Author's Note: Apologies for the late posting! I thought I'd posted this chapter on Friday, as usual, but seems to have eaten the update (or something). But here without further ado, the second of two chapters taking place during "The Fifth Bullet."

Then Came Love

Chapter 42

The next day, their planned return visit to Jeremy's apartment proved to be fruitful because his ex led them to the connection between Jeremy and Victor Fink, a reason for why Jeremy would have gone to Fink's studio. At first, Castle had to admit he was somewhat less than thrilled at the lead because it seemed to be pointing to a motive for why Jeremey would have killed Fink and Castle was honest enough to admit that while his words about wanting to know why had been sincere, he'd had another motive in rather wanting to clear Jeremy's name. Yes, Castle knew he was being irrational and not thinking like a cop but he didn't want Jeremy to be guilty. Jeremy had been likable but more than that, Castle liked to think he was a good judge of character (well, at least, where other men were concerned; he had to admit that past history indicated his judgment of women was clearly not always right, Scarlett Price most recently) and Castle wouldn't have judged Jeremy to be a murderer.

And then, following the clue of the forged painting, they discovered that, in fact, Jeremy wasn't the murderer after all, had been framed by the actual killer, Fink's assistant.

It had taken a long day of work and into the next morning but it had been worth it. Castle was sure he had never been so glad to have a suspected killer proven innocent.

His satisfaction was overtaken by curiosity as Jeremy's ex showed up, with his dog, to accompany Jeremy now that he'd been freed and needed to make his way into the world, still without his memories. "So are you two…" he began, his curiosity overriding his (admittedly weak) filter.

"Castle," Beckett hissed sotto voce, nudging his arm.

"It's okay," Emma laughed a little. "The answer is, who knows. I like him and he likes me. And for now, that's enough."

Jeremy's smile and quick glance at Emma echoed the truth of the words as they both said their goodbyes and headed off.

"One of them has 15 years of baggage, marriage, divorce," Ryan commented musingly. "The other's on a first date. How long do you think that'll last?"

It was certainly a unique situation.

"Hopefully for a long time," Beckett answered.

He glanced at her in some surprise. "Why, Beckett, I had no idea you were a romantic."

She threw him a teasing look. "You didn't think you knew everything there was to know about me, did you, Castle?"

"Not for a minute and you keep surprising me anyway."

She smirked at him. "I try."

He wanted to kiss her–well, he always wanted to kiss her but especially when she smirked at him like that—but they were in the precinct and anyway, Ryan was continuing, "What about you, Castle? How long do you think it'll last?"

"Maybe it's just the writer in me but I'm hoping for a happy ending," he answered, meeting Beckett's smiling gaze and after a moment, he somewhat daringly rested a hand on her shoulder since he rarely touched Beckett in the precinct. He half-wondered if she would allow it or shrug his hand off but she didn't, only lifted her own hand and briefly rested it on top of his.

"There is something to be said for second chances sometimes," was all she said, her tone relatively light but her eyes soft as they met his and he guessed she was also thinking about the two of them, her giving him a second chance in allowing him back into the precinct and, of course, their whole relationship.

His eyes met and held hers and he thought, for about the millionth time, that he would never get enough of seeing the warmth in her eyes when she looked at him, never get enough of the way she smiled at him. "Second chances are precious," he agreed. There was a pause and then he forcibly pulled his gaze from Beckett and glanced at Ryan. "What about you, Ryan, you think it'll last?"

Ryan threw him a look that took in Castle's hand still resting on Beckett's shoulder, Ryan's smile shading into more of a smirk, although being Ryan, he didn't outright tease them. "Who am I, to root against a story like that?"

Castle grinned at that. "Good point."

"Yo," Esposito returned and Castle discreetly slipped his hand off Beckett's shoulder. "George, a.k.a. Darius Langley's been booked into Central Holding so they just need the official report on the investigation."

And just like that, it was back to work for them, the paperwork that always accompanied the end of a case. Castle stuck around for a little while before returning home to find his mother sitting on the couch.

