143. Chapter 143

Chapter 143

Castle's phone alarm woke the couple in time to shower and dress for dinner and dancing.

"So are you up to dancing tonight?" Castle asked his wife sleepily.

"I think I might have recovered enough to take to the dance floor with you. How about you?"

"Yeah. I think I can manage. But you did wear me out this afternoon, Woman."

"I didn't hear any complaints," she challenged mischievously.

"Not a one. Wore me out in the very best sense of the words. We should get up now, though. When I set the alarm, I didn't give us a lot of leeway."

"So we should shower together for efficiency?"

"That doesn't usually make us more efficient," he answered with a chuckle. "But it's our anniversary. Of course we shower together…maybe keep it to just the shower, though."

"So we'll still have enough stamina for a night of dancing?"

"Yeah."

They gave each other anniversary worthy attention, and their shower was enjoyable; but they stuck to their agreement not to get carried away. They were both looking forward to the dancing. It would also avoid going to dinner wearing the it's-our-anniversary-and-we-bet-you-can-guess-what-we-just-did look.

Dinner was excellent, as expected, and then they hit the dance floor, dancing to every song played for the next half hour. A lot of eyes were on the tall, attractive couple who moved so well together and only had eyes for each other. As the evening went on, they took little breaks and then went back for more; and along with three other couples, they stayed until the band packed up to go home.

Kate wrapped her arm around her husband's waist, and he swung his arm across her shoulders, nuzzling her hair and whispering, "Looks like self-control in the shower paid off."

"Looks like it did," she answered. "We helped them close the place down."

"I don't want to recommend that kind of shower restraint forever, though."

"Me either," she answered and kissed him as soon as the elevator doors closed.

xxxxx

As they prepared to check out on Sunday, Kate looked around the suite and said, "I hate to leave. Good memories here."

"Let's stop in some of the shops downstairs and see if we can find a fifth anniversary souvenir," he suggested.

"Something like the framed picture to remember our wedding night…innocent looking so we can leave it out without raising suspicion…or in the case of the children, disgust?"

"Exactly. Are we ready?"

"We have to get back to reality, don't we?" Kate sighed.

Castle kissed her forehead and held her close. "Fraid so," he answered. "But reality isn't all that bad, is it?"

She cupped his cheek with her hand and said softly, "Not as long as you're in it."

After one more lingering kiss, they went to check out and to look for a souvenir, happy and more in love than they were five years before.

Alexis answered the door when they knocked. "Hi. Come on in. Was it a good anniversary? We thought all the rain yesterday might have put a damper on things."

"It was great," Kate answered. "Your father had planned for dinner and dancing at the hotel last night, so staying out of the bad weather wasn't a problem."

"We went out on Friday when it was dry and warmer," Castle added.

JD joined them near the door and told them, "That's when we took Jamie out, too."

Jamie had followed JD out of their office, and Kate said, "Hey, Peanut, did you have fun?"

Jamie accepted his parents' hugs while insisting on showing them something, but they didn't understand what. Then he said impatiently, "Come and see," and led them out of the room. "There's a bed…just like mine. And it has Spiderman." Sure enough, on one side of the bedroom that Alexis and JD used as an office, there was Jamie space…a little bed like the one recently set up in his room at home, this one sporting a Spiderman comforter set. There was also a small toy chest and a little bookshelf with children's books. "JD said I can stay again."

"This was over and above, Pumpkin," Castle said in surprise. "We never expected you to do all this. But thank you for doing it for him. He obviously feels special."

"JD had as much fun putting it together as I did. And Grandpa John kept bringing things to put in the toy chest, too. We've been collecting the little things for a while because we knew we wanted him here now and then, and we got the bed last week. This weekend was fun. We let him help fix meals like I did with you, and took walks and looked at things JD and I had forgotten we used to notice…"

Castle chuckled. "By the time you were three, I had decided that your seeing all those things I had forgotten about must have something to do with little kids being so much closer to the ground. It's fun seeing things from the perspective of somebody who hasn't seen them before, isn't it."

"Yes, it is," JD agreed, walking in to join them. "We enjoyed it. We took him to the park, and chased him around on campus, plied him with ice cream, and tucked him in with Bear and Spiderman."

"I think he enjoyed it, too. He doesn't seem to have missed us at all," Kate answered as she picked her son up from the little bed he crawled up on to show her. "Thank you for all this and for the weekend's freedom."

"You ready to go home, Buddy?" Castle asked his son.

As if he had just realized he missed them, Jamie leaned from his mother's arms to get to his father's and snuggled on Castle's shoulder, nodding his head. Kate got the little bag she'd packed for Jamie, and they went home, thanking their college age children again and leaving them to prepare for the next day's classes.

xxxxx

The Christmas holidays were close, and from the day after the visit to the tree farm, the loft was gradually turned into a Christmas showplace; but it still felt like a home. Alexis and JD stopped by for a short visit one night and found Castle and Jamie lying on the floor on their stomachs. They were both propped on their elbows watching the train Castle always set up to run around the bottom of the Christmas tree.

