146. Chapter 146

Chapter 146

Kate was going to be home for the next ten months. How could she possibly ask if he was ready for this?

"I've been ready for this for ages," he told her. "I just didn't think it would happen until you retired."

"So you think you can handle it?" she asked, her arms still around his neck.

Using his bedroom voice, he said suggestively, "Mrs. Castle, I've been handling everything you'd allow me to since we first got together, and I don't intend to stop now."

"Good. With all this time on my hands, I'd be crushed if you did." When Jamie came to join them, she picked him up and kissed all over his face the way she used to, and he belly laughed; so she did it again. "Let's order in…comfort food," she suggested. "Something that feels like throwing caution to the wind and living dangerously."

"This is a good start for your leave time; you look so happy about it."

"I am." Jamie chose that moment to plant kisses all over his mother's face, and his big laugh joined hers, both of them looking absolutely joyful.

Castle found the comfort food menu in the kitchen takeout drawer and asked what they wanted. He read the choices he knew his son liked, and when he read it from the menu, Jamie held up his hands up in a stop signal, and said jubilantly, "Skabetti!"

"Spaghetti," Castle said slowly, correcting his pronunciation.

"Let it go for now," Kate begged quietly. "Give me a week. I had to give up his 'tisses' all over his little face, and now he corrects us if we get silly and talk about 'mongous' cows or whatever. Let me have 'skabetti' just a little bit longer. Next week I'll even help you correct it. But it's so cute, and he says everything else so clearly, and tonight is for being indulgent."

"You're adorable like this," he told his wife, planting a playful kiss on her lips. "Soooo…we'll order mac and cheese, biscuits, green beans with bacon bits, fried chicken…and skabetti for our boy?"

"It sounds so unhealthy when you read it out loud," she answered with a sheepish grin.

"What? It didn't sound unhealthy in your head when you were pointing at your choices while I read them out? And we did order something green in there."

"Yeah…with bacon bits."

"Just remember, this was your idea. We'll have salads for dinner tomorrow to get ourselves back on track."

"Okay. I'm going to go and change into yoga pants…with an elastic waistband so I can enjoy it," she said with a mischievous smile; and putting Jamie down next to his father, she went to change clothes.

Castle laughed as she left, entirely enchanted with his wife's delight at their new arrangement. Truth be told, he had worried that she would come home sad to have left her work behind. He knew that, sooner or later, she would miss her colleagues and the challenges that come with the job; but for now, she seemed to be reveling in the change, and he intended to enjoy every second that it lasted.

When Kate returned, Castle went and changed into his flannel pajama pants and a T-shirt to be just as ready for dinner as Kate. The parents usually had self-control about their eating, especially Kate; but when it was comfort food time or holiday feasts, they allowed themselves to enjoy it, sometimes a little too much. Jamie seemed to still have the good sense to stop eating when he wasn't hungry anymore, no matter what…unless there was ice cream involved. In that, he had inherited the questionable ice cream portion control genes from both parents.

After dinner, they all sat on the sofa, Jamie between his parents, watching Despicable Me, the parents in something of a comfort food stupor. They laughed with their son and endured his climbing on or poking at their stomachs now and then when he moved around, and then they read him a bedtime story and tucked him in.

"Can we let that meal pass as a weird pregnancy craving?" Kate asked, sitting down at the breakfast bar. "I do intend to feed our baby healthier meals."

"I know you do. I remember how careful you were when you were carrying Jamie, but once now and then won't hurt. I love that you were excited about things changing and wanted to do something a little bit off our normal path," Castle answered, sitting down close beside her and taking her hand in his.

"Let's take Jamie to do something fun tomorrow," she suggested. "Just because we can."

"Do you have anything in mind?" he asked.

"We could start teaching him to ice skate. After this meal, a little exercise wouldn't hurt either of us."

"I still have Alexis's beginner skates from when she was this age, the ones with double blades. If those don't fit, we'll find a place that sells them, or something that works just as well. I'll bet he'd love it."

"Then we have a plan. When do you want to go?"

"At Rockefeller Plaza, there are ninety minute sessions all day, starting at eight-thirty. Why don't we let the spirit move us?" Smiling and using her own words back at her, he added, "Just because we can."