She raised her eyebrows at him. "Well, look who's decided to grace us with his presence. I was starting to wonder if you still lived here after your late nights the past two nights. Living it up?"

"I was with Beckett, finishing up a case," he explained, limiting his explanation to this morning. He resisted the urge to let his shoulders slump or twitch or otherwise react in any way. Alexis might have a point that they all shared too much; there were drawbacks to living in the same household as his mother.

"Oh, is that what the young people are calling it these days?" she drawled.

"Cute, Mother, but we really were working on a case."

She laughed softly. "I know, I was just teasing. But Alexis also mentioned that you were out all night the night before too."

God, that amazing, incredible night. In more ways than one. He tried to moderate his smile. "Beckett called me because she felt the baby move for the first time."

There, that should distract his mother and it did, his mother's expression lighting up. "Oh, did she? That's so exciting! Tell her congratulations for me!"

His smile widened into a beam. "I will and thanks. It was exciting, for both of us."

"And you had to stay there all night to feel the baby move?"

Damn it, he forgot sometimes that his mother could be so single-minded sometimes. "Mother…"

His mother gave one of her characteristic fluttering gestures with one hand. "I'm just happy for you and Katherine, you know. Do I need to sit her down and ask when she's going to make an honest man out of you?"

He couldn't help but grimace at the horrifying thought, even though he knew his mother was joking. "Don't you dare."

She pasted on a small pout. "You do like to spoil my fun."

"Mother, I told you before not to interfere and I meant it. Now," he quickly changed the subject, "what's going on with you? Why is there a dead flower on the table?"

He relaxed a little as his mother launched into an explanation of the flower's significance and her wavering over the future of her relationship with Chet.

It was rare to the point of being almost unheard-of for his mother to openly admit in so many words to being scared and it occurred to Castle, not for the first time, that if he could have, he might have happily killed his mother's last boyfriend, the one who'd stolen all her life savings. He would not soon forget his mother's ravaged, tear-stained face that night when she'd appeared at the loft or her teary explanation that her then-boyfriend had apparently absconded like the lying thief he was with all of her jewelry and cleaned out their joint bank account. Allowing his mother to move into the loft and taking care of the other matters of reporting the theft and trying to track the scumbag down had been the easy part. The harder part was seeing the lingering impact the whole thing had made on his mother.

His mother had never been a fearful sort of person or someone who held back from relationships out of caution. Even with his mother's less than stellar history when it came to romantic relationships, she'd still continued to throw herself into them with all her characteristic open-heartedness–until now. And he hated to see it. A teary-eyed, vulnerable Martha Rodgers was just not right and he did what he could to encourage her.

Later, his mother all but shooed him out the door telling him to go see Beckett since Alexis had plans with friends and she herself was going to go visit Chet.

Castle obeyed his mother's suggestion with an alacrity he rarely gave in response to something his mother suggested. He was always happy to see Beckett. Even happier because she responded to his suggested visit with an immediate invitation to come over for dinner.

And having dinner with Beckett was all he really intended to do when he went over to her place. Really, it was!

It wasn't his fault that things didn't quite happen like that.

Castle lay back in Beckett's bed, trying to catch his breath, as Beckett herself rested next to him, her body already fitting against his as if they'd been sharing a bed for months rather than only once before. That had been amazing and… not quite what he had planned. All he'd done was kiss her when he'd arrived but then, that kiss of greeting had turned into more and then they'd been stumbling back towards her bedroom and her hands were undoing the buttons of his shirt and he'd pulled her sweater up and over her head and her hands were on him while his own hands explored her body and then he was inside her and it had all dissolved into a blissful blur of sensation.

"Wow," he managed. He'd only had sex with Beckett a few times and already he knew he was addicted to her, to the sight of her, the sound of her, the feel of her.

"Mm," she mumbled and he wondered if she were getting sleepy but then the comfortable silence was broken by the sound of her stomach rumbling and she clapped a hand to her stomach, her eyes flying open.

He sternly bit back a laugh. "I guess the Sprout is hungry."

She narrowed her eyes at him as she pushed herself upright. "Stop laughing."

He smoothed his expression into sobriety, widening his eyes innocently. "I wasn't laughing."

