Author's Note: The second chapter revolving around 2x10 "One Man's Treasure."

Then Came Love

Chapter 37

Kate and Castle stopped off at her apartment for just a few minutes. She ran up to hurriedly change back into pants and a sweater while Castle dismissed Patrick for the evening–at least someone would get an earlier night of it than expected–and then met Castle outside her building in a matter of minutes.

They went back over the case as she drove out of the City, heading towards Connecticut, and were already well out of Manhattan when Castle abruptly straightened. "Wait."

She glanced at him. "What is it?"

"The Captain. Will he be okay with us spending the time to drive back to Connecticut at this hour?"

Oh, right, the Captain. Damn it, her duty status kept slipping her mind because even now, she just could not resign herself to needing to check in like this, do so little of the actual detective work. She grimaced. "Damn, you're right. He's not going to be thrilled, that's for sure."

"Well, if we don't find anything, maybe he never needs to know?" Castle suggested tentatively.

She made another face. She wasn't used to, and didn't like the idea of, hiding something like this from the Captain but at the same time… "And if we do find something?"

It was his turn to make a face. "I guess we'll deal with that if we come to it. But really, we're only going to a house in suburban Connecticut that wasn't even the scene of the crime. There's no reason to think Helen Parker had anything to do with the murder and nothing to indicate there's even the smallest risk from anyone at the house."

"Nice rationalizing," she commented rather dryly. "I'm not sure the Captain will find that quite so convincing but I suppose it's the best we can do. And it probably depends too on how useful whatever we find is. The Captain might grumble but he is all about the results, when it comes down to it."

"And if it comes to that, I'll tell him that I insisted and you only accompanied me because you couldn't let me go alone," he offered.

"You don't have to do that, take the fall for me," she objected. She took responsibility for her own actions.

He reached out and briefly covered her hand on the wheel. "You weren't asking; I was volunteering. And honestly, I don't have as much to lose because I'm not really a cop. There's only so much the Captain can do to me."

"He could kick you out of the precinct," she pointed out, a little surprised at the sharp stab of loss at the thought. She didn't want to lose him at work, even if it wouldn't mean losing him in a personal sense.

"I can call the Mayor up," he shrugged.

"The Captain still runs the precinct. The Mayor might not be able to save you."

"I'd find a way. Trust me, Beckett, I have no intention of going anywhere and if it comes to it, I won't be easy to get rid of."

"Only as a last resort, Castle," she cautioned.

He shot her a sudden, brilliant smile. "What?"

"I'd miss you too, Beckett," was all he said.

She felt herself flushing, biting her lip, and refocused on the road, not responding in words. But yes, she would miss him if he was no longer allowed into the precinct. She thought about the way they had decided to leave the restaurant and go to the Parkers' house, the way they had been on the same wavelength, able to complete each other's thoughts. She liked working with him in a way that was separate from her feelings for him personally. (She liked him personally too, of course, a lot, but it wasn't the same thing.)

"Any theories as to what Sarah was looking for in Sam's office?" she asked after a moment.

"Nuclear launch codes? The map to lost Atlantis?" he joked.

She rolled her eyes even as she bit back a smile. "Any realistic theories?" she clarified.

He sobered. "Well, it has to be something related to green solutions, the secret to the new formula that Sam was trying to find."

"Right," she agreed. "And possibly somehow related to whatever he was doing at Port Newark."

They batted around some speculation for a little while but obviously, until they actually arrived at the Parkers' office, there was only so much speculation they could do. Or more accurately, only so much speculation she was willing to engage in. Castle, of course, was quite willing to spin increasingly outlandish solutions and she sternly controlled a smile and contented herself with the occasional comment.

But they arrived at the Parkers' house in due time, to be greeted with understandable surprise by Helen Parker, but she acquiesced to allowing them to search Sam's office which was, fortunately, off in the corner of the house and had its own separate entrance from the outside in addition to the door connecting it to the rest of the house. Which would have made it easier for Sarah Reed to break in the other night, Kate noted.

Once they were inside the office, it occurred to her with a lowering of her spirits–and now that the long drive had tempered the rush of adrenaline she'd felt earlier in the restaurant–that they were looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. A needle they had no actual proof existed or what it consisted of or anything.

"You realize we might be starting a wild goose chase," she commented as she scanned the office, the large desk, the full bookshelves, the filing cabinet.

