There was a moment of dawning revelation, and then I passed out, and when I woke up two days later this had been written. Have fun.

EDIT: basically destroyed my pretty formatting somewhere in between the time I reviewed the uploaded the document and the time I published the story. This new version should correct most of the flaws.

Expensive furs and faux-furs clutter her foyer. They are folded on racks and draped over her furniture and sometimes even piled on the floor. Three interns have set about measuring and annotating. She ignores them, and they know better (or think they know better) than to approach her before she has said she wants it. She picks her way across the room, trying not to step on anything too expensive on the way to her shoes.

Laura, who is her new publicist and all tight bun and dark eyebrows, pokes delicately at her blackberry in the open doorway. "You know who Richard Castle is?" she asks.

"The author?" She stumbles in one particularly delicate maneuver and catches herself with her hand on a truly expensive mink. She scrambles back to her feet. "Fuck."

"Yeah. He wants a meeting."

"What about?"

"I don't know. I have an email from his agent that says he wants a meeting."

She kneels down in front of her shoes. The shoes are heeled clogs with wooden soles and red leather uppers. There is something wrong with them and she's not sure what it is. They've been gifted to her by Donna herself, and and if at least a couple of candids over the next few weeks don't show her wearing them, Donna will be offended.

"So?" asks her publicist.

"Yeah," she says. "I can give him fifteen minutes before the foot thing on Tuesday."

Laura pokes at her blackberry.

The man who pokes his head in is very tall and very broad-shouldered. The one-sided smile gives him a roguish air. "Miss Beckett?" he asks.

She nods. "You must be Richard Castle," she says. With a gesture toward the man who still hasn't looked up from the tiny brush he is running along her toenails, she continues, "You'll forgive me if I don't get up. We're running a bit late."

"Not a problem," he says. He stops, suddenly, looking at her. It's a different look from the obvious once-over he gave her as he came in.

"Mister Castle," she says pointedly. "I still don't know what you're here for."

He blinks and then smiles guiltily. "Research," he says. "My next book is about a murdered supermodel."

The pedicurist switches from the brush to an orangewood stick. Kate looks down at him, making an effort not to inspect his unfinished work. "So what do you want?"

Castle says, "I want to shadow you. Go where you go, see what you do and who you see." She looks back up in time to He stuffs his hands into his pockets. Even that part is annoyingly adorable. "For a couple days."

"Uh-huh."

The pedicurist slides an electric foot dryer from its unobtrusive place against his cabinet, and Kate puts her feet into it. He turns it on and it begins to hum.

"What do I get out of this?" she asks.

As the pedicurist goes off to make himself invisible, Castle approaches to take his place. He grins, exposing perfect white teeth. "More good press than you can shake a stick at. And a spot in the dedication for good measure."

"You've got a deal," says Kate. She offers her right hand, and Castle takes it. They shake, which is refreshing. She turns back to the cabinet, from which she retrieves the decorated silver anklet that will soon adorn ten thousand magazine covers. "When do you start?"

"Now's good," he says. He slides his hand back into his pocket.

They share the back seat of the car. Her driver gives them a questioning glance but doesn't dare to actually ask. Her driver, a tiny white man whose tattoos occasionally appear when his sleeves ride up, hasn't said more than a sentence to her in days. Laura takes the passenger seat. She turns around in the seat, staring at her blackberry and trusting to God and the driver.

"Bobby Mann wants you another half-hour early before the show tomorrow for prep," says Laura.

"No," says Kate. She turns to Castle. "You're going to be spending a lot of time in this car."

"Miss Beckett, you don't want to piss these guys off. If Mann goes after you on his show, it's days of bad press. Especially at -"

"Give me the phone," she says.

The publicist shuts up and hands over the blackberry.

As she mutters about the show and its management, muttering words like "Egomaniacs" and "Assholes", she works her way through the address book. Eventually, she settles on a number and dials.

"Hi, Mark? It's Katherine Beckett," she says, suddenly pleasant.

Castle watches, bemused.

"I know, but I can't. Well, you know how much I love to be on your show. But every time before we said sixty minutes early, and we scheduled around that."

She turns to Castle and mouths the word "Dumbass."

"No," she says, "I wish I could, but there's just no way I can make it that early. Well, I have a meeting - No, Mark, I won't cancel. Mark - If you try to make a fuss about this, I swear I will tell everybody who will listen that you tried to force me to tear apart my whole schedule on barely twenty-four hours' notice.. You want to bet I'll win that argument?" Her publicist looks stricken, but Kate smiles. "All right, Mark. That's all I wanted." She presses the end-call button.

