Thanks to devildog3479 for pointing out to me that I got a little bit ahead of myself with some of the dates in the last chapter. I meant to say that the Manhattan Criminal Justice Breakfast Kate attended was June 6, not June 16. June 10 happens in this chapter. Father's Day will be in the next chapter.

Thank you all for your continued enthusiasm and support. I appreciate them, and all of you, very much.

And just to be on the safe side, I'll say that this chapter is rated M.


It was the first time Javier had been to dinner at the loft since Christmas Eve, and besides Alexis, the only people present were Rick, Kate, and Lily. Javier watched Alexis with Lily, and the way Lily, tiny as she was, responded to Alexis's voice, the exaggerated faces she pulled, the way Alexis cuddled Lily close, and he couldn't help but smile. He had seen Alexis with the Ryan kids, so he knew she was good with kids, but seeing her with Lily brought that up to a whole other level.

"You are amazing, Lily," Alexis said. "Yes, you are." Alexis was holding Lily so that Lily was facing her, and then Alexis gasped. "You smiled at me!" she exclaimed. Rick and Kate were putting dinner together in the kitchen. Alexis turned her head towards the kitchen. "Mom, Dad, Lily just smiled at me! A real smile, not gas!" Then she looked at Javier. "Javier, Lily smiled at me!"

Rick and Kate both left the kitchen to rush to the living room. They stood behind the couch and looked down at Lily, who greeted her parents with a gorgeous, all-gums grin. "She just started doing that yesterday, didn't you, sweet girl?" Kate said, ignoring the sheen of moisture in her own eyes. Kate had been the recipient of Lily's very first real smile the day before, and had been so moved that she had cried for 20 minutes. After Kate had composed herself, Lily had smiled at Rick for the first time, and that had made Kate and Rick both cry for another 20 minutes. Lily was bewildered by her parents' tears, but they eventually reassured her, through a lot of soggy hugs and kisses, that they were proud of her, and they spent the rest of the evening, until Lily fell asleep, smiling back at her and earning more smiles from Lily in return.

"She has Kate's smile," Rick said happily as he took Lily from Alexis, "only without the teeth. Isn't that right, Sweetpea?"

"I still say it's too early to tell that," Kate retorted lightly.

"I'm telling you, our daughter has your smile," Rick insisted to his wife.

"I didn't think babies smiled this soon," Alexis said.

"Oh, now you've done it," Kate said. Rick pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up his new favorite website, Baby Center dot com, which contained week-by-week articles on a baby's development through the first year of life. He handed the phone to Alexis. "Impressive, huh?" he said. "They didn't have that when you were a baby."

"Way to make me feel old, Dad," Alexis teased as she took her father's phone and read the screen. "I'm assuming you've introduced playtime."

Rick looked at Alexis, his eyes twinkling. "Whatever gave you that idea?" he asked jokingly.

"A lifetime of knowing you," Alexis replied, tickling Lily's onesie-clad foot. "Dad's great at playtime, Lily. Trust me on this."

"We've also started reading already," Kate said. "Cloth books for now, although at the rate your dad keeps ordering his and my childhood favorites from Amazon, we're going to be on a first-name basis with the UPS guy before much longer."

"Just making sure our Prime membership is worthwhile," Rick said. "And it's not a competition, but Alexis's first word was 'denouement,'" Rick reminded Alexis and Kate. He looked at Lily.

Alexis looked at Kate. "You realize this means he's going to download a list of literary terms and start teaching them to Lily immediately," she warned her mother.

"He's already started," Kate replied. Rick opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Kate said, "I heard you when you were changing her at 2:28 this morning, babe. 'A is for 'alliteration,' 'B' is for 'blank verse,' 'C is for 'characterization'...I think that was my favorite. Let's see, 'D' was for 'denouement,' of course, 'E' was for-"

"Eat," Rick said, handing Lily off to Kate. "Dinner's ready." He returned to the kitchen to begin dishing up the pasta primavera and the salad Kate had made. After Alexis and Javier washed up, they joined Rick and Kate at the table, with Lily parked in her infant carrier in between Rick and Kate's seats.

