He tried to hide a relieved sigh when he heard her voice. He turned around and looked at her, determined to obtain a satisfying answer. Beckett had walked away from the window and stepped closer to him. The writer crossed his arms and waited. At any other time, his solemn pose would have made her laugh but at that moment, she knew what he expected and she could not bring herself to say it.

He kept that same position and waited. She was no longer looking at him but always seemed on the verge of saying something. Except she never did. And it was starting to get a little long. And awkward.

Castle was trying very hard to fight his instinct to blurt out some wiseass remark. Dammit, this was neither the time nor the place, so get a grip, man. Kate was slowly looking more and more agitated with every minute of silence that passed between them. She actually looked kind of scared, which was not a sight he was used to. Desperately wanting to help her out but without the slightest idea how, he did the only think he could think of. He went to sit on one end of the sofa and gestured for her to take the other end. For some reason, as soon as she was seated, she seemed to regain some composure.

"I'm sorry for what I said before. I might have overreacted."

"Yes, you might have." Castle tried to bite back the words but too late.

She looked up but did not seem hurt, just a little annoyed and he could live with that. Thankfully, she was used to his banter.

"Yeah well, I said I was sorry and I mean it."

"Can I ask, we've been working together for a year now, why don't you trust me?"

Honesty time was back on.

"I trust you. I mean, I know you have my back out there. I know that you are loyal and that you wouldn't let me down on a case. I think that's been made clear more than once. But outside the precinct, it's… it's different."

"But why? You think the people I love can't count on me?"

"No, of course not. I've seen you with Alexis and Martha, I know you'd give your life for them."

Castle had really hoped that she would pick up on the meaning of his words. But apparently, she had not. Oblivious as ever, she had thought he only meant his mother and daughter.

On her part, Beckett was finding the exercise harder and harder. She had rarely felt more at a loss for words and she hated it. Come on, Kate, you deal with killers and creeps all day long and you can't make a point to the writer who plays laser tag with his sixteen-year-old daughter.

"It's just, when it comes to women…"

Castle sat up a little straighter and raised an eyebrow in anticipation. Finally.

"It's the way you look at them, any of them, your attitude. Always smiling, always charming to everyone, at your book signings, during parties, in the street, even during an investigation."

Well, she did have a point.

"You drive them all crazy with one smile, one clever joke and a few seconds of attention and then you forget you ever met them."

That was, maybe, a bit exaggerated.

"And from what I know, it's more or less the same with your romantic conquests. One smile, one drink, one night with Richard Castle and one more name on the list."

OK, that was really, really not… entirely true. And did she really need to bring back the list metaphor? He did not have a list, for Christ's sake. Well, not anymore. But, come on, everybody makes mistakes. He was young, he had just published his first best-seller, girls were all over him… Anyway, back to the matter at hand.

"I told you on our first case, Castle. I won't be one of your conquests."

She drained her glass of wine, not quite believing that she had actually said all these things. Castle tried to focus on the general idea, but there was also something not openly stated that he needed to clear up.

"Do you mean… If you had come to the Hamptons and, and I had… made a move on you, you…"

"I'd probably have said yes."

Congratulations, genius. You screwed up everything fair and square.

"But this would have been a huge mistake."

"But why?" His words came out way more loudly than he had intended to and she started.

"What do you think would have happened afterwards? You'd have finished your book and gone back to your glamorous life and I'd have come back here and…"

And? He really wished she would end that sentence but she just made an evasive gesture. And things would have been awkward? And she would have asked him never to come back? And she would have been broken-hearted? And Ryan and Esposito would have been after him with all the ammunition they could get their hands on?

"I'm confused." The writer finally confessed.

"Yeah, well, I don't think this was a very good idea. Maybe you should go, we shouldn't have thrown Lanie out like that."

"What? You can't be serious? You just… you've said way too much or way too little! Either way, you can't just say stuff like that and expect me to drop it. I've had enough. We're doing this."

"I wish I could, but… I can't find… Oh god, I hate this, I feel like I'm fifteen again and I'm this inarticulate idiot. Things were so much simpler before you came in."

She stood up and pushed back her hair from her face while pacing nervously behind the sofa where Castle was still sitting.

She was losing patience. As much as he hated seeing her like this and feeling that this would somehow end up being all his fault, losing patience was kinda good. She might snap and spill it out and at least this whole mess would be much clearer.

A/N: Well, that was a longer one. TBC.
If you liked it or hated it or anything in between, please review, make me forget all about that Canadian weather.
And I changed the rating to T, just in case, for the future. I'm not really sure about that rating system.