a.n. I am highly disappointed in the response to the last chapter. Only five people reviewed. Is the story moving too slowly? Or does it just suck so bad people are getting bored? Reviews are what keep me motivated, so let me know what you think of the story! For those of you who did review, thank you so much!

Not sure what I think of this one.

Disclaimer: I won Castle merchandise. I don't own Castle. Same letters, different meaning.

xxxx

Chapter Eighteen

Previously…

"Well I guess we could stay… You know, you're right. You guys stay a few more hours, I'm sure you can turn something up."

The boys groaned, obviously wishing they had kept their mouths shut. Kate smirked.

"You guys keep going at it. Castle and I are going to head out," Kate said, walking past them.

"Night, guys," Castle said.

xxxx

The first thing the next morning, the Captain stepped out of his office and said, "Beckett, Castle, my office now."

Kate looked at her partner, wondering what the Captain wanted with them. The two of them got up from their seats and walked into the Captain's office. Montgomery shut the door after them and took his own seat.

"Are you two in a relationship?" he asked, looking at Beckett

"Yes, sir."

Montgomery sighed, and ran his hand over his bald head. "Well, shit. Listen. I'm okay with it. And technically it's not breaking any rules since Castle here doesn't actually work for the NYPD. But he does have a badge. He did take an oath when he became an official NYPD consultant, so you guys have got to keep this out of the precinct, and you have to act professionally when you're out in the field. One hint that it's affecting your job, Kate, and it has to end. Understand?"

The Roy of before wouldn't have cared at all, Kate thought bitterly. The Roy of before would have cheered us on. "Yes, sir. We'll keep it to ourselves."

He nodded. "Good. Now get back to work. And congratulations."

Walking back to her desk, with Castle following, she decided that this didn't actually change anything between them. They had already been keeping it out of the precinct, and they had no plans to stop that now.

Sitting down in his chair, Castle said, "Kate, I don't want to cause you any problems."

"You're not, Rick. Montgomery is just covering his ass. This doesn't change anything between us. We just can't do it in the supply closet."

He scowled. "Well that's disappointing."

She laughed and started getting her things ready to go find the woman in the picture they had found the day before.

xxxx

After questioning Cameron and Melissa Talbot, Kate wasn't sure how the differences in this case were going to come into play. Despite Eliska Sokol's husband being more in the picture than he was before, the rest of it appeared the same. At least so far.

The Talbots had a young son named Zane. Eliska had, like she had before, gotten close to the Talbot kid, and had made the parents nervous, which had resulted in her being fired.

Despite her assumptions that the rest of the case would play out as it had before, she decided that she had to play it safe and follow the leads wherever they lead.

Once they were back at the precinct she gathered her team around and said, "Alright, guys, let's put ourselves in Eliska's shoes. She is suddenly unemployed, and she's worried about two things. First money. She needs the job to make rent since she and her husband had separated and were undergoing a divorce. The second thing she's apparently concerned with is her investigation into her son's death. She, according to the husband, was convinced that the son they had raised until age three wasn't their biological son, but instead had been switched at birth. That explains why she got close to the Talbot's son."

"We should look into that, then," Castle said, handing her a cup of coffee. "We should see if there is any truth to her suspicions, especially in regard to the Talbot child."

"Let's first check the Talbot's alibis," Kate said, looking at Ryan and Esposito. "Then we should also go back to Eliska's building and talk to the neighbors again to see if anyone saw anything suspicious."

xxxx

In the end, Kate decided she was happy she was paying attention. Before they had found a witness who had saw someone looking like Cameron Talbot in Eliska's building. This time the sketch turned out to look more like Melissa Talbot.

"Yes, I was in her building," Mrs. Talbot said when they confronted her with the sketch from the witness.

"Why?" Kate asked, confused as to how this difference in her timeline was going to play out.

"I…" she started, but looked away, trying to hide the tears that had sprung up in the corners of her eyes. "My husband was having an affair with her."

"How do you know, Mrs. Talbot?" Castle asked.

"She was here a lot. And I could see the way he looked at her, and acted around her. I told you before that she was here and got close to Zane, but she also got a lot closer to my husband than I'd consider proper. I went to her building to confront her about it."

"Have you discussed this with your husband?" Kate asked.

"Yes. He…he told me yesterday that it was true." She started sobbing.

xxxx

Back at the precinct, Castle said, "This makes no sense. So Cameron Talbot was having an affair with Eliska. Eliska thought that Zane was actually her child from her actual marriage. Why would she sleep with the Talbot man if she thought he played a role in taking her child?"

"Maybe she confirmed it, and that was her way of insinuating herself into their lives?" Kate wondered aloud as she sat next to him on her desk, their sides smashed together.

"If she confirmed it, then why not just report it? She'd end up with custody and one or both of the Talbot's would go to jail."

"There has to be something we're missing. Maybe she was just using the affair to play for time. She needed the time to wait to confirm it."

"The candy!" Castle said, excitedly.

"What do you mean, Rick?"

"Melissa Talbot got angry with Eliska for giving Zane candy. What if she used that to get his DNA? If she sent his DNA off to some lab, she would need to wait. But she needed to have an excuse to stick around, so she started to sleep with Cameron Talbot. Melissa Talbot, at the time, didn't know this, so she just went to the building management and got Eliska fired. The question is, which of the Talbots is involved in this, and had Eliska gotten the test results back?"

