our new home." He drank a sip, passed the bottle to her. "And second, we want to share with you that a couple of weeks ago, she and I-"
All of a sudden, Martha came fluttering back into the room, noticed everyone sipping in unison. "Oh, for heaven's sake, I've missed the wedding announcement?" she grouched, cutting him off. "Honestly, Richard, I was in the little girls' room for two minutes. You couldn't have waited for me?"
His shoulders slumped.
"Thank you, Mother," he replied defeated. "As always, your timing is impeccable."
Morgan threw a hand up to the sky and cheered like she'd been relieved of a thousand-pound weight. "Hallelujah! I don't have to keep the secret anymore!" It'd been one day. And she hadn't kept it.
Kate, still holding the bottle of champagne, swallowed a couple more healthy gulps.
"That's wonderful news, Katie, congrats," her father said, his reaction, Rick noticed, oddly muted.
Then Lanie chimed in, and only managed to compound his confusion.
"Yeah, we're so happy for you guys. I'll definitely drink to that."
Kate could only shake her head. They hadn't even tried.
Martha pushed her way from the back of the room to the front, flicked Rick on the arm before giving his bride a hug and moving along.
"Well, I guess it's foolish me, isn't it, Counselor? I assumed you'd be too busy to find the time to blab about being the new wife of the great Richard Castle. I guess I assumed wrong, since everyone in this room already seems to know all about our Nevadan nuptials."
Kate pivoted slowly toward him, folded her arms across her chest. "And I guess Gus is going to have to build a pretty big dog house out back, after all. Woof, woof."
"Yeah, well… touché." He snatched the bottle from her hand and set it on the coffee table, curled an arm around her waist. "I couldn't help it. And I'm not sorry. I've never been this happy. Really, if you think about it, I should get points for only telling one person. Apparently, you took out an ad in the newspaper."
"I had to. Someone already had his face plastered all over all the billboards," she wisecracked and they shared a laugh. "Hillary's going to be devastated, you know. I'm sure her dream has been crushed."
Rick's tone took a tender shift. "You're my only dream. Being here with you is my only dream."
"So, you two lovebirds…" Jim dropped a hand onto the shoulder of each. "When can Johanna and I expect our first grandchild?"
Kate rolled her eyes.
"Seriously, Dad?"
"Now that is an excellent question, Jim." Rick's lips curved. "I'm ready to kick off negotiations on that anytime. What do you say, Counselor, your conference table or mine?"
XX