They were about halfway through dinner, talking about Alexis's internship, Kate's campaign, all things Lily, Rick's new book that would be out soon, and the goings-on at the 12thfrom Javi's point of view, before Rick and Kate exchanged a look and then broached the subject that was the most important reason they were having dinner with Alexis and Javi that night.

"So," Rick began, "we wanted to talk to you two about something."

"Both of us?" Javi asked, doing his best to mask his surprise both on his face and in his tone of voice.

"Yes," Kate replied. "Rick and I are drawing up our will. Not because anything's going to happen," she added hastily when she saw the brief, instantaneous flash of panic in Alexis's eyes.

"It's just the responsible thing to do," Rick added, barely managing to avoid talking over Kate. "And we actually hadn't gotten around to it after getting married, so it was past time."

"Obviously, the most important part of the will is naming guardians for Lily," Kate continued. She looked at Rick again before looking at Alexis and Javi once more. "We gave this a great deal of thought, and talked it over a lot, and we were wondering..."

"Would the two of you be okay with Kate and me naming you Lily's guardians in our will?" Rick asked, looking from Alexis to Esposito and back again.

Javi was more floored than Alexis. "You want us to..." She couldn't bring herself to give voice to the thought, but the weight, the importance, of the responsibility were abundantly clear to Alexis, and she exclaimed, "Yes!"

But then Alexis looked at Javier. He looked composed, even though his heart was pounding hard and fast. Javi looked at Kate, who was looking at him hopefully, and then he locked eyes with Castle. The two men looked at each other across the table, neither blinking or flinching, neither of their expressions changing.

But Esposito saw clearly in Castle's eyes that he was not being asked to be Lily's guardian because of Alexis, but because of himself. It wasn't just that Beckett trusted him, which he had known for years and which went both ways, but Esposito saw that Castle trusted him too. Castle trusted Esposito to do right by both of his daughter, if it came down to that.

"Yes," Javier echoed Alexis.

"Great!" Kate exclaimed. "We're just covering all of our bases. But we're very happy that you both said yes."

"We really are," Rick said.

After dinner, Alexis picked Lily up again to hold her and then looked from Lily to Javier. Javier was surprised when she held Lily out to him. "You haven't held her yet tonight," Alexis explained simply.

Javier took Lily in his arms, carefully shifting her until he was cradling her. He looked down at her and saw that she was looking back up at him attentively. That was definitely the Beckett in her, he thought. "I'll be here for you for the rest of my life," he told the baby. Her response was to smile up at him, which made him crack a smile of his own. The smile may have been Beckett's, but the fact that she was smiling at him like that was a Castle trait if ever he saw one.

Before leaving the loft that night, Esposito pulled Castle aside. "I won't let you down," he said simply.

"I know you won't," Castle replied. "More importantly, Alexis knows you won't let her down. That's what it's really about."

"I'll always have Lily's back too," Esposito said seriously.

Rick nodded once. "I know you will," he said. "Kate and I went around and around on the guardians thing, but I know we made the right choice...and not just because Alexis is Lily's sister, and not just because of Alexis."

Alexis approached then, carrying her overnight bag, which Rick pretended not to notice. "Is everything okay here?" she asked. Kate was behind her, holding Lily.

Her father and Javier both turned to look at her with smiles on their faces. "Everything's great," Rick assured his daughter.

"It really is," Javier agreed. Alexis said good night to her parents and Lily, and then she and Javier left to go back to his place, while Rick and Kate took Lily off for her bedtime routine. They signed the will after Lily was asleep, and returned it to the lawyer the next day, and then put it entirely out of their minds as they went on with the business of everyday life.


Kate and Lily both aced their six-week checkups with their respective doctors, and Kate went back on The Pill, albeit a lower dosage containing only one hormone that was safe for a nursing mother, and then it was finally June 10.

