A/N: You'll have to forgive me for the couple of time-travelling anomalies that crept into the last chapter: namely Castle's (slightly) smart phone and the mention of One Direction, which some helpful (but anonymous) reader pointed out. This story in set in 2003, when Harry Styles was only nine! Just go with it, I am. :)

Chapter 8 – The Cell Phone

The cab slams to a stop while Kate is still staring at the pale face and large, expressive blue eyes belonging to Richard Castle's six-year-old daughter. She almost loses the slippery cell phone to the thick, ribbed matting on the cab's dusty floor, managing to maintain her grip at the last second. The phone isn't ringing. It just woke up for some reason, revealing the photograph Rick has saved as his wallpaper: his daughter.

He has a daughter.

Kate pays the cab driver with distracted, fumbling haste, stuffing the phone into the pocket of her denim jacket until she can get inside her apartment building and figure out what the hell to do next. If he left his phone in the cab on purpose for her to find, then he's clearly desperate to have some excuse to see her again. Given his recent behaviour, it's not a stretch to believe this could be true. The rather obvious M.O. has his fingerprints all over it. And if he dropped it or laid it on the seat beside him and then forgot it by accident, that makes him careless. Either way, neither option looks good on him.

Kate backtracks a little as she climbs the stairs to her floor, softening her stance. If he left it as a ruse to see her again, it is kind of sweet…but it's also a little desperate. He could just have asked her outright. But then she gets a flash of his face when he reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear, and she pulled away from him. That was him trying to ensure tonight wasn't a one-time thing, and she shut him down with some opaque remark about how her life is complicated before he even got a chance to ask if he could see her again. Well, with this child and an ex-wife he isn't able to trust, it seems his life is pretty darned complicated too, even if it is complex in different ways to hers.

She pulls his phone out of her pocket when she reaches her front door, but the screen is dark. She discovers that it's also locked when she tries to wake it up again. All she gets to see is the pretty, serious face of little Alexis Castle staring back at her with eyes so wide and penetrating, followed by an invitation to type in a pin code she couldn't even begin to guess at. The phone is typical Rick Castle, or what's she's gleaned of him so far. It's high tech, expensive, sleek and black; a complicated boy toy compared to Kate's simple flip phone. She makes a growl of annoyance, attempting to unlock the door to her apartment as fast as she can, suddenly overcome by an urgent need to go to the bathroom that has her dancing on the spot as she jiggles the key in the lock.

She sits on the toilet, just a moment or two later, contemplating her next move. If Alexis is staying with her mother and his phone is an important means of keeping in contact with her, Rick might be frantic imagining that he's lost it. Also, goodness only knows the contacts he might have stored in the memory - the Mayor of New York City for one. In fact, she doesn't even want to think about that, she decides: about the women whose numbers might be listed on there too.

"Dammit," she curses, as she washes her hands and then heads back to her living room. She has no option. If this is a trick, he wins.

She picks up her landline phone and calls the Precinct. The duty desk sergeant answers on the third ring. "Yeah, uh…hi. This is Officer Beckett, badge number 41319. I need you to look up a phone number for me. It's in a file that I…yeah, Richard Castle. That's Charlie-Adam-Sam-Thomas-Lincoln-Edward. Yeah, the home number would be great."

She waits for a second or two, unzipping her boots while the sergeant gets her the information she's asked for.

"Sarge? Thanks, yeah. Go ahead," she tells him, grabbing a pen and notepad from the counter next to the phone.

She's about to thank the man for his help and hang up when he asks her something else.

"Date?" She freezes. "Uh…yeah, well we went out for a couple of beers," she replies cagily. "How did it go?" she asks, her eyes widening, caught completely off-guard by the question. "Sergeant Halliday did what? She left you a note…asking for what now?"

When she's answered all of the Sergeant's questions, with as little information as she can get away with, and finally gets to hang up, her cheeks are flushed with embarrassment. Because apparently Hardass Halliday saw fit to leave some kind of BOLO* alert pinned to the damn desk blotter looking for feedback on Beckett's date with Richard Castle should she either call in or show up in person.

She has to take a deep breath before she can even contemplate picking up the phone to call the writer, since he is at the root of this embarrassing mess. She hates people poking around her private life, and until now has managed to keep a pretty low profile around the precinct, maintaining an air of mystery or even dull-disinterest when it comes to what she gets up to in her off-hours. Just one drink with a millionaire author and all of her hard work is shot to hell. Who'd have thought, right?