He turned and gave her a look of mock dismay. "Oh, ye of little faith," he pretended to sigh. "Don't you have more faith in our searching prowess than that? Anyway, we know Sarah had to be searching for something; she wouldn't have come all the way out here and concocted that excuse of the pen for nothing."

"True, and we know it wasn't in her bag."

He nodded brightly. "Exactly. I have to admit, I am kind of loving this case, corporate espionage, the whole spy vs. spy thing and everything. When it first started with the whole wife and fiancée thing, I thought it was going to turn out to be one of those tawdry cases, adultery as the motive, you know, but this is so much cooler than that. I mean, we're talking about the potential fate of the planet!"

She hid a smile. She wasn't quite so inclined to excitement as Castle was (was any adult as excitable as Castle was?)—but she felt a little jolt of energy go through her at his perspective nonetheless. "If you put it that way," she drawled. "How can we let the planet down?"

He grinned at her. "That's the spirit, Beckett. You want to start on the desk drawers and I'll take the bookshelves?"

She nodded, taking a seat in the desk chair, and they set to work. The surface of Sam Parker's desk was reasonably neat and anyway, whatever they were looking for was hardly likely to be lying out in plain sight. She methodically started going through his desk drawers, glancing at all the papers, while Castle started going through the bookshelves.

After almost an hour of searching, though, her energy and her optimism flagged. They hadn't found anything, or at least, nothing remotely relevant or worth killing Sam over. They'd learned that Charles DePetro's story about the Parkers being overdrawn was true, learned that Sam was meticulous in his record keeping, learned–more poignantly–that he appeared to have been a loving father. He had kept little drawings and school report cards and all sorts of mementos of his young kids in one of his desk drawers. Castle had sobered, the corners of his lips tightening in a way she recognized, when he saw that and she had found her hand automatically dropping to rest for a moment on the curve of her stomach. The discovery did add an additional urgency to their search, but it didn't make their search any more successful.

The fruitlessness of the search was not helped by the fact that she was getting increasingly hungry since they hadn't had dinner, only half the appetizers, before leaving the restaurant. And while Castle had provided a granola bar and some chocolate, it wasn't enough to substitute for an actual dinner, not in her current condition. She suppressed a grimace, setting her jaw. She wasn't going to whine like some spoiled child. They had work to do and they'd already agreed to grab dinner somewhere afterwards.

He looked over at her. "Want to switch off?" he suggested.

She glanced up. "Huh, what?"

He gestured with one hand. "We could switch. We haven't gotten anywhere so far and I was thinking switching, getting fresh eyes to look at things, might help. It can't hurt, at least."

She nodded. "It can't hurt," she echoed as she stood up. "I'll get these other shelves. You want to take the filing cabinet?"

He agreed but paused before he stepped past her, sliding one arm around her waist, and she was tired enough–and fine, discouraged enough–that she allowed herself to lean into him a little, just for a moment. "I was thinking, if we don't find anything in, say, another half hour, we might as well call it quits. As you said, we don't know for sure if there's anything to find or what it might be. We do still have to drive back to the City and I don't know about you but my stomach is about to revolt out of hunger."

She sighed a little and nodded against his shoulder. She didn't like giving up but he had a point and she was tired. "Yeah, okay."

He tipped her chin up with his finger. "You all right?"

She managed a small, reassuring smile for his benefit. "I'll manage." And she would. This hardly constituted a hardship and she refused to coddle herself so, even if she was pregnant.

"I know you will, you always do, don't you." He brushed a quick kiss to her mouth and then released her. "Back to work. The sooner we find it, the sooner we can leave."

She moved over to the bookshelves, aware of a little boost to her energy, somehow. She wasn't entirely sure how or why but something about his unquestioning belief in her, in her strength, somehow helped to shore up her resolve. Or maybe it was more about just knowing he was there, that she wasn't alone. But whatever the reason, she did feel a little better.

Castle pulled open the first drawer of the file cabinet while she began going through the shelves he hadn't looked through, pulling out every book and quickly checking to see if any papers or anything hidden among the pages fell out.

It had been roughly 15 minutes or so of still more fruitless searching before she reached the end of her section of the shelves and put the last book back with a sigh of frustration. "Nothing. This doesn't make any sense. If there was something in here, we would have found it by now." They had certainly searched just about everywhere.

