Disclaimer: I do not own these characters-if I did I would have my own house in the Hamptons (you can find writing I do get paid for on Amazon, beginning with Wearing the Cape). Summer Heat continues the Castle/Beckett storyline begun in The Long Holiday, and is told around the events in Episode 3/1, A Deadly Affair (suitably altered by "personal stuff").

Kate finished up her case notes and saved them. Another piece of paperwork out of the way, her eyes wandered back to Castle's text: I'm back in the city today for an editor's meeting. We should talk. Dinner?

Dinner. That should be okay, right? She shouldn't be desperately trying not to panic.

Since she'd left the Hamptons and returned to the city, Castle had texted occasional word-count boasts, descriptions of dinners or of books Alexis was reading, anecdotes. And that was it; there'd been no phone calls, no late-night discussions of, oh, of anything. No discussion of what was going to happen at the end of the summer when he got back, and even the texts had tapered off. She'd heard more from Alexis in the last two months, and now Castle wanted to talk. How was she going to tell him that the waiting had given her time to come to her senses? That she desperately wanted to find the Reset Button and push it?

She put her head in her hands, elbows on her desk, and moaned silently.

Maybe not a moan, more of a wordless whine, but not something Detective Kate Beckett would normally indulge in.

She'd been ignoring the text for over an hour, and it was so stupid.

I'm an idiot. Mom would be laughing. The shadow of pain at the thought didn't keep the twist of a smile off her lips—because her mom would laugh at her for getting so mixed up in her head over something that should be simple.

She liked Castle. She liked Castle, and for reasons she still didn't really understand—he was so not her usual type. He'd pushed his way into her life and semi-stalked her, stepped over every personal boundary, and she just couldn't get rid of him. She'd threatened to shoot him more than once, and at times she'd been reduced to grabbing and twisting bits of his anatomy. What kind of grown woman did that?

But that had changed. When had that happened?

She looked at the empty chair beside her desk. When she'd finally had cause to boot his butt out of her precinct, she'd…passed. And somewhere between the coffee and the theory-building, she'd fallen in love with the big goof. And—and she still found this hard to believe—she'd told him. Over the long and strange Memorial Day weekend, she'd told him.

What I really want is something more, Castle.

And he'd smiled, and kissed her, and made wonderful promises with his eyes. He'd told her he'd fallen for her, Detective Kate Beckett, the girl with the gun. And then she'd gotten in her car and driven back to the city while he stayed in the Hamptons to finish his book, Gina-less.

And his silence had given her time to wonder what she'd gotten herself in to. How stupid was that?

But…

She remembered the first time he'd seriously, smoothly, propositioned her. In the aftermath of their first case together.

"Too bad, detective. It would have been great."

She'd briefly been back to liking him at that moment—nothing like helping her close a case to get on her good side and she was his biggest fan; his low-voiced proposition had curled her toes inside her shoes. But he was Castle, and there was no way she was going to be just another girl who'd slept with Rick Castle.

And was now really any different? He had two exes and a cornucopia of actresses, models, beautiful women spilled across Page Six, flavors of the day. She'd seen him chase them—or really seen them chase the White Whale—and he'd always been happy to play and say goodbye. Could Castle do long-term? If he couldn't, and the two of them started something serious, that put a hard time-limit on their continued partnership.

She pushed her hair out of her face, kept another moan inside. Because they'd started something serious, or at least promised to. Maybe now he'd had second, saner, thoughts and knew what a disaster this could be. What had she—

"Beckett?"

Ryan's voice snapped her out of her spinning thoughts and she flushed, jerking her head up to look for him. He leaned back in his chair, brow wrinkled.

"You okay, Beckett?" He didn't look at Castle's chair, obviously didn't look. "Have you heard from Castle? He's got to be what, polishing up that book now?"

"Dude, what's wrong with you?" Esposito turned around from his desk, smacked Ryan in the back of the head. But then he looked at Kate. "No word from him?"

And that was the other problem; by some miracle, Captain Montgomery hadn't told the boys about her Memorial Day holiday in the Hamptons. And Kate hadn't either. She didn't know why—well, to avoid all the jokes, of course—but she hadn't told anyone about Castles' becoming her text-buddy, either. Or about the butterflies that invaded her stomach at the thought of seeing him again.

She looked at her cell.

Dinner? The word looked back at her accusingly.

She blanked the screen. "You can stop pining for your girlfriend, fellas. He'll come back when he comes back."