"You were laughing on the inside, I could tell."

He made a face at her. "Have I ever mentioned that telepathy like that is kinda creepy?"

"And your staring is still creepy so I guess we're even," she quipped, grinning at him, and in spite of, or possibly because of, her words, he really couldn't help but pause and just gaze at her, amazement crashing over him. He simply couldn't believe that this was actually real. That he was seeing Kate Beckett in her bedroom, just slipping on her underwear and then shrugging on a robe, her hair tousled, her eyes bright, her stomach rounded with their baby… She was just so… gorgeous, she was almost incandescent right now, at this moment, and it occurred to him that this, being here with Beckett like this, was everything he had ever wanted.

"Earth to Castle."

He blinked. "Huh?"

"You seemed to just freeze for a second there. What's up?"

"Just trying to decide what I want to eat, that's all," he prevaricated. Since babbling about how she was so beautiful she literally took his breath away and how he wanted to spend the rest of his life seeing her just like this was out of the question.

She flicked her eyebrows at him rather skeptically but didn't call him on it. "Okay, well, get dressed so we can eat."

He obeyed and after a brief discussion, they settled on ordering Chinese food, eating their belated dinner sitting comfortably on her couch. These casual dinners with Beckett in her apartment were rapidly becoming one of his favorite aspects of their relationship. He liked seeing her when she was so relaxed, more Kate than Beckett. Of course he loved all the facets of her character but there was something to seeing her like this that was extra-precious to him, maybe because of what it meant, of how comfortable she was becoming with him. He liked that, liked how easy it was to talk to her, liked everything about being with her. (God, he really did have it so bad.)

While they ate, he duly passed on his mother's congratulations on feeling the baby kick, feeling a surge of warmth in his chest at the way her expression softened and brightened at the mere mention of it. Even after so many weeks, even months, he still seemed to swoon a little inside at how much Beckett already cared about the Sprout, how… happy she honestly seemed to be. He knew this baby was completely unplanned but in spite of Beckett's occasional fretting over her restrictions at work, the faint frown he sometimes caught on her face because of her fears and worries, he sometimes thought he was falling more in love with her every day to see the way she was embracing this experience, their baby.

It was all just so different–wonderfully, amazingly different–from his experience with Meredith when she'd been expecting Alexis. He tried to make allowances for the fact that Meredith's experience of pregnancy had been a hard one–he was very thankful that it appeared Beckett was having an easier experience of it (although he guessed Beckett was not mentioning a lot of the other physical discomforts she might be feeling, reticent as she was)—but still, the difference in attitude was stark.

Around this stage, when she hadn't been feeling sick, Meredith had been worrying about her weight gain and how quickly she'd be able to lose it after Alexis was born so she could return to work. Beckett worried over the possible health of the baby and how good of a mother she would be (as if there could even be a doubt about that).

She gave him a small, almost shy smile as she admitted, "My dad sounded almost teary when I told him about feeling the baby move."

His lips curved. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that he had lucked out in this too, because he had no doubt that Jim Beckett would be a loving grandfather. His eyes lowered to the curve of her stomach and found himself addressing the baby–as he never really had before but somehow, it seemed… easier, more natural, now that Beckett had felt the baby move, proof that their baby was really there, growing and developing more every day. "You hear that, Sprout? Your grandpa's so excited about you; we're all so excited about you so you take good care of yourself, okay?"

"Silly Castle," although her attempt at a scold failed miserably, her voice soft, her eyes bright. "I don't think she can hear you."

"Actually, I read that babies start to hear sounds outside the womb from right around this time so she can hear me," he offered helpfully.

Beckett rolled her eyes and he hid a smile. (It wasn't weird to love seeing her role her eyes at him, was it?) "Maybe she can hear you, but it doesn't mean she can understand you."

He feigned horror. "Bite your tongue, Beckett! I'm sure our daughter is going to be brilliant, far advanced compared to other babies, so how do you know she can't understand English already?"

"You go on and tell yourself that," she drawled but then spoiled the effect of it by addressing the Sprout herself, her voice lowering, "I told you your daddy's silly."

