Days of Summer

Chapter 2

The next morning Kate went for a run along the beach to clear her head. She couldn't believe that she had spent part of last night flirting with Richard Castle. Her mother's, and recently her, favorite author was living three houses away from her this summer.

Kate ran for about a mile down the beach before she turned around and started running back. She wished she had remembered her sunglasses. She could barely see in front of her. She was close to the house when something caught her foot and she fell forward into the sand.

"Whoa, are you okay?"

Using her hand to shield her eyes from the sun she saw him. Richard Castle. He was sitting in a lawn chair on the beach with a laptop in his lap and a coffee nestled into the sand beside him. He hadn't been there when she went by the first time.

Kate got up and brushed the sand from her legs and arms. "Umm, yeah. I really should watch where I'm going. Sorry"

Castle closed his laptop. "Kate, you're bleeding." He pointed to her right shin.

"Shit." Kate muttered. "I better get back to Lanie's. Clean this up."

Castle got up from his chair. "Come inside, I'll clean it up for you. Get you a cup of coffee?" Kate looked at her watch. It was only seven. Lanie wouldn't be up for hours and that fancy coffee machine her parents had looked really confusing. That was a good enough excuse to follow the handsome author back to his house in just running shorts, sports bra, and Nike's right?

"Sure. Thanks. Lead the way Castle?"

"Castle? People don't usually call me Castle." Kate followed him as he walked up to his house.

"Lanie's boyfriend calls everyone by their last names, he's a cop. I guess I've picked it up from him. Most of my friends call be Beckett."

"Friends huh?" Castle asked.

"Just a habit I guess." Kate teased. She really had to stop doing that.

"Well, we've got all summer. Hoping I can become more than a guy friend." Touché Richard Castle. He led her into the kitchen and motioned for her to sit on the kitchen island. "Let me just grab my first aid kit."

Kate looked around. What was it with these Hampton's home owners and their fancy confusing coffee makers?

"I'll make you a latte after I clean this up." Latte? Did he own a Starbucks or something?

"Thank you."

"Your welcome. So... Beckett, I hope you don't mind me asking but, how old are you?" Castle bent down to clean the cut on her leg.

"If you're trying to find out if I'm jail bait you're safe on two accounts. I'm not sleeping with you and I am twenty years old." Kate knew from the biography of Richard Castle she had read online last night that he was twenty-seven years old.

Castle laughed, not even fazed by her blunt words. However he was finding it difficult not to run his hands up the longest legs he had ever seen. "As helpful as that information is, I just asked because you weren't drinking last night and you're underage, I get it. But that usually doesn't stop most people."

"That's not why I wasn't drinking." She muttered.

"Oh?" He asked, genuinely curious about the beauty before him.

"I've had a little too much drinking as of late." Kate answered honestly. "I'm using this vacation as a sort of cleanse."

"I get that. Believe me. Maybe you can help keep me in check this summer."

"You need help keeping in check?"

"Considering I threw a party last night instead of starting my new book makes me think I need to be kept in check."

"You're here writing your next book?"

"Supposed to be. Thought a change in scenery might spark an idea."

"And has it?"

He looked up at her. "So far so good." Kate rolled her eyes. He smiled. "So, maybe you can help keep me in check this summer?"

Now it was Kate's turn to smile. "Deal." Maybe this was exactly what she needed this summer.

"Great. I'm all done here. Sorry about the Disney Princess band aid, it seems to be Alexis' favorite thing right now."

"Alexis?" Kate asked as Castle went over to the scary 'coffee machine'.

"My daughter. She's seven." Kate was stunned; his biography has said nothing about a daughter, or a wife for that matter.

As the coffee brewed Castle went and grabbed a picture off of a shelf. "This is her." It was a picture of a beautiful little girl with fiery red hair taken at the beach just outside. "Her mother lives in L.A. Alexis is there visiting her for a month before she comes home and spends the rest of the summer with me."

Kate nodded. So he was divorced. "She is absolutely beautiful. So, Alexis lives with you?"

"Yeah. Her mother is a bit of a flake." Castle handed her the specialty coffee. "Let's talk about more pleasant things shall we? Where did you meet Lanie?"

Kate was all for telling the truth; but this truth just hurt a little too much right now. She took a sip of her latte. Man that was good. "Yea. We were taking criminology together. Esposito was taking it too, he wants to be a detective." Kate was trying her hardest to keep the conversation off of her.

"Wow. That's so cool. I'm going to have to pick his brain this summer." It seemed to have worked. "I should talk to him about my next book."

Kate smiled. "Yeah. He thinks he is going to be some hot shot detective."

Castle noted. "Maybe I can use him in my next book."

"Trust me; he doesn't need his ego built up anymore than it already is."

"Then maybe I can use you in my next book."

"If you make me some damsel in distress I swear I will kill you."

"Oh Beckett. You are definitely not some damsel in distress."

Kate smiled. She wished that were true.

END CHAPTER.