Chapter 2

Kate Beckett hadn't stopped sobbing from the moment she'd started, and was still crying now, as they pulled up outside Castle's block. He'd tried every manner of comforting he could think of and execute in a taxi: Kleenex, ignoring it, sympathetic patting – and not one action or word had stopped her floods of tears. He paid off the driver, added a generous tip, and drew Kate out and into the building. His doorman regarded him in confusion, which Castle magnificently ignored.

He wasn't sure that this was a good idea, he just didn't have any better ones. He couldn't possibly leave anyone in the distress Kate was displaying. He took her upstairs to his loft, steered her inside, and gently installed her on the couch, minus coat and scarf, with a box of Kleenex. She wasn't seeing anything outside of her own head, which, considering his (less than usual, but far more than none) Christmas decorations, was just as well. He left her there, found his laptop, and – from a different part of the couch where he wasn't touching her in any way – began to try to write. As with every attempt in the last few weeks, it was far more difficult than it should have been. He felt that he was forcing words out, rather than simply controlling their flow.

After a short while, he became aware that the sobbing had diminished to hiccups and occasional nose-blowing. He looked up, to find a thoroughly soggy Kate, clearly embarrassed and staring at her knees and the floor to avoid his decor.

"I should go," she forced out.

"Why?"

"I want to be home." She sounded utterly broken. "I want to be at home," she repeated.

"Okay, but let me take you. You can't go on the subway in that state."

She shrugged soggily, as if she didn't have the energy to care, head down, elbows on her knees, shrunken into her own misery. She blew her nose again. "I can manage."

"Just let me. I'll even drop you off at the nearest corner if you don't want to give your address."

She shrugged again. "Whatever," she said, dragging herself off the couch and back into her coat and scarf. Castle looked at her bedraggled state and couldn't help but hug her in.

He let go, instantly. Where he'd hugged her, he burned. He wanted – oh, how he wanted – to catch her in again, kiss her…but it was a Very Bad Idea. She was staring at him as if turned to stone, still staggeringly attractive despite the tearstains and the reddened eyes and nose. He stepped back a little. "Let's go," he said, a tiny shake on the words.

"Yeah…"

It was all she said, but something in the tone made him think that she'd felt the same instant blaze as he had.

He was extremely careful not to touch her in any way, all the way down to the parking level under the block, all the way into the car, all the way to the address she gave him. He parked neatly.

"Will you be okay?" he asked; the first words since they'd left his loft.

"Yes…" She stopped, swallowed, and then pulled out her phone. "Uh…not now. Tomorrow. Can I, uh, buy you coffee. To say thank you. For bringing me home…" Her words were jerked out.

"Sure," Castle said easily. "Lemme give you my number." He read it out and she tapped it in. "Text me."

"'Kay." She lurched out of the car and into her building. Castle watched until he was sure she was safely inside, then drove back to his own loft, where he intended to think through what on earth had just happened.

He made himself some dinner, then repaired to his study with a small Scotch, put his feet up on the desk, and contemplated. Sure, she was gorgeous – when she wasn't snipping, snapping, or sobbing. But he'd met plenty of equally gorgeous women (and enjoyed their company enormously, not always in bed), and while there'd certainly often been a flare of appreciative lust, there hadn't been the blaze he'd just felt. He truly didn't get that. Love at first sight – or touch – belonged in fairy tales, not in his life. Not now. He'd rather given up on that, having tried it once – and hadn't liked the outcome much, except for his beloved daughter, which was the only good part of the whole disaster.

Still, love wasn't the issue here. Interest, intrigue, and that sudden blazing awareness. And, of course, another coffee date, though her embarrassment and uncertainty didn't exactly augur well, or for her sharing the sparks. She hadn't exactly been impressed by who he was, though, which was good.

He thought further. At first, he'd thought her to be in her late twenties, based on her assertive demeanour and poise, but now he thought he'd overstated that by three or four years. If she'd been later twenties, she wouldn't have fallen apart in that comprehensive collapse – which had made her look shockingly younger. Hmm. However, he hadn't tried to hit on her and he wasn't going to. (Right, a nasty little voice in his head said. Let's just see if you mean that. Would you really have gone after her if she'd been ugly? He didn't like that thought, because the honest answer was probably not twice.)

