Chapter 11
Without a doubt, Rick considered himself a people person, comfortable interacting with and being at ease among groups of friends and strangers alike, but the way his insides were rolling as he pressed a finger to the buzzer at Lanie's apartment door had him feeling far from at ease.
"Lanie?" he presumed incorrectly when a woman opened for him. He couldn't have known, of course. Though he'd been called and invited to her home, he didn't have the first idea what Lanie looked like. "Hi, I'm Rick." He'd stopped at a market on the way over and picked up a bouquet of flowers for the hostess, which he then offered.
The woman, in fact a colleague of Lanie's from the ME's office, gave him an unabashed once-over, called into the room over her shoulder. "There's a fine man at your door with flowers, Lanie, and he thinks I'm you. Can I take them?" She came back to Rick. "I've never seen you before, but I could definitely get used to it."
Lanie came strolling up beside his greeter, hip checked her aside without warning.
"You'll have to excuse her. She doesn't spend a whole lot of time with the living." Her friend drew a look and slowly backed away. "You're Rick. I'm Lanie," she said and welcomed him with a peck on the cheek, and because she simply couldn't help herself added, "the picture on your books doesn't do you justice."
"Well now, flattery will get you…" He presented his hand for the second time. "Flowers. It's nice to meet the real you, Lanie. Now that I can see you, I know it was your gorgeous face at the restaurant."
She hooked an arm around his and led him inside, all of her attendees-of which there were now four-already present, except for Kate, whom she'd asked to make a stop for the limes she'd forgotten to buy earlier in the day.
Introductions went around: Javi, Kevin, and Nora-the flirty colleague-and the name Rick Castle didn't seem to move the needle on any of them. Had he been of calmer, clearer mind, he might've seized the opportunity to roast them for it. As it was, they could've mistaken him for James Patterson and he probably would've let it slide by.
Under the pretense of preparing him a welcome drink, Lanie pulled him into the kitchen for a tête-à-tête out of earshot.
"Kate's on her way. She still doesn't know you're going to be here. There's beer or wine or I have some harder stuff. She's bringing limes." Rick thanked her for the beer, popped the top, and coated his abruptly dry throat. "I told you a thing about me on the phone. A thing about my girl is that she likes everything to line up nice and neat. That helps her when she's wearing the badge, not so much when she puts it in the drawer at night, you understand?"
"I think so," he replied genuinely. "The last thing I want to do is push too hard or scare her away. Obviously, it seems like I've already done that."
"Look, I don't want to talk for her, but she-"
Just then, Kate came around the corner and stopped dead in her tracks as though she'd walked straight into a wall of glass.
It was Rick she locked eyes with first, and the shock of seeing him there, somewhere there was absolutely no reason she should be seeing him, nearly collapsed her.
"Hey," Lanie said casually when neither of the two said anything at all. She took the bag of limes Kate had hanging at her side. "I'll get you one," she told Kate, absent the need for a verbal request, and promptly filled a glass with more vodka than ice.
"Lanie, what the hell's going on?" The entire two minutes, she hadn't broken eye contact with Rick. He'd instantly fallen under the spell she'd cast with her mere presence and stood there absolutely lost in her. "How did you… What are you doing here?"
Lanie's eyes tracked from one to the other. "I'm just going to go back out there." She ducked between them, stopped, and glanced back. "Food in fifteen," she said and got out of there, mainly, given the fire in Kate's eyes, for her own safety.
"Hi," Rick said finally when they were alone. Getting such a simple word to leave his mouth had never been a tougher challenge. "You look great."
She'd arrived in well-cut jeans, boots of black, and a plum-colored sweater that hung off one shoulder, the skin the garment's generous cut left exposed pale and perfect. He recalled how his lips had explored that unconcealed place, indulged in the sweet taste of it, and he admonished himself the prideful rush, not from the remembrance of the whisper they'd left behind but from her present exhibition, as though it was now for her a piece of art she carried with her for all to see.
"Your cheek is much better," he observed and fought to keep his fingers from it.
Kate looked away for the first time, down at the floor a breath and back up again. "Rick, I don't understand what you're doing here." Beyond confusion, there was an unmistakable note of anger in her tone-at him, at Lanie, at both.
"I just wanted to talk to you. I didn't want to leave things the way they were after the other night."
"So, you ambush me at my best friend's house?"
"Well, putting it that way seems a little harsh. It wasn't even my idea. You're not even the teensiest bit glad to see me?" He held up his fingers, made a cutesy gesture trying to elicit a smile. The effort crashed and burned in spectacular fashion, or so screamed the scowl she slapped him with, though the truth was that part of her anger was with herself for feeling exactly as he hoped.
"No, I'm not," she insisted through a crack in her voice, and with a fist pressed against her hip like it suggested some firmness the quaver had undermined, she doubled down. "I think you should go."
That was the moment the remaining embers of Rick's nerves extinguished, and the fun began.
"Is that right," he poked, coolly sipped from his bottle of beer.
Kate mimicked his move and swallowed the vodka that remained in her glass, but did so overzealously, causing the ice cubes to smack her in the teeth. Rick bit back a smile, but not without breaking a sweat.
"Yeah, it is," she pressed on, brushing off the miscue. "I don't want you here. No one asked me if I wanted you here."
