“It looks like a good night in store for us,” one of the valet guys commented.

“I wouldn’t mind an event like this every weekend,” another valet joked. Six of them were all busy on duty that night as the luxury cars of well-dressed passengers continued to drive up.

AT HIS APARTMENT, less than ten minutes away from the Hyatt hotel, Ivan squirted Giorgio Armani cologne onto his wrists and rubbed it into both sides of his neck before his cell phone rang from his hip.

He looked at the phone call and read Lucina’s number. It was a quarter to ten. She wanted them both to arrive at the hotel no later than ten, after the opening of the doors at nine. Several of her more experienced girls would do the hosting until they arrived.

“You’re right on time again,” Ivan commented.

“Yes, of course. Are you ready?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right down in a minute.”

“Okay, because we only have a minute to waste.”

Ivan shook his head and hung up. Lucina could be as anal as a drill sergeant.

Down in the parked limo in front of his apartment building, she sat patiently in the backseat, wearing a black and gold Oscar de la Renta dress and gold and onyx jewelry, with a Gucci watch, a small black purse, and black heels.

Ivan climbed into the back of the limo in his own impressive clothes and looked Lucina up and down.

“Damn,” he told her, “now you got me looking all underdressed.”

“You do not look underdressed, Ivan. You look very nice,” she assured him.

He said, “I don’t look nothing close to you.”

“Yes, you do, we both have on plenty of black,” she told him. “And we’re not supposed to look too close. We want to look like a partnership, but not a couple. So you have your style of dress, and I have mine.”

Ivan looked at her and frowned. He said, “Shit, Lucina, this is all your style. You picked all of this shit out.”

“Ivan, you watch your mouth before you step out of this car and walk into this big event,” she warned him. “It’s good to be yourself, but never be too brash.”

Ivan looked at her and deadpanned, “Fuck ’em all, baby, we don’t need ’em. We can take the world, just me and you.”

Lucina stared at him and told him that it was not funny. But when he refused to look away from her, she cracked a smile.

“Unh-hunh, there’s the smile. I knew you had it in you,” he teased her.

She said, “Because you’re crazy.”