"Maybe you should call him—"

Her phone rang and she picked it up with an inside sigh of relief.

"Beckett. Got it. Be right there." She hung up. "We've got a body."

On the way out, she texted back. Sorry, Castle. A body dropped.

And it was just so wrong that she felt relieved.

Detective Ryan looked up at the dangling body, fallen half-through the apartment door awning. One of her arms dangled, as if reaching down for the safe ground.

"Whoa. Jumper miss the pavement?"

"Maybe, but it wasn't the fall that killed her," Lanie called down. "More like the large-caliber gunshots to her torso before she did a Greg Luganus out the window up there."

"The victim's name is Chloe Whitman," Esposito said. "Witnesses heard shots, saw the body fall out the window, but when patrolmen got here the apartment was empty. There's no doorman on duty, and so far no-one recalls seeing anyone fleeing the scene."

Kate nodded. "Alright. Have uniforms start knocking on doors—find out what else the neighbors didn't see. So, what else do we know about our victim?"

Espo checked his notebook. "She's got a boyfriend, Evan Murphy. He's on his way."

"Okay, let's go upstairs and see what else we can find."

The apartment was a mess of blood, broken glass, and red crime-scene cones. A spilled suitcase and purse said Ms. Whitman had been leaving town. Fleeing her killer? The twenty dollar bills in her purse said it wasn't a robbery. With her shooter between her and the door, from the spatter it looked like she had thrown herself out the window.

As lead detective, Kate took the unenviable task of interviewing the boyfriend. The kind of narrow, light-weight geeky-cute type made popular by modern sit-coms, Evan Murphy sat stunned and shock-pale and didn't add any light to the question that was Chloe. She was a school chemistry teacher. Her students loved her. She had no enemies. She would never have skipped town without saying anything—she had class tomorrow.

Lanie's interruption was a relief, allowing Kate to excuse herself.

"She had this in her hand." She held up a smoothed out paper napkin in a plastic evidence bag. "She had it gripped so tight I almost didn't see it."

Kate looked at the careful writing. "This is an address in Tribeca. It could be where she was going."

Espo shrugged. "Only one way to find out."

Ryan did his research on their way, briefed Kate as they all got off the building's musty elevator.

"Address is registered to a Mia Santori. Professional sculptor. Thirty-two, clean, no priors."

Kate nodded, scanning the hallway. "Apartment 417?"

"Yeah, right there." Esposito pointed. Two more steps, and "It's open." Kate's pulse picked up and they drew their service pieces, moving forward. Espo and Ryan stepped into place behind her like beads on a string as she cat-stepped up to the door. No sounds, nobody visible through the cracked door—broken off its latch. A breath, and Kate pushed hard with her shoulder, moved fast into the apartment as Ryan and Espo stepped center and left and they quartered the room with their guns.

Nobody in front of them but signs of a struggle in the cluttered Bohemian space. Bedroom door ahead, closed—a crash inside, shadow moving behind the glass-brick bedroom wall. A silent signal from her, and they rushed the door, cleared it and fanned out even as Kate trained her gun on the gun-holding figure before her and they all shouted.

"NYPD!"

"Drop it!"

"Gun!" Ryan fired without aiming and the figure flinched with a "Whoa!" Kate felt her own finger twitch but his gun stayed pointed at the floor as he straightened. Then—

"Castle?"

"Beckett?"

"What are you doing here?"

"I, uh…" He half-turned to look at the body behind him on the bed, his gun waving in their general direction and she flinched. "Down! Down! Put it down!"

Espo and Ryan added their shouts as Castle froze again. "Whoa! Guys, easy, it's not what it looks like." But he had the sense to drop the pistol.

"It never is," Kate declared, voice hard but drowned by the sound of her own racing blood as she advanced. "Turn around. Castle, turn around!" She stepped forward and spun him, shocked and unresisting, slapped her cuffs on him. "Richard Castle, you're under arrest for murder."

By the time Kate stepped into the interrogation room, Rick had had plenty of time to review everything he knew about police procedure and relax. Yes, he'd been found standing over poor Mia's body, and his fingerprints were on the gun. But a simple test for gunpowder residue would confirm he hadn't fired it, and checking his phone records would show the call Mia had given him, establishing his reason for being there.

Given all that, since he was back where he wanted to be—if on the wrong side of the table again—he intended to enjoy himself. It was even nostalgic.

"Something is different," he said when Kate closed the door. "Did you remodel?"