He didn't respond in words, only dropped down to sit in the desk chair.

She glanced at him. Was he giving up now? The expression on his face didn't look like it and it didn't seem like the sort of thing he would do. "Castle, what are you doing?"

"I'm writing a scene."

Huh, what? Now that he'd said it, she recognized his expression, the vaguely absent one, but still wasn't sure what he was up to or why.

"Let's say Sarah found whatever it was she was looking for. She had it in her hand," he went on, his tone shifting into something approaching his story-telling voice. Looking at him, she could see that he really was playing the scene out in his mind, his active visual imagination at work, as he tried to get into Sarah Reed's mind, the way he would one of his characters.

"That's when she would have heard Helen coming out of the house. She would have had to have gotten rid of whatever it was that she found…"

She wasn't entirely sure how Castle's 'writing the scene' would help but she found herself watching him anyway, almost in spite of herself. She liked watching him like this, liked watching him think and visualize a scene. Although this was hardly the time for this sort of process.

"Okay," she agreed with mild sarcasm. "Do you want to write the part where we find it?"

He ignored her as if she hadn't interrupted. "... so Helen would never know…" He looked around, his gaze falling to the floor, and he emitted a little exclamation of surprise. "What do you know?" He pulled out a shredding machine and grabbed up a blank sheet from the desk, running it through the machine, proving that it was still plugged in and running.

He met her eyes. Could this be…

They both peered into the shredding bin, at the stack of shredded materials, and–bingo. That had to be it. Shredded pictures of something industrial-looking; she caught a portion of the hazardous material symbol on one. The symbol that would be attached to battery waste.

Castle's eyes met hers as she smiled, feeling the usual thrill of triumph at finding some crucial piece of evidence.

"We're going to need some tape," Castle quipped lightly.

She huffed a laugh and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek because she could and he had found it. His way of writing a scene, as he put it, as strange as it seemed, had worked, had led them to what they'd been looking for. "The photo techs at the precinct can manage it. Grab a bag and bring all the shredded material."

They briefly checked in with Helen Parker, letting her know what they had found and that they were taking the shredded material, and thanked her for her cooperation.

"Dinner?" he asked hopefully once they were back in her car and leaving the Parkers' house.

"Yeah, we'll find a place to stop and grab something on the way."

And that was what they did. In the town before getting back on the highway, they stopped to grab sandwiches and Castle ran into a Walgreens in the same lot and returned brandishing not only bottles of water but a roll of Scotch tape which he had bought.

So armed, they found a picnic bench in a little town square, helpfully illuminated by a lamp post, and started eating their sandwiches while at the same time, trying to sort through the shredded strips of the pictures.

"This is like putting together a puzzle where you don't even know what the full picture looks like," she commented.

"It really is. But fortunately, I am something of a puzzle expert," he declared smugly.

She hid a smile. "Now why doesn't that surprise me?" she asked dryly. Castle so often asserted his own expertise at something but then again, he did have a varied and rather random range of experiences and, yes, skills too.

He made a face at her. "You mock but I mean it. Alexis and I worked on a lot of puzzles together. One summer, we were out at the Hamptons and there was a whole week where it basically did nothing but rain so we were stuck inside and after a while, we got bored with reading or watching movies so we started working on puzzles instead. We started on puzzles with a couple hundred pieces and then put together a couple 1000-piece ones and then got ambitious and worked on a 5000-piece puzzle. That one took us more than a day but we finished it."

She surveyed the shredded strips. "Well, then, Puzzle Master, this should be easy."

He bridled in mock offense. "Must you mock me when I'm trying to be helpful?"

She grinned and nudged him with her elbow. "Pout later, Castle, we have some pictures to reassemble."

He made a face but joined her in trying to piece together the pieces. It was made more challenging by the fact that so many of the shredded strips were similar in appearance since the pictures probably depicted similar things but it was, at least, simplified by the fact that Sam Parker's shredder had only cut them into long strips.