Why had she been so upset? She'd been semi-crying when he'd knocked into her; snippy-snappy throughout coffee; and though she'd agreed to dinner, she'd then reversed course and backed off at a hundred miles a minute.

Maybe, he thought, he shouldn't have pushed. Maybe that had been…ugh. Pressuring pretty women was not what he did or who he wanted to be. But she could have said No the first time, not weaselled around it. She hadn't denied it had been to deal with an ex-boyfriend.

Well, shit. He really should not have pushed once he'd worked that out. It left a squirmingly unpleasant feeling in his stomach. He resolved to apologise the next day – if she called, which right now didn't seem too likely – and not repeat the invitation to dinner. He wasn't going to be one of those unpleasantly predatory men who couldn't take no for an answer.

Doing the right thing didn't make him any more cheerful, however. He really had been intrigued by Kate Beckett, and the memory of the instant flame hadn't dimmed one iota. Just his current romantic luck to meet someone interesting and then have to back off. He drained his Scotch, depressed.

Beckett stumbled into her apartment, utterly ashamed of her emotional outburst and tears, and exhausted. She couldn't do anything right today. She should never have gone out into the Christmas shopping frenzy, she should never have snapped (no matter how justified) at the man bumping into her, and she should especially never have accepted the invitation to coffee from Richard Castle, even if she did own and love all of his books.

But having said yes to coffee, she shouldn't then have been so unpleasantly manipulative. She could just have said no thank you to dinner. She could have accepted with good grace. What she really shouldn't have done, Christmas misery or not, was try to weasel out of it in that dishonest fashion. She hated herself for falling back on to old, bad habits.

Not so very old. In fact, only a couple of months since she'd ditched Will in fury and disgust, and started to realise just how often she'd felt she'd had to sneak around him to avoid trouble and fuss. And at the first sign of having to do something she didn't want to, she'd done it almost by reflex, rather than simply using her words. She didn't think at all about why she'd collapsed in tears. That way madness – and more tears – lay. Christmas wasn't a time of joy and merriment for her. Not now.

She didn't like the person she'd been. She didn't much like being the person she was, in fact: manipulative and petty. Ugh. She really needed to fix herself, and soon.

The first thing she could do was make up for her atrocious behaviour – crying all over someone she didn't even know? – by buying him coffee and being civilised and civil. No more sniping.

She made herself mac 'n' cheese with extra cheese and some bacon bits, chased it with more coffee and some ice cream, and later went to bed somewhat comforted.

Considerably later than the time at which Castle had given up hope, especially since he'd had limited faith that Kate Beckett would actually invite him for coffee, his phone buzzed. If you still want that coffee, I've finished work now. Oh. Of course she would have work. He hadn't thought of that. Just as well he hadn't put dinner on.

Yes, please, he sent back. Where?

There was a noticeable delay. Remy's, half an hour arrived, with an address. Ah. Oh. Wow. That was seriously not what he had expected.

Okay.

He wrapped himself up against the December chill, and hurried out, arriving at Remy's some twenty minutes later. It wasn't exactly what he'd expected, pleather booths, warm and cosy; the meals he could see passing by looked mouth-wateringly delicious. He couldn't understand how he hadn't found this place before. A server produced a menu, which made his mouth water even further, and reminded him that he'd missed lunch. (You were sulking, a nasty little voice said. He ignored it. He didn't sulk.) He peered around to see if he could spot a cheeseburger, and eventually succeeded. It looked delicious.

"Er…hello."

Castle whipped around. "Hey," he answered, remembered some manners, and stood. "Work done?"

"Yeah." She sat down, and shortly a server produced a menu.

"What do you do?" To his astonishment, she squirmed. "It can't be that embarrassing, surely. I mean, unless you're working a telephone sex line, but they're all sixty and, um…if you were going to do that you'd be a really expensive escort, um, like a really top level geisha who never had to do anything she didn't want to…"

"What are you on? Should I arrest you now for possession and use of illegal substances because you're clearly" –

"You're a cop?" he broke in. "That's so cool."

Beckett boggled, which was a considerable improvement over her first instinct, which had been to slap him silly. Fortunately, she'd recognised his babble as an inability to keep his thoughts behind his teeth before she laid him out flat on the floor, but he wasn't exactly improving the position with the intent gaze and sudden focus.

