“Come to mama,” I said.

I didn’t focus on the guy who dropped into the seat at the machine next to mine right away, though I got a glimpse of him in my peripheral vision as soon as he sat down.

He was good-looking, probably in his late thirties, with a head of sleek, light brown hair and the kind of body you have to sweat for, often and hard. I wanted to ignore him, but I could tell by the way he kept shifting around and glancing my way that he wanted to talk.

Shit, I thought.

“I’m just waiting for a spot to open at one of the poker tables,” he said.

“Mmm-hmm,” I replied, hoping he’d take the hint and leave me alone. Watching the reels spin is a form of meditation for me, and I like to focus. It unscrambles my brain in a way nothing else does, except maybe really good sex, and even on a generous gambling budget, it’s a lot cheaper than therapy.

Come to think of it, it’s cheaper than really good sex, too, from an emotional standpoint.

“I think I’ve seen you somewhere before.” Mr. Smooth.

I suppressed an eye-roll and pushed the spin button with a little more force than necessary. He wasn’t even pretending to play his slot machine anymore; just leaning against the supporting woodwork, with his arms folded.

“I get that all the time,” I said tersely. “I must be a type.”

He chuckled. It was a rich, confident sound, low in timbre, and it struck some previously unknown chord deep inside me. It could have been fear, it could have been annoyance. All I knew was, it wasn’t anything sexual; I’m a one-man woman, even when the man in question is thoroughly unavailable. “And not a very friendly one, either,” he observed.

I gave him a brief look. Ever since the first Nick episode, I hadn’t trusted my own eyeballs. “You’re not dead, are you?”

He shrank back, but with a grin, and extended one hand. “What a question,” he said. “Do you run into a lot of dead people?”

I ignored the hand, took in his boyish face, his wide-set, earnest gray eyes, his strong jaw. In the next moment, I leaped out of my chair and backed up a couple of steps. I know my eyes were wide, and my voice came out as a squeak.

“Geoff!”

My parent-murdering, cat-killing half brother contrived to look affably mystified, and threw my own line back in my face. “I must be a type,” he said. “My name isn’t Geoff. It’s Steve. Steve Roberts.” He actually fished for his wallet then, as though prepared to show me his driver’s license or something, and prove his identity.