Page 48 of Belong to Me
"Hi." He stopped at her desk. His smile was warm. Disarming. "I'm told this is where I come if the casino is becoming a problem."
Mia blinked. It was the most self-aware opening line any client had given her all morning, and she'd been doing this for approximately four hours.
"You're in the right place." She pulled an intake form toward her. "I'll need some details. First name?"
"Morgan."
"Last name?"
"Is that strictly necessary?" His smile widened, engineered to make you trust the person wearing it. Warm without being pushy. Open without being desperate. "I'd rather not have my family's name on a gambling addiction form. You understand."
She did understand. Monaco was a small place, and the people who came to Ace Royale were the sort whose surnames made headlines. "We can start with first name only. I'll need it eventually, but there's no rush."
"Morgan, then." He sat down across from her. His posture was relaxed. His hands rested on the arms of the chair, and his fingers were long and clean and perfectly still. "And you are?"
"Mia. I'm new. As of this morning. So if I do anything wrong, that's why, and I apologise in advance."
He laughed. It was an easy sound, natural and generous, and she found herself smiling back. "I doubt you'll do anything wrong, Mia."
"You don't know me yet. Give it time."
She walked him through the intake questions. History of gambling, frequency, amounts. He answered each one with a candour that was almost disarming, his tone light but honest, as if he found the whole exercise vaguely amusing rather than distressing. He'd been playing too much, he told her. Roulette, mostly. It was the aesthetics of it he loved, the spin of the wheel, the collective intake of air around the table. The money was irrelevant.
"It's the anticipation." Something moved behind his blue eyes that she couldn't read. "The moment before the ball drops. That's what I can't stop chasing."
"That's actually really common," Mia told him, scribbling on the form. "The dopamine hit is in the anticipation, not the result. Dr. Vasquez can explain the neuroscience better than I can, but basically your brain gets more excited about the possibility of winning than the actual win."
"Fascinating." His gaze was on her face. Attentive. Present. "You seem to know a lot for someone who started four hours ago."
"I read ahead. I'm an aggressive preparer. I once read three textbooks before the first day of a class that turned out to be cancelled."
He smiled again. "I like you, Mia."
The words were simple. Friendly. There was nothing in his tone that set off any alarm, nothing predatory or inappropriate. He was a charming man who had walked into a clinic and offered something kind, and she appreciated it, because her morning had been long and her coffee-to-stress ratio was unfavourable and it was nice to interact with someone who didn't need her to explain the espresso machine.
"I'll set you up with a counsellor," she told him. "Tuesdays and Thursdays work best for most people, but we can be flexible."
"Tuesdays and Thursdays." He stood. His movements were unhurried. "I look forward to it."
He left as he'd come, easy and golden and smiling at Dr. Vasquez on his way out. Mia filed his intake form in the stack with the others and went back to work.
She didn't think about him again.
She opened the desk drawer. Checked her phone.
Nothing.
ALEXEI
He found her at four o'clock.
He hadn't gone searching. That was what he told himself, and it was almost true. He had a meeting on the casino floor at three-thirty, and the meeting ran long, and the corridor between the VIP lounge and the east exit happened to pass the clinic, and the clinic door happened to be open, and she happened to be there.
She was behind the intake desk with a pen behind her ear and a coffee cup that was definitely more milk than coffee and a stack of forms in front of her, and she was talking to a man.
Blond. Blue-eyed. Young enough to be appropriate. Leaning against the desk with his arms crossed, saying something that made her laugh, and his posture was angled toward her, body language that read I'm not leaving yet, and Mia was smiling up at him with the open, unguarded warmth that she gave to everyone because that was who she was, she gave warmth to everyone, it meant nothing, it was just Mia being Mia—
His hands went to fists at his sides.