"I never met a cop before, except when I was arrested." Beckett opened her mouth. Richard Castle just kept talking. "Storm doesn't do legitimate law enforcement. He's more of a lone wolf – but you know that 'cause you've read them." He looked her up and down. "But you're not in uniform, so…"

"I'm a detective."

"Ooohhh. How long have you been one? Do you do murder, robbery, fraud? Special Victims?"

"Homicide," Beckett said automatically. "Almost two years."

"Oh, wow. How do you do it? Do you get a call? What do you do when you get to the scene? How do you start on a case?"

Beckett simply stared. The usual first questions were more like do you like using those handcuffs? Some of the worst, sleaziest men went with can I try your handcuffs with a substantial flavouring of on you. Richard Castle had gone straight to the actual details of a case.

"I look at the scene," she said, "and the victim."

The server arrived. "Are you ready to order?" he asked.

"Yes," Beckett said. "Cheese and bacon double burger, fries, strawberry milkshake, thank you."

"Cheeseburger, fries, Coke, please," Richard Castle requested, and then looked back at her. "Call me Rick," he suggested. He'd called himself that yesterday, she remembered. "If we're having dinner together, you might as well use my name."

"Not Richard?"

"My mother calls me that. Usually when she's, um, disagreeing with me." He pouted, which should have looked dumb but actually looked adorable. "Anyway. Back to the point. You look at the scene and the victim?"

"The victim is the point."

Castle's eyes widened, and he grabbed a notebook and a pen from an inside pocket. "I have to write that down."

"What?" Beckett gaped, seeing the conversation and any hints of sanity galloping off over the horizon.

"I have to write it down. I told you yesterday I wasn't trying to hit on you, but everything's material for a story. That's a good line and I don't want to forget it." He scrawled. Even upside down, his handwriting was appalling – even worse than Beckett's, which reached new depths of illegibility. He put the period at the end of the sentence with a decided jab.

Beckett looked up to find that the server was bringing their drinks, and hoped that would return this befuddling conversation to somewhere within a mile of reality. A second later, she realised that Castle's total insanity had left her so confused that she had forgotten to be miserable, and furthermore that she was famished and thirsty. A third of her milkshake went down in one long draught.

"Okay," Castle said. "So the victim's the point. I get that. What else are you looking for?"

"My dinner," Beckett said tartly. "I'm hungry. If I'd known dinner came with the Inquisition, I'd have been late." Fortunately, at that point her burger arrived, and she dug in with alacrity. Equally fortunately, this prevented her answering any questions.

Castle, watching with concealed astonishment as Beckett put away a quantity of food that would have easily defeated any self-respecting sumo wrestler, could hardly contain his impatience to ask her more about her job. He forced himself to wait until the last fry had disappeared, and then began again.

"What do you look for?"

"Evidence. Clues. Anything that might give us a lead" –

"Us?"

"Me, Ryan and Esposito. We're a team."

"Three?"

"Yep."

"Isn't that a bit of a weird number?"

"Nope. It works for us." She looked around, and smiled at the server, who bounced up with dessert menus. "Brownies, please, and coffee."

"Where do you put it all?" Castle enquired, wide-eyed. "You're so slim." Beckett flashed him a sceptical glance. "You are. You can't be scarfing down burgers and brownies every day and stay that slim."

"There's a lot of exercise in being a cop. Drills. Sparring. That sort of thing."

Castle grinned. "And you don't do burgers every day, either." His butterfly mind flitted off. "So why were you so upset yesterday?"

"None of your business," Beckett shut down. Her face closed off, and she attended to her milkshake and then, when it arrived, her brownie.

"Just tell me whether it was my fault." Castle tried batting his eyes at her, which earned him only a disgusted expression.

"No. It wasn't."

"Okay. Let's go back to what you do, then." He thought that he'd much rather be talking to her than not, so diverted his errant mind and mouth back to her job. By way of apology, he patted her hand – and then stayed there, staring at her. "What was that?" he asked stupidly.

"What was what?" but she sounded almost as stunned as he was, and she hadn't moved her fingers. His own fingers curved around hers, swamping them.