She set the file she carried on the table between them, folded her hands over it, and gave him the eye. "You've been informed of your rights, Mister Castle?"

"Really? You're not even going to ask me how my summer was?"

Her lip curled just the tiniest bit. It was cute. "You are aware that you're under arrest. For murder."

"And I thought you were being rough with the cuffs just for fun. You look good."

And there was the flash of dimple. "You look good too."

"Yeah?"

"For murder." Okay, the dimple was gone.

"Why are you so mad at me?"

"I don't know, maybe because you were found standing over a dead body with a gun in your hand."

"Yeah but I told you, she was dead when I got there."

Kate leaned in. "Why didn't you call?"

Oops. Over a year's practice reading Beckett's subtext, and her question wasn't Why didn't you call the police? even if that was what she said to the room and anyone listening behind the glass. Rick scrambled for verbal balance.

"I…was going to call you. But then you showed up before I could."

"Really." Kate nodded, kept her voice even, her face straight, but the subtext continued. "Well then, why did we find you in our victim's apartment?"

Beckett? What's going on here? Okay, that was not a question for the whole room either, no way to hide it, but... "Why did you show up in her apartment?"

"Castle!"

"She called me."

"Oh. So, you and Ms. Santori were in a relationship." She made a note.

"Well I wouldn't call it a relationship, I bought a couple of sculptures from her—"

She pinned him with a glare. "Were you sleeping with her?"

Aha! "How is that relevant?"

The glare stayed. "Motive."

"Ah. No." Rick swallowed, carefully kept the Somebody's jealous… smirk off his face. This he could deal with. "I wasn't sleeping with her."

"Are you sure?" She raised her eyebrows. "Beautiful woman…"

"I'm in a relationship."

"With whom?"

"Is that a new lipstick?"

"Castle."

Ooh, and now the patented Beckett snap. "You know with whom," he returned softly.

"How should I know, I haven't seen you in months. You could have been in dozens of relationships since then."

"You sound jealous."

"Jealous? Of your summer girls?" She scooted forward a bit, claiming space with her elbows. "Tell me, Castle, how are you able to stay on deadline with all the distractions out there?"

Wait, what? His mind stuttered but his mouth kept going, returning the volley. "So how about you? Find someone to keep you busy on those long hot weekends?"

And Kate broke eye-contact. She sat back, looked at her notes with furrowed brow while Rick tried to figure out how the conversation had suddenly blown up and why. When she looked up all hints of banter were gone.

"This victim that called you? What was it about?"

Okay, Rick could do serious. "She said she was in trouble, and couldn't go to the police."

"So, why did she call you?"

"Mia knew I had a relationship with you—with the NYPD. She thought I could help."

"Help how?"

"She didn't say. She just asked me to come over. When I got there, the place was trashed, she was dead on the bed and there was a gun on the floor."

"So, you being the veteran expert of dozens of crime scenes, decided to pick up the weapon to, what? Insure that we had your prints?"

And now it was just getting old. "Maybe you missed the part where she was shot dead? When I heard the noises coming from the next room I thought whoever killed her was coming back. So I picked up the gun to defend myself! It seemed like a very good idea at the time—that's when you, Esposito, and Annie Oakley come bursting through the door!" He waved at the mirrored window. No way the whole gang wasn't watching back there.

"Hmm. Tell me, why should I believe you, considering you pretty much make up stories for a living?"

"Because you know me."

Kate looked away again, pulled a file from her folder and opened it between them.

"Do you know her? Chloe Whitman. She was shot to death."

Now they were getting somewhere. He held up the printed page, didn't recognize the woman in the picture.

"Your friend's address was found clutched in her hands after she was killed."

"Another murder…" He looked up at Kate. "What's the connection?"

Her eyebrows rose in apparent disbelief. "I don't know, you were the one with the gun. You tell me."

Oh, come on!

Captain Montgomery opened the door and leaned in before Rick could come up with a good rebuttal.

"Beckett. A word?"

Good timing. "Hey Captain, how's it going?" The captain fixed him with a You're Kidding stare. "What, you too?" What was going on around here? Kate stepped past and Montgomery closed the door on Rick's "C'mon, guys!" He put his chin in his fist.

Fine. Just…fine.

Kate reopened the door a minute later. "You're free to go."

"What? That's it?"

"Bullets don't match your gun. You're off the hook." She turned away as Rick scrambled up, grabbing his coat to follow.