Lily sat in her carrier in the middle of her parents' bed, watching as her daddy got dressed for dinner and talked to her the whole time. "Which one, do you think?" he asked, as he held up two brightly colored neckties for Lily to see, a navy blue one in his left hand, a purple one in his right. Lily cooed at him as she waved her hands around. "Purple it is," he said. He turned up the collar of his French blue button-down shirt—the one that he knew Kate thought brought out his eyes—and draped the tie underneath the upturned collar, making sure equal lengths of material hung down on either side. "I'm not a big tie guy," he confided to his youngest daughter, "but a little over ten months after your mom and I met, we were working on this case, and we didn't get any dinner. Well, not really. So I asked your mom if she'd go to Remy's with me...well, I guess I didn't ask her in so many words, but she put her arm through mine and we went to Remy's. In a sense, that was really our first date. We just didn't call what we were doing dating for another couple of years. And I was wearing a tie that night." He tied his tie while he talked, keeping Lily's gaze the whole time as she stared raptly up at her daddy, listening to every word he said. "And she doesn't usually do this, but that night, your mommy twirled her hair when we were walking to the elevator arm in arm. It made her look very girlish, and very cute, in the best possible ways." He shrugged into the smartly tailored navy blue Armani suit jacket that matched his pants, patting the breast pocket to make sure that the purple silk pocket square he had retrieved from the drawer before placing it in the pocket and putting the jacket on peeked out just enough. "Just promise me you won't twirl your hair like that until you're...well, at least in high school, okay, Sweetpea? Because I have to have to time to get your Uncle Espo and Uncle Ryan prepped to help me deal with any boys that come around you, although actually, if your Mommy just goes Detective Beckett on those boys, they'll run away screaming, although when it comes to you dating, I'll be the bad cop more than your mommy, I think."

He looked up then, having sensed Kate's presence. She had just exited the bathroom and was standing there looking stunningly gorgeous in a black dress with thick straps that had two black fabric flowers at the end of each strap, one at the bottom of the strap and one a couple of inches above her breasts. The dress's square neckline was modest, completely covering her chest, and the dress's skirt stopped just above her knees. Simple nude stockings and black heels completed the ensemble, and she was wearing her hair pinned up in the back. Rick had to consciously keep his fingers from twitching as he envisioned taking Kate's hair down, peeling off that gorgeous dress, removing her stockings one at a time, kissing every inch of her flesh as he bared it, while she did the same to him, with her maybe getting impatient enough to rip the buttons off his shirt (and not for the first time), and perhaps using the purple silk tie now knotted so neatly at his collar on him in lieu of handcuffs. 'Apples' was still his safe word; when they had first gotten together officially, and Rick had insisted Kate pick a safe word, she had chosen 'oranges,' at which point he had accused her of being a smartass. "Well, they do say that when couples have been around each other a long time, they start to act like each other, Castle," she had smirked at him. Back then, she had only called him 'Rick' when they were making love. Now Kate called him 'Rick' all the time, and he liked the way she uttered that one syllable, no matter the context—while making love, when she was scared, when she was happy, when she was sad, even when she was angry, although she usually reverted to 'Castle' when she was angry with him.

Kate hadn't heard most of what Rick had been saying to Lily, with the bathroom door closed, the water running, and her concentrating on getting her hair to look just right and finally going with the quintessential little black dress, giving in to the cliché that black was slimming since she was a mere six weeks removed from giving birth, although she had already lost most of her baby weight. This was her and Rick's first significant alone time since Lily had been born, and the sight of her husband in Armani and a tie with matching pocket square made her heart skip a beat. Of course, One if by Land, Two if by Sea was the fifth most romantic restaurant in the world, and definitely a get-dressed-up place if there ever was one in Manhattan. She wasn't at all worried about Rick's reaction to the stretch marks she had gained while carrying Lily. Her scars had never fazed him, just as his scars didn't faze her, and she was fully expecting him to talk about how the stretch marks were another badge of honor, just of a different kind. But she was a little self-conscious about that last little bit of extra weight she still carried, although deep down, she knew that wouldn't matter to Rick either.

