Chapter 7

With Rick occupied behind the shop's bar and his focus momentarily pulled elsewhere, it was now Kate who found she couldn't help but stare.

However commonplace the undertaking, watching him as he assembled their coffees was like watching a crafter assemble a model. Every move was precise, and every action deliberate, his hands gentle in a way that persuaded her of their strength rather than any lack thereof.

Whether it foam or fiction, he was a creator, after all, a maker of art. By the books stacked on her nightstand, she now had an appreciation of that for herself. It was the passion for it in his eyes in that moment that took hold of her. It was then that Kate truly began to understand how powerful the Rick Castle quicksand was, and just how much danger of sinking she was in.

"Confession: I do enjoy having your attention." Rick caught her in the act not by any special brand of observation he possessed, but by her utter lack of stealth. It seemed she'd forgotten to try not to be obvious in her immersion. "I think it's only fair, though, that if you get to watch me like that, I should get to watch you like that."

He carefully placed her latte on the counter in front of her. He'd poured out a heart on top.

"A simple nod to the matchmaker, that's all." He picked up his cup and brought it close. "I tried to make Batman in mine, but now he kind of just looks like a ghost with boobs."

A tiny laugh escaped Kate.

"So, I'm a matchmaker and you're, what, a superhero? Thanks, by the way." She inhaled a second time, purely for the pleasure of it. "Sure took you long enough, but it smells incredible."

"You're welcome. I hope it tastes the same. And coffee may be an addiction but it's also a love, so I try to treat it as a love deserves, with patience and care."

"And boobs," Kate added amusingly.

"Yeah, yeah, everyone's an art critic." Rick tapped her cup with his. "Less talk and more drink."

He came around then and perched on the stool beside hers, facing her rather than forward as she remained, and were it not for the distraction afforded by the bar's design of bold braids in contrasting woods-in itself a vision-his nearness might've done her in.

The broadness of him. The athletic arms that his removal of his jacket had revealed. The scent of cedarwood he carried on his skin. It was a titillating fusion of hard and soft.

"So…Madison. I should tell you about Madison." Rick neither agreed nor disagreed so she pushed on. "She's, um, she's great. She also owns a restaurant, which is why I thought it made sense to-"

"No, I'm listening. I am," he insisted when, mistaking the opposite, Kate swiveled her head his way as if to accuse. "I can't help myself. You just have one of those faces."

"Doesn't everyone?" she wisecracked.

With a single word he contended otherwise, and she believed him, because of the silent words his eyes spoke after it. She heard every one.

"Anyway, sorry, keep going. She owns a restaurant. I like the symmetry there. Promising. What else?"

Rick sipped from his coffee, unaware that his admiration had nearly sent Kate sliding off her stool, and she sipped from hers, unaware that Rick was clinging to his stool for dear life in order to avert the same.

"She's tall."

She'd known Madison for over a decade, and that was what came to her brain. Clearly, she wasn't functioning properly.

"I'm tall. I like tall. Tall is good."

"She has blonde hair," she rolled with next, as if the sell couldn't get worse.

"Oh, now I definitely like blondes," he responded and with greater eagerness than she appreciated. For it he earned another swivel, that one more prickly. "My ex-wife aside, of course. All rules have exceptions. Do you ever break your own rules?" He gave her a once-over when she appeared to stiffen. "I bet if you do it's not often."

"You don't know what I do or don't do," Kate snapped.

"That's fair, maybe I don't, but I'm trying to change that. So, maybe I can ask you something." He took a pause in hopes it might help to dissipate the cloud he unintentionally blew in. "Why is it you do what you do? Instead of a vacuum cleaner saleswoman, or a journalist, or a whatever, why of all things are you a matchmaker? And before you start seriously thinking about making me wear that latte, which from your clenched jaw is the direction I'm guessing you're leaning, I promise you there was no judgment, just curiosity and interest."

She sat there silent and still, but inside her there was a tug-of-war raging between her head and her heart. Each held an end of the rope, and each was tugging with all its might-toward him, away from him. Toward him, away from him.

Her head had come there to deliver someone else, someone who wasn't afraid to try or to fail. Her heart had come there because before his, it'd never met a counterpart that felt more worth trying or failing for. Being stuck in the middle made Kate's entire body ache.

"If you think I'd waste perfectly good coffee by throwing it at you, you really don't know me. God, I have no idea why I'm telling you this," she whispered like a warning to herself before doing exactly that. "My mom was killed in an accident a few years ago."

"Kate, I'm so sorry."

"I don't want to talk about that. Just, that happened, and after, my dad and I had to go through all her things. She had an office in our house that she worked from sometimes. She was a lawyer. My dad is, too. I was in there one day and found a shoebox in the top of the closet, and it was filled with old letters he'd written to her."