So they ate their sandwiches and worked together on organizing the strips into actual pictures and although she would never have expected it, she found she was rather enjoying herself. The challenge of putting together the equivalent of a puzzle, yes, but also just because it was Castle and he had a way of making things more fun. They found themselves laughing softly and teasing, their hands brushing often as they rearranged the strips. It took some time but after a little more than half an hour, they had pieced together most of two pictures, haphazardly taping the pieces together. The photo techs would, no doubt, be able to complete the job in a much more thorough fashion and really recreate the images but at least for now, the images were complete enough to recognize the subjects: containers at Port Newark, one labeled with the hazardous material symbol and the other without.

She sobered as she looked at the pictures, some understanding of what it was that Sam Parker had discovered beginning to dawn. The labels were just being replaced.

Beside her, Castle frowned at the pictures. "I know I'm no scientist but does this look like a new, fancy way to recycle batteries to you?"

"No, it definitely doesn't." She looked up and met his eyes. "I think we just found our motive."

"And what Sam planned to tell his old boss," Castle finished for her.

More, it gave Sarah Reed motive to kill Sam but since she had an alibi…

"I think I know who the killer is," they blurted out in rough unison and their eyes met and held, again, and then they were exchanging smiles and this time–well, this time, they weren't precisely in a private place but they weren't in a place where anyone knew them either–this time, she gave in to the tug of attraction and he leaned in and then he was kissing her or she was kissing him–they were kissing each other.

The kiss didn't last for long. They broke apart after just a few seconds as she became belatedly conscious of the sound of cars driving past, the distant sound of a honk.

She cleared her throat a little. "This isn't enough evidence alone to convict Lance Carlberg," she managed.

"No, but at least now we know who else to look into and he's one person whose alibi we haven't checked yet and something tells me, he won't have one."

"True." She paused and then remembered something else. "We're going to have to tell the Captain about all this obviously."

He grimaced. "Would he really be that annoyed since what we found led directly to the motive and presumably the killer?"

She made a rueful face. "That'll probably help but I can't be sure."

"Well, my offer still stands if you want to blame me."

"I couldn't do that, Castle."

"If it'll keep you from getting benched, you should."

She couldn't–wouldn't–agree to that but she reached over to grasp his hand in thanks for the offer. He might downplay the risk to him but she knew there was still some chance he could be barred from the precinct if Montgomery chose.

He was being so… good to her, not just in offering to take the fall for her but this whole evening, cutting their date short and spending the evening working instead.

"I'm sorry," she found herself blurting out.

He blinked. "For what?"

"For, well, everything." she gestured with her free hand to their surroundings, the pieced together pictures on the table. "After you made reservations for dinner and the car and everything, this isn't the way you were planning to spend the evening…"

"You didn't plan this either," he pointed out. "You don't have anything to be sorry for. Honestly, this evening might not have turned out the way we planned but," he shrugged a little, "I understand that your work is important. Helen Parker, her kids, they deserve justice, deserve to know why Sam was killed." He paused. "And as far as I'm concerned, we did still have dinner together and the sandwiches were actually pretty good, and I got to spend the entire evening with you. It might not be what we planned but I actually think this evening has been pretty perfect."

Put like that… Her lips curved, warmth swelling in her chest, a little knot of uncertainty, of fear, dissolving. She thought about earlier in the restaurant, her realization of the gulf between their respective incomes, and maybe that was true but as Castle had put it, they didn't live their lives on paper. He might be rich enough to eat at such luxurious and expensive restaurants but he was also just as happy to grab a burger at Remy's or these sandwiches tonight. And other couples could enjoy themselves and bond over romantic dinners in nice restaurants but for the two of them, somehow, this worked too. They bonded over solving murders, the shared challenge and rush that came from evidence falling into place. It wasn't traditional but it was real.

"Yeah, this evening has been pretty perfect," she agreed softly and kissed him again. Who needed a fancy dinner anyway? Just spending time with him was enough, was all she really wanted.


The next day witnessed the end of the case.

The photo techs at the precinct were able to take the patched-together pictures and the remaining pieces and put them together, reproducing the images as a decent whole.

Once all the pictures Sam Parker had taken were clear, the scheme that Lance Carlberg had been running became clear, the fraud he'd committed on his clients, to say nothing of the environmental damage.

Captain Montgomery directed the boys to dig deeper into Lance Carlberg, try to find concrete evidence to tie him to the murder, and then pinned her with his gaze. "Detective Beckett, a word."

She caught Castle's look and gave him an infinitesimal shake of her head–she had to face the Captain alone–before dutifully following the Captain into his office, inwardly steeling herself.

