God Said

Chapter 6

Kate questioned her cousin as they just stood there. "Why are we waiting at the ticket counter area?" They already had tickets. All they needed to do was go to the gate and enter.

"We're waiting for your boyfriend," Sophie teased her.

"My what?" Kate knew she didn't have a boyfriend. Or at least not any longer. She had already gone through her fair share, many of whom she didn't ever want to see again and would rather forget about.

"Oh no, please tell me you didn't," Kate begged her cousin because if she did what she thought she did she was going to kill her.

"You better believe it!" Sophie crowed just as they heard a man's voice.

"Kate!" They saw a man in shorts, t-shirt, socks, and tennis shoes walking right toward them.

"You've been holding out on me, Kate. He's drop dead gorgeous. If you don't want him I'll take him," Sophie whispered to Kate and only had eyes for Rick as he joined them.

"You must be Sophie." Rick shook her hand. He also saw the look of shock on Kate's face. "I can leave." He was guessing Sophie had sprung this on Kate.

"No, you can stay. Right, Katie?" Sophie poked Kate since she was standing right next to her.

Kate just knew she was going to regret this. "You can come with us."

"If you're sure. I just need a ticket," Rick said and got in line to purchase a ticket so he could get in.

oO{}O{}Oo

"What's first, ladies?" Rick knew these two were in charge. Besides, his mother had brought him up to respect and let woman lead. They were to be treated with respect and kid gloves.

What they all started with was a map and list of today's events.

Hercules Victory Parade: 2:45, 4:30

The Mulan Parade: 8:50, 10:15

Fantasy in the Sky Fireworks with Tinker Bell: 9:35

Disneyland Presents Animazement the Musical: 12:30, 1:45, 3:00, 5:00 6:15

Fantasmic!: 9:00, 10:30

The Golden Horseshoe Variety Show: Tue & Wed – 11:15, 12:45, 2:30, 4:00, 5:15

Billy Hill & the Hillbillies: Fri.-Mon. & Thu – 11:15, 12:45, 2:30, 4:00, 5:15

Jump, Jive, Boogie Swing Party: Fri. - 7:30, 8:00, 9:15, 10:30

Big Band Bonanza with the Bill Tole Orchestra: 7:30, 8:30, 9:45, 10:45

The Sword in the Stone: 11:45, 12:45, 2:30, 3:30, 4:30, 5:30

"Railroad first, maybe?" Rick suggested since those two couldn't seem to decide. "It should bring us right back here. Maybe not a long line." That got them both to agree.

It was a nice, big, steam train complete with whistle all the way around. They didn't get off at any of the stations till they were right back where they had started. From there it was walking down Main Street till they reached the spoke and then they had to decide.

"Popcorn!" Rick saw what he wanted. He walked over to the little red kiosk and bought a small, open top box of popcorn. "Want some?" Rick was willing to share with them. So now everyone but Kate was eating popcorn as they went left into Adventureland.

oO{}O{}Oo

The lines seemed to vary as they went. Some rides looked a little long while others were far shorter.

New Orleans Square was next, followed by walking out to Bear Country. Then they had to backtrack to reach Frontierland which was next. It was there that the lines got longer.

Rick naturally had to stop and pay to shoot a rifle at targets. "You know how to shoot!?" Kate was shocked. He was hitting targets left and right.

"I'm full of surprises." Rick had finally reached the prize he was shooting for and gave it to Kate. "For the lovely lady."

"Thank you." Kate knew she was blushing but couldn't stop it.

"You want to try? I'll buy." Rick looked at Sophie who declined. Shooting weapons wasn't for her.

"Here, hold this." He took his prize from Kate, gave it to Sophie, and got Kate to stand next to him and handed her a rifle. He paid for her to shoot. Her first shots were terrible.

So Rick moved in behind her and helped her to aim. Kate's problem was that Rick was now really close, he had his arms around her and those lips were also really close. Neither of them were watching Sophie whose grin was quite wide as she watched those two.

