Hello everyone! So this chapter and the next one were originally one big chapter that I broke into two pieces. Spread the love (and the word!) and happy reading!

On Sunday morning, the temperature remained high but winds from the southeast brought in ominous thunder clouds that pelted the shore with fat splattering raindrops. From the spacious kitchen of the main house, Meredeth watched the water lap and wash against the rocks and shore as she peeled potatoes for home-fries. She loved this time of day, a warm wet weekend so peaceful and lazy. Well, mostly lazy, as Arturo had scented breakfast being made and followed his nose to the kitchen. The dog had apparently taken a shine to the baby-mama and followed her around the house and property like he was magnetized.

'If he's being a pain, just tell him to go away.'

'It's sweet. He can tell there's something happening with me, but can't quite figure it out.' Beside her, Honey-Milk scrambled eggs in a bowl, added pepper and dill and chose her words carefully. 'So, you have a good sleep?'

'Yeah, why?'

'Just figured you might be kind of tired from getting off the water late, is all.' When Meredeth's hands froze on the pile of potatoes, Honey-Milk pursed her lips to keep from laughing out loud. 'I was up for a late-night snack. Arturo needed to go out, and I heard the motor when we were back on the porch.'

Feeling a little foolish, Meredeth continued peeling. 'Oh, that. Javi took me out for a little date on the boat.'

'That's it?' When Meredeth's hand slipped on the potato, Honey-Milk shook her head. 'Details, please. You gonna share or am I gonna have to yank on your tongue?'

'You might as well give in.'

Both women turned to see Lanie wander in to the kitchen wearing leggings and a long baby-doll sleep-shirt. Her hair was messy and tangled, her eyes still at half-mast as she reached for the coffee pot. 'Once this girl gets it in her head to find something out, there's no living with her.'

'I can't talk about sex with Javi to you two, it's strange.'

'Why not? I didn't get this way by magic,' Honey-Milk pointed out. 'One juicy little detail. That's all I ask. Just one.'

Meredeth rinse the peeled potatoes, considered it. She hadn't had girlfriends like this in awhile who wanted to know about those intimate details, had forgotten that it was okay to have these girls-only talks with friends without feeling like she was betraying her boyfriend. Besides Esposito went to Castle and Ryan for locker-room talk in pretty much the same damn way so who was he to judge her? 'We literally did it on the water; we were on the wet-dock of the boat. Easier on his arm.'

Honey-Milk pushed the cooking eggs around in the pan. 'Give it a proper christening, did you?'

'Oh Castle and Beckett already took care of that before you guys got here.' Lanie rose from her seat at the island to pour more coffee and help with breakfast. She knew Beckett would blush and steam a little over Lanie spilling details, but she also knew Beckett would demand to know all the dirty dish if Lanie had any to share, too. 'Why do you think she took Friday off extra?'

'So that's two of us this weekend.' Meredeth picked up her juice glass. 'Honey-Milk, think you and Ryan might make it a hat-trick?'

'Not a chance. The belly requires space, lots of padded, cushioned space if there's any of that going on. Yes we're talking about you,' she said aloud, patting her tummy before dismissing the concerned look on her friends' faces. 'He or she wiggles around when I talk about him or her.'

Leaving the potatoes to sizzle, Meredeth, then pulled out a wrapped package of bacon from the fridge. 'Have you and Ryan reached detante on the naming front?'

'Oh yeah.' Lanie chuckled as she remembered the on-going debate Ryan had been having with his wife, even having a classic daddy-to-be moment when Honey-Milk had burst into tears on the phone and he'd spent most of his coffee break calming her down, promising her the sun, the stars, her favourite ice cream and movie-rental when he was off shift to appease her. 'I think at last check it was Sophia Jordan for a girl and Patrick Paul for a boy.'

'I thought it was Joanna Mercedes for a girl and Mackenzie Finn for a boy.'

'Now it's neither.' Honey-Milk explained, spooning her eggs into a serving dish and lidding it before sitting down on one of the short island chairs where she'd set up her little cheese-grating station to continue being helpful while she had a seat. 'If it's a girl, Agatha Bernadette, or Abby for short. If it's a boy Thomas Delaney, or Dell for short.'

