Discovery at the Lovelock Inn (Valentine Key Book 2), page 1
Discovery at the Lovelock Inn
Valentine Key, Book 2
Katie Prescott
Scott Street & Second Publishing
Copyright © 2024 Katie Prescott
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, organizations, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to a real person, living or dead is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
About The Author
Books In This Series
Books By This Author
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Prologue
The day after meeting her newly discovered niece, Marigold Roselli—or Mari, as she preferred to be called—Lily Lovelock set about rectifying some things.
The first item on her to-do list that needed to be done immediately was to write Marigold a letter. She had sent all of her nieces a letter with a personal note attached several months before the reading of her brother’s will. All but Mari.
She hadn’t known about Mari then.
She wondered what in the world she would say to her newest and youngest niece for the personal part of the letter. She didn’t know the girl very well, of course. Horatio had seen to that.
Ah, well. She’d just have to figure it out and wing it.
Lily rolled her eyes at the foolishness Horatio had brought to all of them at the reading of his last will and testament. It was not the first time she’d rolled her eyes at her older brother.
Never in his presence; she wasn’t foolish. That would not have gone over well with her brother or with anyone else in her family. Even so, while she didn’t approve of a lot of what Horatio did, he was her brother and she respected him.
Expressing her true feelings regarding Horatio’s treatment of his daughters would have only caused a disagreement between them. Given how he’d acted when he was alive, it had never been a good time to disagree with him.
Now Horatio was gone. He had lived his life the way he wanted to live it, no matter what anybody else said. She guessed there was something to be said for being so stalwart in one’s opinions as to clearly not care what anyone thought.
Still, she was really angry at him for never telling anyone about the existence of Marigold Roselli. Was it his stupid manly pride that prevented him from admitting to an affair and then the shameful way he’d abandoned his youngest child and her mother? Probably, but she could only guess.
Lily tried to understand why her brother was the way he was, especially with regard to his daughters. There wasn’t really that much to understand. It was family pressure. The older Horatio got, the more rigid he became, and the more dug in he got about doing his part to live up to the legacy of Lovelock Enterprises by providing a son and heir.
Every single man who had ever been in charge of Lovelock Enterprises insisted that only a son was worthy of helming the family’s vast business interests. Horatio was no different.
Well, maybe that was the way it had been for two centuries, but as far as Lily was concerned, these days, women could and had run all manner of companies, big and small, with great success.
Lily had been running a prestigious inn just fine for forty years. At least she had until recently. She shouldn’t cast stones.
Her brother certainly had different ideas about family relationships and the way they should be managed. She did not care for his way. Not at all. In Lily’s humble opinion, he had not treated his girls the way he should have. Not the way Lily would have, if she’d been able.
Perhaps she should have tried harder to convince Horatio to allow them to spend more time with her. It was just that she was so busy with the Lovelock Inn. In the end, she supposed, she was no better than Horatio. She’d put her business before her family. She was just as guilty as he was of the girls’ neglect from their father’s side of the family.
But that was all water under the bridge. She’d done the best she could by them. It was too late now to change anything.
Horatio had largely ignored all six of them—no, it was seven girls; Lily need to remember that—for decades. And then, well past the eleventh hour, he used his will to dump an outrageous challenge on them: For each daughter to run a business of his choosing in Valentine Key for one year, with the prize being a single non-voting seat on the board of the company he’d shut them out of. She thought it was beyond the pale.
Why had he done it after he was gone and wouldn’t see the impact, good or bad, once the challenge he’d issued was complete? Lily truly did not understand why it had to be the way he had laid it out in his will.
Lily supposed he had his reasons, as incomprehensible as they were to her. She knew her brother as a savvy businessman. He never did anything without a purpose. She should trust in that, if nothing else. He had been very good to her when they were younger. And she’d loved him and had no doubt that he had loved her, in his own way.
Horatio had never been demonstrative in his affections for anyone except his first wife, Isabella, and that had been so long ago. He’d also adored Victoria when she was a baby. Lily remembered him looking at his eldest daughter with wonder.
That was back before the tragedies happened, shaping their lives and turning them all in a different direction.
Lily had been the youngest of three children in the Lovelock family.
Her eldest brother, Sebastian, had never had much time for her. Their mother, Nora, had died when Lily was ten years old and still in elementary school. That was only the first of the tragedies that had shaped her life. Her mother’s death had been a lingering one, from cancer. It had been terrible to watch her waste away slowly and in pain.