For a second she contemplates flinging his cell phone down the trash chute, or maybe flushing it down the toilet, tossing it in a dumpster or hurling it like a skimmer out into the Hudson next time she's passing that way. But then she thinks about his little girl: about the wan, trusting little face with the opalescent eyes, and how his concern for her drove him to engage in such risky behavior in the park last night, and with that image in mind she finds she just can't do it. The guy is under her skin already and she just can't do it to him, not with his kid's safety in question.

He answers on the second ring. "Castle residence. Speak now or forever hold your peace."

Kate hesitates, bemused silence stealing her voice completely. She has no earthly idea what to say to that, and the only good thing to come from this dumbfounding is how her anger dissolves away in the light of such absurdity at not yet eight-thirty at night. It's too early and she's too sober to engage in this the way she might have if they'd stayed at the bar for just a couple more drinks. But she wants to. She wants to engage with him, and it takes her by surprise. He's fun and silly and so unselfconscious he's like a breath of fresh air. But first she needs to find something out. Interrogation 101 – this is her chance to try her budding detective skills out on someone she doesn't have to look at face-to-face.

"Hello. Is anyone there?"

Castle's question from the other end of the phone line snaps her brain to attention, giving it a big enough jolt for her to form an answer…of sorts. "Uh, yes. Yeah. Sorry. It's Beckett. I…I mean, Kate." Silence. Deep breath. "It's Officer Beckett."

"Kate," he replies, repeating her name with such warmth and genuine enthusiasm that she doesn't believe she's ever heard anyone offer it more. "Hi," he adds, smiling through the single syllable, like it's the answer to everything. To her everything anyway. "Miss me already?"

"Sorry to call you so—"

These words are out of her own mouth before she registers the cocky, rather smug question Castle has just asked her. But before she can respond or change tack, he's cutting in with some infuriating reassurance. So the opportunity to refute that she might have been missing him – And what? No! It's been less than an hour since they parted ways – that opportunity passes as the conversation quickly moves on.

"No!" he interrupts. "No, please don't apologize. It's great to hear your voice," he says, sounding genuine and sincere.

She can hear him moving on his end of the line, shifting around as if he's trying to get comfortable, maybe settling in for a long conversation. But before she can explain her reason for calling, he's off again.

"I'm glad you called actually. I had such a great time tonight and I was…I was wondering if maybe you'd consider—"

"Rick, can you just stop for a second?" Kate interjects, actually holding up a hand to stop him. She holds up a hand while she's sitting alone in her own apartment forgetting that he can't even see her, he has her that rattled.

"Okaaaayyy."

"You left something in the back of the cab tonight. I was calling to make sure you knew you hadn't lost it and to figure out a way to get it back to you. In fact, why don't I just leave it with the desk sergeant at the Twelfth and you can come pick it up next time you're passing." She rushes the words out as if there's some time limit to the call, as if some hidden clock is counting down and the quarter will drop any second and they'll get cut off before she has a chance to finish. She's speaking as if she's on a pay phone.

"Kate?"

"Mm?"

"A you nervous by any chance?"

He's grinning, enjoying this, she can hear it in his voice. Dammit.

"Nervous?"

"Yes. Do I make you nervous? Because you sound as if—"

"That's what you're worried about? If you make me nervous? You haven't even asked what you left in the cab."

"My cell phone maybe?"

Kate slaps her hand onto her thigh, so hard and loud that she makes it sting. "Ha! So you left it on purpose? I knew it!" she declares triumphantly.

"Actually, no. No, that's where you're wrong," Castle assures her calmly.

"But you knew instantly—"

"I realized when I got home that it was missing. Back of the cab, back at the bar, in another jacket, lying on my nightstand maybe…I haven't had the thing for long enough to miss it. So I wasn't sure where I left it. Anyway, is this an interrogation, Officer Beckett? Should I be calling my lawyer?" he teases, and does nothing bother this guy?

Awkward silence follows.

"Was I being that obvious?" Kate asks with some reluctance.

She hears Castle smile at the question. "Just a little," he admits. "But I like your technique. Good balance of nonchalant and stern. And I'm sure no one else would notice. Writing crime fiction for a living…well, you get to recognize certain things…I keep my ear tuned in."

