1048. Chapter 1048

After When the Bough Breaks

Episode 2.5

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: When the bough breaks, I will not own Castle. Rating: T Time: See above

"When were you going to tell me about the other book?" Kate asked in the grungy hallway of what used to be Eliska Sokol's apartment building.

"You heard about that?"

"So it's true?"

"Well, it's not a done deal, yet."

"Well, did it ever occur for you to talk to me first?"

"Well, frankly I thought you'd be relieved."

"Oh, don't flatter yourself."

"Well, I mean I'm flattered to even be considered writing a certain British secret agent. It'd be a very big opportunity for me."

Kate suddenly realized they weren't talking about the same thing. "I was talking about Nikki Heat."

"Oh."

"Wait a minute. A certain British secret agent? Are you…?"

"If they actually offer it to me. They may not."

"Yeah, but if they do…"

"Well, I, uh, I'd certainly consider it. Like I said. I thought you'd be relieved."

"I am. I mean, I would be, if they offered it to you."

Before either can say anything more, Ryan and Esposito show up and they need to interview another witness.

Later, after Castle has gone home, Kate sat at her desk, staring at her computer. I always assumed that I was Nikki Heat and that Castle was Jameson Rook. I mean it was obvious. Except now it isn't. Suppose he sees me as Nikki Heat and he's Don, the ex-Navy SEAL that spars with Nikki and who has sex with her. Sex with no emotional content at all. We work together and we have sex. It's great sex. The best I've ever had, but it's more than sex. I could have something with Castle. Her thoughts suddenly came to a shuddering halt and her more realistic side took over her brain. Sure, Castle, who's been married twice and who's never met a pair of boobs he didn't want to sign. Sure, I could have something with Castle. A broken heart.

Kate resolutely pushed all thoughts of Richard Castle from her mind and got to work on her computer. But she couldn't quite get the idea that Castle leaving her was going to hurt.

Meanwhile, Castle was hard at work on his laptop. Paula had asked him to provide her with a story treatment of a James Bond book. It didn't have to be one of the books he'd write if he got the nod, just something she could use to show how Rick would handle a Bond book.

He'd had a great idea right off the bat. A group of al Qaeda terrorists hijack a US Air Force B-1 bomber carrying four B83 thermonuclear bombs. The terrorists plan to extort money from the US and the European Union in return for not setting off the bombs. However, no matter what, they plan to set them off underwater off of Israel, off the coast of Hosni Mubarak's Egypt, off of Italy and France.

Castle is imagining the hijackers ditching the plane in shallow waters off of a deserted section of the coast of Libya. He can see in his mind's eye the camouflaged warbird slowly extending its wings as it slows down. Then a magnificent splash and the huge airplane sinks into the water. Terrorist frogmen set out from shore to recover the crew and the weapons. On shore the terrorist mastermind, Abdul al Aziz is smiling as he imagines the destruction of his enemies.

Castle suddenly looks at what he's done and deletes the whole thing. After an hour of playing Angry Birds, he's back at it again.

The US-Mexico border. A place where death and violence have been commonplace ever since the Spaniards headed north from the Valley of Mexico. Rick could almost feel the desert heat as he wrote. He could almost see buzzards wheeling in the skies over doomed parties of peasants headed for El Norte in hopes of a better life. He imagined much better prepared drug smugglers also headed north. He envisioned Bond's enemy, a seemingly honest and incorruptible politician who in reality would flood the Southwest with drugs and make it his own. He imagined the Bond Girl, beautiful, capable, but in awe of Bond. Then he went over the paragraph describing the Bond Girl and deleted the whole thing.

"I need some sleep." He said. But he tossed and turned for many hours before sleep came.

