Return to the Lovelock Inn (Valentine Key Book 1)

​Prologue

Prologue

Lily Violette Lovelock sighed as she looked out one of the kitchen windows that flooded the cheery room with sunlight. Absently, she pinched the dead blooms from the pots of African violets on the wide sill above the sink.

Spring was on the horizon. It was almost time to start getting ready for the busy season. Guests would be arriving at the Lovelock Inn on Valentine Key very soon.

A fair number of lodgers spent time here during the winter months, longer than just a week-long vacation or weekend getaway.

Lots of those long-term guests who started out as snowbirds, practically living for months at the Lovelock Inn, eventually found homes in town. But those folks who left the inn to buy homes on Valentine Key hadn’t slowed her business.

Not until the last several years, anyway.

While there were still a few stalwart longtime guests who never missed a summer at her famed Lovelock Inn in the lower Florida Keys, Lily was willing to admit that number had dwindled, and her bottom line was feeling the pressure.

The lessening number of guests had sort of creeped up on her, until one day she realized she was only at two-thirds capacity during her high season. It was enough to pay the bills in the short term, but not enough to carry her through the lean months to the next season.

By the time she realized how low the number of her regular clientele had dropped, she felt like it would be a monumental task for reservations to recover to the level of the inn’s former bounty.

Plus, there were other things to consider.

For all its Old World beauty, the Lovelock Inn needed updating. Lily knew that. The cosmetic updates were on her to-do list, along with quite a few maintenance things that absolutely needed to be done. She was willing to admit her to-do list had been ignored for too long. And that list had grown, year to year, until she was afraid to look at it.

Every year, she promised herself that this would be the year she’d tackle that long to-do list and cross off a few items, vowing she’d do the rest soon. But soon never seemed to come and, every year, she’d fail to get anything substantial done.

As a result, she fell further and further behind on her tasks until that ever-growing to-do list had become a maybe-do list. Now, it was practically a stop-lying-to-yourself-Lily list.

She held deep pride that the family name’s prestige had endured for so long, both for her business and in town. Two-thirds capacity was better than nothing and the Lovelock Inn was profitable, even if barely. For now. But not for much longer.

She honestly had no idea how much longer to she could keep up appearances, let alone pay all the bills.

She loved Valentine Key, which lay an hour north of Key West on the only road that linked the Florida Keys with the mainland. It was where Lily had spent the majority of the past forty-five years on this Earth.

More specifically, she had spent that time as the proprietress of the Lovelock Inn. The place had started out as Lily’s salvation after a terrible, life-altering romantic betrayal when she had so desperately needed to focus on something, anything, else.

She shook her head as if that would shake the thought right out of it, not wanting to go down that particular memory lane and mentally relive that terrible chapter of her life.

Lily had been here for the birth of the Lovelock Inn. She’d witnessed its transformation from some survey stakes on a scrubby piece of land on a secluded island in the Keys with a lovely view, to the stately mega-mansion it had become. It looked precisely like the Italian villa she’d pictured when her brother first talked to her about the project.

And with a family name like Lovelock, the inn could not have been set anywhere other than Valentine Key, so-named by the island’s founder because of its heart-like shape on the map. It was a short, squat, off-center heart, but a heart it was.

Back when the Lovelock Inn had been built, the town of Valentine Key had been little more than a handful of businesses and a few dozen small homes scattered around the island. The businesses had catered to the many tourists who stopped along their way south from mainland Florida to Key West, when the only place to stay in town was the Valentine Key Motel.

Once the Lovelock Inn opened its doors, Valentine Key became a travel destination, not just a stop along the way.

The motel was still there, right off the exit to the main drag of downtown Valentine Key. Unlike the inn, it had changed hands more times than Lily could count on her fingers and toes.

She couldn’t really say why. It wasn’t like the motel was a rathole. It simply appealed to a different vacation crowd than the majestic Lovelock Inn.

Until the last few years, there had been more than enough business for the inn and the motel. Had the motel seen a drop in guests, too? Or was it only the Lovelock Inn?

Lily rinsed her hands in the sink, dried them on a well-worn kitchen towel embroidered along one edge with the Lovelock Inn’s logo, the once-vibrant threads fading. She retrieved her lightly steaming cup of tea from the table and headed toward her writing desk in her private parlor. Time to finish the letter to her nieces. Or rather, letters.

She settled into her cushioned chair at the antique desk that was older than she was. Placing her tea on a coaster to protect the old wood, she drew out the first almost-blank page and her favorite pen.

