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curling my slender frame into a ball.
    Sudden applause pushed me back into the real world with a jolt. I opened my eyes and looked up to find Rah leaning against the ebony baby grand piano, his hands still clasped together.
    He’s my man, true enough, but I don’t like anyone messing with my time to dance.
    Nobody.
    “Hey, Rah, whassup?” I swallowed back my irritation.
    “Nothing. I was in Manhattan handling some business, so I dropped by to give you a ride home.”
    “Thanks, baby,” I said, turning my back to him as I rolled my eyes heavenward. I turned off the CD player and removed my disc.
    Inside I was pissed the hell off, but this man was my bread and butter right now. I put on this fake smile, pretending I’m happy to see his intruding ass.
    Rah was only twenty-seven, and he already owned several thriving businesses in Newark. There was the beauty supply store on Springfield Ave., the upscale clothing store on Broad Street downtown, and Sweet Things, the shoe store on Halsey Street. He took the money he had made slinging dope across the Tri-State area for the last ten and put it into profitable businesses.
    And I had to admit that the brotha was fine.
    He was six feet of solid muscle, and looking so good in a Sean John velour jogging suit. His platinum and diamond jewelry was sparkling like crazy. His “I don’t give a fuck” attitude, with that tilt to his chin and the hooded lids of his eyes, was what first drew me to him.
    I saw it in his eyes now that he was getting turned on looking at me in my tight-fitting leotards, but sex in the studio was a definite no-no. This was my private place. Mine alone.
    “Let me get my stuff.” I walked over to the corner where my purse and duffel bag sat. I pulled my pale blue JLo sweat suit over my dance clothes and pushed my feet into my newest pair of sneakers.
    “I got a surprise for you,” his deep voice echoed over to me.
    I looked up from my cell phone as I turned it back on. The smile on his handsome face—think Morris Chestnut—was teasing. I wondered if my surprise was the tropical strapless dress I showed him in BCBG last week. Or the ABS wrap dress at Saks. Or was it that cute Gucci camel hobo bag we saw at Short Hills Mall?
    “What is it?” I finally asked as we left the brick warehouse building together.
    “Patience,” was all he said.
    His silver Mercedes sat at the curb still as clean as the day he drove it off the lot. Our reflections shone in the polished chrome of his twenty-four-inch rims.
    As I climbed in, I peeped out the backseat for any signs of shopping bags, but I didn’t see a blessed thing except the usual CDs and Philly blunt cigars scattered about.
    “Come on, Rah. What’s my surprise?” I asked again, unable to fight my curiosity.
    Rah just smiled as he pulled into the busy New York traffic with a soft purr of the motor. He reached down on the side of his seat and tossed a bag of weed onto my lap. “Roll one for me, baby.”
    I did a double take. True, back in high school I smoked weed like that shit was my lifesaver, but I slowed up on it big-time once I started college. I smoked it only twice with Rah back when we first got together, but no more since. My plan for success, remember?
    Hell, back when I was smoking Dom under the table, I still wasn’t the type of chick to get excited over a man giving me weed.
    Was this fool for real or just stupid?
    Even as I busted the cigar down the middle with my thumbnail and emptied the leaves out the window to scatter in the wind behind us, I was steady thinking, This better not be my surprise ’cause he know I don’t play this dumb shit.
    Our relationship worked so well for me because he liked to give and I loved to receive. We were a perfect match on that point, right?
    “ This is my surprise?” I asked.
    “Hell no. Patience, remember?”
    Rah drove his whip smoothly through the New York traffic and into New Jersey, smoking the entire blunt by himself like it was a cigarette. He