Thanks again for all the wonderful reviews, you guys are great.

Here's the next chapter and we see a rather different side to Kate.

Disclaimer: I may wish to be in Andrew Marlowe's shoes but I'm not so Castle still does not belong to me.

Chapter 7

Eye of the Beholder

The door to Kate Beckett's apartment slammed shut, shaking the walls. Her bag flew across the room missing its intended target, the sofa, by several feet, instead clattering into the legs of the small side table and dislodging several photo frames and the lamp which resided there, usually in peace. The detective was, to say the least, mad; furious may be a better word for it.

"Shit!" she yelled, trying but failing miserably to right the objects so recently upended.

She was mad with everyone, Castle, of course, nothing unusual in that, Serena 'Bloody' Kaye, Mrs 'High and Mighty' McHugh but most of all, she was furious with herself for allowing the situation to get to her.

"Where the hell is that diary?" she said, feeling an urgent need to write everything down about the last couple of days and maybe, just maybe, get it all out of her system before she did some serious damage to something or someone.

Murder at an art gallery, body spiked on an exhibit, $50million piece missing, divorcing co-owners, international art thieves and Serena Kaye, sexy insurance investigator and, supposedly former, art thief; put them all together and you have a couple of the worst days of my life. Okay, well given my life, I suppose I've had far worse days, but at the moment, that's how it feels.

The case started well enough. I even let Castle know about my brief modelling career for an art class at college where my clothes consisted of, well, basically, nothing. That certainly gave him pause for thought. Nothing like stirring the Castle pot every now and again!

It went pretty much downhill from there, though, at least it did when darling Serena appeared on the scene, all blond hair, loopy gold earrings and blue dress leaving little to the imagination and, to top it all, rebuffing our perfectly plausible theories and coming up with some far-fetched story of her own. Okay, it wasn't so far-fetched but as for her offer to consult, well I wasn't having any of that; apart from anything else, I could tell Castle was far too taken with her, suggesting she had valuable assets. Yeah, know just what assets you're thinking of there, Castle (although, mind-reader as always, he denied that immediately).

Much though I hate to admit it, the siren's theory proved to be correct, the thief/murderer had indeed accessed the gallery via an air duct and left in an unmarked catering van. Just because she made a lucky guess, doesn't mean I had to like it. But it seemed enough for, of all people, Gates, who accepted the woman's offer to help and the 'expertise she could bring as a consultant'. I tried to say that I preferred to work with my own team but of course that includes Castle and Gates was quick to point out that my team included a consultant with 'no expertise at anything'. I suppose, in the circumstances, I asked for that one.

The boys seemed more than happy to have the blond bombshell on the team, Castle being only too willing to follow her like a little puppy when she went off to talk to some of her, no doubt shady, sources. Whatever happened between them while they were away, and I really didn't want to know, the next time Serena went to talk to sources, she left Castle behind but did tell him she'd catch him later to which Castle, full of the cheesy lines as always pipes up,

"You can catch me anytime."

Argh! I couldn't handle anymore of that and just walked away. Fortunately for me, I had an appointment with Dr Burke. I don't think it was fortunate for him, though. I had an outlet for my fury, he, poor guy, just had to sit there and listen. I think I may have used words such as uncooperative, cocky, stubborn, know-it-all to describe our temporary consultant. I did tell him that Castle seemed to think she was good at her job (among other things, but I didn't add that) and, as usual, he had to spoil my rant by asking a rather too pertinent question, why does that bother me?

Why does it bother me?

The answer I gave was probably not the whole truth, well it definitely wasn't the whole truth and I suspect Dr Burke knew that. I said,

"Because he's supposed to be my partner. He's supposed to be on my team. He's not supposed to be all smitten."

What I really meant was, because he's supposed to be in love with me, he's supposed to be mine. I told him it was complicated so naturally he wanted to know why, which was a stupid question because he's knows why it's complicated. I've told him enough already for him to work that one out but then he had to ask me,

"What are you really scared of? That he won't wait for you or that he will."

There you have it. Trust a psychiatrist to get to the nitty-gritty. How do I answer that one? I'm terrified of losing him, that he won't wait, that I'll take too long to get to where I need to be before I can open up to him. Then again, what happens if he does wait, if I am ready, can I even begin to handle a relationship with Richard Castle? What if it proves not to be right after all? What if the tension is all there is? How the hell do I know?