Montgomery closed his office door and then moved to stand behind his desk, eyeing her for a long moment in which she tried not to squirm or shift her weight or worse start blurting out excuses.

"Detective, correct me if I'm wrong but I distinctly seem to remember telling you that you were not to work overtime yesterday and yet this morning, I find that you chose to drive to Connecticut and back last night, after your shift was over."

She inwardly winced. Montgomery's tone wasn't angry but as she well knew, he was very good at getting his point across without any display of temper. "Yes, I know, sir, but in this case, I thought the use of overtime was necessary. We needed to try to find out what Sarah Reed was actually looking for when she broke into the Parkers' house the other evening, before the evidence could be cleared away or interfered with again, especially since Sarah Reed wasn't in custody."

"I don't dispute the reason behind your visit, Detective; the results speak for themselves but I wonder why you didn't instead contact either Esposito or Ryan to have them manage the task."

He had a point. She just wasn't used to it, delegating so much of the actual case work. "I didn't think of it at the time, sir. The Parkers' house is not a crime scene so there wasn't any risk associated with it and it occurred to me that as I've been the one to question Helen Parker, she might be more inclined to cooperate and permit the search without a warrant."

Montgomery's lips twisted rather wryly. "You have an answer for everything, Beckett. What I find interesting is that Castle was quite eager to take credit for the discovery because he said it was his idea to go to the Parkers' house."

Damn it, Castle. She was torn between irritation at his essentially going behind her back to protect her and something like fondness at this display of loyalty and solidarity. "It was both of our ideas, sir."

Now, Montgomery's lips quirked slightly and she let herself relax a little. He certainly wouldn't be smiling, sort of, if he were about to punish her. "What am I going to do with you, Beckett?"

"Sir," was all she could say to this clearly rhetorical question.

"Your instincts, your reasoning, certainly paid off yesterday and I have to take that into account. I don't want to lose you any earlier than I have to and I know that your drive and your determination have always been what make you such a great detective and that wasn't going to change, no matter what your official duty status."

"Thank you, sir."

He sobered and pinned her with a look. "Now, don't take this as permission to start going to crime scenes without backup or to make arrests. You need to minimize the risks to your person, Beckett, and I mean that. I can't allow anyone under my command to put themselves in any unnecessary danger and that goes doubly for you right now. And we will be revisiting your duty status in January, which will mark the end of your second trimester, if I'm not mistaken."

"You're not, sir, and I understand."

"Good. Now get back to work."

"Thank you, Captain." She turned to leave the office only to be brought up short as the Captain spoke up again. "Oh, and Beckett?"

"Sir?" she turned back to him.

This time, Montgomery gave her a definite smile, not quite a smirk. "Tell Castle it was a nice effort at protecting you but he's not nearly as subtle as he thinks he is."

She fought to keep her lips straight. "I'll tell him, sir."

Castle straightened up in his chair the moment she returned. "Beckett?"

"It's fine, Castle. Montgomery's not pleased but he let it go because we got the answers we needed." she paused and then added, "And he wanted me to tell you, nice try but you're not as subtle as you think."

Castle had the grace to look a little apprehensive and more sheepish. "Oh, right, that, I kind of thought the Captain knew what was up but I had to try. You're not mad, are you, Beckett?"

She forcibly controlled her expression. She thought she should be at least a little irritated at him but faced with his sheepish expression, she couldn't muster up any real annoyance. "Just don't get it into your head to keep going behind my back like that," she told him with as much asperity as she could muster.

"I'll behave. Scout's honor," he promised, lifting one hand as if taking an oath.

She snorted. "You were never a Scout."

"You remember that, huh?"

"I think it was the first time I wanted to shoot you so yes, I remember," she drawled.

"The first time, as in there have been other times that you wanted to shoot me?" He gave her a look of mock injury, lifting a hand to his chest. "You wound me, Detective."

She bit back a laugh, softening in spite of herself at his antics. "I'm sure you'll survive."

He made a face. "Yes, but–"

Before he could finish his sentence, he was cut off by the sound of her phone ringing and she answered it. "Beckett."

The call proved to be from Ryan letting her know that they'd found the gun used to kill Sam Parker in the trash outside of Lance Carlberg's building and were bringing Carlberg in.

