CH58

After dinner and losing to their resident card shark, Kate lost on purpose this time; Kate put Alexis to bed and layed down with her, talking to her until she was asleep.

Kate went back downstairs in search of Rick which was going to prove to be a challenge now. The house was so much bigger than the apartment. She found him at the kitchen counter nursing a glass of wine. Kate got one of her own and joined him.

"How is she?" Rick asked.

"She's sleeping." Kate looks at him. "She'll be fine Castle." Kate tells him.

"I know you had to go, but you weren't here Kate. She's attached to you." Rick turns to look at her.

"You need to understand it from her point of view. You told me that she has heard the arguments between me and Meredith?" And Kate nods her head.

"I've been thinking, Meredith ignored her since the day she was born. The only time she paid any attention to her was when it served her own interests. If Meredith hated her she might be able to understand that and learn to deal with it.

But Meredith treated her like she didn't exist. Think back Kate. What would you think when you were young and your mother ignored you. Didn't come to your birthday parties, didn't buy you Christmas presents, and didn't live with your father?" Rick asks.

Kate's tears were running down her face. "What did I do wrong? Why does my mommy not like me? Where is my mommy?"

"I've done my best to make her feel wanted. I've loved her the best I can, mostly because I do love her. Probably more than I'll ever love anyone else. But I'm not a mother. There are just some things I can't duplicate." Rick explains.

"And then I show up." Kate comments thinking back.

"You treated her like a loving mother even if you didn't see yourself as a mother. You slept with her. Maybe it started to help you with your nightmares but it also helped Alexis with hers. Then you fought off Meredith and protected her from Meredith doing even more damage." Rick continues.

"Then I told her I loved her and continued to sleep with her. OH CASTLE! My poor baby." And Kate's tears increase a little as she wipes some of them away.

"That's part of my point Kate. You just called her YOURS. You see her as yours, even if you didn't give birth to her." Rick points out.

"And then I had to go away for three days. I left her. OH CASTLE! I didn't mean to but I hurt her. I hurt my precious baby! …. And you're right. I do see her as mine. I wouldn't lose her to anyone for any reason.

I should have shot Meredith when I had the chance!" Kate suddenly talks with venom in her voice. "On second thought shooting her is too good for her." As the tears slow as Kate thinks about what she should have done to the bitch. Even her mother told her to never let her touch Alexis again.

Rick gets up with his glass of wine and holds out his hand. Kate gives him a funny look but places her hand in his while picking up her own wine glass.

"Where are we going Castle?" Kate is confused. He's not headed upstairs so it's not to their bedroom to have sex. Though the sudden thought of it had her suddenly thinking of it.

Rick stops in the dining room. In here she sees a bunch of papers and Rick's laptop.

Rick picks up the papers with one hand and a pen in the other. "You see Alexis as being yours. Alexis certainly sees herself as being yours. I'm not even sure what she would call Meredith now if she ever saw her again." Rick tells her.

"That bitch gets to see my little girl over my dead body!" Kate still has venom in her voice.

"These are adoption papers. You sign these and Alexis will not just be yours in your mind and mine, but legally too." Rick tells her. With eyes that Kate can see 'I love you' in them.

Kate wastes no time in hugging Castle and burying her head in his shoulder. Then releases him and places his head between her hands and kisses him as tenderly as she can.

As new tears start. "I don't know what to say Castle."

"You can tell me you love her and sign the papers." Rick tells her smiling.

Kate places her hands over her mouth. "I love her more than I thought I would ever love anyone." Kate leaves off the 'after my mother died.'

Kate grabs the papers and the pen and signs them on the table. "I've got a real daughter." Kate barely gets out through the tears. Then launches herself at Castle and kisses him. "I love you Castle!"

Rick is smiling at her. "I've got one more thing. If you'll remember, in all that paperwork you read you needed someplace to store data that is sent to you through Jill." Rick reminds her.

"I'm going to need to get a laptop." Kate remembers nodding her head.

Rick places his hand on the one on the table. "Well this one is yours. I've already downloaded a couple of programs you are likely to want. I've partitioned the hard drive for you and set it with a heavy encryption program. As soon as you turn it on it'll prompt you for you to create a password for that area. It needs to be something you can remember but no one else can figure out. Including me.

No dates, nothing about where you work or anything else that is even remotely obvious." Rick tells her.

Kate is happy and groans at the same time. "Another code to memorize?" Kate has to groan.

This gets Rick to start laughing. "Yea, yet another code." Rick tells her grinning.

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Kate would play with it later, but she had something else on her mind at the moment. "Alexis will always be special to me Castle. She's my first daughter. Take me to bed Castle and make love to me. I really want OUR baby." Kate tells him shyly.