The next morning, with no call from Beckett to keep him from his work, he again sat at his laptop and began. The words flow easily. The Middle East. There's always trouble in the Middle East. Add in the Americans, Russians and the Chinese and add Bond, James Bond and you have a story that almost writes itself. He thinks of Judi Dench as M. Of course. M will be kidnapped as part of a plot to destabilize the Middle East, if not the whole world. Castle looks at his outline, groans and deletes the whole thing.

Later, he forgets about the treatment and happily attends the launch party for Heat Wave. Seeing Beckett looking through one of the copies of the book, he heads for her.

"Hey." He says to her.

Surprised, she looks at him and smiles. "Hey. I…I was just, uh, the dedication. Wow. Thank you."

He smiles happily. "I meant it. You are extraordinary." He stops for a moment. "Listen. I was thinking…" Then he stops.

Kate waits a second. "What?"

He shakes his head. "Nothing. Just forget it."

Kate doesn't understand Rick. He seems off somehow. "Any word about a certain British secret agent who shall not be named?"

He shrugs. "I got the official offer."

"Wow, congratulations."

"I haven't accepted it yet."

Kate thinks he seems unhappy about the offer. "Is there a problem?"

"I guess."

"You don't seem at all happy, not like you were earlier."

"Do you know how many Bond books there are, by Ian Fleming and others?"

Kate frowns and shakes her head, wondering where this is going.

"He wrote fifteen novels and nine short stories. Of course, other Bond books were written after Fleming died. There was one by Kinglsey Amis and one by John Pearson. Fourteen were written by John Gardener. Then there's eight by Raymond Benson and five by various other authors. Then there's the Young James Bond series set in the 1930s. There's also the Moneypenney Diaries, supposedly written by M's secretary. And the films, which are different from some of the books they were based on."

Kate was mystified. "So?"

"How many deranged dictators and psychotic industrialists with oddly named henchmen can here be? How many gorgeous, willing women with sexy names?"

"Castle, I don't understand the problem."

"I tried writing a book outline, showing the plot, a few pages of dialog and some descriptions of the other characters. The first thing I wrote, the plot was Arab terrorists hijack a bomber with nuclear weapons on board."

Kate shrugged. "Sounds Bondish."

"It should. That's the basic plot of Thunderball. And my villain was a minor character from Unholy Storm. Oh, I gave him a different name, but he was the same character. The next one was about a corrupt politician in Mexico who was going to flood the Southwest with drugs and take it over. That's the plot of Live and Let Die. I even had a sexy Bond girl. A CIA agent named Summer Storm."

"That does sound derivative." Kate admitted.

"It should be. She was Nikki Heat with another name. She was you, Beckett."

"That doesn't mean…"Kate began.

"The third one was about M being kidnapped and the sabotaging of a Middle East peace conference. That was the plot of Colonel Sun, the first Bond book not written by Ian Fleming. Beckett, I've been here before. From the time I killed off Derrick Storm until I met you, I couldn't write a thing. Now, I can't write anything but plagiarism. I'm done."

Kate knew it would hurt to lose Castle, but she had to tell the truth. "Castle, of course you're having trouble switching gears mentally and writing a new character and new plots. But you overcame this before and you'll do it again. This is a huge chance for you. As a writer of a new Bond series, you really will be world famous. And there's the possibility of Bond movies an everything else. You've written twenty-four best sellers and this could be…"

"The worst literary disaster since Clifford Irving wrote a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes." Castle finished for her.

"Rick?" Castle cringed at the sound of Paula's voice. "She isn't trying to talk you out of the Bond books, is she?"

"No. In fact, she's on your side. Oh, Kate, this is Paula Haas, my agent. Paula, this is Detective Kate Beckett." The two women nodded at each other.

"In that case, come down to my office in the morning and sign the damned papers. Okay?'

He took a deep breath. "Not okay. I've decided not to do the Bond books."

"What?" Paula screeched, then noticed the people looking at her. And, a tall, distinguished looking man was calling to her from the other side of the room.

