She looked quickly at Rachel, who’d walked up to the other side of the squarish table, leaning into it, like Jia and Rian were. What gives? she mouthed.

Rachel shrugged, but a worried look crossed her face.

Janet watched the interplay between Jia, Rachel, and Rian, from halfway down the bar area that had been hastily set up, while she huddled around another squarish table with Cindy, Jules, and Tina.

“So where was I?” Cindy asked the group, after her husband, Cris, walked off. He’d explained that he was briefly joining a group that had gathered over at the other end of the large living room, by floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Central Park. He promised Cindy that he wouldn’t tarry, though, as he was meeting Tiler in one of the rooms of the apartment adjoining Aerin’s penthouse to practice something that the father and daughter had come up with for the silver anniversary. (The apartment had belonged to Chris, Aerin’s former girlfriend, who’d died from cancer, and Chris had bequeathed the apartment to Aerin).

Earlier, after the DJ had called for a break, Logan and Bette had dropped in on the small group led by Tina and Cindy that had gravitated toward the dozen or so champagne bottles Logan had brought with him, now chilling atop a tub of ice. As Logan expertly popped a couple of bottles open to pass round, as Cris poured, Logan and Bette had managed to get Cris to admit that Cris had been one of the partners of a boutique investment firm that had successfully flipped a tech firm specializing in cloud-based solutions. He’d heard that the boutique firm had sold its interests to a retail giant in Europe that owned a variety of luxury-to-mid-priced-to-general brands. The retail giant had been interested in some of the tech firm’s proprietary price-gathering-and-quoting systems, and the boutique firm had done a good job in prepping the tech firm for the sale.

Cris had quietly confirmed to Logan, Bette, and Diane rumors that the boutique investment firm had made over six times its original investment in the tech firm in the process, which drew effusive praise from Logan and Diane. Bette cocked her head to one side, impressed. “That’s impressive. I must say, you are one of the few sports-jocks types I’ve heard about who have successfully transitioned to finance.   So your firm must have cleared, what, over $900 million?”