Kate woke the next morning happy and determined. Her little girl was going to get loved like no one else on this planet and she was going to be the best mother Alexis could ever ask for.

Kate headed for Alexis's room to get her up and ready for school. "Hi sweetie, let's get you ready for school." As Kate hugs her and kisses her head. While Alexis is in the shower Kate lays out her clothes for the day. Then goes back to her bedroom and showers and gets dressed and heads downstairs.

Down here is where she finds Alexis already working on her breakfast and Castle had hers waiting for her.

"I can start taking her to school Castle. I can drop her off on my way into work, though it might be best if you pick her up. She gets out of school before I could ever get off work." Kate offers. It was logical to her and it gave her a chance to spend more time with her. Plus she wanted to talk with Alexis this morning.

"That should work. There is something we need to talk about though." Rick tells her.

Kate looked at him funny. They had talked a lot last night. What more was there?

Rick can see the gears rotating in her brain already. "Nothing serious and we have time still. But we live out here now. Not downtown and it's going to snow out here. So was thinking if we should get some kind of 4x4 to use during winter." Rick offers his thoughts.

Kate sat there and thought about it. Her Charger from work wasn't 4x4 and neither was Castle's Maserati. And if it did snow hard they might be trapped. And chains on the drive tires only did just so much.

"You have something in mind?" Kate asks thinking he already had one in mind.

"Actually no. I was also thinking of going grocery shopping again today. I wanted to fill our pantry with non-perishables in case we get snowed in. I was also going to look into getting a generator and how to install it." Rick tells her.

"Send me what 4x4 you are thinking about and we can go look at them. And I like the full pantry idea. As for the generator, I will not have some giant Caterpillar generator in my backyard. Or anyplace else on our 6 acres." Kate adds in case Castle was thinking of trying to hide that behemoth in the woods around them.

"Scouts honor." As Castle raises his hand. "No giant Caterpillar generator." Castle tells her.

"Some nice small Honda generator Castle, don't go all Home Improvement on me." Kate warns him.

Kate left with Alexis and Rick went to his laptop to start looking at 4x4's or SUV's.

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Rick found others but these three seemed to stand out so he looked up where these three were locally so they could go view them and get a test drive.

The generator was next.

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Satisfied he was on the right track he decided to go grocery shopping and fill up their pantry. While driving he made a mental note to find what it took to get a cord of wood for the fireplace.

Shopping for non-perishables turned out to be more of a challenge than he thought. A lot of it looked like stuff he would rather throw out than eat. So he decided on getting items that he could mix together to make meals with. Then he picked up a couple of propane tanks for the outdoor grill.

Kate was driving Alexis to school and it was in silence since Alexis wasn't talking.

"Are you worried about something in school today? Is a boy bullying you?" Kate asks trying to get her to talk.

Alexis just shakes her head. "You know if there is a bully you could tell me. I'll break both his legs for you." Kate tells her.

This actually gets Alexis to giggle a little. "Are the girls harassing you about wearing make-up?" Kate had been doing since practically day one.

Alexis just shakes her head. "Do you know what you want for dinner? Should I ask you dad to experiment with your dinner tonight?" Maybe a threat will get her to open up.

However Alexis doesn't bite. Kate sighs and finishes the drive in silence. Once she reaches the school she stops the car, turns it off and hops out of the car before Alexis can even reach for the exit handle.

Kate is on the outside and opens the door and when Alexis steps out she wraps her up in her arms.

"I love you sweetie, can you tell me what's wrong? You're the only daughter I have. I need you to talk to me." Kate pleads with her.

"I'm not your daughter." Alexis whispers out. Suddenly Kate had a clue.

"You're father gave me the adoption papers to sign last night after you went to bed. You're mine sweetie. I know you're mine, you're father knows you're mine and now legally you are mine.

Meredith can never touch you again, forever. And if she does I'll shoot her next time." Kate tells her sounding serious.

'You, …. I'm yours?"Alexis whispers her question.

"Tell you what how about we go shopping. Just you and me. We can find a ring for me to wear and one for you to wear. Your father gave me a ring and I gave your father a ring. We can do the same thing.

You're mine sweetie and I promise you'll always be my little girl. Do you want to go shopping for rings?" Kate asks.

"You want to marry me like you did my dad?" Alexis asks trying to understand.

"It's more of a pledge actually. I pledge that I'm yours if you'll pledge that your mine?" Kate offers. Kate couldn't have people think she married a little girl should Alexis talk to anyone using that term.

Alexis nods her head. And Kate takes her in her arms and hugs her. "I love you sweetie, and we'll go shopping for rings tonight to prove it." Kate whispers into her ear.

Kate gets an. "I love you mom." Whispered into her ear that makes Kate melt. Kate had reached her and gotten her to open up. It was going to haunt her at work all day if she hadn't.