He huffed, hiding his thrill. Beckett had already talked to the baby about him? "That's not nice, making fun of me to the baby already."

She gave him a look of mock innocence. "I'm being truthful. Surely you don't expect me to lie to the baby."

He made a face at her and she dissolved into laughter. "You walked right into that one, Castle."

He gave in and laughed too. He loved the way she teased him, loved seeing the humor sparkle in her eyes, loved hearing her laugh.

His hand lifted almost of its own volition to touch her cheek–he wanted to kiss her but that would be a little too awkward with the food between them–his fingers gently tucking a tendril of hair behind her ear in an unnecessary gesture, more as an excuse to touch her than anything else. Their eyes met and held, their smiles slowly fading, as the air seemed to thicken between them… But then she ducked her head a little, her lips curving ever so slightly in spite of her biting her lip, an expression he was becoming familiar with, her small, almost shy smile that indicated she was a little flustered and trying, in her typical Beckett way, to hide it. It was adorable.

He was learning wisdom in the ways of Beckett so he smoothly changed the subject, telling her the tale of the recent ups and downs of his mother's relationship with Chet. (Huh, it belatedly occurred to him that it was an odd sort of coincidence that both he and his mother had faced significant steps in their respective love lives in the past couple days, although this development in his relationship with Beckett was not nearly as dramatic as his mother's romantic woes.)

"It's hard to imagine Martha being afraid. She's always seemed so fearless to me," Beckett commented.

He smiled slightly. "I'll tell her you said so. She'll appreciate it, coming from you." He sobered. "My mother puts on a good show of being impervious but she's more vulnerable than she likes to admit, especially after what happened with her last boyfriend."

"What did happen with her last boyfriend?"

He paused, hesitated a little. He hadn't quite meant to say that much and hadn't actually told anyone else about what had happened to his mother since it wasn't the sort of thing his mother would want to have bruited about, for obvious reasons. But this was Beckett and if there was one person in the world he trusted to talk about his mother and his daughter with, it was her.

He grimaced a little. "It's not a happy story. My mother had been dating this guy for about a year and they moved in together and were unofficially engaged, at least my mother thought so. But then one weekend, my mother went out of town, auditioning to be in a show in Boston, and when she came back to their apartment, he was gone. Vanished, taking all his things, her jewelry, and he'd cleaned out their joint bank account too, taking all my mother's savings." His mother's savings might not have amounted to outright wealth but still, it had been a significant lump-sum by anyone's standards.

Beckett winced. "Oh god, that's terrible. Poor Martha."

He sighed. "Yeah. It's why my mother ended up moving into the loft, about six months before I met you," he clarified, unnecessarily, except to him, he seemed to think of most recent events in relation to meeting Beckett, his life being divided into two distinct parts, Before Beckett and After Beckett (just as he also tended to divide his life Before Alexis and After Alexis).

"Was he ever caught?" Beckett asked quietly.

He glanced up at her sharply. Oh, he hadn't thought of this, the similarity, in spite of the obvious difference in the magnitude of the crimes, that the person responsible for hurting their mothers had gotten away with it. He didn't want to remind Beckett of her own mom's case but now, he couldn't really avoid it. "No," he admitted quietly. "I tried, hired a private investigator, but it turned out he'd been using a false identity so there was really nothing much for us to go on. He might as well have vanished into thin air."

"I'm sorry."

He made a rueful face. "Yeah, it wasn't the easiest time for my mother but she's resilient."

"I don't doubt that. But I actually meant that I'm sorry for you."

Oh, no, he really hadn't meant to remind Beckett of her mom's case. He pasted on a look of exaggerated martyrdom. "Thank you; I really have suffered terribly, having to live with my mother."

She swatted at his arm. "Castle, be nice! And you know that wasn't what I meant."

He sobered, meeting her eyes–and found himself remembering that day in the precinct back at the beginning, when he had profiled her, told her what he'd deduced about her, that something had happened to someone she loved and the person who did it was never caught. He felt a pang of shame. How… arrogant and how glib he'd been, trying to show off like that, not even caring that he was doing so at the expense of the most private, painful part of her life. What had happened to his mother was nothing and his own feelings about it were not at all significant in comparison but even he didn't like to think about it, let alone talk about it. "You're right. I'm sorry."

