A Party in a Stone

Published by: eXtasy Books

Author : Lark Westerly

ISBN :978-1-4874-4331-3

Page :173

Word Count :45200

Publication Date :2025-06-11

Series : #

Heat Level :

Available Formats :

Category : Fantasy Romance , Romance , Mainstream Fiction , What's New

BrandsExtasy Books
Product Code: 978-1-4874-4331-3

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Anastasia Blugle believed she had found the perfect companion in Dequan. When it all fell apart, Annie threw herself into building her fitness business and befriending a group of women with one thing in common. They were all ex-girlfriends of Dequan Qin.

Anastasia Blugle loves stones that sparkle with colour—what her grandad calls a party in a stone. While she waits to acquire one, Anastasia lives an active life. Most of her friends have trouble keeping up with her.

When Anastasia meets Dequan, she seems to have found the perfect companion. Dequan has a territorial cousin and an obsession in his past, but nobody’s perfect. He even supports her ambition to become a personal trainer.

Then something happens, and Anastasia sees her bright future crumbling around her. She still had her ambition, so she sets up her business, trading as Annie Blue. Befriending Dequan’s exes gives Annie a solid sisterhood, but one day she gets a phone call from a stranger.

Anastasia Blugle, understandably, had an issue with her name.

She found it inconvenient to inhabit.

“Name?”

“Anastasia Blugle.”

Incomprehension. “Er—”

“Anastasia Blugle.”

“Anastasia Bugle…”

“Blugle.”

“Blur…”

“’Blu’ as in ‘blue,’ and ‘gle’ as in ‘eagle.’”

Faces would clear.

“Anastasia Beagle.”

“No, b-loo. Blue-gle.”

And then of course they’d spell it with an E. Or, occasionally, a well-read person would wonder aloud if she was related to Ernestine Bugle from the Anne books and be pleased to have made such an erudite quip. (Surely no one else would have thought of that one!)

Her first name was also a challenge. Anastasia used to lay odds on whether they’d treat it with a C or an S. She tried prompting them by saying it ended with “Asia,” but they usually considered that a political statement.

Anastasia took it philosophically. She couldn’t blame them for the confusion because, despite her assiduous search of surname lists and etymologies, she had never found hers. Even Bugle was rare—more so than Bugler. Blugle just didn’t exist.

She’d asked, of course. Her dad, Mick, a phlegmatic football devotee, said he thought it was a corruption of a foreign name misheard, mispronounced, or maybe misunderstood back in colonial times.

Anastasia signed into Bloodlines and pursued the tiny Blugle family back to 1799, when a man calling himself, or maybe being called, Aleksander Blugle had arrived unwillingly in Botany Bay. His name, written in assertive strokes in brown blotty ink, appeared in a few records, with his first name acquiring and losing an X, a CK, and a double S more or less randomly. That troublesome B had a large smudge at the top of the earliest representation, and Anastasia decided it had probably once been an F until a fly walked through the ink and got squashed en route. Or something like that.

Flugle was a name, though a horribly uncommon one, with a single living exponent in the USA.

Still, in the country of the blind and all that…

Anastasia gave up after this. She had an enquiring turn of mind, but she was much more interested in kinetics than in linguistic blind alleys. She reasoned, along with Mick, that if it was good enough for Grandad Petre, it was good enough for them.

Petre—not Peter, as he sometimes bothered to explain—had a Russian maternal grandmother who, though long-dead by the time her great-great-granddaughter was born, was indirectly responsible for Anastasia’s name. Olga, she’d been called, but Anastasia’s mum had refused that fence point blank. If a grand duchess had to be involved in her daughter’s name, then at least it ought to be a prettily-named one.

Anastasia agreed. She wouldn’t have wanted to be an Olga Blugle. Definitely not. Someone might have decided to nickname her Olga the Brolga and sung the Brolga Boatman song at her.

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