"A writer, huh? Sounds like a man I'd like to meet," Rick said when she returned briefly to the comfort of her cup.

"She'd never told me about them. We were close, she and I, but I never knew anything about any letters or that they'd ever even written back and forth. Anyway, I took them up to my room and I must've read them each ten times that first day, to the point that I could hear the words in their voices, almost like they were both in the room performing them like some kind of a play.

"My parents were really in love. I don't think I realized until recently how lucky I was to have grown up around that." She sat with it a beat. "At the end of one of the early letters my dad said something about how he'd never thought so until he met her, but that my mom was right that some people are meant to meet, that their paths cross for a reason.

"I was actually working as an associate at a law firm when she died, but I just couldn't find my way back to it, not after that happened. It was a difficult time, and having those letters shifted what I thought was important, I guess. I don't know what she'd have to say about it if she were up there watching, but it feels like it keeps her close to me, helping to find for other people something like what she shared with my dad. Now I can't imagine doing anything else."

Kate flashed him a glance, chuckled an apology. "I bet you're sorry you asked."

"No, Kate, I'm not. I'm only sorry I didn't ask sooner, and if your mother is up there watching, I'm sure she's proud and honored to have a daughter who's chosen to spend her life celebrating the happiness and the love she was lucky enough to find."

"Thank you for saying that."

Rick pushed off his stool and headed back behind the bar, came up and stood directly in front of her.

"I didn't just say it, I meant it. It's a special thing you do. I hope you're proud of it, too." He reached under the counter and came up with a small, foil bag, which he nudged Kate's way. Through its circular window at the front, she could see a cookie inside. "I hope you find the person whose path is meant to cross yours. Oatmeal, on the house."

Of all the things he could've reached for and presented her with, it turned out to be her favorite cookie, and that he'd done so amid a conversation salted with parallels threw her for a loop.

"Yeah, well, thanks but I think my hands are full enough with other people's paths at the moment." With a blush in her cheeks, she peeled open the sticker on the back of the bag and broke off a bite. "It's good. Your friend doesn't mind you giving away her cookies?"

He leaned onto his elbows and folded his fingers together. He was terribly close, even more so than before, and he seemed so impossibly comfortable with it, so unshaken by what, in stark contrast, had Kate's every sense on overload.

"She knows where to bill me," he answered with all the charm of a man who believed he invented it, and before Kate knew it, her lips were pressed against his, by her own doing.

It wasn't more than a few seconds before she pulled herself away, and the embarrassment that struck was both swift and severe. The urge to bolt out of the place was one she had to fight to resist, but rightly she knew doing so only would've made it more awkward.

"I'm assuming that was a thank-you for letting you have the oatmeal cookie without raisins." A grin curled the corner of his mouth as he straightened, took up his coffee. "You're welcome. It's the least I could do for the woman who's out there in the trenches finding me The One. Ooh, speaking of which,"-he grabbed his phone from his pocket-"I should get Madison's number. This is great timing, actually. A friend came through and she managed to score me a couple of Springsteen tickets for this weekend, last minute. Hopefully she's free."

Kate's jaw clenched again for about twelve reasons, not the least of which was the lightning speed at which Rick had moved on from a moment she imagined she'd be trapped in for the foreseeable future. Maybe beyond.

"You have a lot of shes around. That friend, now this one." She sounded every bit as green-eyed as she was feeling.

"What can I say? I'm a man blessed. There's you now, too. Hey, if you're a fan-of Springsteen, not of me-I can make a call and see if I can get my hands on a couple more tickets. Maybe there's someone you'd like to-"

Kate cut him off, launched straight into Madison's phone number, which, of course, she then had to repeat because he wasn't ready for it.

"I already have plans Saturday. A date."

Other than to work, she had not one plan for Saturday, let alone a date. Work was always her plan, on weekdays and weekends, her one sure, constant plan.

"I thought you said your hands were full," Rick questioned with warranted suspicion, essentially calling her out on a lie there was no reason for her to have told.

"I need to go." She got up, grabbed the cookie bag, and stuffed it into her purse. "Madison's expecting your call."

Rick's eyes trailed her body as she headed for the door. "That really is a great suit, friend," he called after her, his tone dripping with self-satisfaction. "Thanks again for saving my ears tonight."

"You'll need them for Springsteen," she muttered, and when she yanked on the door handle, the only thing that opened was her mouth with a huff.

"Let me get that for you," he said, already on approach. "The trick is unlocking it first." Around her shoulder he reached, flipped the lock. "Enjoy the rest of the cookie."

The breath in his words tickled her neck. The words in that voice of his tickled far more than that.

Off Kate went, unsure if she was ticked off more at him for not doing something, or at herself for doing too much.