"I remember doing that," Alexis exclaimed and immediately joined them on the floor. "Daddy and I used to do this when I was little," she told Jamie.

"You were little?" Jamie asked in surprise.

"I was. I'll show you pictures sometime. Right now, let's watch the train." Then JD stretched out on the floor with the others.

The four train lovers took turns running the train as if they were all Jamie's age, and now and then Kate would wrap Christmas cookies in napkins and put the cookies in the open cars so they could make the train stop for cookie deliveries. They would let it make another loop or two around the tree, and then bring it to a stop so all four of them could grab a cookie, munch and smile, and then do it again later.

Christmas at the loft was as full of family as ever. That was the place with enough room for everybody…and the kitchen with the best cooks. Their big dinner on Christmas Eve and gift exchange on Christmas Day had gradually all moved to Christmas Day as the family grew and more schedules had to be considered, but no one seemed to mind.

The Castles opted to stay home for New Year's Eve again, and then the decorations came down and the new year began.

xxxxx

Preparing to be replaced again, Beckett was carefully keeping track of everything that needed to be in place for Captain Dohrman's return. In January, she a bought a couple of file boxes where she consolidated recent files that he should be aware of, any information on personnel matters, maintenance, budget concerns, recent changes in policies, etc., and added to it as needed.

She was keeping up with her regular tasks, too...and attending the required meetings, filing the required reports, and the other mundane matters of a captain's job.

Trying to keep track of developments in cases was also keeping her busy. There was another incursion of drugs in the neighborhood they had so recently removed DeLand's people from; but this time, some of the neighbors came forward to let them know, and Narcotics moved quickly to squelch it…bringing down a small time dealer who was trying to expand his territory. He lost everything instead.

At the captain's meeting in February, Deputy chief Alvarez took Beckett aside and apologized. "I hate to leave you with a temporary assignment again, Beckett. We knew a few months ago that the retirement fell through, but we had reason to hope that something else would open up by now. We're more than happy with the job you've done in both precinct commands. You're already making a name for yourself. Everyone knows you do your job well, but there's also respect for working with others outside your precinct and giving them credit where it's due. And your numbers at the fifteenth have risen to be nipping at the heels of some of our best precincts…including the twelfth, where we know you helped establish those numbers. Captain Gates acknowledges that your training methods helped in retaining that record after you left. You deserve your own command; but unfortunately, there simply isn't one available at the moment. A six month leave of absence is coming up near the end of March…another medical leave. We'll get the information to you next week if you want it."

"I can't say that I'm not disappointed, but I know it wasn't what you expected either."

He nodded and moved on to speak with others before the meeting began.

Gates came to speak to Beckett and sympathized when she quietly explained her situation after leaving the fifteenth.

"You're proving yourself, though," Gates told her, keeping the conversation only between the two of them. "They're seeing that you're successful wherever they put you. It isn't easy to move so often, but it could be to your benefit in the long run. You've handled the pressure of some high profile cases well, and you have a good track record for reaching out to other precincts when it's necessary. They know your career isn't all about you. The good of the city is always the ideal, but we all know that isn't always the case. You're giving me some competition, too," she added good naturedly, and both women smiled. "Both of our precincts rate high when it comes to results."

"Well, what else should they expect from the two youngest women to make detective?" Beckett whispered playfully. They both grinned companionably, got their coffee, and found seats for the meeting.

xxxxx

"How are my men?" Kate asked as she came into the loft after work that night.

Her two men looked over their shoulders from the kitchen where they were making biscuits. Jamie was in command of the biscuit cutter, and Castle was putting them in the pan. Both of them were dusted with a light coating of flour and looking perfectly content with themselves.

"We're making biscuits, Mommy."

"Yum. That sounds good." She went to the chair her son was standing on and kissed his cheek as he went back to his job, then she kissed his father. "Anything I can do to help?" she asked.

"Nope. Everything is nearly finished." Castle answered. "When the biscuits are done, we can eat."

After he rerolled pieces of dough together, allowing Jamie to cut two more biscuits, Castle put the last two in the pan; and he and Jamie shared a high five, which engendered a respectable puff of flour and a chuckle and shake of the head from Kate.

As he cleaned Jamie up before turning him loose in the house again, he told Kate, "I made Valentine's Day reservations at the place we went right before Jamie was born."

"I thought you had to make reservations a year in advance to get in there on Valentine's Day."

"And I did. I know something could come up at the precinct, but I didn't think they'd have any trouble filling our place at the last minute if something happened. I understand their waiting list is a couple of miles long. We enjoyed it then. Just hoping we can do it again."