He was wearing the blue shirt that she loved him in the best, the one that always brought out his eyes, having matched it with his navy blue Armani suit, and a purple silk tie and pocket square. Thoughts of dinner flew out of her head as she imagined being back here later, alone in their bedroom for the first time in six weeks, with the Armani suit on the floor beside their bed while she stripped the shirt and tie from him, running her hands all over his bare chest and back and then following the paths her hands blazed with her mouth, maybe finding another use for that tie later, driving him as wild as he was already driving her with the both of them still fully dressed and Lily in the room with them.

"Wow," Rick said in a hushed voice.

"Wow yourself," Kate replied, crossing the room to him and straightening his tie, even though it didn't need straightening. They stood there for a long moment just looking at each other until Lily broke the reverie with a gurgle and coo. "And let's not think about Lily dating tonight. That's a long way off. The only date I want to think about is ours."

Kate carefully sat down on the bed next to Lily then. "You're going to have a fun evening with your Gram, yes you are," she told Lily. Rick watched Kate and Lily together, Lily responding to her mother's voice and smile with another gurgle and a smile of her own. "And when you wake up, you'll be here at home with your dad and me." Kate checked Lily over. "Looks like Lily's ready," she said.

"Well, I changed her before I finished getting dressed," Rick replied. "I'll just go grab the diaper bag, and then we can go."

Downstairs, Kate got in the backseat with Lily, as had become the custom over the past six weeks whenever they went anywhere in the car. The drive to Martha's was short, but they were taken aback when Jim Beckett answered Martha's door.

"Dad?" Kate asked, confused. She was carrying Lily in her carrier, and Rick had the diaper bag.

"They're here!" Jim called over his shoulder, before looking eagerly at Lily. "There's my girl!" he exclaimed. Lily smiled then, and Jim's jaw dropped. "She smiled at me!" he exclaimed. He looked at Kate excitedly. "She has your smile, Katie."

"Told you," Rick said under his breath.

"Well, for heaven's sake, Jim, let them in already!" Martha called, bustling to the door and gently nudging him out of the way. "Hello, Lily," she greeted her youngest granddaughter. Rick and Kate entered with Lily to find Alexis sitting on the couch, putting the cap back on her bottle of water.

"What's all this?" Rick asked, surprised to see Alexis at Martha's as well.

"An unofficial meeting of the Lily Castle Fan Club," Alexis replied.

"Did they press you into referee duty?" Kate asked Alexis.

"There's no need for that, Katherine," Martha said, having unbuckled Lily from her carrier and lifted the baby into her arms, where Lily was fascinated with the necklaces and dangly earrings Martha was wearing. "Jim and I have negotiated a truce."

"And they didn't even need me to broker the peace," Alexis chimed in, rising from her seat and hurrying over to greet her baby sister properly. "Javier had to work tonight, and I knew Lily would be here, so I dropped by, and Jim was already here, so we're all going to spend the evening with Lily while you guys, who look incredible, by the way, have your night out."

"Jim and I met for coffee earlier this week and talked," Martha assured Richard and Katherine. She looked at Jim now.

"That's right," Jim said. "Martha and I are going to behave ourselves from now on. That's not to say we might not slip from time to time, but we're certainly capable of sharing Lily. I think one reason it's been difficult for us to share her so far is that we were each a parent to only one child-"

"And I was a single parent," Martha interjected.

"And I admit, I feel closer to your mom when I'm with Lily, Katie," Jim said. His expression softened."She would have loved being a grandma, and as I told Martha, if you think I'm a baby hog, Johanna would have been much worse than me. Lily's a Castle, I know, but she's also a third-generation Beckett woman. And you know how much I love the first two generations of Beckett women."