"Then let's not tell Jamie until we're ready to get him dressed and leave. Otherwise he might be rushing us to get dressed, like for the zoo," she answered. "That spoils the 'Let the spirit move us' factor."

"Yeah. He can be a little single minded."

"Not unlike his parents, she admitted. "And we need to keep your book tour in mind, too. We leave in three days, right?"

"We leave Thursday afternoon for San Diego. There's a signing there, and then we move north. Two days in LA, one in San Francisco, then Eugene and Salem, Oregon, one in Portland, more in Olympia and Tacoma, Washington, and we end in Seattle. In between there are a few radio and TV spots, any of which you're welcome to join me for. It's probably going to play havoc with Jamie's sleep schedule. But there are two of us. When I took Alexis with me at this age, I always had to worry…either about somebody else taking care of her or getting to my signings barely awake."

"Partners, Babe. You have help now," she promised.

"So tomorrow we celebrate our freedom, Wednesday we pack and tell Jamie he's going to ride in a plane. And then we deal with being tied to my work schedule."

"Like I said, partners. I just want to be there when you can come home to us…whatever hotel home might be right then."

"Paula wasn't thrilled about changing all the hotel reservations to suites, but she said she'd get over it if it made me this cooperative." He lifted her hand and kissed it before saying, "I'm going down to the storage room to look in the box of Alexis's old toys and see if I can find those skates. FYI, they're plain white ones…just in case you were envisioning our boy in pink with purple unicorns. And I researched to find the ones that were best for the job."

"I have no doubt you did, Mr. SuperDad," she answered, playfully kissing his cheek. "I'll go find a pair of Jamie's shoes to compare the size."

A respectable length of time after breakfast the next morning, they were dressed and ready to try the skates on their son, thinking they might work out, and they did.

"We're going to take you to learn to ice skate today," Castle said as he took the skates off. "Mommy left clean clothes on your bed. Let's get you dressed while she's getting our skates together. Then we'll go."

They stood outside the rink at Rockefeller Center and watched other people skate as they waited for their session to start, and Jamie was getting more and more interested in the idea of being on the ice. Castle explained that they wouldn't go that fast today, that Jamie would have to figure out how to use his skates before he could go fast.

While Kate held Jamie, Castle put his own skates on. Then as his wife laced up the neon green skates she still wasn't ready to give up, Castle chuckled and said, "Kate, you're going to wear those glow-in-the-dark skates out one of these days, and then how will we ever find you in the crowd?"

"Stop picking on my skates."

He laughed as she stuck her tongue out at him and leaned to get the first skate on her son. Castle put the other skate on him and picked him up to take him to the ice. Just outside the rink, he put Jamie on the floor so he could feel the blades he would be standing on. We're gonna take you on the ice, and you just stand on your skates and let Mommy and Daddy pull you with them. Then each of them took one of Jamie's hands and started by standing him on the ice and keeping him upright, pulling him along as they skated slowly. They stayed close to the fence, out of the way of the faster skaters. After letting him get a feel for the ice and the skates, they took turns skating backward while holding his hands and letting him try moving his feet on the slippery surface.

"Can you go fast?" he asked his parents when they stopped to check one of his skates, watching others skating past them.

"Yes, because we learned a long time ago when we were little," Kate answered.

"Show me?"

"You make a loop around the rink, Castle. I've got this," she told her husband. "Jamie wants to see some action out of us."

"You were fast," the little boy said as his father returned.

"You'll be fast after you've learned, too," Castle promised. "Let's practice going slow a little more before we go home." When they were on the way home, Jamie was already asking when they could go back.

"I think he liked ice skating," Kate observed. "Want to take him for hot chocolate?"

"Yeah," Jamie answered before anyone else could, smiling up at his mother and laying on the charm.

"Mommy is just full of good ideas today isn't she?" Castle asked and had their driver drop them off at the corner coffee shop for their hot chocolate, then they walked home.

"I like this," Castle said to his wife. "We've already had a little adventure, even if it was a planned one."

"And I have the feeling that this book trip could be one little adventure after another."

"We'll make it that way," he promised.

xxxxx

The next afternoon, Kate was in Jamie's room taking clothes out of his dresser and closet and stacking them on the dresser top.

