Summer in the Hamptons

A/N: There will be 14 chaps + epilogue

Warning: minor character death in a later chapter

Photo Credit: Dennis Flood (via Google)

Chapter 1

"Daddy—c'mon!"

"I'm coming as fast as I can sweetheart." Though his legs were twice as long as hers, Richard Castle struggled to keep up with the six-year-old girl rushing down the sidewalk in front of him. He jogged a little to ensure they reached the crosswalk at the same time and then landed his hand on her shoulder as they stepped into the crowds crossing at the intersection, which always felt a little bit like being a salmon trying to move upstream.

"Well be faster!"

"Alexis." Rick's hand closed tighter on his daughter's shoulder and he forced her to stop walking. Gazing down at her, he said in a firm yet serious manner, "You need to be patient; there's no need to rush."

"But Kate and Thor are waiting for us!" She insisted with a level of seriousness that would have made a stranger think their destination was the Pentagon and not a park in lower Manhattan.

"Yes, and they know we're coming. Two more blocks and we'll be there."

With that, he continued moving with his hand on Alexis's shoulder, forcing her to walk at a moderate rate instead of darting through pedestrian traffic like an Olympic gold medal awaited her. He understood that Tuesdays and Thursdays were her favorite days of the week; he couldn't exactly say he disagreed about that, but at the same time she was getting older and needed to learn that getting her way was not always possible. Nor was it possible to have everything right that very second as difficult as that was to explain to her sometimes.

When they turned towards the park's entrance, Rick had to once again close his fingers around his daughter's shoulder so she didn't scamper off until he spotted their friend and her canine companion. When he did see the woman sitting on her usual bench with a German shepherd sitting patiently by her feet, he released his daughter from his grip and almost winced from the piercing way she screamed out, "THOR!" The dog immediately hopped up and began barking and wagging his tail. The woman, who had been reading something in her lap, reached down and unhooked the dog's leash from his collar, letting him run over and greet his favorite pint-sized companion.

"Thor! Did you miss me Thor? I missed you!" Alexis said as she reached out her hand to stroke the dog now circling her as he barked and hopped about. Revealing the yellow tennis ball in her grip, Alexis held it out to the dog, which took it happily and pranced off towards the open grassy space in the park with Alexis close behind. Rick chuckled and shook his head at the familiar sight. No matter how often they saw each other, Alexis's excitement always made it seem as though she and Thor were finally being reunited after many weeks apart.

Eight months earlier, just after the beginning of the school year, Rick and his daughter were standing in almost that exact same position tossing a Frisbee back and forth as their after-dinner activity when suddenly the red disc was snatched out of mid-air by an overzealous brown-and-black dog, leaving them both stunned. As the dog stood before Alexis with a wagging tail and an expectant look, his owner, a young woman Rick later learned to be named Kate, hurried over calling out apologies. Rick insisted there was no harm done and even happily gave the pooch a little scratch behind the ears before they parted ways.

A few days later, a similar event occurred, only that time Alexis saw the approaching dog and pitched him the Frisbee, which he caught between his teeth with ease. She then asked for his permission to play with the dog, to which he said she needed permission from the dog's owner, which Kate happily provided and thus their friendship began.

Through the fall, Rick and Alexis saw Kate and Thor and average of two days a week, but as the days grew shorter and the temperature colder, they hardly saw the duo at all. Occasionally they'd bump into each other on a weekend morning—that was how Rick learned that Kate and her canine actually lived on their street in a building caddy-corner to their own—but for the most part they spent the winter apart. Finally, when spring arrived, Alexis requested that they make their "dates" with Thor more official, and thankfully Kate agreed. They had a standing Tuesday-Thursday schedule, which they tried to stick to as best they could as it made both dog and little girl very happy.

As Thor and Alexis ran through the grass, Rick walked over to the bench and sat beside his twice-a-week companion. After exchanging hellos, she smiled at him and said, "I was hoping you didn't forget about us today."

He clicked his tongue. "As if Alexis would allow that. No—I was just finishing up a call with my publisher, which was why we were running a bit late. Sorry about that."

She shrugged. "No worries."

Leaning back, he propped his left elbow against the top of the bench and twisted his upper body to face her. "How are you?"

She let out a light laugh and dropped the highlighter she held down into the book open on her lap. "Slowly seeing the light at the end of the tunnel…until they throw more work at me."

He gave an encouraging smile. "You'll get through it, I'm sure of it."

As a stay-at-home father, Rick was used to striking up conversations with the mothers (or fathers, though that was much rarer) of the children Alexis played with. This playground chatter was a standard in his repertoire so it only made sense for him to chat with Thor's "mother" once he and Alexis began playing regularly. Unlike the other park moms, who seemed to be won over rather quickly by his friendly demeanor and winning smile, Kate was very slow to warm up to him. She was always pleasant and friendly, but never went out of the way to speak with him, and always seemed to have her nose buried in a book. It took him nearly a month to discover she was a lawyer in her first year at a big firm, which explained her youthful appearance and studious demeanor. In the months that followed he'd gained only a limited amount of information further, though she continued to intrigue him endlessly; there was nothing he wanted more than to discover what stories lie behind her mysterious honey-brown eyes.

"Daddy! Are you watching! Look how high Thor can jump!"

