He's helping her slip into her coat when Esposito bounds up to her desk, box in hand, waving franticly.

"Grand Theft Auto 5," is all the Hispanic detective has to say before Castle abandons her mid-sleeve.

"No way, that's not out until next month."

"I gotta guy."

"You gotta guy?"

"Yeah, I gotta guy."

Her eyes roll involuntarily, watching the two men revving up their machismo factor before Castle throws down the gauntlet, snapping his fingers.

"You and Ryan, my place, tonight. It is on."

"Um, hello?" She cannot believe he just ditched their jazz night for a video game.

"Kate, you can come over too," he charms, smiling at her, "be my lucky charm?"

"I thought you and I had plans tonight?"

"We can do that show another night, come on Kate, this is Grand Theft Auto 5," he holds up five fingers, "this one has sharks."

"Not the only place there are sharks," she mutters giving Ryan and Esposito her evil eye from. Why the hell there are sharks in an auto theft game she doesn't even want to know.

"Please Kate?"

Damn, she feels herself softening at his pleading look. "Fine," she says, "but I'm still going to Blue Note, I'm not wasting our tickets, I'll just ask Lanie."

He smiles at her as he pushes her chair into the desk and grabs her bag. "I do feel bad though."

"Yeah?"

"It's just, usually, having a guy is my thing."

Lanie's got a case and, annoyingly, wants to finish it before tomorrow, when she and Esposito have plans. Kate briefly considers the irony of killing a fellow homicide detective.

She tells herself she can do this alone. She's Kate Beckett, police officer, detective, bad-ass muse and life-long New Yorker. None of that changed when she started dating Richard Castle. She can damn well go listen to jazz music alone.

"Ha!" Ryan gloats, pressing buttons on the handset to check his stats, "I am on fi-yah." The disgusted look from both his fellow players goes unnoticed. The Barry White ring tone does not.

Let's get it on.

"You miss me already?" Castle says by way of greeting, drawing the eyes of the men in the room. The disgusted look both men throw in his direction when they realize the caller is their team leader is returned by a very smug writer.

But there's no immediate response to his greeting. No sultry comeback, no snippy retort. In fact, there's no voice at all and as he presses in to listen intently, he can hear the soft sounds of people in indistinguishable conversations, the clink of glasses, the shuffle of movement.

And then he hears her detached response to some unknown question, "Yes, I mean no. I'm here alone, but I'm with someone, he just couldn't come tonight."

"How unfortunate for me," a male voice responds.

Beckett's phone must have auto-dialed him.

Castle feels the need to get out of the room and away from his partners. Kate, his Kate, has given him the most horrifying fodder for his writer/boyfriend imagination. He wanders into his bedroom, out of earshot from a new round of revving engines drifting from the wide screen in his office.

"Kate," he calls, hoping to catch her attention as a wee small voice, probably in her handbag.

"From the gentleman at the bar," he overhears another male voice say, before a bit of a shuffle. And then the mild, desolate notes of a piano underline the distance between them.

"From the gentleman at the bar," the waiter says to her.

"Oh brother, seriously, send this one back, tell him I'm still not interested," and then after watching the condescending nod from the server, she throws in, "and I'm also a cop."

"Pardon me, miss, but this one is from a different gentleman."

"I'm not interested in any drink from the bar that I didn't order, thank you."

She came here to relax, not be pestered by the male population of the New York bar scene. She gathers her change from the little black folder and spends a moment, head bowed with her purse in her lap to stuff the bills in her wallet.

"You here alone?"

"Yes, actually," she says without looking, "but I was just leav- Castle?"

He's dressed smartly, dark suit, white shirt open at the collar, suave personified. And he's holding out a glass of wine to her.

A slow smile spreads across her face as he slides alongside her pushing her along the bench seat with his hip and at the same time wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

"Hi," he says an inch from her face.

She has questions, her eyes ask them, but her mouth only repeats his word, "hi."

His lips touch hers so achingly softly, she can't help closing her eyes and pressing into him, a check to see that this ephemeral creature is really her Castle. He can taste Chateauneuf du Pape on her lips, a sure symptom of neglect on his part.

"I've been a little stupid," he says breathlessly.

"Oh yeah?" she says, eyes fixed on him, like there's no one else in the room.

"I forgot to ask you about your sign. Let me try again." He grins at her and backs out of the booth, their last point of contact the hand he holds after his fingers trail over her back, across her shoulder, down her arm. He steps back from the table and approaches again.

"Pardon me, miss, but I need your help." If her eyes weren't glued on his she'd be checking to make sure he couldn't see down her dress with a leer like that.

"How's that?"

"I can't find my puppy, can you help me find him? I think he went into this cheap motel room."

For the first time since they left work, she laughs. A sharp, surprised, happy melody that surely catches the heart of every man in the room, but only plays for the one in front of her. "Sorry, sailor, my boyfriend doesn't like me to help other men."

"Who's going to tell him?"

"Oh but I'm always faithful," she says as he moves to sit beside her again.

"Stupid man leaving you unattended in a room full of sleazy company. Can't imagine why he'd do that."

"Said something about sharks," she says holding his hand in both of hers and dragging them to her lap.

"Ah, the downfall of every beautiful woman," he says pressing his forehead to her temple, "falling for shark-guy when you really want puppy-guy."

"Let's get out of here," she whispers, her breath skirting his face.

He kisses her temple and uses their joined hands to pull her up and out of the booth.

As they walk arm-in-arm, she prods him, "so, that puppy thing, is that your best pick up line?"

"I've forgotten all the others," he says pointedly, "why? Did you just now realize I don't have a shot of happiness without you?"

She hip-checks him before replying, "No, I wondered which cheap hotel I should follow you to."

He stops walking and smiles at her, pleasure written all over the author's face. "You deserve the best, Kate."

"The best cheap motel?" She smiles.

"The best of everything."

"Don't worry Castle, I've gotta guy for that."