Lanie finished making fresh coffee, then began to pull containers of fresh fruit from the fridge. 'Good names.'

'Well, they need to feel right, you know? Oh, looking who I'm saying this to, a professional author,' Honey-Milk laughed as Meredeth chased the frying potatoes around in a pan. 'I remember you saying in an interview in Quill & Ink you always chose your names deliberately with reason, especially those who've been based off of a real person.'

'You can't just randomly use a name. It has to mean something. Like with Tabitha, her name is 'gazelle' in Aramaic, I thought that would be good for someone who moves quickly and spiritedly.'

A loud growl came from the opposite side of the island. Immediately Meredeth's hand tightened on the frying pan. 'Artie, what is it boy?' When she heard nothing for a moment, then another growl from the dog, she picked up the paring knife ready to throw it at a mouse or chipmunk as she rounded the counter. Relief gave way to hilarity when she saw her dog staring at Honey-Milk's stomach like it was going to attack him. When Meredeth saw it jiggle again, Arturo gave another growl and laughed. 'Oh, puppy-kins,' she giggled, setting down the paring knife and rubbing his head. 'It's not an alien invasion, it's just a baby growing in there.'

Arturo wriggled out of his mistress' grip and laid his chin on Honey-Milk's leg, watching her belly with the intensity of a sniper waiting for his mark. He sniffed wildly, pricking up his ears when her stomach gurgled and let out another yip when he saw the movement of the belly.

The sliding doors off the kitchen opened, and Esposito wandered in, still heavy-eyed but freshly showered. The medical pressure-sleeve he'd put on the night before was just visible under the hem of his t-shirt sleeve. 'What's the mutt yapping about?'

'He thinks Honey-Milk is posessed,' Meredeth explained as her man kissed her cheek on his way to the coffee maker.

'Well, hopefully he'll figure out it's just a baby by the time we have kids,' he commented; because he was turned to Meredeth, he missed the looks the other women sent each other. 'Otherwise it'll be a long nine months.'

'To be fair, Honey-Milk's the first pregnant lady he's been around. Poor thing doesn't know what's going on.' Meredeth went back to the stove, felt his touch on her shoulder as Esposito reached for a coffee mug. 'How's the arm?'

'Fine. Sleeping with the compression band helped, just like my physio guy said it would. Speaking of help, anything I can do?'

'Yeah, stay there and look pretty. You struck lucky gold with the barbecue on Friday night, so let's not chance it. I do need the table set, though.'

'That I can do.'

'Aw, what a good guy,' Lanie cooed, earning a filthy look from Esposito to which she responded with a cheeky grin as he took plates and silverware into the dining room. 'Okay, fruit's done. What next?'

'You're on pancake patrol.'

'Like from a mix or your own two little hands?'

'I used my own recipe for the dry mix. All you have to do is just measure out a cup of milk for every cup of mix, ladle and babysit.'

Lanie followed her instructions attentively; she first made a test cake for size and flavour-testing. 'Excellent call, Mere, these are awesome. And you'll have another fan of your chef-tastic skills.'

'Oh?'

'Yeah, Dave's a sucker for pancakes.'

At this, Honey-Milk exchanged a glance with Meredeth, who'd pursed her lips and began to scratch the back of her neck. When she got the go-ahead node from Meredeth, Honey-Milk continued grating cheese as she tried to sound casual. 'He, ah, made you pancakes yet, Lanie?'

'Huh?'

'Javi has a theory that pancakes are how a guy thanks a woman for sleeping with him without saying 'thank you for sleeping with me',' Meredeth explained, gesturing with her bacon-flipping spatula to her friend.

'Well-'

Before Lanie could respond, Dave came into the kitchen and both Meredeth and Honey-Milk fluttered a little. Even though they were both well-established in loving, stable relationships there was no denying Dave Robbins was a fine-looking man - six-one with waving black hair around an angular Italian face, skin the colour of toasted almonds and bottle green eyes, put together with a long lean frame that was all arms and legs like an Olympic swimmer. And just like their men, he only had eyes for one woman in the room and that was the pretty ME who was overseeing pancake production for their Sunday-morning brunch. 'Hey beautiful,' he said, wrapping his arms around Lanie's waist. 'You making pancakes?'