Lily shook off the horrible memory, saddened even after all these years.
Sebastian had spent most of his time with their father, Silas, learning how to run Lovelock Enterprises. Silas was a cold man who had little time for anyone but his heir.
That meant Lily and Horatio had grown up together as more than siblings, as pals and confidants. They had become especially close after their mother passed away. Horatio had even fallen in love with Lily’s best friend, Isabella.
Then Sebastian died, and the crushing weight of the responsibility for Lovelock Enterprises had fallen on Horatio’s shoulders.
At least when he had been left in charge of the family business, he was in a position to be very kind to Lily. He had stood by her through the worst betrayal of her life and helped set her up on Valentine Key with the Lovelock Inn.
If he had not been there to support and encourage her, Lily would not have been able to make this life she’d lived happen. For that alone, Lily would always be grateful to her big brother.
As Horatio had stood by her when her life had taken a turn, so would she stand by his daughters.
She looked down at the blank page, waiting for the perfect words to pen for Mari and welcome her one step closer to the bosom of the Lovelock women.
Also on Lily’s to-do list was finding out Mari’s favorite flower and her favorite color. Once she had that information, she could make her youngest niece a special quilt and embroider a set of towels for her.
Lily had done the same for all of her nieces when they’d been old enough to appreciate it. And they all had been very thankful for her efforts. Whenever they arrived to visit her on Valentine Key, each girl always demanded, “Where is my special quilt and towels, Aunt Lily?”
Mari wouldn’t be staying at the Lovelock Inn like all the other girls had, using their special quilts and towel sets on their visits during summer vacation, but Lily would make them so Mari could have them.
It would make Lily feel so much better if she could accomplish that one thing for Mari. She wanted the young woman to feel like all the other girls. She didn’t want Mari ever to feel left out, even though her existence had been a mystery to them all until the reading of the will.
Lily shook her head.
Well, she would do everything in her power to ensure that Mari felt loved and a part of the Lovelock family.
Yes, she would.
Chapter One
Valentine Key Public Library
Three months after the reading of the will – specifically, the first Tuesday of the month.
Mari watched as her eldest sister, Victoria Lovelock, got up to stand at the front of the small room they’d booked at the library. This was the first official meeting of the Seven Sisters Council.
That was what they’d decided to name themselves as they had all texted each other while making their way to Valentine Key, Florida, over the past couple of months to take up their late father’s challenge.
Victoria was the only child from their father’s first marriage, which had left him a widower. Horatio’s second wife, Kelly, was the mother of Colleen Lovelock, Darby Tyler and Evaline Lovelock. After that marriage ended in divorce, Horatio married Sunshine, who was the mother of twins Jessica and Jacklyn. Then there was Mari, the only Lovelock daughter born, as it were, out of wedlock.
It had been a shock to find out at the reading of the will that not only had Mari’s father not died tragically before she was born, as her late mother had implied, but she had six older half-sisters. Perhaps the bigger shock was how welcoming they had all been to the surprise sister shoved into their midst.
Nervous as she was, Mari looked forward to getting to know these women better. They’d certainly have time to do it over the next year while they all figured out how to run businesses they knew nothing about.
Victoria had agreed, as the eldest Lovelock sister, to be the one to kick off each gathering, regardless of who needed the most help or if one of the women had anything specific to talk about. They had voted her in as the permanent mistress of ceremonies.
Mari appreciated that. She didn’t want to have to rotate that chore around month to month, only to live in dread for the time when it was her turn to be the hostess. She did not feel like she was hostess material in any sense of the word.
While the sisters planned to hold their meetings at the library on a monthly basis, they’d kicked around the idea of meeting at other places around town as needed, such as at each other’s homes, if an emergency gathering was called for.
Now that they were all living on Valentine Key, the clock had started ticking on the year they had to meet Horatio’s Lovelock’s challenge.
Darby, the third eldest Lovelock sister, was the only one of the seven who’d called Valentine Key home when their father threw down the proverbial gauntlet at the reading of the will. Darby and her husband had deep ties in the town. They ran a convenience store they’d taken over from his parents and he was a member of the town council.
Mari had convinced herself that her new Valentine Key apartment was too small to accommodate more than four people comfortably at a time, unless they used the standing-room-only method of meeting.
At least that was the joke she’d told everyone to get out of inviting them over.