"So…you didn't leave your phone in the back of the cab just to make sure you heard from me again?" she asks, needing an honest answer, though the question sounds more than a little conceited and presumptuous once it's out of her mouth.

"Would you be disappointed if I said no?"

Kate's answering laugh is somewhat scoffing.

"And what if I called it fate? What then?" he asks, with a warm intimacy that sounds entirely too much like he's flirting.

His tone is still teasing, but his voice caresses her ear like velvet, making her shiver. She had something of the same vague thought when she got out of the cab and realized that she would have to call him. But her thinking on the subject was more nebulous than his and certainly not something she was willing to fully acknowledge to herself, let alone verbalize. Fate hasn't dealt her the best hand over recent years, so she isn't about to leave her life in its capricious hands now.

She laughs shakily, trying to brush off the idea of his lost phone being some kind of matchmaker by sidestepping it entirely. "I saw a picture of your daughter. The phone lit up on the back seat just as I was pulling up at home. That's how I found it. She's very pretty."

"Yes, she is. You two have that in common already."

Kate bites her lip, dodging the suggestion in his comment that she and six-year-old Alexis might end up with more in common before too long. She evades his remark with a question: Interrogation 101 again. "Do you need your cell to stay in touch with her?"

"I wouldn't want to be without it for too long, but no. Not strictly speaking. Meredith calls every night at nine New York time."

Kate looks at her dad's watch. That's less than thirty minutes away. But the thought of having to hang up their call disappoints her.

"I should let you go. She'll be calling soon and—"

"In half an hour," Castle points out calmly, sounding as amused as she is flustered.

"I don't want to interrupt—"

"Keep me company, Kate? Mm? Just a few more minutes? I like your voice."

Kate sighs, tired now. She answers without thinking or filtering her thoughts. "I like yours too. But I should go."

"Sorry. That was selfish of me. You probably have things to do. Of course you do."

She drops her forehead onto her hand and closes her eyes, wincing. "Five minutes won't hurt."

He sounds delighted. "Great."

"Were you writing? When I called, I mean?" She missed her chance to ask about his work when they were out at the bar tonight, since time flew by so quickly. She's kicking herself for passing up the opportunity to learn more about his life as an author.

"No, actually. I was…"

Silence.

"Rick? Are you still there?"

"Yes. I'm just…I was taking a shower," he admits, since it's the truth. He sounds…bashful, which seems odd after the night before. But then he's also a lot more sober than he appeared to be the previous evening.

"Ah. You're not still…"

"What? Wet?"

They both laugh. It's funny and awkward and not. It's intimate and yet companionable in a way Kate has missed, with little time for friends and too many barriers erected to let anyone in anyway close enough for a nighttime talk like this.

How does he do that, she's busy wondering when he stops chucking and answers.

"No. All dried and ready for bed."

"At this hour?"

"I've had a big couple of days. Thought I'd catch up on the sleep I missed last night in your not-so-comfortable custody suite. You know you guys should definitely rename that. Anything with the word "suite" attached should really have room service and an actual en suite bathroom facility with fluffy towels and—"

"You mean you missed the can in the corner?" Now who's teasing.

"Eww," winces Castle, wrinkling his nose at the pungent memory of the stinky, stainless steel, anti-vandal toilet fixed to the wall in the corner of the holding cell.

"And Sarge didn't have someone pass you a stale sandwich and a can of soda through the bars in the middle of the night? Shocking!" Kate laughs, imagining Castle's face if he had.

"Have lunch with me tomorrow?"

The line crackles with the awkward silence that follows his unexpected request; a heavy, weighty silence that neither of them breaks for several seconds.

"Can't. I'm on shift again," Kate finally replies, with a quiet that dampens everything that came before.

"You still have to eat. Bring your partner. What's his name…"

"Jurkowski? No way." On this point she is emphatic, immovable as a chuck of quarried rock.

But Castle isn't a man to be put off easily – not by work or family or her evident, blunt reluctance. "When can I see you then?"

"Rick." She winces at the warning and the irritation she can hear edging into her tone.

"What, Kate? I need to see you. I want to see you. At least let me thank you for finding my phone."

"You don't have to thank me," she sighs, running a hand through her hair. Saying no to this guy is inexplicably hard.

"But I'd like to."

She buries her head in her hands, the phone still pressed up to her ear where she can hear his patient, regular breathing.

"Kate, I really like you. No bullshit. I promise. No games. I just…I like you, okay?"

