Page 2 of Igniting Sparks

“Why does Mina suddenly need a husband?” Ori inquires.

“It’s part of the stipulation for Mina taking over the dance studio.”

Ori covers her mouth, a bark of laughter escaping. “I thought you were joking when you said that.”

Sadly, I wasn’t.

My great-aunt is a pillar of the community here in Sparkwood, with some questionable ideals about the role a woman should play in society. Skating through life untethered is not an option and, in her estimation, I’m already over the hill at twenty-five.

“Trust me, she’s serious.” My mom pulls out her phone. “She even spelled it out in an email, sent by her attorney, no less.”

“Let me get this straight.” Ori props her elbows on the table and quirks her mouth in a lopsided smirk. “In order for you to take over your aunt’s dance studio, you need to get married? What does one have to do with the other?”

“Not a damn thing,” my mother replies. “It’s Bitsy’s way of exerting control. She failed with me, so she’s hoping to sink her hooks into my daughter.”

“I’d tell her to back the hell up and learn her place,” Ori mutters.

“Seriously, Mom. It’s not worth it.”

“Isn’t it? Mina, this is your chance to return to the world of dance, in a well-established studio with a long list of clients.” My mother grasps my hand, giving it a squeeze. “You’d be set for life—in a way your dad and I could never offer.”

There it is—the guilt bubbling just below my mother’s calm façade. The long-held belief that her marrying a blue-collar mechanic had relegated me to a life of mediocrity.

My mother grew up in the lap of luxury, a beloved member of the Farnsworth family.

Yes,thoseFarnsworths. The ones who party on yachts andown private islands in the Caribbean. The family who rubs elbows with royalty and celebrities alike.

That’s my family.

Or they were until my mother married my father and the Farnsworth clan disowned her.

Seems the Mercer family, aka my father’s brood, was nowhere near good enough to rub elbows with Sparkwood’s elite.

My mother didn’t care. She followed her heart and abandoned her pedigree.

While my mother grew up in a mansion on the mountainside, I grew up in a Tudor in town. She had a yacht named after her, and I had a canoe my father built.

The funny thing? I had a far happier childhood. Hell, I didn’t know my mother had any family until we ran into them at a town festival when I was five.

My great-aunt Bitsy was curt and cold to me, so I opted to twirl in the grass while my mother engaged in stilted conversation.

That twirling changed everything.

Bitsy noticed my innate grace and balance, something she too possessed after years as a dancer.

But I’d never had a single lesson.

Per her words, I possessed natural talent, and that talent was something she planned to nurture.

So, with my parent’s permission, she enrolled me in her dance studio, and I spent the next seventeen years honing my craft, until that fateful day when my balance didn’t hold and my dreams of a career in dance shattered.

Now, I have a path back to the world I love, but at what cost?

“Forgive me for stating the obvious, but won’t your aunt know you’re trying to pass off your cousin as a husband?” Ori asks, arching her brow at me.

“Greg is on my father’s side. Bitsy doesn’t know any ofthem. Doesn’t make it any less weird, though.” Huffing out a breath, I twist the napkin in my hands, my anxiety growing by the second. “Shit. I can’t even find a boyfriend, and now I need a husband?”

My mother chews her lip, contemplating our sad array of options. “Ori, what about Ash? Would he step in and help Mina out?”