"Would you like me somewhere else?" His eyes traveled over her. "You can have me anywhere you want." Her muscles tensed when he shifted closer. "Maybe later. I think I'll stick around for a while. Everyone knows the party doesn't really get going until the limes arrive, and whatever's in the oven smells delicious." He stepped around her, dipped in for her ear as he passed. "So do you, Detective."
The rumble sent a flash of heat through her from tip to toe, and it took her a minute to reset, to throw the switch and divert her huff from the Rick track to the Lanie track, and once she did, she went straight for her as she stood away from the rest of the group, huddled in conversation with Javi.
"Can I talk to you for a minute, please? Alone." Her partner grinned goofily, unaware of the tension on account of his intoxication not courtesy of the beer in his hand, but of the one-on-one attention granted by his date, whose company he'd been long hungry for. "Now."
The pair went down the hall to Lanie's bedroom and Kate closed them inside, began to pace the floor around the bed. "I don't even know where to start," she said and tugged her hair into a fist when she needed to do something with the explosion of excess energy.
"Exactly. That's why I invited him. Now you don't have to know. I started for you."
"Do you think this is funny, Lanie?"
Lanie wandered over to the bed and dropped down onto the edge, crossed her skirted legs. "You don't need to be acting like the world's coming to an end is what I think. Get a grip, would you please? It's not like you were never going to talk to the man again. I just made it sooner rather than later. Lord have mercy, did you get a whiff of him?" Her eyes closed with the heavenly remembrance.
Kate had, but it wasn't the time for that.
"You don't know what I was or wasn't going to do. God, Lanie, I'm not-"
"And what's the difference if you knew or didn't know he'd be here, huh? How exactly do you think you would've prepared to see him again? He's a man, not some test you study for. Anyway, it's just dinner. No one's asking you to tear his clothes off and do the nasty again." Slowly her lips curled. "Speaking of," she said and began to bounce, "my new mattress got delivered yesterday."
Kate twisted her face and turned away. "I told you to keep me out of your sexcapades with Espo. What a shock, again you don't listen."
"Okay, you know what?" Lanie pushed up from the bed and straightened her outfit. "I'm having a dinner party. Parties are fun. This isn't, so if you want to go, if this is all too much and you can't find a way to sit and enjoy a nice meal with your friends, then go. I won't stop you. But he's only here because he wants to talk to you, Kate. He's not here to hurt you, and that's not what I was trying to do, either. I know you know that. He seems like a good man to me, but you do whatever you want."
"Dammit," she sighed, and a few steps behind followed Lanie out, stopping first in the kitchen to refill the drink she'd left before rejoining the rest of the group that was now being called to the dining table.
Each of its six settings had a name card placed in front of it, Lanie's beside Javi's, of course, likewise Kate's and Rick's, with Kevin and Nora anchoring each end. Obvious care was paid to the table's design, but invitingly so. The extent of formality began and ended with the glass centerpiece arranged with lemons and the matching ivory-colored dinnerware with the black rim, and fine china it was not.
Rick located his seat, peeked at the card beside it and happily found Kate's name. "Looks like we're neighbors," he remarked as she approached, and slid out her chair. "If you ever need to borrow any sugar," he teased in close when she sat without acknowledgement and stiffly tucked in.
"I guess that makes me the other slice of bread of a Rick sandwich," Nora his saucy admirer chirped. "Can I be the one on top?" she added with a guffaw and without shame, earning a pop of an eyebrow from Lanie.
"Allow me." A puffed-up Rick pulled her chair as well before he took his own. "Before I start shoving my face full of this incredible food, a thank you to all," he announced, "with a special nod to Lanie, for allowing me to crash the evening's festivities. You've saved me from a night alone at home, where I'd planned to wash my hair and eat ice cream straight from the carton."
Nora, already busy with salad tongs in hand, uttered "Great hair" like no one could hear her.
"So, you and Beckett know each other?" Kevin posed innocently, landing a synchronous affirmation and denial from the two.
"Hey, can I call you Beckett?" Rick followed. The denials continued. "I'll ask again some other time. To answer your question, Kevin, uh, the detective and I have met once or twice. I think our hostess here has it in her lovely head that we should see more of one another." He shrugged exaggeratedly so Kate would catch it. "I don't know. I'm not sure yet."
Javi snickered, threw in "That's cold, bro. She's sitting right there." Nora sulked over her salad. Kevin didn't know what to do, so he straightened his napkin that didn't need straightening.
"The hostess is just trying to get herself some pork roast," Lanie said. "Pass the meat, Writer-man."
"Yes, ma'am." Rick handed the serving dish off to Kate to keep it moving.
"What do you write?" Javi asked. "Not that I read much. I mostly like to sleep and do…other stuff when I'm off the job." He and Lanie swapped unsubtle glances.
Like she'd been cued, that was when Kate finally injected herself into the chat. "He writes cheesy mystery books," she said around a forkful. "The ones they're always trying to get rid of for cheap on clearance racks at airports."
By Kevin's face, he was more lost than ever.
"I like romance novels," Nora muttered.
Rick uncorked a swift retort, one masterfully tied with a wordsmith's bow. "That's true. I do." He tipped back the final sip of his beer, turned to Kate. "You know, I had no idea cops got so much vacation time, Detective. I mean I guess that explains the shelf in your apartment that's lined with my cheesy airport mystery books."
Beneath the table, his hand crept up and over the curve of her thigh and squeezed.