With that, she and Castle perforce had to return their minds to the case. Mindful of the Captain's warning, she let the boys take point on Carlberg's interrogation, watching from behind the glass with Castle, as Carlberg eventually folded, faced with the undeniable evidence of the gun.

The boys went ahead with processing Carlberg's arrest while, with Captain Montgomery's permission this time, she and Castle made the drive to Connecticut for the second time in 24 hours to tell Helen Parker that her husband's killer had been caught and that Sam had, in the end, given his life for the cause he believed in. There were tears in Helen's eyes but she managed a watery smile at that and Kate saw in her expression some of the peace that came with knowing why. As usual, she felt a pinch of something she refused to call envy in her chest. She, of all people, knew how much it could help to learn the reason why a loved one was murdered. Over the years, she had learned not to wonder why she could spend her life finding those answers for other people while never learning the answer herself–but sometimes, it did hurt.

Castle's hand slipped into hers as they returned to her car and she glanced at him, saw the softness in his eyes. He understood, had guessed somehow what she was thinking, and maybe the best evidence that he did understand was that he didn't say anything, didn't try to make some well-meaning but trite comment.

And somehow, it helped, was enough just to know that he understood.

He paused when they reached her car, before she could open her door, and kissed her temple, sliding one arm loosely around her waist. "You know what I was thinking?" he murmured.

She looked up to see the faintest quirk of his lips. "No, what?"

"I think we should stop for ice cream on the way back. I looked it up and there's apparently a pretty well-known ice cream place the next town over so I think we should try it."

She bit back a smile, warmth swelling in her chest at his way of trying to distract her, cheer her up. "Well, we are in the neighborhood and came all this way," she agreed with spurious solemnity.

He nodded brightly. "Exactly, that's what I was thinking too."

She gave in to her smile. "Sure, Castle, let's stop for ice cream."

He almost bounced on his feet in his excitement at her agreement and she huffed a soft laugh as she finally got into her car.

She was still smiling as they drove away from the Parkers' house–and it was, as usual, because of him.

So they stopped for ice cream at the place Castle had looked up, which did turn out to be quite good, and then returned to the precinct to start on the paperwork to close the Sam Parker case. Or more accurately, she started on the paperwork while Castle just watched for a while until she was interrupted by her phone ringing to announce an Anna Knowles who wanted to come up. It turned out that it wasn't just the Sam Parker case that had been closed today but Alexis had also managed to close her own "case" to find the rightful owner of the photo album she'd found in the property room.

Kate watched as Alexis greeted Anna Knowles, the girl's expression soft with sympathy, as she accepted Anna's somewhat teary-eyed thanks. The girl really was very sweet and mature; Kate couldn't help but wonder how many teens would have gone to so much effort to find Anna Knowles, would have understood how much significance such family pictures would have to someone after losing a loved one.

And she thought, yet again, that she would count herself lucky if the Sprout ended up being anything at all like Alexis when the Sprout became a teenager. Although, if Kate's own younger self was any example, she rather doubted she would be that lucky. (She made a mental note to apologize to her dad for her teenage self.)

"I don't know how I got so lucky to end up with Alexis being the way she is," Castle murmured and she glanced at him to see that he wasn't looking at her at all. He was watching Alexis, his expression so soft, so full of love, that it almost made her chest ache, filling with a surge of emotion for him, for how much he loved Alexis–and how much he would love the Sprout too.

She abruptly wanted to kiss him, a wish that, strangely, had nothing (or very little) to do with physical attraction and almost everything to do with sheer emotion. She wanted him, wanted to feel just a little of the warmth of the devotion he felt for his daughter, wanted to be a part of that kind of family love.

But of course, they were in the middle of the bullpen so she couldn't kiss him, couldn't really even touch him.

Even as she resigned herself to that, Alexis was saying goodbye to Anna Knowles with a quick hug, and Castle stood up to greet Alexis as she returned to Kate's desk, slipping his arm around his daughter's shoulders and pressing a kiss to her hair.

Kate smiled at Alexis, carefully trying not to focus too much on the girl's father so her expression wouldn't betray her. "Nice job, Alexis. I'm sure Anna Knowles will never forget what you did."

Alexis flushed with pleasure. "Oh, it's not that big of a deal. I was just glad I was able to help," she demurred.

"Trust me, Alexis, it is a big deal. When you lose someone, that sort of thing matters a lot."