"Why are you taking out all my clothes?" he asked.

"Because we're going on a trip, like when we go to the beach. Remember when Daddy was gone for a while and we missed him?"

He nodded. "Uh-huh. I cried."

"Well, he has to go away again. But this time we don't have to miss him because we're going with him. And to get there, we have to ride in an airplane."

"We're gonna ride in an airplane? Up in the sky?" He looked thrilled.

"You sure are, Buddy. And I bought suitcases just for you," Castle said as he joined them. Mommy will pack your clothes in this one, but this is for your toys." He pulled the handle out to show his son that the Jamie sized luggage worked just like Daddy's and pulled it over to him.

"It has dinosaurs," the little boy said, obviously pleased.

"This is your toy suitcase," Castle told him. "It's big enough for Bear and a few of your favorite books and toys. And we'll take your bathing suit. It's warm where we're going, and there are pools to play in."

The chatter kept up while Kate packed clothes in the dinosaur duffel bag, and the three of them discussed various combinations of books and toys until Jamie had worked out that that his big firetruck wouldn't fit, but some of his smaller cars and trucks and books would. Bear consistently retained his place of honor. They wouldn't be travelling without him.

The next morning, clothes and toys packed, Castle found videos online so he could show his son what to expect when they were in the airport and on the plane, from going through the security line to walking through "the tunnel" to get from the airport into the plane.

When they arrived at the airport, the adults checked the larger bags and the duffel bag with Jamie's clothes, Castle taking both carry-ons and Kate taking Jamie's car seat. Then they showed their tickets and ID's and went through security. Kate went first to show her son what to do, and he took off his shoes and handed them to her. Their carry-ons were placed on the track for the scanner and then they all went through the metal detector, Jamie looking around and appearing to soak everything into memory.

"Right now, he reminds me of you at a crime scene," Kate commented quietly. "I don't think he's missing much of anything that a three year old mind would recognize."

"He'll start asking questions after he's had time to absorb it," Castle responded. "I love seeing that."

"Me, too."

Shoes back on and bags zipped back up, they entered the concourse that led to their departure gate. Jamie insisted on pulling his dinosaur suitcase like Daddy, while asking the expected questions as he walked between them.

The area next to their departure gate was empty and had large windows, so they took Jamie there to look at the planes moving in for boarding and out to taxi to the runway. They pointed out the shuttles bringing in luggage and the jet bridge being moved to the one of the planes for boarding.

More questions followed, and Kate stood back and watched as Castle answered all of them patiently, and with as much enthusiasm as his small interrogator.

As they went to find seats at their gate, Kate said gently, "I love watching you be a dad."

"Turns you on, does it?" he whispered in her ear.

She grinned at him and said, "Yeah, it does. Now behave yourself and let's be sure we don't miss our plane."

They found seats and got a book from Jamie's bag to entertain him while they waited. Then they were called to board, and the crime scene like observation started again as Jamie pulled his little suitcase through the jet bridge. Kate lifted him into the plane when he wanted to look down through the little spaces near the door, and both parents breathed a sigh of relief as they found their seats in first class. Kate's seat was across the aisle from her men, and she took Jamie while Castle set up the car seat next to the window and stowed the carry-ons. Then, when there was a brief lull in the entering passenger traffic, she handed her son over and Castle talked to him as he strapped their boy into the seat. They had found a non-stop flight, so the car seat had several advantages. It was safe, something familiar and comfortable, something Jamie had slept in often in the car, it placed him high enough to see out the window, and it was available any time they might use a car during their trip.

"Are we flying yet?" Jamie asked excitedly.

Castle laughed. "Not yet, Buddy. People are still getting on the plane. They can't do that when it's flying. I'll tell you when we are."

Kate was smiling, watching from her seat across the aisle; and the pleasant looking older woman sitting next to her seemed to have been watching the entire operation. "That handsome husband of yours is a good father, isn't he?"

"The best," she answered, her eyes never leaving her husband and son.

"That's a lucky little boy…and adorable."

"Thank you," she answered, looking toward her travelling companion.

"I'm Elsie," the other woman said with a smile.

"I'm Kate." Nice to meet you."

The other woman went back to her reading, and Kate settled in for the trip.