"We did enjoy that night…all the little surprises. I still laugh when I think about those little hugging stuffed cats you sat on my pregnant belly 'for the baby'."

"The ones our unborn boy kicked across the table from inside? I still can't imagine that didn't hurt you."

"I must have been laughing too hard to notice if it did."

"Well, we know that won't happen again this year, but we'll still enjoy it."

Castle carefully removed his flour dusted apron, washed his hands, brushed off a few stray spots of flour, and grabbed his wife for a bigger kiss than the one she gave him earlier. They held each other for a long moment before he put the biscuits in the oven and set the timer.

Leaning against the counter as he worked, she told him, "Alvarez said there's a six month leave of absence I can fill starting the latter part of March; so I guess I'll have two, maybe three weeks free between assignments. I'm supposed to get the information sometime next week."

"Paula called this afternoon. She and Gina want me on a book tour on the west coast for the first two weeks of March, insisting that I accept their short notice to repay them for my obstinance in the fall. Why don't you and Jamie come with me? Maybe they'd be able to push it a few days out to give you a day or two to relax first."

"If the dates work out, we might do that. That way we don't have to miss you like we did a few weeks ago in January."

"Really?" Rick asked delightedly. "No arguments or misgivings?"

"None. I'm sure Jamie and I can find a way to leave in the middle of a New York winter and enjoy the weather in southern California…while you sign books and flirt with fans."

"Awesome. That was almost too easy."

"I miss you when you're gone, Writer-Man. I've wanted to go with you before, but this time I can. Easy decision." She kissed his chest and went to the bedroom to change out of her work clothes.

Martha breezed in just before the biscuits were taken from the oven, and her son said excitedly, "Kate and Jamie are coming with me on the book tour in March. Kate has a couple of weeks off."

"That's wonderful."

"Yes, it is. Would you set the table, Mother?"

As they got supper on the table for the family, he told his mother about the temporary positions Kate would have to take the following year in lieu of the more permanent command she had expected.

"That must have been quite a disappointment for Katherine," Martha answered sympathetically.

"It was," a much more comfortably attired Kate said, joining the conversation. "But at our meeting today, Gates pointed out that the more often I prove myself in different situations, the more they should appreciate that I can. And the timing of the first one allows me to spend some time travelling with my husband and give Jamie his first trip on a plane. So it isn't all bad."

"Good for you, Darling. Finding silver linings."

Castle went to get his son, and the four of them had dinner. Everyone contributed to the conversation, which involved new NYPD assignments, the upcoming west coast book tour, the Spiderman bed at Lexis's house as opposed to the Batman theme at the loft, interesting bugs at the park that morning, and a new show that Martha's students were rehearsing.

As they got ready for bed later, Castle said, "I found those books I wrote for Alexis and brought them down to my office."

"Can I see them?"

"Tomorrow." He hesitated for a moment and said, "It occurred to me that, since I wrote them for Alexis, I should talk to her first. I'm sure she won't object to sharing them with Jamie. After all, she did always want the little brother we wrote into them. But she might want to be the one who reads them to him for the first time."

"I hadn't thought of that, but you're right. I'm sure they were pretty special to her. Does that mean I shouldn't see them yet, either?" She sounded disappointed.

"No. I'll show you tomorrow. Right now let's get under these nice, warm covers and get some sleep."

xxxxx

Following the recent and relatively fast purging of the new drug threat to their neighborhood, Mrs. Keaton bought a Valentine card as tall as Jamie and had almost everyone in the neighborhood sign it. It was delivered to the captain, and Beckett held it until a decision was made on how to best display it. That turned out to be only the beginning, though. During the morning, there was a steady stream of deliveries of a variety of largely homemade casseroles, sandwiches, hors d'oeuvres, and baked goods to feed the fifteenth for lunch on Valentine's Day, keeping security on its toes but appreciative. The solution to the card display problem was to designate the conference room on the Narcotics floor as the buffet room and put the card in a prominent place there. The rare and unexpected thank you from the community provided a boost in morale and left smiles throughout the precinct for the rest of the day. Beckett penned a thank you message and sent it to Mrs. Keaton with a request that she pass on the sentiments to her neighbors.

After Valentine's Day started so well at the precinct, at the close of the day, it ended well, too. No new emergencies or odd occurrences held Captain Beckett back from a Valentine's Day dinner with her husband.

Martha was staying at home with Jamie, and just as Kate and Rick were leaving, John called to see if he could join them at the loft.

Sitting in the town car with their conversation shielded from other ears, Kate asked mischievously. "Do we suspect ulterior motives…John being so willing to help babysit on Valentine's Day?"

"I think he has real feelings for Mother," Castle answered. "He's almost said that to me a few times…stopped just short of it. I'd feel good about it if something did happen between them."

"You don't think things have 'happened' between them already?" Kate asked, complete with air quotes.