"I'll see you tonight sweetie and then we'll go shopping." Kate kisses her and then let's go of her. "Have a nice day at school sweetie." And Kate watches her run into the school.

Kate was essentially bored at work. They didn't get a body drop all day and were forced into nothing but paperwork all day.

Kate had finally had enough and turned her computer off and went home, after Espo and Ryan had already gone home.

No one had asked her why she was gone for three days. Even Roy had left her alone.

Rick had made it home and had unloaded the car and was now in the kitchen putting countless bags of groceries away. This kitchen was so much bigger than their old one.

"Richard I'm picking up talk about making arrangements for the Senator to go into the hospital for dialysis tomorrow." Jack speaks up.

Rick stops what he was doing. "Have they discussed a time?" Rick asks.

"Relatively early in the day, around 10:00 am it sounds like." Jack replies.

"Early." Rick didn't like that part. "Can you check train schedules for me. I may need to leave tonight to make it there that early." Rick asks him.

"If you leave at 11:05 pm tonight. The next train back is at 6:21 pm." Jack tells him "Plus you will need a car or taxi to get from the station to the hospital and back. It will take you 1 hour 41 minutes to drive it." Jack explains.

"Sounds like I'm driving." Rick responds. As soon as he is done putting his groceries away he goes out into the garage to load one of his Steyr machine pistols along with a silencer already attached and some extra clips. Then drives the car to the closest gas station to fill it up.

Then he was off to do some writing for the next book. Mostly still just outlines and some ideas. Then he was off to pick Alexis up from school.

"Hi pumpkin, how was school?" It was fine. "Mom told me we were going to go shopping together tonight when she gets home." Alexis can't keep it to herself.

"Oh and what are you shopping for?" Rick asks her.

"That's a secret dad." Alexis tells him.

"Secret huh. I'm good at keeping secrets, you can tell me. I won't tell anyone." Rick tries confusing her to get her to talk.

"No way dad, it's a girl secret and you're not a girl." Alexis tells him.

"Girl secret huh." Rick glares at her while trying to watch the road. But Alexis isn't talking.

Alexis didn't go upstairs and hung around the front door waiting for Kate to get home. Finally she saw her car pull up and slammed into Kate as soon as she opened the door.

"Can we go shopping now mom?" Alexis asks bouncing on her feet.

Kate chuckles. "I have to talk to your father first then we can go. It'll only take a minute. Do you know where he is?" Kate was finding out having a big house had its draw backs.

"He's in the kitchen typing." Alexis tells her. Which made sense since his office still wasn't done. The other items were not here yet either.

"Hi Castle." As Kate walks up and gives him a quick kiss. "I'm taking Alexis shopping, so we'll be back in a little while."

"So I heard. You're going 'Girl shopping'". Rick uses his hands to show quote marks.

Kate giggles. "Yea something like that." Kate smiles at him.

"Well you two have fun, I'll start dinner and have it ready by the time you get home. …. Oh and I have to travel to New Jersey early in the morning. I'll be back in time to pick up Alexis from school." Rick tells her.

"Does this have something to do with the case you are working on?" Kate asks remembering what Obama had told her.

"What makes you think I have a case?" Rick asks. "What did he tell you?"

"Just that you were presently working on a case for him. He said if I wanted to know what it was I would have to ask you." Kate explains.

"Are you asking?" Rick asks her trying to hold his poker face.

"Not right now. But you'd tell me if you needed help, right?" Kate asks wondering how much he trusts her.

Rick takes her hands in his. "Kate if I thought for a second that I needed help you would now be the very first to know." Rick tells her. Lifting her hands up to his lips and kissing the back of one of them.

"Do I want to know what you are doing?" Kate asks him almost scared of the answer.

"I don't know, do you?" Rick counters.

Kate stares at him wondering if she should ask. "I should be going, Alexis is probably wondering where I am." Kate leans in and kisses him quickly.

Kate stops at a store she thinks might do the trick. Kate and Alexis are looking around when Alexis gets her attention.

"How about this one?" Alexis points.

"We could have out first names engraved on both of them. That way we know who we love." Kate tells her. Getting an enthusiastic nod of Alexis's head.

They take ring sizes for both of them and are told they could be ready in about half an hour if they were willing to wait.

"We'll wait." Kate tells her.

Once they get them back Kate takes Alexis's ring. "You're my daughter and I love you, now and forever." Kate places the ring on Alexis's right hand ring finger.

Alexis takes Kate's ring. "You're my mom and I love you, now and forever." Alexis places the ring on Kate's right hand ring finger.

Alexis steps into Kate and wraps her arms around her as best she can while Kate does the same. "I love you mom."

"I love you too sweetie."

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