"We need to check her mail," Kate said, impressed with his story.

xxxx

In the end it turned out that both of the Talbots were involved in the baby switching scheme. When Cameron Talbot had discovered that their actual baby had a deadly disease, his wife had pleaded with him to do something, which is when he hatched the plan to switch the identity cards of two different infants. Unlike her previous time, Melissa Talbot wasn't the innocent bystander. She had figured out that Eliska was trying to get close to them by sleeping with her husband, and had figured out why she was doing it.

Melissa Talbot was their killer, but both Talbots were going to jail. After booking them both, Kate flopped into her chair and sighed deeply.

"Zane was caught in the middle," Kate said to Rick as she gathered the paperwork for the case and started organizing it.

"What's going to happen to him?"

"We called Child Services. Now that there is proof that he is indeed Teodor's child, he'll likely get custody, but it's going to take a while for it all to get sorted out."

"Well I won't say that this made any sense to me. In the end, the Talbot's real son died, and they didn't even get a chance to know him. Instead they only inflicted pain on another couple. I can understand not wanting your child to die. But the child still died. It changed nothing other than filling the void that would have been left when he died, and they still had to know that their actual child died at some point. It makes no sense."

"Some crimes don't make sense. They must have thought that by replacing their child with another the grief wouldn't come for them."

"Sad, really."

"Yeah."

"Alright. I've got to go get ready. I'll pick you up at 7?"

"Sounds good."

xxxx

"You look beautiful, Kate," Castle said after he found his voice. She blushed, knowing exactly what she was doing to him by wearing this short blue form fitting dress.

"Thanks, Rick."

"Oh, this is for you. Sorry, but I couldn't afford more than just the one," he joked as he handed her a single red rose.

"Spending all those royalties on scotch and women?" she asked, raising an eyebrow teasingly. She walked back into her apartment to put the rose into a vase, leaving the door open behind her.

"Yes, Kate, that's exactly what I'm doing," Castle said sarcastically. "That and entering into weekly strip poker tournaments with my author buddies."

Laughing at him, she put the rose into water then grabbed her clutch. "Alright, Writer Boy, let's go."

He scowled at her.

"What? That's what Lanie calls you," she said as she shut her apartment door behind them.

"Well, then that's okay then, I guess."

xxxx

"So how are we going to go about this?" Kate asked as the limo pulled up outside the building where the launch party was going to take place. Hundreds of press and photographers were already lined up on either side of the red carpet waiting for their glimpse of someone even remotely famous.

"Well this first part will probably be the hardest, but just ignore every question and comment thrown your way, and we'll get passed it. Say nothing, okay, even if you're provoked. Just by us showing up together arm in arm, they'll know we're together. But after they read the dedication they'll know for sure."

Raising her eyebrows, Kate asked, "What does the dedication say?"

"Uh-uh. Not until we're inside. It's a surprise."

"But you've dedicated all your books to Alexis." He had. She had went back and checked after he had started to shadow her. She wanted to know how the rest of his books had differed from their previous versions in her time before.

He smiled. "Alexis would understand. You ready?"

Thinking she'd know more once she got to his book, she nodded and swallowed hard. She remembered going to this launch the first time. She had been so sure that he was about to leave her, and she had no courage to ask him to stay. It had been the first time he had called her extraordinary. Of course they had to go and ruin the moment by fighting with each other, but she knew even then that he had meant what he wrote.

She knew that that night which had ended with hurt feelings on both sides was just one of many missed moments that she was trying to make up for this time around.

xxxx

After they got inside, they had to separate so that Castle could go do his thing. She hadn't liked being the center of attention on their way in, but she knew that if she wanted to be with him, this was something she was going to have to accept.

She looked around, looking for familiar faces as she had done the first time.

"Well, Beckett, you clean up nice," Montgomery said, coming up behind her.

Turning around, she gave him a bright smile. "Thank you, sir."

"These parties are much more subdued now than they used to be," Roy said somewhat mournfully. "Everything in his life changed when his little girl died." He looked at her, giving her the patented Montgomery stare, "You've made him happier these last months, Beckett. I'm glad you found him."

"I'm glad too."

"So did you get to read the dedication yet? Or did he keep that a secret?"

"No not yet. I've read the book, or at least the first draft, but the dedication wasn't there yet."

He smiled, putting a fatherly hand on her shoulder. "You should check it out." He walked away after giving her a smile.

Kate walked up to the center of the room where a pyramid of Heat Wave novels was stacked neatly on a table. Picking up one of the copies, she hesitantly opened the cover and flipped to the dedication page. Her breath caught as she read the words.

To Kate, the love of my life. Always.

They had only said the words for the first time when he was in the hospital. So she knew he must have had these words put here long before that, even though he hadn't said them to her yet. She sat the book down and wiped away the tears that had streamed down her cheeks.

"Hey," a voice said behind her.

She turned and threw her arms around him.

"I love you, Rick. So much."

He pressed a kiss to her temple and said, "I love you too."

xxxx

a.n.2. Not sure what I think of this one. Reviews inspire me to write faster and better. So please leave a review.