Epilogue

Ten Years Later….

The atmosphere in the Plaza Hotel's Regency Suite was quiet and contemplative, a sharp contrast to the raucous standing room only crowd in

the grand ballroom, eight floors below. The candidate's inner circle gathered around eight very large TV screens, each displaying a different network's take on what The New York Times was already calling the election of the century.

Alexis Castle-Hayworth, who just happened be the campaign manager, sat off to the side, her keen eye and quick mind evaluating and analyzing the raw data flowing into her laptop. Win or lose tonight, she was widely admired for running an issue-focused campaign remarkably free of mud-slinging, at least on the part of her candidate. The opposition candidate had gone low almost immediately, releasing a series of vicious personal attack ads. But he quickly learned that when the other side refused to play, he ended up looking more like a bully than a leader.

"Aha," Alexis smiled in satisfaction. The polls had closed an hour earlier, and the mid-town precincts were starting to report. She had expected to do well there, and her intuition was rewarded when her candidate's numbers jumped from forty-eight to forty-nine percent. "Mom, Dad," she called out, and the couple seated in the center of the room swiveled toward her. "What is it, pumpkin?" Richard Castle responded.

"It's starting to trend upward; we just hit 50 percent," she said with elation.

Richard and Kate Beckett-Castle shared a relieved smile. It had been a long hard slog, but as always, they faced it together. They had worked hard to find time for each other and their three children.

"Fifty-one percent." Alexis called out and, on the screens, CNN and Fox put up their 'Declared Winner' graphic. The junior senator from the State of New York leapt to her feet and embraced her husband. "Congratulations, Mr. Mayor."

He thought about the campaign he ran, never once wanting to smear his opponent. In the end, he listened to the two people he trusted the most, his daughter Alexis and his wife Kate. And he had to laugh because if it hadn't been for him writing that ending to Naked Heat, all those years ago he and Kate would have never talked about what they really wanted from each other.

A/N: I am saddened by the amount of some of the guest reviews that tore apart this story up one side and down the other. This story was written with the talents of two other fanfic writers. I could really care less about how those "guest" reviewers tore apart what I wrote, but when you did that you also ripped apart two other writers who took time out of his and her very busy lives to give you something to read. I myself have never written a book and I don't think I ever will. Only because I work a full-time job and don't have the time, help take care of my 7 grandchildren and try to write for people like you (guests) who I really thought they appreciated the time and effort to write this and the time it took to set up the logistics between three people to give this genre and other registered members some way to keep this Castle category alive. People busted their asses to give something for you to read and this is how you act?

You know what? All those guests should be ashamed of the reviews they left because it's shit like that that makes me (I can't speak for the other writers) wonder why I am writing these stories in the first place! I can not understand how other people who write for Castle can just shrug off reviews of this nature, I have a tough skin but when reviewers tell me that I should not even be writing a grocery list, well I wonder why I'm doing this in the first place. (Don't worry those shitty guest reviews were deleted) So, for now, each and every guest can read go someone else's stories now, I'm taking a long deserved break after writing Castle for the last eight years! I'm out!