Chapter 7

After the interruption from his father, RJ returned to the interview.

"So it's safe to say that your first impressions of Richard Castle were not wholly favourable. Later events would tell us that circumstances must have changed at some point, how did that come about?"

I think, at the 12th, the betting pool on our relationship began shortly after that first case but for a long time everyone else seemed to be far more aware of the chemistry that existed between us than we were; or at least, than I was. I struggled to see beyond the facade, the public image, the two ex-wives and initially his whole demeanour seemed to confirm my opinion that he was a shallow playboy. However it didn't take too long for his true self to emerge. I think the first thing that made me sit up and take notice was his relationship with his daughter. Alexis was fourteen when we first met and I soon realised that she was an amazingly intelligent and mature girl and was clearly the apple of her father's eye. I knew that he had divorced her mother when Alexis was still very young and had, therefore, brought the girl up single-handed. I had assumed that he would have employed nannies along the way, after all, surely as a newly single, very wealthy young man, a little girl would have severely cramped his style but no, I soon learned that he never used the services of hired help and had indeed brought the girl up alone with just the occasional help from his mother. Once I saw that new side of him, a side he seemed willing to open up to me, I began to look at him in a new light.

Of course, the nine year old on a sugar rush would continue to emerge, usually at the most inopportune moments but, nevertheless, he certainly had begun to grow on me and I discovered that his very presence lightened my spirit. I had a tough job, a job that I had always taken very seriously, maybe even too seriously, but having Castle around started to make it more fun and for the first time in many years, I found myself actually feeling happier and far more relaxed about life.

But it was not all sweetness and light. We made mistakes, many of them. As I said earlier, he ignored my request not to look into my mom's murder and I kicked him out for that but a photo shoot and publicity event for the first Nikki Heat book brought him back to the precinct and when he apologised so very sincerely for disregarding my request, I allowed him to come back.

We let other people get between us which of course did nothing for our relationship but was, looking back on it, also highly unfair on those involved. Whenever I felt myself getting too close to Castle, I ran away and hid in a safer option, a detective, a doctor, neither of whom I loved but they distracted me from my growing feelings for my partner. Castle would later accuse me, during a heated argument, of hiding in relationships with men I didn't love and he was quite right. I was safely keeping one foot out of the door but, as I later acknowledged, with one foot out the door, you tend not to know where you stand.

The second summer we spent apart (it's strange how it always seemed to be the summer months when we messed up) was due to my fear and our miscommunication. He asked me to go to the Hamptons with him for Memorial Weekend. At first, I refused; I wasn't totally sure he was serious, if I'm honest. I had also recently started dating a detective in Robbery but, thanks to a certain amount of prompting from my friends, I had a brief moment of clarity, broke it off with my boyfriend and was all ready to accept Castle's invitation. However, just as I was about to pour my heart out to him, in strides ex-wife number two, Gina, his publisher. It appeared that he hadn't taken very long to get over my refusal and find himself another date. That event left me heartbroken and my friends at the precinct absolutely livid with him. He stayed away all summer and still had not called by the fall.

Next time I saw him, I arrested him for murder.

We found him standing over a dead body with a gun in his hand, in fact Ryan very nearly shot him; I think that was an accident but the boys were still pretty mad with him, so I can't be certain. He hadn't actually killed the woman, of course and it didn't take long for him to talk his way into the case, again. This time I made a bet with him. If he solved the case first, he could come back; if I solved it first, that would be it, our last case together. I may have cheated. I figured out what was going on first but kept quiet, I knew it wouldn't take him much longer to work it out, so I let him think he'd won the bet and the partnership continued. Even though he was still dating Gina and I'd started dating a surgeon, our relationship seemed to go up a notch or two after that.

Then, of course, there was our first kiss. Well, as it was us, it couldn't be simple, could it? The boys, Ryan and Esposito had been captured by a killer we were searching for. Castle and I had found the building where they were being held but there was a guard stationed outside and we had no way of approaching undetected but Castle naturally came up with a 'stupid idea'. So it was that we played the part of a drunken couple taking a stroll along the road. We just needed to get close enough for me to take out the guard but he didn't seem to be buying our act. I was about to draw my weapon when Castle stopped me by grabbing hold of my hand. Before I knew what was happening, his other hand was round the back of my neck and he had pulled me in for a scorching kiss.

I pulled away initially, totally confused by, not so much his actions but by my reaction to the kiss. For a moment my heart seemed to stop beating and I completely forgot how to breathe. Then instinct took over and I was the one to initiate the second kiss; this one way more passionate than the first. Fortunately, I hadn't totally forgotten why we were even in that position in the first place and managed to keep one eye on the guard who seemed to be more amused and, I have to say, now utterly convinced by our performance, which is hardly surprising because I can assure you, neither of us were acting by then. Once curiosity had brought him within range, I took him out with a single blow but it took us both a few moments to recover from what had just happened, and I don't mean with the guard, and get on with our job of rescuing the boys.