It's too much.

"I can't. I'm sorry. I just can't. Please don't push. I already told you, my life is…it's too complicated. Please don't ask me again."

It's thin - her protest - tissue thin and more hurtful than she would ever mean it to be were she thinking straight. But he caught her unawares and it is – hurtful - because it's delivered without context. He doesn't know the history, the background, the dark, painful secret that has driven almost every major decision she's made over the last four years. He doesn't know, most of all, that this isn't really about him, anymore than it's about her believing she has no room for anyone in her life, for any romantic relationship. Because beyond the odd random hookup, she has eschewed any prolonged attachment to anyone. Friends included. It's safer that way.

After a hanging pause, Castle's response is swiftly delivered and unerringly apologetic, which somehow makes it worse. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to overstep. I have a habit of just opening my big mouth and well…you've seen me in action. I don't have to tell you how big an idiot I can be."

She wants to tell him that he's not an idiot, that he's already been like a savior to her in some small way. But the words won't come. They sound too big and grand when she tries them out in her head. The idea that his books, her mother's copies of his books, have somehow brought her solace, comfort, hope in the strangest of ways, the idea of saying any of that aloud just sounds wrong when she scrabbles around inside her own brain trying to scare up the right words. So she says nothing. She says nothing about the books, she just goes with what's safe and mundane. She goes with what will end this conversation before she makes some big mistake she can't even put her finger on right now.

"I'll leave your phone with the desk sergeant. Put your name on it, make sure it's waiting for you whenever you manage to come by."

"It's the best I can do," she adds, a few pounding, sickening heartbeats later, feeling like an utter fraud. A fraud and a coward. She doesn't know which is worse, because she does like him. She likes him a lot and that really scares her.

"Thanks for your call, Kate," Castle replies, his tone suddenly more businesslike and grown-up than she's ever heard before. "I appreciate you letting me know that you found it. Please tell whichever sergeant is on duty that I'll be by tomorrow morning to collect it."

"No problem," she whispers, with the deepest, most sinking feeling ever.

"Well…g'night, Kate. You…you take care."

"Thank you. You too. Goodnight."

When he hangs up, she drops her phone and doubles over, letting her forehead land on the cool surface of the countertop and then she shuts her eyes, willing the world away. Her stomach feels empty, since they never got around to eating, and a queasy feeling rises to fill her throat. She makes it to the kitchen sink just in time, retching violently but only managing to bring up some bitter, acidic froth from the alcohol she drank that she spits and rinses away.

A glass of water makes her feel marginally better, but only if we're splitting hairs. It makes her feel no less empty in her heart and no less sick over what she just did. The clichéd phrase - it's for the best – hovers in and around her thumping head, beating the words out on repeat, like a tattoo. But she knows that it is and it isn't…for the best. How much longer she'll hang on to that worn out slogan is anyone's guess. But it's getting more threadbare, more moth-eaten, and less true by the day. Nothing she's been doing lately is for the best, let alone pushing away this kind, funny man she's just met. This kind, funny man whose words provided solace when nothing else worked to numb the pain. She should know, she tried everything else.

She finally stands, straightens her spine, and begins busying herself by making toast and putting the kettle on for tea before bed. "No use crying over spilled milk" is another well-worn phrase, one her mother was fond of using. It's at times like these she needs to dust that one off and stick it to her fridge, right along with "tomorrow is another day", though whoever thought up that inane remark should get no prizes for merely stating the obvious.

By bedtime she's feeling better. A little. She's sleepy from the chamomile and feeling just a fraction less sad inside. She blindly reaches for a book on her nightstand and comes back with her mom's worn copy of Gathering Storm, the one she dug out of a storage box when she got home last night. She turns the title over in her hands, restlessly wondering if Rick was right about fate: if the Universe is trying – in some rather heavy-handed manner – to tell her something. Well, whatever it is, she's too tired to figure it out right now.

She falls asleep with her hand resting over the photograph of a much-younger looking Richard Castle, his smile sincere and unburdened beneath the warm tips of her fingers.

"It's for the best," is the final thought to float through her brain, before the heavy weight of sleep descends to silence all.

He's still smiling and she's nothing but trouble.

It's for the best.

TBC...

A/N: Ooops! I'm sure they'll get funny again soon. xxx

Note: *BOLO = Be On the Look Out: an acronym used by law enforcement, basically an all-points bulletin.