'Yes, I am.'

'You know what they say about pancakes,' he teased her, pressing a noisy kiss to her neck. 'Beckett and I are going into town to pick up some extra batteries and things for the day. Weather guys said it's supposed to get worse, we might even lose power. Anything you need?'

'Nope, we're good.' Meredeth waited until she heard the screen door slam behind him before turning to Lanie with a goofy knowing grin. 'Well I guess that answers that question. Riddle me this, were you on Castle's boat, alone with him, when the subject of pancakes came up?'

Lanie's hand, which had been ladling out round pancakes, jerked and made a splat in the middle of the griddle. 'How do you know that?'

Meredeth took the bowl of shredded cheddar from Honey-Milk, then turned back to Lanie with a saucy glint in her eye. 'Looks like the hat-trick was made after all.'

'I told Dave you'd find out, you and Esposito were sleeping right above in the boathouse and he assured me you two were asleep, but...' Lanie trailed off her tirade as she studied Meredeth's face. 'You didn't know Dave and I were down there on Friday night, did you?'

'We do now,' Honey-Milk commented, 'and you, Miss Gossip Girl, thought you were going to get away with not telling us, when you horn in for dirty details about the rest of us?'

'Hey, is that why I found your sunblock on the stairs of the boathouse when it wasn't there before Javi and I turned in for the night? Guess it's good for more than one kind of protection,' Meredeth said innocently passing a shell-shocked Lanie a spatula for flipping, then let out a giggling snort at the absurdity of it, as did Honey-Milk. Rather than being offended by the discovery of her not-so-secret late-night date with Dave, Lanie joined in the laughing as well.

'What is so damn funny?'

'Sunblock,' Meredeth told Castle and Ryan as they wandered into the kitchen to the sight of three women laughing hysterically, 'and now that we have the rest of our big strong men awake, take this stuff out to the table.'

When they were ready to eat, they sat down at the dining room table save for Castle, who appeared with a bottle of uncorked champagne and proceeded to fill everyone's orange juice for table-side mimosas, save for Honey-Milk's. 'I don't care what they say about red wine and all that, I'm not getting a foetus drunk,' he told her.

'Agreed.'

Once all glasses were filled, Castle ever the showman picked up his spoon and tapped it against his glass. 'First of all, thank you very much for coming to my house. I know that it's difficult for people who do what all of you do to make plans and keep them like this, but I'd also like to think that a weekend like this, of friends and beach-time and barbecue, that reminds you why what you do matters so much. And I also realized this is a very celebratory weekend too. Honey-Milk and Ryan are having a baby, Esposito is healthy and well and commandeering my boat for midnight swims with Meredeth-' at this, Meredeth gave Esposito's hand a squeeze - 'Dave and Lanie are spending their first weekend vacation together. So, I'd like to raise my glass and toast. To new adventures.'

The ting-ting-ting of touched crystal sang in the room as food was passed around the table, yet the conversation did flag a mite despite the fact all plates were heaping with fruit and eggs and bacon and pancakes in various combinations.

'Pancakes are great. They yours?' Esposito asked Meredeth.

'My mix, Lanie grilled them.'

'Hey, wait a minute.' Lanie washed down her pancakes with her mimosa. She'd never be able to think of them in quite the same way again. 'You said to new adventures, what about you and Beckett?'

'Oh right.' Beckett wiped her mouth on her napkin and automatically reached for Castle's wrist. He'd set down his utensils and laid his bear-like hand over her thin, delicate one. 'We've been talking a lot lately, and we're going to try living together, starting next month.'

'Congrats, you guys! That's awesome!' Ryan lifted his glass in a toast.

'Took you long enough,' Esposito added.

As Beckett sent Castle a smile, and gave him one of her rare public kisses, the entire dining room plunged into darkness.

R&R&Enjoy.