Rick finally gave up so Sophie gave Kate back her winnings and they headed off for what came next.

oO{}O{}Oo

The roller coaster-like ride in Frontierland had a horrible line but they waited. While they waited all three did a lot of talking. Kate and Sophie were learning how Rick got his start at being an author but he was interrupted.

"You're Richard Castle! Can I get your autograph?" She managed to find a pen and handed over her Disney map for him to sign. "Thanks!"

"My pleasure. Anything for a fan." Rick didn't mind.

"Does that happen often?" Kate inquired.

Rick shrugged. "Depends. Some days no one even knows who I am, while others I can't get away till I run out of ink. I don't mind. If it makes them happy then I'm happy."

oO{}O{}Oo

"Arms up, Rick." Kate raised her arms high and glared at Rick till he let go and did the same. Soon everyone was screaming.

"I'm going to die, I'm going to die!" Rick yelled while screaming. Kate grinned. He was a mystery to her and she was beginning to realize that she was starting to really like him.

What she hadn't worked out yet was that Disneyland was the perfect place for him. He was in his element and could let the kid inside him truly take over. But she would eventually.

oO{}O{}Oo

They hadn't even made it to the Castle yet to reach the next land. "I don't know about you two but I'm starving and since I'm buying, you two get to decide where we eat," Rick told them.

Frontierland food wasn't that big of a challenge for them to choose.

"Parade, ladies. Let's go." Rick was looking at his brochure. He wanted to be up front so he could see this. Three of them found an empty space so they sat on a curb with their feet in the road as they waited.

"You're not married?" Sophie asked him. She had noticed he wasn't wearing a ring on his finger.

"I was. It lasted less than a year. She filed for divorce. Thanks to California law she got half of everything. It's a long story." Rick didn't want to scare Kate away since he was beginning to like her but she did deserve to know.

"We're not going anywhere. Dad isn't going to pick us up outside the park till almost midnight." Sophie was willing to ask. If she was going to get Katie to like him she needed to know.

Rick sighed. "We need to go back in time to my early college days. I was dating someone. Kyra. She was a little short, very pretty, very smart and I fell in love with her. The big drawback was that her parents hated me. You have to remember that her parents were high brow. Anyone below their station was slime, so I was slime. I was never going to amount to anything so they hated me and made sure I knew it.

"It didn't stop me from asking her to marry me, though."

"She divorced you because of her parents?" Sophie thought that was stupid.

"No, she said she needed to think about it," Rick told them. "Her idea of thinking about it was to move with her parents to Great Britain. I never saw or heard from her ever again."

Kate felt for him. "Ouch, that had to hurt."

"She was an idiot. To let her parents rule her life is stupid." Sophie already didn't like her.

"After Kyra came Meredith. She was basically a rebound. Meredith was nothing like Kyra. Kyra was shy, quiet, and soft spoken. Meredith was none of those things. She was an actress, or is an actress, or wants to be an actress." To Rick she wanted to be an actress but she wasn't making it.

"Then she showed up at my place screaming at me… Ooo, Parade!" He saw the start of the parade and really wanted to watch so he stood up and that got the women to follow his lead.

oO{}O{}Oo

Fantasyland was next. Since it was approaching 4:00 pm they chose to go through this land pretty fast. If there was a really good ride worth waiting in line for they did. Otherwise they hurried over to Tomorrowland. Now there were at all the really good rides.

It's a Small World was first followed by Raceway riding Go Kart-like cars over a track that zigzagged all over. A little noisy and a little hard on breathing from the exhaust but nice.

Carousel and rocket ships. Then came the ride that marked this park. "Space Mountain!" Rick kicked it into gear, so much so that the girls had to walk faster. That lasted to the point where they had to stop and wait in line.

It gave them more time to talk. This time Kate was doing most of the talking.

"How many boyfriends?" Rick was impressed and maybe a little shocked.

"My best girlfriend called me Rebel Becks for a reason. It was a time in my life I'm not overly proud of now. I think I was trying my best to get a rise out of my parents." Kate was willing to admit these days.