"I know, Dad," Kate replied, feeling the familiar bittersweet pang in her chest that her mother, who would indeed have loved being a grandma, wasn't here to see Lily.

"Anyway, we're going to share and play nicely from now on," Martha said. "And we'll do our best not to backslide, at least not on a regular basis." To prove her point, Martha turned to Jim. "Jim, would you like to hold Lily?"

"Yes, I would, Martha. Thank you very much," Jim replied as he accepted the baby from Martha and kissed her forehead. "We're going to have a lot of fun tonight, Lily Jo, yes we are. All of us," he added, looking at Martha and Alexis.

"Everything's in the diaper bag," Kate said.

"I do remember how to give a bottle and change a diaper, Katie," Jim said, amused.

Rick was hoping he and Kate could get out of there without Martha making any remarks about their plans for the evening.

"You can text or call if you need us," Rick added.

"Okay," Alexis said, "but I think we've got this, Dad. You two go out and enjoy yourselves."

"Yes, have fun," Martha told them. "And don't do anything I wouldn't do—which, as you know, leaves you a long list of things to choose from."

"And there it is," Rick muttered. Kate bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud at Martha's comment. Rick and Kate both hugged and kissed Lily and told her they loved her and they'd see her later, then said their goodbyes to Alexis, Martha, and Jim before heading to One if by Land, Two if by Sea.

After a sumptuous three-course dinner—Pan Roasted Nantucket Scallop appetizers, followed by Beef Wellington for Kate, and Boneless Rack of Lamb a l'orange for Rick—with most of the conversation being about Lily and Alexis, and a little bit about Kate's campaign and the readings and signings Rick was getting ready to commit himself to in the tri-state area, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania in the fall, Kate and Rick headed home. Rick texted Alexis to check on Lily while Kate was in the ladies' room at dinner, and Kate texted Alexis after buckling her seat belt, while Rick started the car and pulled into traffic.

"Lily's asleep," Kate reported when Alexis texted her back.

"When I texted earlier, Alexis said that they were all taking turns playing with her and reading to her," Rick replied. "They probably wore her out."

Kate put her phone back in her clutch purse, set the purse in her lap, and not-so-innocently reached over to rest her hand on Rick's knee, continuing to look out the windshield as her fingers danced from his knee to this thigh and back again. "So this is why you wanted to skip dessert," he mused, even though she was moving teasingly closer to his inner thigh and it was starting to arouse him.

They stopped at a red light, and Kate looked at him, and he turned to look at her, seeing the look of pure desire in her eyes. "I'm not skipping anything. You're my dessert," she replied.

The tires squealed as Rick's foot came down harder than he intended it to on the accelerator when the light turned green. "You do know I can't get you out of speeding tickets anymore, babe," Kate said, her eyes dancing with amusement now.

"You never got me out of speeding tickets before," Rick said, silently congratulating himself on being able to utter a coherent sentence as he decelerated to just under the speed limit.

"No, but I can think of something else I'd like to get you out of," Kate replied, her hand returning to his thigh and resting there, soft and warm and solid and burning his skin through the material of his pants.

When he looked back on this night in the months and years ahead, Rick wouldn't remember exactly how he and Kate got home, parked the car, and made it upstairs, because Kate couldn't keep her hands off him the entire time.

Once they were in the loft, though, with the front door closed and locked behind them, they walked hand in hand to the bedroom, just as they had their first night together. In the bedroom, Kate kicked off her shoes before stretching up on her toes to kiss Rick slowly and deeply, her tongue mapping his mouth as his hands roamed her back, looking for the zipper to her dress as his own questing tongue answered hers.

When the need for oxygen forced them to break the kiss, Rick's jacket, tie, and belt were on the floor, his shirt was untucked and rumpled, and Kate's hair was down and her dress was unzipped. "Should I have gotten candles, rose petals, put satin sheets on the bed?" Rick wondered.

Kate, her lip gloss totally wrecked, shook her head, then replied, "All I want, all I need...all I will ever want and need...is you."