She reached out with her free hand, briefly squeezing his hand. "You did help your mother, did everything you could for her, letting her move in."

"It wasn't purely selfless. It was good for Alexis, having my mother around all the time. She was getting to the age where she likes having another woman around to talk to about things like clothes and makeup and boys, you know." His small shudder at the mention of such topics was entirely sincere.

"Well, I'm sure Martha appreciates it too."

"She appreciates my wine collection the most, I think," he quipped.

A small smile flickered across her face but then she sobered, studying him with a look on her face he could only remember seeing a handful of times before. "You're a good man, you know that?"

He blinked, a little surprised and a lot overwhelmed, an odd combination of humility and amazement and pride flooding him. It was not the most eloquent of compliments but he thought he'd never heard anything that meant so much to him. And he could only hope that he could live up to her opinion of him, hope that he would never let her down.

"Well, she is my mother. What else could I do?" he demurred and left unsaid the other part of that, which was that his mother had not had the easiest of lives, being a working actress and a single mother. Since having Alexis, he'd realized that more and more, how difficult things must have been for his mother over the years when he'd been a child and therefore oblivious to all of it, as only a child could be.

"Still."

"I try. But feel free to keep telling me how wonderful I am," he pasted on one of his usual smirks. "And I hope you make sure to tell the Sprout too."

She rolled her eyes. "And you're annoying again."

He lifted his shoulders into an insouciant shrug. "What can I say, it's a talent."

She snorted. "Yeah, you definitely have a talent for being annoying."

"And yet you like me anyway," he pretended to preen.

"It's just hormones," she claimed but her smirk was belied by the softness of her eyes.

He made a face at her to hide his silly, giddy thrill at her teasing.

"So, finish your story," she prompted after a moment. "What did Martha decide to do about Chet?"

"She's giving him a second chance. In fact, she's probably talking to him as we speak."

"I guess second chances really are a theme today."

"Yeah, although my mother's second chance is not nearly as dramatic as Jeremy's and Emma's is. I really hope it turns out well for them because think of the story that'll be, brought back together because Jeremy got amnesia? It doesn't get any cooler than that."

"I think it was less about amnesia than it was the painting. If you think about it, Jeremy must have had some feelings for Emma even before all this because he kept the painting and went to confront Fink about the forgery too and that's what started the whole thing."

"Yes, but saying it was because of amnesia sounds so much cooler."

"And obviously you'd never want the truth to get in the way of a good story," she drawled.

"What can I say, I'm a storyteller."

"What you are is ridiculous," she quipped.

He huffed in mock offense. "Well, if you're just going to be mean to me, I think that's my cue to leave. Alexis will be getting home soon anyway." Which was true enough but for one of the few times in Alexis's life, he was distinctly reluctant to actually go home. It would be easier and so much better if Beckett would stay at the loft, not just for his own sake but going forward with the baby too. He momentarily toyed with the idea of suggesting it to her but then immediately discarded it. They had only just started sleeping together and his cautious Beckett would not be nearly ready to think about moving in with him. At least not yet.

Instead, he and Beckett worked easily together to clean up after their dinner and then she accompanied him to her door. Although it was quite a while before he actually opened the door and another minute or so after he opened the door before he finally stepped into the hall.

She gave him a last kiss before gently pushing on his chest to get him to step back into the hallway. "Go home to your daughter, Castle. I'll see you tomorrow."

He pasted on a pout and gave her one last kiss because he couldn't resist and then he (finally) left, returning home to dream about a day when he'd never need to leave Beckett again, could have all the people he loved best with him in his home.

~To be continued…~

A/N 2: Thank you, as always, to all readers and reviewers who are sticking with me for this story that's already become much longer than I expected. (I've realized I'm very bad at estimating how long it will take to tell a story as planned but I'm guessing there will be at least another 10 chapters to go.) And apologies in advance but I won't be able to post next week as RL will be getting in the way.