"Kate, please. I try not to go there," he answered dramatically. "She seems happy doing her own thing. I'm certain her last husband left her skittish about any new commitments. The way he left her was brutal…worse than Meredith."

"Surely she knows John would never do such a thing. He doesn't need her money or yours, and the man loves your entire family. He treats you like a son."

"Something I treasure," he answered, taking her hand. "Which leaves fortunes intact, but it doesn't protect her heart. Mother was devastated to be left with nothing and to have to turn to me; but for that to have come from someone she trusted, someone she loved, who was supposed to love her…someone she expected to spend her life with, to take care of her… I wanted to kill the man with my bare hands. I sent a private investigator to find him; but by the time he was found, most of the money was gone, and he was out of the country. I went to the authorities there, but he wasn't in a country that had an easy extradition policy, and it looked like a lost cause. We did save a European woman from the same fate, though. The PI told her everything we knew about how the man worked. She recognized some of what he described, and she dropped the smarmy SOB like a rock. At least I had the pleasure of ruining his next venture."

Kate leaned her head against his shoulder and smoothed her hand over his arm sympathetically. "It was almost as bad for you as it was for Martha, wasn't it?"

"It was. Mother was in a fragile state of mind at the time, and I wanted her to stay with Alexis and me, anyway; so I kept providing her with enough to enjoy the lifestyle she had earned for herself before she met the jerk she married." Looking over at his wife, he smiled, looking less serious. "She felt guilty about it at first; but by the time you met her, she had obviously come to terms with it. I have a trust in place for her in case anything happens to me."

"I know you've taken care of all of us."

"She was all I had until Meredith and Alexis. And then Mother and I were all Alexis had. For a while, it seemed like that was the way it would be for the Rodgers family; but then Kate Beckett happened, and life became phenomenally better. That's what we should be thinking about tonight, Kate. Us."

"We are, Rick. What affects you, affects me. That's what us is about, right?"

He leaned in and gave her a soft slow kiss. "I'm not sure I could love you any more than I already do, Mrs. Castle."

The car stopped then, and Darrell let them know they were at the restaurant.

As they remembered from three years earlier, the restaurant staff was fully committed to providing a Valentine's Day experience. The food and the service were exemplary, and the suggestion for the formal attire most of the guests wore added to the ambiance of a special evening. The way the staff casually dropped off little Valentine themed surprises added to both smiles and romantic moments.

Their first surprise of the night was a group of five "Roses are red, Violets are whatever" poems…all silly but with a romantic flair. Then there was a game where a ball had to get past barriers labelled as arguments, exes, misunderstandings, jealously, and stupidity before it could be dropped into a hole in the center of a heart.

"Does any of this look familiar," Kate asked.

"Yeah. It's like this one was made just for us. Good thing we got past that after the first two years," he said just as Kate dropped the ball into the center.

"Your turn," she said, handing it to him.

At various times during a wonderful meal, they received more surprises. There was a list of a few funny definitions of love, a page with blanks to say what you appreciate most about each other in different circumstances…something they would save. They laughed through a Valentine Mad Lib where they had whispered a few words not suitable for the general public before reading the finished product, and then there was a sweet note from the restaurant management thanking them for spending their Valentine's Day with them, wishing them love and happiness in their future, and reminding them of the complimentary photographs available near the entrance. That evening's hugging stuffed animals were purple penguins.

"Looks like it's just the two of us this year," Castle said, smiling. "Nobody there to drop kick the penguins yet."

"It could still happen. We still have most of the year left in the plan."

"Then a toast to possibilities, and to us," he answered.

She touched her champagne glass to his and smiled. "To possibilities and to us," she agreed.

Again they took advantage of the pictures that were offered. That night's photographer tried to get something more personal than the one from three years before, and he asked Castle, "If you only had a quick moment and you wanted her to feel loved, what would you do?

Castle already had his arm around Kate's shoulders and she had an arm around his waist. He responded to the photographer's suggestion by pulling her closer and placing a kiss on her head, and Kate defaulted to curling toward him and closing her eyes as she clutched the lapel of his jacket…in this case with the penguins peeking over the hand on his lapel. The photographer caught the perfect moment, and all of them were happy with the photo, even though they all laughed at the penguins.

When they were in the car in the middle of a conversation, she asked, "Is this what everybody sees when you do that? I know how you look. I've seen you kiss Alexis that way. And I know I kind of melt most of the time when you kiss me like that, but I didn't know that's how it looked."

"Does it embarrass you? I love this picture, Kate. It looks like I feel about you. And apparently it looks the way you feel, too."

"It does, and I love it," she assured him.

"Wonder what we would have looked like in the aftermath of our anniversary afternoon," he said with a wide grin at the memory.

She smiled back just as widely, then suddenly looked at Castle and said, "Tell Darrell we want to get home faster."