"That's Jay Warner, CEO of Black Pawn. I'm not going to get into a screaming match in the middle of your book launch. But if you think you can get away with this, after everything I've done to get this for you, you have another think coming. Go to the manager's office, down that hall, first door on your right. I'll just be a minute or two." Paula stormed off.

He looked at Kate apologetically. "I…Um…I have …..To go…Over there." And he was off.

Kate quickly found Ryan and Esposito. "See that woman over there. Black hair and an off the shoulder dress?"

Espo nodded. "Castle's agent. What about her?"

"Get over there and stall her for a couple of minutes."

"Stall her? How?"

"Tell her you've written a book."

"Yeah. Tell her you used new crayons and everything." Ryan added.

Kate glared at both of them. "Stall her. Now. Or else."

They left and Kate headed for the office.

Rick started talking as soon as he heard the door start to open. "Paula, I know what….Beckett! What are you doing here?"

"This." She reached under her hair and undid the back of her dress. The top fell down, exposing her boobs. Then she shimmied out of the dress and put it on a nearby desk. She was now dressed in a very tiny pair of panties and her heels.

"Beckett?"

She threw her arms around his neck and began kissing him. She moved one of his hands to her boobs and the other to her ass. He responded at once.

He didn't even hear the door slam open. "Castle, you are…." Paula stopped.

Kate broke the kiss and turned to Paula. "We really can't keep the truth from her anymore, lover. Paula, we've been sleeping together since our first case. I'm afraid Rick is just too important to me as a lover and as a detective for me to let him go. Sorry."

Paula glared at both of them. "Men! Why do I even bother? Everyone of you thinks with his cock." She slammed the door again on her way out.

Rick was very confused. "What...How…What was that?"

Kate shook her head. "I just saved your relationship with your agent. Now she's mad at me because she knows you're just a poor dumb man who thinks with his cock, so this must be all my fault."

"I do not think with my cock." He complained.

Kate pushed her panties off over her slim hips and tossed them with her dress. "Are you sure?" She said as she locked the door.

"Maybe just a little." He mumbled.

"Undo your pants, pull down your boxers and sit on that chair."

Kate walked over to him, straddled him and pushed herself down on him in one fluid move. "Remember, we're just doing this so Paula will see we're a bit…mussed. We have to make it look good, right?" As she whispered in his ear, she used her legs to drive him in and out of her.

"Absolutely." Castle mumbled around her left boob. "It's not like this is fantastic or something."

"Oh, god. Fantastic is a very good word. I'm so damned close to….fantastic. Castle. I can feel you. Can you feel me?"

"That was so good, Beckett. Better than fantastic. But it was kind of quick."

She gave him a kiss. "Don't worry. I know a great place where we can have a drink and make love all night long?"

"You do? How come I've never heard of a place like that?"

"You have. It's my place." Kate stood up, just a bit shakily. "We need to get dressed and got see your readers."

"Our readers, Nikki. Our readers."

From long habit Kate was awake and alert as soon as the phone rang the next morning. "Beckett."

There was a pause. "I assume since you answered his phone that Castle is with you?" Paula asked.

"It's for you. Paula." She handed the phone to Rick. "Put it on speaker." She whispered.

"Hello, Paula."

"Rick, you may be an asshole, but you're a lucky asshole. Maybe a talented one, too. The reviews for Heat Wave are all raves and sales are through the roof. Black Pawn is offering you twice the money for three new Nikki Heats than you would have gotten for the Bond books. Can you come down and sign that contract?"

"Absolutely. Um, Paula, I am sorry about the Bond thing. It just wasn't my kind of book."

"As it happens, their second choice is also someone I represent, so it all worked out okay. But, if you ever do anything like that to me again, I'll gut you like a fish. Good-bye, Rick."

"You want to go read the online reviews, don't you?"

Rick looked longingly towards Kate's computer. Then shook his head and reached for her. "Why would I want to do that?"

To be continued in After the Late Shaft.