It was months before we spoke about that night again by which time we had also nearly frozen to death in each others' arms and had been standing together at ground zero when the timer of a dirty bomb ran out. But we never spoke about those events either until Castle ran out of patience with my constant obsession with my mom's murder and threw it all in my face. Don't get me wrong, I don't blame him for a second; I totally deserved everything he said to me that night. Then my obsession got me shot.

As I lay in Castle's arms on the luscious green grass of that cemetery, the final words I heard before I passed out were,

"I love you. I love you, Kate."

When I came round in the hospital and was finally allowed visitors, it was no surprise that Castle was one of the first people to come but I just could not handle it. The man who I knew, even then, was the love of my life had told me that he loved me. What did I do? I sent him away, said I'd call and then hid from everyone, including him, for three months. I was trying to heal, to recover both physically and mentally but I was so stupid to attempt it alone.

Eventually I returned to work, met up with Castle, who was justifiably angry with me, and tried to explain what was going on in my head as best I could without, of course, giving too much away. I told him about the wall I'd built inside to protect my heart from ever again suffering the agony of loss caused by my mom's death and that, as I saw it, the only way to remove said wall, would be to find the person responsible. How wrong I was. As it turned out, the only thing needed to completely obliterate that wall was the selfless love of a wonderful man.

It took many more months and no small amount of risk, fear and heartache before I finally understood. Months during which we were both keeping secrets from each other, secrets that, when they eventually emerged, almost destroyed our relationship before it had a chance to begin. I had told him in the hospital that I couldn't remember anything about the shooting but that was a lie, of course; I remembered everything about it until the moment I passed out. I repeated the lie every time the subject cropped up until one day, unbeknownst to me, Castle was in the observation room when I was interviewing a suspect about a bombing in which five people had died. The case was high profile and the atmosphere in the precinct was highly charged. We were all desperate to find the person responsible and this guy looked good for it. He was trying to tell me that he had some form of amnesia caused by the trauma of the event but I wasn't buying that one and I told him that I'd been shot in the chest and remembered every second of it.

Castle didn't challenge me on it. He just, somehow leapt to the conclusion that it meant I was embarrassed by his confession and didn't feel the same; that I'd been stringing him along all those months. He didn't walk away; he still came to the precinct every day but he pulled away from me emotionally and it was torturing me because I had absolutely no idea why.

A few weeks later, during a case involving zombies (don't ask!), I managed to convey to him that I was working through my problems and that the wall was almost down. He seemed to get the message and we were good again. Until mom's case reared its head yet again and in the course of an argument that threatened to tear us apart again, Castle confessed to me that he had information regarding the case and had been told to keep me away from it in order to keep me safe. I wouldn't back down and he wasn't prepared to watch me get myself killed so he walked away.

It took another brush with death for me to suddenly see the light and realise what was most important in my life and it wasn't solving my mom's case after all. It was Richard Castle.

I'll never forget the night I turned up at his door, soaked to the skin, begging for his forgiveness. At first he was angry when he saw me, then concerned as I told him that I'd almost died, again. Finally, almost as though a switch had been flicked, there was love and passion. That night, the night of Alexis's graduation from high school, as it happened, was the first night of the rest of our lives, the night we became more than friends, more than partners, more than just lovers even. We became us.

RJ had remained silent while Kate was speaking. He had known parts of their early story but this was the first time he had heard it in its entirety and certainly the first time he had heard any of it from his mother and the way she told the story, well it left him speechless; not so much the words she used, but more by the expression on her face as she recalled these past events that had made such a massive impact on her life. He had always known that his parents had a special bond, a very rare chemistry that he had never seen in any of his friends' parents but it was only now that he began to really appreciate just how remarkable their relationship was and how lucky he and Beth were to have their example to follow. There was more of the story to come but he thought this might be an appropriate time for a short break and put this to Kate,

"Are you okay, mom? Do you want to just take five? Have a few minutes to yourself?"

Kate looked at her son and realised that she had tears in her eyes. Talking about those early years of their relationship had been a lot harder than she had thought it would be. Had she concentrated too much on the negative aspects, she wondered? Most of the time spent with Castle, working cases in those first few years had been great fun and he'd brought that into her life. He had changed her and she had become the woman she always thought that she was meant to be before the death of her mother had altered not only the course of her life but her whole personality. Richard Castle put her back on the right track and for that she would be forever in his debt.

"No, I'm fine. We'd better keep going if we want to get this finished before we head out tonight."

She took a deep breath, composed herself and prepared to continue.