"Uh…" He couldn't explain. He only knew that he couldn't let go. He couldn't stop staring into her eyes, either. Hazel, he noted, with long lashes – and dark circles beneath, to which he'd paid no attention earlier. He wondered, suddenly, if she'd slept much last night.

They sat, staring at each other, hands linked.

Beckett didn't have the brain function to remove her hand – and she didn't want to do so. Castle's large span around hers left her warmed from her fingernails to her heart. He might not want to hit on her, but right now, she might not have objected. She gazed into his face, and didn't see unpleasant, sleazy lust. Attraction, for sure. Those piercing blue eyes were as warmly hopeful as they'd been the day before, but though there was attraction in spades, he wasn't trying to do anything more than hold her hand.

As she finished her brownie, one-handed, he was still gazing at her. "I'll get a coffee too," he said to the server who came to take the plate away. "Do you want to get some more?"

"I always want to get more coffee," she said. "Cops run on coffee, but the slop in the precinct machine barely qualifies. I go through a loyalty card a week at the coffee bar near the Twelfth."

"Wow." Castle's eyes went far away for a moment. "You said you were with two other cops?"

"Yeah. Ryan and Esposito. Ryan only joined us a few months ago, but it works really well."

"How did that happen?"

"Captain dropped him on us. Said he'd had a rough case and needed to move precincts, so we got him." Her eyes danced. "He has dreadful taste in ties and sweater-vests, but he's a good cop."

"And Es-Esposito?"

"Ex-Army. He's a bit macho."

"Doesn't bother you, though, does it?"

"We worked it out."

"How? Don't you have to depend on each other? How do you do that if you have to work it out first?"

"You think cops are some kind of perfect everyone's-all-pals-together right away?"

"Uh…"

"It's not like that. We're just the same as any other set of people. Some get along, some don't. Matching us up is the Captain's problem."

"Matchmaking for the modern day," Castle quipped.

"I don't think so."

"What, no workplace romance?"

"No."

Phew, Castle thought. He could do without complications. This Kate Beckett was complicated enough. But…complicated was good. Interesting. Brainless blondes weren't fun any more.

"I guess it wouldn't be professional," he said temperately.

"No." She used her free hand to sip her coffee.

Castle flicked a glance at his watch. "It's not late," he said. "I know! Can you ice-skate? Let's go to the Bryant Park rink."

Beckett's face shut down, and her hand withdrew from his, leaving a chill space behind it. "I don't skate." She looked at her own watch – a slim but practical, cheap affair – and frowned. "I need to get home."

Castle pouted. "You do?"

"Work."

He was pretty sure that was a lie, or at the very least a convenient excuse. Still, it was absolutely no part of today's plan to push her. "Okay. Uh…look, I'm really interested in how cops work. Can I buy you coffee tomorrow and ask you more questions about it? I'm wondering if Storm might get caught up in a police investigation." Which was also a convenient excuse.

"I guess." It wasn't enthusiastic agreement, but it was agreement. "My shift technically finishes at five."

"Okay," Castle jumped in. "Same coffee bar as yesterday, five-thirty?"

"I'll text you when I'm done. I can't guarantee a time."

"Okay. Great." Castle grinned, and put some bills on the table.

Beckett scowled, and put some bills of her own down.

"Nope," he said cheerfully. "I persuaded you to come for dinner, and then you answered all my questions." He pushed the money back at her. "You can pay another time." When hell freezes over, he thought to himself. "I'll walk you to the subway. I would walk you home but I don't think you want that."

"No. Thank you."

Beckett wanted to go home and try to work out what on earth was going on. She was confused, and she didn't like being confused. Then again, she didn't like the thought of the ice rink. Too many jolly, cheery people humming along to jolly, cheery – or downright cheesy – Christmas songs, out of tune, which hurt her ears. Too many twinkling lights, which annoyed her eyes. Too much – be honest – too much Christmas. New York was full of Christmas spirit, and she had precisely none, nor did she want to acquire any.

All she wanted was her father sober, and her old life back again with her whole family. And that wasn't going to happen.

"Okay?" Castle said. It sounded as if it was the third or fourth time. "We can go."

"Okay."

Thank you to all readers and reviewers. You are very much appreciated.

Happy New Year to all of you, and best wishes for 2023.

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