Alexis's flush deepened and she momentarily turned her face into her dad's shoulder as if to hide it in a gesture that for a moment made her seem younger than her years.

Kate's eyes met Castle's in a moment of shared fondness, as if the three of them–Kate, Alexis, and Castle–were a family already, even before the Sprout actually arrived.

Alexis looked at Kate, her smile turning hopeful. "Oh, Kate, I wanted to ask you, can you come?"

Kate blinked. "Come to what?"

Alexis pinned her dad with a reproachful look. "Dad, you said you'd ask her!"

"We've been in the middle of a case," Castle said defensively.

"It would only have taken a few minutes to ask," Alexis scolded mildly but the small smile she gave him was indulgent. She turned to Kate. "Sorry, Kate, Dad was supposed to ask if you would come over for Thanksgiving dinner next week. Your dad's invited too, of course. Unless you have to work on Thanksgiving or something, do you?"

"No, I don't work on Thanksgiving," Kate answered automatically. Even before her limited duty status, she normally didn't work on Thanksgiving since she worked on Christmas. (Oh. It occurred to her that she would almost certainly not be allowed to work on Christmas this year thanks to her condition. She pushed aside the pull of emotion at the thought. She would deal with it later.)

Alexis brightened. "Oh good, so will you come have Thanksgiving dinner with us? Please say you will."

"Yes, have mercy on me, Beckett. My mother insists on it so if you don't come, my mother will probably never forgive me," Castle interjected.

Alexis nudged her dad. "Dad, be nice. Ignore him, Kate," she added, refocusing on Kate. "We all really want you to come."

Faced with the girl's look of bright-eyed entreaty and, yes, Castle's too, Kate found she could only agree. "That sounds nice, so yes, I'd love to. And I'm sure my dad will be happy to come too."

Alexis beamed. "Oh good!"

Oh lord, what had she committed herself to? Spending a holiday with Castle and his family–having her dad meet Martha and Alexis. She hadn't really expected that her dad would meet Martha and Alexis quite so soon but she supposed, in hindsight, she should have expected it. It seemed so characteristic of how open-hearted Castle's entire family was. "Can I bring anything?" she asked, trying to sound calm.

"Oh, no, that's fine," Alexis assured. "Dad and I are used to getting everything ready for Thanksgiving dinner."

"We really are," Castle corroborated. He released Alexis and leaned forward as if about to impart a state secret, although the air of mock secrecy was belied by the smirk tugging on his lips. She felt the now-familiar pull of attraction–she didn't know what it was about his smirk that made her want to kiss him but somehow, it did. "Alexis is actually a terrible tyrant about the whole Thanksgiving prep thing," he told her in a loud whisper, as if Alexis wasn't standing right there.

"Dad!" Alexis swatted her dad's arm and he laughed and straightened up to put his daughter in a mock headlock, resting his chin on her hair.

"A little respect for your father, please," he huffed in mock offense.

Alexis turned to Kate. "You see what I have to put up with?" she asked in a tone of affected beleaguerment.

"I know, he's such a trouble-maker," Kate pretended to commiserate but couldn't help but laugh at this playful interaction that spoke volumes for the sort of relationship Castle and Alexis had. Oh, this family, this close and loving family–it was what she wanted too, for the Sprout, yes, but also for herself.

But even as she thought it, she felt a pang of doubt, a niggle of fear slithering through her, because she wasn't sure she knew how to be part of such a close, vibrant family. She had patched up her relationship with her dad, yes, and she treasured that relationship but their small family unit was so… different from Castle's family, less playful, certainly, but also less… open, less certain, if that made any sense. From what she had seen of Castle, Martha, and Alexis, the bond between all three of them was so strong, so unquestioned, even if–at least when it came to Castle and Martha–it was mostly expressed through a show of exasperation.

Her eyes met Castle's, filled with humor and so much emotion it made her heart stutter in her chest. She wasn't sure how much of the emotion was due to Alexis and how much was due to her but it hardly mattered because she knew he cared about her. He showed her every day how much he cared about her and she could only hope that she could be enough for his family too, that she would find a way to fit into his family.

~To be continued…~

A/N 2: Thank you, as always, to all readers and reviewers, especially the guests whom I can't thank directly. And apologies in advance as I don't think I'll be able to post next week due to RL commitments.