As she passes the blackberry back, her publicist says, "Well-"

"No," says Kate. "That was your job, because now everyone in that studio thinks I'm a huge asshole."

"Miss-"

"Save it. You've just started, and you're already running out of chances."

Laura shuts her mouth so quick her teeth clack against each other.

Kate smiles brightly as she turns to Castle. "Learning a lot?"

"You have no idea," he says.

"Tell me this is the last one," says Kate, staring down at her feet. She has worn about twelve different pairs of shoes in the last two hours, and, with each one, has cavorted around a tiny set as though she were having the time of her life.

"Yeah," says Francis. Francis, a gentlemanly boy with an uncontrolled mop of red-brown hair, is helping the photographer.

Castle's easy jokes have lent the time a little extra humor, though they occasionally venture into the inappropriate and the awkward. He wanders around, poking at things, and getting stared at by the various members of the retinue. He turns to watch the door at the sounds of a scuffle. A security guard in a gray-blue collared shirt forcibly restrains a man in somewhat grubby street clothes.

"You know that guy?" he asks.

Kate glances up from where she is tightening the sandal's strap around her ankle. "No," she says, and looks down again.

"You get that a lot?"

"Sometimes fans don't get boundaries," she says. "You must have the same problem."

A wicked smile graces his features. "I wouldn't call it a problem, exactly."

The unwelcome tourist flings a rude gesture in her direction. Kate pretends not to notice, because she's not supposed to have noticed in the first place. The tourist storms away, and the security guard offers a half-relieved laugh.

"What about threats?" asks Castle.

"Um." She stands. "I've had one or two since I started. I'm not really that controversial. Some of the other models are. God, these fucking sandals. Okay, let's do this."

They finally make it to her apartment at five-thirty. Castle stops in the door, obviously intimidated by the furs that still haunt the foyer. Kate pushes past him and kicks off her shoes and darts through the piles.

"Sorry about the mess," she says. "It's for my new line, and it got a bit out of control."

"No problem," says Castle.

As she disappears into the depths of her apartment, Kate says, "I just have to grab my books, and then we're headed back out."

"Books?" he calls.

She reappears, carrying a pile of textbooks. "For my MBA," she says, scanning the mess around the floor. "Now if I could just find a comfortable pair of shoes."

"You're getting an MBA?"

"Yeah," she says. She looks back up at him. "Sorry, I'm not sure it would be appropriate if you followed me to class."

"That's fine," says Castle. He checks his watch. "My daughter's waiting for me, anyway."

"You have a daughter?"

"Yeah." He grins and she knows he knows this fact makes him even more appealing. "Alexis. She's sixteen."

"Interesting age."

"Yeah. She's more adult than I am, these days."

Kate smiles as she pushes past him in the doorway. She waits until he realizes he's supposed to vacate her apartment as well, and then locks the door behind them.

Castle is standing in front of the doorman, who's much shorter and a lot skinnier. The doorman blocks his path bravely, and Castle contents himself with towering over him and cracking wise.

"Mister Castle," Kate says, walking up to them, "You can stop tormenting him any time now."

He has the grace to look guilty.

"Come on," she says. "We're going shopping."

"Ooh. For lingerie?"

"Could be." She offers Castle a suggestive look. "But we're starting with purses."

"It's like I'm married again."

Kate doesn't bother to withhold her laugh, and she grabs his arm and takes him to the car. She halfway shoves him in, when they get there, and circles around to the other side of the car herself. There's an odd gender reversal there, but Kate doesn't stop to think about it. She starts to buckle herself in and there's Laura in the passenger seat, again, turning around to see them.

"We just got the word back from Cameron," she says.

"Cameron?" asks Castle.

Kate ignores him. To Laura, she demands, "Tell me."

"He said no. He said - well."

"Tell me."

"He thinks you're too big for the part. Especially, um, your feet." The publicist cringes, appropriately.

"My feet?" Kate pauses, and then with deadly earnest: "He can shove his fancy 3D camera up his ass."

"Wait. The director?"

"And all his fancy computers, right up his asshole. I know it'll be tough - I know how tight his ass is - inexplicably, considering how many fucking pervert producers he's taken it up the ass for - but - oh, fuck it."

She turns to stare out the window. Castle watches her, his jaw open. Eventually, he gets himself together at least enough to speak. "That was impressive."

Kate frowns distinctly. She doesn't share what she's thinking. Her publicist and her driver both seem to recognize this mood, and give her her peace.

Castle isn't much good with peace. "Miss Beckett, can I ask a question?"