When the plane started moving, Castle narrated for Jamie what was happening and pointed out the window at things looking smaller as the plane was higher in the air. Later on, Kate traded places with Castle, read to her son for a while and talked to him about those white things he asked about, identifying them as clouds. That brought on a little gasp and an outburst of glee, followed by a rather loud report to his father.

"Daddy, we're flying all the way up in the clouds. I can see them! Look!"

Kate did her best to help him find his indoor voice without dampening his enthusiasm; and soon after that, their dinner was served, providing a distraction, and she helped him with it.

Castle had settled into the seat Kate had vacated, and as they ate after dinner was served, Elsie said, "I've enjoyed watching you and your little boy. It's nice to see a man enjoying being a father."

"I love being a dad. It keeps your mind young." Looking at the open book propped between the woman and the wall of the plane, he asked, "What are you reading…if that isn't too nosy."

"The beginning of a series I keep hearing about. It's called Heat Wave. I don't understand why the woman on the cover is naked with a gun, though."

"Did my wife tell you to say that?"

"No. She didn't even know what I was reading. "Wait." She checked the picture on the back cover, looked surprised, and said, "No way!"

"Castle smiled and put a finger to his lips, saying, "Shhh. We like traveling without attention. I have signings at several bookstores on the west coast for the next couple of weeks. Looks like you've almost finished. What do you think so far?"

"I started it last night and would have finished it by now if I hadn't needed to get to the airport. I've had trouble putting it down."

"Music to my ears," he answered quietly.

"Would you mind starting early on the signings?" she asked just as quietly. "I think I have a pen."

"I have one right here," he answered, taking it from his pocket. He signed it to Elsie and added a short personal comment, and she smiled.

"Thank you," she said mischievously. "That was much easier than standing in line."

From there the two of them bounced from subject to subject until Kate tapped his arm. "Jamie looks sleepy, but he needs to use the bathroom. Would you take him? Then you can have your seat back if you want to catch a little sleep while he does. You have a busy couple of weeks ahead of you, and the time difference is going to catch up with us."

"Sure. Hand him over and I'll show him the teeny tiny bathroom."

While bathroom duty was being taken care of, Kate moved back to the seat next to Elsie, apologizing for playing musical chairs.

"Nonsense. I got an autograph out of it," she said stealthily. "And some good conversation. I get the impression there may have been a few words back and forth about the naked silhouette on the cover."

"That and the stripper name for a cop," Kate answered with a laugh. But I'm over it now…mostly."

"And you're really a homicide detective?"

"I was. Right now I'm a captain using some leave time. I miss him when he's gone."

They chatted a few more minutes before Elsie lifted her book and said, "I'll finish the rest of this adventure and let you relax. It's even more exciting now. I'll have to buy the next one when I get home."

Kate dozed and woke several times before they reached the San Diego airport, waking to the crying of her son as they were landing,

"His ears," Castle explained. "I'm looking for the gummy bears to give him something to chew on."

"Outside pocket of his bag," she reminded him.

The gummy bears seemed to help. The crying was down to whimpers, but Bear was still being held with a death grip. It didn't help that they had to be buckled in for landing and Castle couldn't hold Jamie to comfort him; but he did the best he could to distract him with watching their descent and their movement to their arrival gate.

As soon as they stopped, Kate insisted, "Give me my boy." Castle took Jamie from his seat and stood him on the floor, and he crawled into his mother's lap and snuggled his face into her neck. She sighed, looking relieved at being able to do something to comfort him, and wrapped him in a tight embrace.

"Is it better yet?" she asked, and he nodded, relaxing a bit. She kissed his head and rubbed his back, then looked at Elsie and said, "I'm sorry. Would you like to get up? All I was thinking…"

"No hurry, dear. I usually wait until the aisle clears anyway. I'm in no rush." She gave Jamie a little wiggle of the fingers wave when he opened his eyes, and he gave her a small, shy smile. "You look just like your daddy," she said before his eyes closed again.

When the flow of humanity slowed considerably, Castle piled their carry-ons in his seat and got Elsie's down for her. Then the Castles went to find their checked luggage and the car Paula had said would be waiting for them.

Once the luggage was gathered and they were in the car, Castle looked at his wife, smiled broadly, and said, "Let the adventure begin."