"I'm— So what's our next move?" With a fresh case, obviously dinner was off the table.

Kate kept walking. "There isn't one, at least not for you. You're going home."

"Whoa, whoa—two victims, one of them an acquaintance of mine, and you're sending me home?"

She waved it away. "You're a witness, Castle, you can't be involved—"

"I'm already involved—"

She spun to face him.

"Castle, go home. Go back to your Hamptons, your editor's meetings, your book parties. Okay? I've got work to do."

And she walked away, leaving him stunned.

"What did I do?" A ghost of restraint kept Rick from shouting, and Kate didn't hear or at least didn't acknowledge it. He turned to see Esposito and Ryan turn away in solidarity.

Everybody? What the hell did I do?

"Lanie…" Kate groaned, covering her face. "What the hell did I do?"

"You got me, girl. I have no idea." Her BF waved her sandwich—ham on rye—at her. Late lunch in her office.

"I just—"

"You accused Castle of cheating on you in a relationship that hasn't exactly started yet, and then kicked him out of the precinct. I got that. Why?"

"I don't know!"

"Uh huh."

Kate had needed to tell someone about her Hamptons weekend, those first few giddy days back in the city, and Lanie knew how to keep a secret like nobody's business. She'd been able to relive and dissect the long holiday weekend with Lanie, and now she wanted her BF to look into her head and tell her what was wrong with her.

"Listen, girl." Lanie put down her sandwich, sipped her drink. Kate guessed she had bodies to get back to. "You want this, right? You've been waiting for him to get back, counting the days—I see you staring at the calendar on my wall every time you're down here. So he drops into your investigation—like he hasn't done that before—and you practically shoot him between the eyes?"

"I know!" Kate rubbed her face, dropped her hands. "I know. I…panicked?"

"You do tend to do the preemptive close when you think it's not going to work, but before it's begun? That's a new one."

"When have I—"

"G-Man."

"Will? That was three years ago, and he moved to Boston!"

"And asked you to go with him."

"I couldn't—"

"I know why you couldn't. But as good as you two had it, you didn't even try and do the long-distance thing. I'm just saying, you were a zombie for weeks after he left. Point is, you ended it because you thought it wouldn't work, not because you wanted to."

"And you think Castle and I would?"

"Maybe. The boy's persistent, I'll give him that. Mooned after you for a year before deciding to cut his losses and leave town." Lanie contemplated the rest of her sandwich, sighed and rewrapped it. "Look. You may not know if you're in or you're out, Kate, but you'd better decide quick. I don't think he'll wait as long this time. You gotta tell him where he stands."

Kate matched her friend's sigh. "I know."

So she just had to figure out a way to sell Castle on being "just partners." If she hadn't just chased him away completely.

She closed her eyes and saw him again, smiling with his whole face.

Kate, you had me at "something more."

She was doomed.

"Thanks, Lanie. I'll—" Her cell buzzed and she pulled it out, saw it was Ryan, and put it on speaker. "Beckett."

"Hey, Beckett. Got the report back from ballistics. It's a match—both victims were shot with the same gun."

"Okay, anything on the canvas?"

"We showed Chloe's photo to Mia's friends and neighbors? They didn't recognize her."

"And Chloe's boyfriend and colleges from her prep-school?" Espo inserted. "They don't know Mia, either."

Kate rubbed her forehead. Great; they had a high school chemistry teacher and a sculptor, who lived in different neighborhoods and ran in completely different circles, shot on the same day with the same gun.

"Okay, well their lives have to intersect somewhere. Run their phones and financials, let's see if anything pops."

"On it," Ryan confirmed and hung up.

"You know, Kate." Lanie brushed off her scrubs, got out the hand cleanser. "You could always go see Castle, re-interview him about Mia and…talk."

"I don't know, Lanie. Maybe." Kate looked at her phone like it had the answers. "Let me know if you learn anything more? It might help if I can take him a peace offering."

So... I couldn't resist. I had planned to wait awhile longer before putting up this new "episode" in the Hamptons-verse (hey, I can't think of a better label for the divergent arc begun when Kate went to the Hamptons after all).

Don't know if I'll post subsequent chapters as fast as I did last time, but I am following the same framework: taking one of the cannon-mysteries and stripping out the other stuff to replace with my own idea of the Caskett Comedy Hour. As you may have noticed, one "mystery scene" got copied almost verbatim but with a whole new subtext...

As always, reviews welcome.