She doesn't look back. With her hair expertly curled past her shoulders and her face turned mostly away, she looks like she looked once, on a huge black-and-white banner on Broadway, advertising a brand of eyeliner. She sighs at length. "Sure," she agrees.

"You're taking classes toward an MBA; you're putting out your own lines; you're trying to get parts in Hollywood blockbusters. I've never followed anyone as interested in finding something else to do as you."

"Stop here," she tells the driver. Along the sidewalk, a table is lined with purses of every fashion, and two racks behind it are similarly packed. Along the windows of the store behind it are plastered signs which inform the public that everything is twenty-five percent off, but Kate doesn't get out. "I started modeling fifteen years ago," she tells Castle.

The driver starts hunting for somewhere to parallel park.

"I've been doing this for a living since I was twenty and needed to pay my way through the last two years of college. I've been name-brand, you know, friends with the designers and all the talk show hosts and all that... about five years now. I'm now the oldest supermodel who still makes a career doing it. And my profession is dying."

Castle chokes on a laugh. At her offended look, he grins. "Modeling? I don't -"

"Not modeling," she says. "Supermodeling. The designers hate you because you can control the creative product. The other models hate you because you take the high-paying work. The journalists all think you're an idiot, and the public thinks you're a walking symbol of excess." She grabs the door handle, and a smile appears on her face as she goes to face the mobs of camera-phone-armed New Yorkers. "Come on," she says. "I'm sitting next to Posh on Thursday, and I need an accessory."

After the show, she heads back out along the sidewalk. Of course she smiles for the benefit of the others, shaking hands with staff members and anyone else who happens to be nearby. Castle materializes from the crowd and follows at her shoulder, and she doesn't mind.

"You go through a lot of shoes," he mentions.

Kate glances down at those which currently adorn her feet. They are quartz contraptions, so low-heeled they might as well be flats, but they're supposed to look like glass slippers. She's getting paid about five hundred dollars to wear these shoes tonight, and the thought of diving into it like Scrooge McDuck reduces the discomfort. "Shut up," she says to Castle, still smiling.

Castle opens the back door for her. When she's made sure no one else can see, she rolls her eyes at him. She slides across the bench to make room for him, and he follows her in.

"Home," she tells the driver.

Laura, in the front seat, is almost smiling. The bun in her hair looks so tight it might well inhibit her facial expressions. She says, "That was very good. I didn't know he was going to bring up Mister Castle, but you handled it well."

Kate offers Castle both eyebrows raised. He makes his face as innocent as he can manage, and she can't help but laugh.

"Isn't it past your bedtime?" asks Kate.

Castle smiles. "Jordan took Alexis out tonight. I'm not expected until breakfast tomorrow."

"Jordan's your ex-wife?"

He bites off a laugh. "No. Jordan's a friend. An FBI agent I met doing research. She and Alexis get along really well."

The publicist frowns at her blackberry, and then presents it to Kate. "It's on your private number."

Kate's brow furrows as she takes the phone and presses the button to answer the call. "Hello?" she asks.

Castle glances at the publicist, whose face is blank, and then resumes watching his subject unapologetically.

"Mom," says Kate, "No, because it's just - well, obviously you watched it anyway. I'm on TV all the time - no, that's not what I meant, but - okay, that's not fair. You know that's - Mom. Mom. I'm hanging up, okay? I'll be by tomorrow, okay?" And she hangs up, and hands the phone back to her publicist.

When they pull up in front of her apartment, Kate turns to Castle. "Would you like to come up?" she asks.

"Would I?" he asks, and it's not even close to being a question.

He makes pancakes the next morning, which is pretty much expected. When she makes her way out of the bedroom at seven-thirty, he smiles and points to the huge stack sitting beside the stove.

"Looks good," she says.

And, though she's lost her makeup and her hair is a mess, he leers right at her. The half-open housecoat probably doesn't hurt. "Sure does," he says.

She groans. "Tell me that line doesn't actually work."

"It's great," he enthuses. "You know how bad it is, and it's still working on you!"

Kate smiles at that. She slides four pancakes right off the stack and onto her plate.

As she sits at the table, he turns to lean against the counter. "So," he says, "Was this a one-time thing, or am I supposed to call tonight?"

"How about you just come over again, instead of calling?"

Castle flashes his teeth. "It'll be tough, but I think I can manage."

She looks across at the two shoes that never made it to the rack where dozens of others are safely stowed. "You can stay for breakfast," she decides, "But I have to go see my parents later. And you have your daughter."

He makes, it turns out, fantastic pancakes. They taste like they were made for someone else, who isn't quite her, but might have been.

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