"Katie!" Sophie was learning something new.

"You blab to your parents and I will make you pay." Kate shook her finger at Sophie who just smiled at her.

Rick went back to his question. "So how many?"

Kate groaned. "Six, maybe seven. And if you blab that to your parents I'll do more than hurt you." Kate pointed again at Sophie who kept smiling.

"Never married?" Rick queried.

Kate shook her head. "I'm only eighteen, so no, I'm not married."

"So how old are you?" Sophie questioned him.

"I was twenty-eight last April. April first. Go ahead, let's hear it. I've heard them all." Rick waited for the jokes but they never came.

"Katie will be nineteen in November," Sophie told him. She didn't know if that was too much for Katie. If she didn't want him it wasn't too much for her. It might be too much for her dad but she wasn't Kyra. Her parents didn't rule her life.

"November, November what?" Rick was going to make a mental note of this date.

"November 17th. I'll be in Stanford then and not here. I leave in about two weeks." Kate knew her time was running out here. Soon school would rule her life.

oO{}O{}Oo

Little by little they kept inching forward till finally after a lot more conversation Rick sat down and much to his surprise, Kate sat down in front of him and leaned back. He was sorely tempted to wrap his arms around her but he grabbed hold of the handles instead.

Both of them, along with Sophie who was all alone behind them, were screaming as they got rocked side to side and went round and round.

"AWESOME!" Rick declared after they were off and walking out.

"Fireworks are at 9:35 so where to next?" Rick wanted them to decide. "More food maybe?"

"The Mulan Parade at 8:30," Kate suggested and saw Rick smile. This was another clue for her as to just who Richard Castle really was.

oO{}O{}Oo

They were sitting and waiting and had decided where they want to be to watch the fireworks.

"Meredith?" Kate asked him since the parade had interrupted him.

"Where did I leave off?" Rick questioned.

"She had shown up at your place and started screaming at you," Kate reminded him.

"Yes, Meredith was trying to be an actress and no one was going to hire her since she was pregnant," Rick began to tell them.

"Pregnant!?" Sophie was shocked. To her this meant he had a kid somewhere.

"My daughter, Alexis. She's all of three months old now." Rick reached for his wallet, slipped out a tiny picture of her, and handed it to Kate first.

"She's so cute. Is that orange hair?" She didn't have much hair but what she did have looked orange.

"Yeah, my mother has red hair and Meredith had red hair."

Kate handed the picture to Sophie for her to see.

"Meredith wanted an abortion. She was only telling me because she was so angry at me. We always used condoms so I don't know." He still wasn't discounting that Alexis wasn't his but by now he didn't care. Besides, how did she get her orange hair? Was it from Meredith alone?

"It took a lot of convincing. A marriage proposal and one of the biggest engagement rings you've ever seen. Except it was never really a marriage but at least she didn't get an abortion.

"Then she up and disappeared for three days at the end of her pregnancy. And one day she showed up with a newborn that was wailing away and handed her to me and told me there was my damn baby."

"Nice." Sophie hated her already.

"The next thing I know she's packed and gone. A little while later someone shows up with divorce papers for me to sign. She got half of everything and she signed over all rights to Alexis. She was gone. I've never seen nor heard from her again." Rick was done.

"Again? Kate looked at him in shock. First Kyra and now Meredith. She didn't see what was so wrong with him.

"Yeah, I'm cursed. It doesn't stop me from trying to make friends, though." Rick looked at those two. He knew a lot of women didn't have any interest in being part of an immediate family. He was willing to call this a first date even though this might be their last date.

"Curses don't exist," Kate informed him. "You just keep meeting all the wrong women." That, she saw, had him smiling. There was, however, a point she needed to think about. Well, maybe more than one. The big one was that he had a baby.

Maybe it didn't really matter. She was moving to San Francisco in two weeks. He would be here.

oO{}O{}Oo

They had stood and watched the parade and then hustled to find a spot for the fireworks.

