Richard Castle: Raging Heat

“…All right. Is this going to be about the task force?”

“In essence, yes.” She held a shielding hand up to the ring and chuckled. “Can you put that aside for a second? It’s very hard to concentrate.”

“That’s the whole idea.” He flashed it in her face again to tease, then slipped it back in the velvet and closed the lid.

“I haven’t figured out how to put this,” she said at last, “so can I just spew?” After his affirming nod she embarked. “I’ve wondered why this task force job was such a flash point. It really got us both at each other.”

She paused there to allow him a space to speak, but he just showed agreement, so she proceeded. “I asked myself why. When I heard about it, I knew it was an exciting job and a big promotion. But what did I do? I hid it from you. By reflex. Why? Because I knew it created major challenges for us. Logistically, in our lifestyle, and — here comes: as a couple. There’s a concept, right? A couple. Talk about an exciting job and a big promotion.”

He held his silence, letting her roll. “That job offer pushed me to define things. Define us.” Nikki shrugged a tiny shrug. “And to define me. I don’t mean me without you. I just mean, as a test of whether I am still young enough and independent enough to make choices in my life.”

“On your own.”

She borrowed a phrase from her shrink session with Lon King. “I can’t solve my life in ten minutes in a hotel room. But, even though I don’t have all the answers, I do know a few things after this week. Like, I know we are good together. You make me laugh. You shake me out of my earnestness and task-orientation. You’re the only one I ever met who also gets bugged by missing commas.” She laughed.

“I’m your comma cop.”

“My punctuation police.”

“Did I hear good in bed?”

“Awesome in bed; are you serious?…But, as much as I feel that we belong together, the idea of taking it to the next level scared the hell out of me.”

“Wait.” He held up the jewelry case. “Are you saying you knew about this?”

“A woman knows.” Not prepared yet to bust herself for her trash can revelation, she let it go at that, which he seemed to buy. “So what did I do? I fought with you. I accused you of things.”

“You baptized me with top-shelf tequila.”

“I didn’t know what the upset was.” She churned her hands in front of her chest. “It was all this stuff kicking inside me. All the quaint little idiotic theories you always come up with started feeling like attacks, so I hit back.” She rested a hand on his knee. “When I almost lost you in the car last night, I freaked. I thought I saw you take your last breath before you went underwater. And you used it to tell me you loved me.”

A choking sob escaped, and Nikki fought to hold it together. “Rook, I couldn’t picture myself without you. And reflecting on it now, I’m seeing what I was fighting with all week wasn’t you. It was the fear of losing my independence. I know it may sound selfish and indulgent — even a bit Self-Help section — but I need to be true to myself. You know, even in a relationship — no, especially in a relationship — I need to have that independence for it to be healthy. Does that make sense to you?”

He swayed a few inches side to side, a writer choosing his words. “Well, Nikki, may I make it short and sweet?” After she wiped a tear, he continued, “It so happens that this independent woman you are describing is the one I love.”

In the last hour of the day, at the end of a dark week, Nikki could swear she saw a rainbow. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s see if you feel that way when you hear about my new job.”

Points for Rook — he didn’t blink, didn’t falter. “Please,” he said, and took a long pull on his white burgundy, waiting.

“It’s going to mean a lot of long hours, extra responsibility, days and nights apart, broken plans more common than not. It’s going to be a ballbuster.”

“So you you’re on the task force. Congratulations.”

“No, I turned it down.”

“OK, now you’re just fucking with me.”

She laughed. “And you just didn’t, with the ring?”

He lifted his glass to her. “Touché.”

“They offered it to me, that’s why they called me there. I said thank-you, but no, thank-you.”

“But I told you we could weather this, Nikki. I meant what I said about your independence.”

“I didn’t do it for you. How indie is that? I did it because there’s a job that interests me more. A job where I know I am needed. I turned it down once before, but now I am ready.”

“You’re taking over the Twentieth Precinct.”

“Damn it, Rook, do you ever let anyone deliver their own punch line?”

“Apparently not. Continue.”

“They weren’t delighted, that’s safe to say. But they got it. I saw what happened last time when I passed, and they brought in Wally Irons. Then I got a look at that doofus today, and I could see it happening all over again. To my squad.”

“I am with you a hundred percent.”

“Tell me that when we have our fifth canceled dinner in a row.”

“And this would be new?” He thought a moment and said, “Don’t you have to be a captain to command a precinct?”

“I already passed my boards, remember? The Hammer still has my gold bars in his desk drawer from three years ago when I told him to shove them where the sun don’t shine.”

Rook hefted the jewelry case in his palm. “Is that what you’re going to tell me?”

Heat finished her wine, set her glass on the coffee table, then bounced on the couch cushion to face him. “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

He slid off the sofa, lowering himself on one knee before her. In that instant all the light in the firmament, the sum total of the heavenly glow of the sun, the moon, the stars, the comets, and the planets conspired to fall on the beaming face of Jameson Rook. Nikki’s skin chilled with excitement and irrepressible glee and she swallowed hard. Keeping his eyes true, caressing hers while she cradled his, he reached out a hand and she took it, thinking, thank God his fingers were trembling, too. His smile filled her heart, and somehow it grew bigger as he finally spoke.

“Well, Captain Heat…”

A sound came out of her, whether a laugh or a cry, it was born of joy, and that’s all that mattered. “…Yes, Mr. Rook?”

“I have loved you from the first day we met. And, as unbelievable as it would have seemed to me then, I love you more now — this day, at this moment — than I ever have.”

Nikki wanted to say I love you to him, and almost did, but didn’t dare interrupt. So she told him with her face.

And he got it.

“Nikki, I believe in destiny. Not only has everything I’ve ever done led me to you, every time we are apart — whether I’m in Paris or a jungle or across town in Tribeca — I measure everything, every minute, every breath, by how soon we can be together again. Which, in a way, means we are never really apart. But here. Now. Together like this. This is what I want forever. To spend the rest of my life with you. And you with me. Rockin’ happiness.”

After working some swagger, he paused before he continued. “I want to be your husband. And I want you to be my wife.” He started to choke up and some water rimmed his eyes. Rook collected himself, held out the ring, and smiled at her — an angel’s smile. “Nikki Heat, will you marry me?”

First off, I am not Richard Castle. It seems proper to get that out up front, although certainly you have already discerned that from the absence of his flair in this section. Normally, Mr. Castle would write this part himself, but circumstances I’m not at liberty to discuss have intervened to make him…unavailable by deadline. So it falls to me, this lowly junior editor, to fulfill his wishes by acknowledging those who assisted him with this book. Please bear with me. Searching his office, I found his notes to be less than organized, and anyone I could consult for clarification is too rattled to talk. Here is my best offering gleaned from his work space.