When they stepped through the double doors of the Grand Ballroom, it was all Jade could do from whistling: her mouth almost dropped as she looked around the two-tiered ballroom. A truly stunning setting, and elegantly decorated tonight with lilies, tulips, and other flowers that were favorites of the couple that had just wed at a moving ceremony outside City Hall.

“That’s a forty-four foot high ceiling and that chandelier’s custom-made, easily 16 feet in diameter,” Fabienne whispered. “My dad says it’s still one of the grand spaces in Manhattan.”

“I have to agree,” Jade said softly.

The reception was a glittery event, and despite the huge crowd, the grand ballroom accommodated all of them easily.

“I’m glad I wore the diamond set mom insisted I wear tonight,” Fabienne whispered excitedly as she quickly looked around.

Jade swallowed nervously, feeling out of her depth. Women were walking past dripping in jewelry while men lounged about in expensive, well cut suits. This was a notch above the charity ball that Fabienne had taken her to last Thanksgiving.

“I wonder where mom and dad are?” Fabienne muttered. She unclipped the lock of her handbag and pulled her cell. She started to text someone on her phone.

Somehow, that seems tacky in a setting like this, a fleeting thought crossed Jade’s mind as she continued to look around.

She noticed a lot of women were looking right back at her.

Oh, yeah! Remember to expect more lezzies around tonight than usual.

Jade extricated her arm from Fabienne’s grasp, and pulled out the embossed card from an inside pocket — they’d been given the card before they rode the elevator earlier, and it indicated the table number they were assigned to.

“Fabienne, why don’t we just look for our table and see if your parents will be in the same table?” she asked when Fabienne gave her a puzzled look.

She offered an arm to her girlfriend so that they could make their way around the tables, and look for their table.

When they found the table they saw that it was just off of the center of the action, in the right side of the ball room, in the middle row of tables. There was a couple seated in the table already, and Jade recognized the woman was the chief aide of the president of the university.