The fireworks display was where Kate got yet another glimpse at just who Richard Castle was. He clearly enjoyed fireworks. She liked fireworks but apparently Rick liked them a lot more.

oO{}O{}Oo

Rick had them stop at a clothing store on the way out since the park was going to close soon.

"Here." Rick put a t-shirt across Kate's front. "That one's yours." He left it in Kate's hands and soon had one in front of Sophie. "That one's yours."

Now he was off looking for something for him and Alexis. She might not be there in person but where he went she was always there.

"Three t-shirts and one monkey." Rick took them to check-out.

"Monkey?" Kate asked him. He didn't want a mouse instead?

Rick explained his choice of a stuffed animal. "It's The Jungle Book monkey. It's for Alexis. She won't understand but she deserves to have something from this trip."

This also told Kate something about just who Richard Castle was. She now had a lot of information to share with her mother.

oO{}O{}Oo

Rick had insisted on escorting them to their site where Sophie's father was supposed to show up and take them home. "My mother raised me right. I'm not letting anything happen to either of you if I can help it."

"Thanks for the winnings." Kate held up her stuffed animal he'd won at that shooting gallery.

Rick nodded and said, "Thank you for inviting me. I've had a great time. If you two decide you want to do something like this again you have my number."

oO{}O{}Oo

Rick watched them get into a Toyota and drive away. They were safe so now he needed to get to his car safely.

"Who was that?" Ray questioned as he drove.

"He's Kate's boyfriend," Sophie singsonged.

"He's not my boyfriend." Kate was in the back seat and glared at the back of Sophie's head and was thinking of whacking her in the back of her head for that.

"Did you get a name?" Ray was going to talk to his wife about this.

"Richard Castle. He's an author and he's nice. He bought us lunch, bought us souvenirs, and he loves parades and fireworks," Sophie enthused. "Oh and he's divorced and has a little girl. His ex-wife is evil. He keeps running into all the wrong women somehow."

"Yeah." Kate could agree with that. "And he's not my boyfriend."

"Yet!" Sophie turned to look at Kate and smiled at her. Then Kate stuck her tongue out at her which had her laughing as she turned around to watch where they were going.

oO{}O{}Oo

Kate was up the next morning and hadn't showered yet. She was letting her aunt and uncle get ready for work first before she used up the hot water.

"Boyfriend, I hear." Jamie wasn't above teasing her.

Kate gritted her teeth. "I swear I'm going to kill Sophie." Scowling, she looked for the orange juice to pour a glass.

"From what I heard he sounds nice. Maybe a little old for you but not by much. So long as you're good with him having a daughter." Jamie didn't know that much about Katie.

"I haven't even seen her, save for that little picture of her he showed us. She's really tiny and has orange hair. I can't say I've ever seen that before," Kate commented and took a swallow of her orange juice then sat down at the table.

"Have you ever done any babysitting?" Jamie studied her niece's reaction. "Sophie did a little to earn money."

"No, none," Kate replied. "I didn't think that was me so I did other things so I could afford my motorcycle."

"Motorcycle? Your parents let you get a motorcycle?" Jamie was stunned and was going to have to have a little talk with Johanna.

"Harley Softail. It's in their garage and they didn't know I bought it till I showed up with it. I think Dad almost had a meltdown." Kate giggled a little. "Mom just wanted to know who I was and what I had done with her daughter." Now Kate was outright laughing.

"I won't get to ride it till I'm back home." She was going to miss riding her bike, she just knew it.

"A motorcycle." Jamie shook her head and missed seeing Kate's wide grin. "So when are you meeting this boyfriend of yours?"

"I don't know and for the last time he's not my boyfriend. Besides he lives in LA and I'm moving to San Francisco." He wasn't going to have a chance to be her boyfriend.

"So ask him if he wants to move if you don't mind the age difference," Jamie encouraged her.

"Just how many people has Sophie been talking to?" Kate didn't know when Sophie had had the time to tell her parents all this stuff. All she got out of Jamie was to listen to her laugh a little.

It only confirmed that she was going to kill Sophie.