The next day, I decided I was going to try to make an effort and if Castle really wanted to pursue Serena, so be it. After all, he doesn't know that I heard him when I was shot, so if he wants to move on, I shouldn't stand in his way. God, what was I thinking! Anyway, then things started to look up and guess who the latest prime suspect was – none other than our own, dear Serena Kaye! Joy of joys! Poor Castle realised he'd been played and had the good grace to look embarrassed about it. It did also give me great pleasure to see Gates squirming with indignation at being made to look bad.

I came up with a ploy to get into Mata Hari's room. Castle would take her on a date to the hotel restaurant and keep her occupied, I may have used the words 'show her a good time', while Esposito and I searched the room to find any evidence we could to prove our theory. My words came back to bite me on the ass, big time.

I was searching the drawers but all I found was undeniably sexy and expensive underwear, stuff that I would never own in my wildest dreams, although, maybe... (Shut it, Beckett, don't go there, just don't.) Espo, of course, knows me like a brother and has a fair idea about my feelings for Castle and was quick to comment that I seemed to really want to nail Serena. I tried to play it down but he reads me well so I just had to play the boss card and tell him to keep looking. Finally it paid off and I found emails to fences on her tablet and, in her closet, Espo found a case containing everything a successful thief could ever need. We had her. It was at that point I picked up my phone to see a message from Castle that just said,

"Get out!"

Knowing that probably meant Serena was on her way up, we left the suite only for me to be completely knocked on my ass by the sight of Castle pressing that woman up against the wall and basically sucking her face off. I was beyond furious and rapidly made my presence known. Castle did at least have the decency to look 'hand-in-the-cookie-jar' guilty and it was with great pleasure that I arrested her for theft and murder.

Back at the precinct, Castle was not convinced of her guilt because she'd been perfectly open with him about her thieving past but that was easily explained away as far as I was concerned because she would feed him just enough truth to make swallowing her lies that much easier. I may just have accused him of thinking with the wrong body part. He was insisting that the kiss was the only way he could think of to give us time to get out of the room; that he was just doing what I asked; but I do know that I never asked him to swallow her tongue.

I benched him from the interview. There wasn't a cat in hell's chance of me letting him anywhere near that interview room. I was determined to enjoy it but things started to look off to me straight away. She was just too cool, countering every piece of evidence we had. She'd even done her homework on me, telling me I was a smart, methodical cop with great instincts, (good things to hear, if they weren't coming out of the mouth of a murder suspect). Then she had the audacity to tell me what I was thinking; that those instincts were telling me that she wasn't guilty but for some reason I was ignoring them and she wondered why that was.

Maybe because you were just caught in a very compromising position with the man I love, bitch!

As it happened, damn the woman to hell, she had an airtight alibi. We managed to find the art thief, Falco, an Englishman called William Holt and as we interrogated him it became clear that we had no hard evidence against him either, everything was merely circumstantial but he did seem to be telling us something, maybe that yes, okay, he was Falco but he wasn't a murderer.

Against my better judgement, I allowed Blondie in to talk to Holt, thief to thief. I wasn't convinced she'd get him to talk but I had to have another dig at Castle and suggested that she might kiss it out of him; childish, I know, but that's how I felt.

She gave us the information she got from Holt and, although I was very dubious, we headed back to the gallery to test out the new theory and, sure enough, Castle found the Fist of Capitalism, all $50millions worth of it hidden in the bottom of the weird TV sculpture we'd seen when we first arrived. He did put his foot in it, though, and I mean literally. Alyssa, the creator of it wasn't impressed but then she was now our prime suspect so I really didn't care. However, the plot did have one final twist as it turned out that Alyssa had sold the sculpture to none other than Mrs Joy McHugh, joint owner of the Fist with dear husband, Anton.

We'll bring Mrs Mc in tomorrow and should have the case closed in no time. Then what? It looks as though Castle's really interested in Serena. He was certainly convinced of her innocence. I guess it's only fair to him if I tell her that, let her know the sort of man she's dealing with; a good man with a great heart. Why the hell can't I just tell him how I feel? Why do I have to watch him go off with her? I don't want to but I do want what's best for him and if that's Serena Kaye, then so be it.

All Kate's fury that was so evident earlier as proved by the wreckage around the room had dissipated and she was left feeling numb. She set the photos and lamp back to their rightful positions, picked her bag up and headed to the bedroom sure that, once again, a sleepless night awaited her but frankly just too miserable to care.

A/N As you can see, I decided to make this chapter a little different as I decided it made for a better story to have Kate writing before the case was actually concluded. Hope it worked out. I think it did but I hope you guys do too.