Ivan then smiled at Lucina as they held hands in the back.

“You know she asked me the big one, right?”

Lucina played coy with a grin of her own. “What big one?”

“She asked me who I was involved with,” Ivan informed her.

Lucina shrugged, no longer concerned about it. She had grown superbly comfortable with Ivan. They were business teammates as well as a couple. She fully accepted it.

“Everyone should know that by now,” she countered.

Ivan continued to smile. He said, “Then she asked me about kids and family.”

That got Lucina’s attention. “And what did you say to that?” she asked him.

“I said it’s a two-way street. Both parties have to be ready for that.”

Lucina grinned and turned away to look out the window. They were entering Interstate 5, headed north toward the private airport.

She looked back at Ivan and told him, “You keep being good to me and everything will happen in time.”

Ivan stared at her, eye to eye. He asked her, “You mean that?”

Lucina stared right back and nodded. “I do,” she answered.

Ivan continued to smile, loving the sound of it. I do, he repeated to himself.

He then nodded back to her with poise. He carefully squeezed her left hand in his right and told her, “Okay…we got a deal.” Then he sat back and relaxed in the comfortable leather seat of the Rolls-Royce…and he was no longer dreaming.

About the Author

Omar Tyree, the New York Times bestselling author, 2001 NAACP Image Award recipient, and 2006 Phillis Wheatley Literary Award winner, has published sixteen novels, five anthologies, a children’s book, and The Equation, a nonfiction work that describes the four indisputable components of successful business. In 2007, Tyree launched, with The Last Street Novel, his first “CinemaStory” of visual mastery, to jump-start an expanded career as a filmmaker. With Pecking Order, he continues in his books-to-film transition, while solidifying himself once again as the “godfather of contemporary urban literature.” He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

To learn more about Omar Tyree,

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