Rick slid the straps of her dress down her arms, and the dress slipped from her body, pooling at her feet. She stepped out of it as she reached for the waistband of Rick's pants. They made short work of the rest of each other's clothes and then Rick was laying Kate down on their bed and she was pulling him down with her. She touched his face gently, and he lowered his mouth to hers, holding himself poised above her for the space of a few heartbeats, before their bodies merged and they let themselves be carried away on a tidal wave of love, desire, and joy.

In the afterglow, they lay on their sides in each other's arms, sharing long, passionate kisses. Kate rolled over so she was lying half on top of Rick, covering his face with kisses. When she rested her chin lightly on his chest, he looked into her eyes as he tucked a damp strand of hair behind her ear. "Amazing," he said softly.

"It certainly was," Kate agreed.

Rick wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer. "I don't mean just that," he replied. "I mean all of it. Everything. You...our kids...our home...our life. It gets bigger every day. It becomes more every day. You and me...our family...I love you, Kate."

"I love you too," she said. "I was, at best, half-alive before you came along. And you've given me a life that is so far beyond anything I ever dreamed of. And it does keep getting bigger and becoming more, and becoming better. You're what I was waiting for without knowing I was waiting for you. I didn't think I could feel the way you make me feel. I didn't think I could have what we have. But you never gave up on me, on us."

"I couldn't. Not completely. Not ever. I was waiting for you too." He paused a moment, stroking her cheek with the back of his hand and looking at her earnestly, his heart in his eyes. "Remember when I said that I never really felt like I belonged until I met you?"

"Yes," Kate replied.

"That's only part of it. I always wanted to belong to someone," he confided. "I love being Alexis's dad...and now Lily's dad. And as crazy as she can make me sometimes, I'm proud to be Martha's son. But I always wanted to be that man...the one that some strong, smart, beautiful woman who would call me on everything and love me for me, even when I make her crazy or angry, and who would always be there with me and for me, and let me be there with her and for her, and who would let me take care of her and would take care of me, and make a life with me… I wanted to be the man about whom that elusive woman would say, 'Yes, he's my husband,' and she'd be happy when she said it, and as proud to be my wife as I am to be her husband. And I'm so happy that that woman is you, Kate. I'm so happy that I belong to you."

She smiled back at him before pecking a quick kiss to his lips, then looking into his eyes and replying, "I'm very happy and very proud to be your wife, Rick." She shifted, sitting up and straddling him. "Only one thing would make me happier than I am at this moment." She felt his body's reaction to hers, and shivered as he ran his hands down her back.

They said it in unison: "Seconds on dessert." Rick pulled Kate closer, pressing a kiss over her thundering heart before she gently pushed him back against the pillows and they made love again.

It was almost midnight when they went to Martha's to bring Lily home. Lily was sound asleep, and Alexis was also sleeping, curled up on Martha's couch, and they agreed not to wake Alexis up, but to let her spend the night at Martha's. Jim had gone home a few hours before, when Lily had fallen asleep for the night.

"Lily is a delight," Martha said. "Honestly, Richard, I don't know how you managed to have two such well-behaved daughters."

"I don't either, but I'm grateful for it," Rick replied. He hugged Martha and kissed her cheek. "Thank you, Mother."

"Anytime," Martha replied. She and Kate hugged then. "Safe home, darlings. Text me when you get there, so I know you're in for the night."

"I will, Martha. Thank you for this evening. Everything was wonderful," Kate replied.

Martha grinned mischievously at her son and daughter-in-law. "Obviously," she said.

Rick and Kate took Lily home and got her settled in her bassinet without her waking up. Then they texted Martha good night, and settled in for a few hours of sleep themselves before Lily awakened for her middle-of-the-night feeding.


One if by Land, Two if by Sea really is rated the fifth most romantic in the world, and Baby Center dot com is a real website that does track a baby's week-by-week development and milestones for the first year of her (or his) life.