Rick looked out towards the grassy area and saw his daughter toss a tennis ball as high into the air as she could. Thor hopped off the ground a foot and trapped it between his teeth on the ball's decent. "I see that, pumpkin; very impressive!" he called out to her. Then, he turned his head back to gaze at his bench companion, who was once again biting down on the cap of her highlighter. Leaning back in his seat, Rick observed her in as non-creepy a way as he possibly could.

As he generally considered himself a people-watcher, both because of his profession (one never knew from where inspiration would strike) and his personality as a social being, Rick had been interested in Kate from the first moment she'd rushed towards him, her hair in a high-ponytail, dark-rimmed glasses balanced on the bridge of her nose. She had been kind and very apologetic given the situation, but also reserved and shy.

The longer they sat side-by-side during their bi-weekly meets, the more he grew to know her. Of course, this was only due to his own persistence. For a reason he had not yet figured out, Kate was incredibly tight-lipped on her personal life and virtually everything else about her. He didn't even know her last name! When they first met, he understood it, but after he discovered she was a fan of his books, he was even more surprised by how closed-off she was being. Generally, his fans couldn't wait to speak to him, which made Kate even more set-apart from the rest.

Why was this woman so seemingly afraid of revealing anything personal about herself to the point where she would deliberately and obviously change the subject with even the most innocent of questions? She was beautiful and clearly kind, which was obvious from the loyalty and devotion of her pet, so why did she spend most of her evenings alone on a park bench with her law books instead of with a significant other? What was the reasoning behind the glimpses of sadness in her eyes he picked up on when she would look out at his daughter playing with her pet?

As a mystery writer, Rick craved the answer to all of these questions and the several dozen more spinning around inside his head, though of course he was too polite to ask any of them outright. Fortunately for his curiosity, she did seem to be getting more comfortable around him. Though it was rare for her to be the one to strike up conversation during their Tuesday-Thursday get-togethers, she did seem less resistant to his questions so long as they remained of the non-personal nature.

For the prior two weeks, Rick had been considering the idea of inviting Kate to dinner as a way of expanding their friendship. He was not entirely sure as to what his ultimate intentions were, but simply being park-friends no longer felt like enough—particularly not when his daughter mentioned Thor at least once a day, sometimes even more. They had never once seen each other outside the park and maybe their friendship was meant to remain only there, maybe it wouldn't work in a more "real world" setting, but he still felt compelled to ask. It was, as he thought, all part of the process of getting back out there.

"Hey, um, I was wondering." Rick paused until Kate gazed up at him, curious. "You…wouldn't want to have dinner sometime, would you?"

Her brow creased. "Dinner? With you?"

"No—all of us. Myself and Alexis. Thor could even come too," he said, thinking that a group dinner would seem less serious and more casual—friendly.

"Oh." She capped her highlighter, placed it in the book on her lap, and evaded his gaze. "That's very kind, but I don't think so."

"Really?" he continued, his heart beating a little bit faster. Given her reserved nature he should have been more prepared for rejection, but he was not. Instead, he was a bit dumbfounded. "I, ah, we could get ice cream instead if you…if you'd rather."

She turned back to him, a small amount of her confidence seemingly returned. "It's just…I'm sorry if I've given you the wrong impression here, but I'm really just too busy with work to have a boyfriend right now."

"Oh no. That's not—I'm sorry." Rick huffed out a breath and dropped his chin to his chest. He had not intended for her to interpret his invitation as one to a date—which was why he'd purposely included his daughter. He would never say that he was uninterested in going on a date with the beautiful woman beside him—quite the opposite in fact—but that he knew would be in the future.

"See, ah, I know I told you I was divorced, but the truth is that it hasn't even been a year since Alexis's mother left us. I'm definitely not ready to be in a relationship again—not yet. I just…I guess I was just thinking how well that Alexis and Thor get along—he honestly seems just as excited to see her as she is to see him, so I thought maybe it would be nice for us to see each other outside of the park. Totally casual—I promise." He concluded with a soft smile.

Her expression softened with a blink. "Oh, I'm sorry for assuming."

He shook his head. "No, don't be; I understand. So, does that change your mind?"

"Ah." She hesitated and gazed out towards the grass, where Alexis was now on her hands and knees as she scratched Thor's belly. "Well, I, um—week nights are pretty busy for me, I'm not—I'm not sure that would work out."

"Well Alexis does have a pretty busy weekend social calendar, but I think she could probably squeeze you in," Rick said, teasing. When Kate looked back to him, he smiled. "Seriously—any day of the week we can probably make work."

She nodded. "Um, okay, well let me look at my calendar and I can get back to you next Tuesday?"

"Ah." Rick dipped his hand into the pocket of his jeans and procured the business card he'd prepared for this exact moment. The card was his standard one with all of his publisher's official contact information, but on the back of it he'd handwritten his personal number. "Or—you could call me."

"Oh. Right." Kate took the card as though it might be tainted with some sort of poison, but once it was tucked into the spine of her book, she gave him a nod. "Okay—I'll call you and we can set something up."

Rick slid his hand over the back of the bench and gave the top of her shoulder a quick squeeze. "I can't wait."

A/N: Thanks for reading! I must confess that this is a little bit sadder and angstier than I've written of late. I actually wrote this in tandem with Come Find Me - the plots are entirely unrelated, but that sex-filled story was meant to make up for the sadness of this one (lol seriously). I intended to post them back to back but the Christmas stories interrupted that. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!