In truth, her little one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment was absolutely perfect for her. She liked it a lot better than the place she’d had in Chicago. In a pinch, she could have accommodated all six of her sisters at her place, but she was too shy to volunteer to host them. Maybe she would feel differently once she got to know them all better.
Victoria clapped her hands together once as if to call them to order. Mari put her focus back on the front of the room.
“Show of hands—who has already had a major crisis on Day One of taking over your business?” Victoria raised her arm high in the air. No one else did. She made a face. “So I’m alone. I guess that figures.”
She spoke before Mari could raise her own hand, and now she felt self-conscious about doing it, so she kept her hand down. Her assigned business, Down To A Fine Heart, an art gallery and studio, had been challenging on her first day in a way she couldn’t have anticipated. She had been forced to deal with a difficult, snobby art acquisition person. To say their meeting had been unpleasant was an understatement.
“What on Earth happened?” Darby asked.
Victoria put her arm down. “Well, when I went to introduce myself at The Olive Tree Taverna, I mentioned to the staff and the chef that I’d be their new manager going forward for the next year.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Mari asked. She looked around to see if anyone else knew why that would be bad. Her other sisters shrugged.
“Oh, not much. Just that the volatile and emotional chef Horatio hired to put the restaurant on the map had a huge hissy fit in front of everyone, threw his chef’s hat on the ground, stomped on it and quit on the spot.”
There were several sharp intakes of breath.
“And since I’m the shiny new manager of the restaurant, it’s my problem to solve. My first question for the night is, do any of you have any Mediterranean recipes you’d like to share? Asking for a friend.”
All the sisters laughed. Mari had known the basics of what had happened before the Seven Sisters Council meeting but not about the hissy fit. Victoria had told Mari she’d had to plead with the temperamental chef to stay.
She and Victoria had been a tight group of two since they’d returned to Valentine Key a couple of weeks ago. They called themselves The Orphan Sisters. Colleen, Darby and Evaline were The Trio, while Jessica and Jacklyn were, fittingly, The Twins.
“What did you do?” Colleen asked, grinning.
Mari noted that her skin was glowing. Colleen’s skin was always glowing. She might be the eldest of The Trio, but she looked more than good. Mari would have to remember to ask her what her secret was.
Victoria rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I practically had to get down on my knees with folded hands and beg him to stay. And I really hated to do that.” Victoria folded her hands in demonstration, but didn’t fall to her knees.
When Victoria had described the confrontation to Mari before the meeting, she’d been impressed by the way her eldest sister used her smarts to get the chef in line.
“Did he?” Colleen asked. “Stay, I mean.”
Victoria nodded. “For now. But my initial begging did not move Chef Arlo. I had to cite chapter and verse of a pivotal portion of his contract, stating that if he left before the end of his first year, he not only wouldn’t get any kind of a glowing recommendation from me or the owner, he also wouldn’t get the lavish bonus he was promised when he was hired.”
“That is unbelievable,” Colleen said. “He gets a bonus after a year?”
Victoria nodded. “I know, right? It still makes me mad that my chef is such a diva, but to find out he has such a big golden parachute in his deal? I don’t know what Horatio was thinking.”
“Exactly. What is this, a sports team or something? He gets a bonus even if he quits after a year? That’s ludicrous.” Darby shook her head.
“I agree,” Mari said, speaking up from her seat in the front row. “But a similar deal was struck with the lead art acquisition consultant at Down To A Fine Heart.”
“Really?” Colleen asked. “Another supersized contract for an employee?”
Mari nodded. “Yes. If he stays for a year, which is really only another nine months, since he started working for the gallery three months ago. Even if the guy quits after he’s stayed on the job for the length of his contract, he gets a nice stack of money. If I want him to stay longer than the year, I have to make a new deal with him. I can’t imagine his price will go down. We’ll have to see what happens then. I’m not even sure I want him to stay.”
Mari felt the same way Victoria did regarding the contracts Horatio had signed to set up this “friendly competition” for the sisters. It seemed a bit over the top, but their father likely had his reasons. She doubted they would ever know what he’d been thinking.
If Mari had her way, she’d fire the arrogant art acquisition consultant as soon as possible. After reading that particular contract over a few times, she figured she was stuck with him.
“I can’t believe this.” Darby said. “That’s crazy. I didn’t have that problem with Racing Hearts Rentals. Then again, I don’t have anyone doing anything special besides me. No temperamental chefs or stuffy consultants. I just talk to mopeds, electric bicycles and golf carts all day.”