She didn’t look out the windows at the sun-drenched view of another gorgeous morning in the Keys. She knew herself well enough to admit that she would easily fall into a bout of procrastination if she did. While she loved her nieces, she detested what she had to tell them.

The girls would all be returning to Valentine Key for the reading of their father’s will. It had been almost a year since her older brother, Horatio Beauregard Lovelock, had passed away unexpectedly.

Likely it wouldn’t have been such a shock if she’d been aware of his deteriorating health. But Lily hadn’t seen him in person for quite a few months before he died. It had been decades since she’d last been to Philadelphia, and she had no plans to return there anytime soon. Since Horatio well knew that, he had always come to see Lily, not the other way around, whenever he had papers for Lily to sign regarding her shares in Lovelock Enterprises.

Or he used to. In the months leading up to his death, instead of coming to Valentine Key himself, Horatio had started sending his trusty lawyer and right-hand man, Miles Lang. Though Horatio had become rather joyless over the years, she thought some of Miles’s trips were more to check up on Lily’s well-being for her brother than because her signature needed to be witnessed. It would be very much in character for Horatio, a man with almost a pathological need for control.

Lily’s stake in Lovelock Enterprises was a small slice compared to the entirety of the successful family empire her brother had run for decades, since the death of their father, Silas Lovelock.

There was no need for Horatio to see her in person as much as he had over the years, even if he had taken on more of their father’s less-than-pleasant characteristics as he aged.

Lily shook her head in an effort to stall a trip down yet another unwanted memory lane. Silas Ezra Lovelock had been a hard man. A man without much love in his heart for anyone or anything, with the exception of the family business. Not even his children rated much care.

No. She definitely would not take that mental side trip.

She wanted to think of something good, so she thought about Horatio’s daughters. She put her mind and her focus on the five sweet nieces she hadn’t seen in too long and on Darby, the one niece she was fortunate to see often.

Soon, all her nieces would have to come back to Valentine Key for the reading of the will and discover the surprises it held for them.

Darby Tyler, the middle child of Horatio’s second wife, Kelly Lovelock Abbott, lived in downtown Valentine Key with her family. She and her husband owned Heart’s Desire, a convenience store, and they had four wonderful daughters.

Colleen was the eldest of Kelly’s daughters and Evaline the youngest. They both lived in Philadelphia, as did their mother, who’d married another Philadelphia businessman after her divorce from Horatio when Evaline was barely two years old.

Victoria, the eldest of the Lovelock sisters, lived in New York City. Her mother, Isabella Lovelock, had been Lily’s very best friend in the world.

Isabella, had died way too young. Victoria had been nearly four when her mother had passed away. Tragic, was what that loss had been, for little Victoria, for Lily and for Horatio, who was never the same afterward.

The twins, Jessica and Jacklyn, had grown up in Chicago with their mother, Sunshine Lovelock. Sunshine had kept in touch with Lily not only for the twins’ sake but because she was a genuinely warm, sweet woman.

Lily felt that the main reason Sunshine had never remarried was that she was left too broken-hearted when her relationship with Horatio ended so soon after the twins were born.

Sunshine’s parents had been bona fide hippies. She’d grown up in an honest-to-goodness commune in Southern California. Lily hadn’t known it while Horatio and Sunshine were married, only finding out much later when the twins had come for one of their annual summer visits.

Lily was certain she was not the only one who’d been surprised to learn that tidbit of information.

She had no doubt that if Horatio had known about Sunshine’s unconventional upbringing, he might not have married her. He’d always been staid and proper, and had only become more so over the years. Those two had definitely been a case of opposites attracting. But that was water long under the bridge.

From things Jessica and Jacklyn had let slip during their visits to Valentine Key before they’d grown up enough to learn some discretion, Lily had the distinct impression that though Horatio ended the marriage, Sunshine had never fallen out of love with him. Or at least she remained hopeful he’d come back to her one day. That, of course, had never happened. As Lily knew, her brother never changed his mind once he’d come to a decision, wrong-headed or not.

The way he’d treated his daughters was one of those very wrong-headed things, as she’d told him more than once. Lily couldn’t have loved those girls more if they were own. She wanted to do what she could, little as it was, to prepare her nieces for a few of the surprises they faced. She didn’t know all the details of what would be revealed in her brother’s will, but she knew enough.

Any inheritances they received would come with conditions. Knowing Horatio Lovelock as they all certainly did, maybe the girls wouldn’t be very surprised by that knowledge. Even so, a heads-up wouldn’t be the wrong thing to do.

Lily took a deep breath, knowing there would be a lot of tangled emotions from her nieces with regard to the disclosure of their father’s final wishes.

His daughters, no matter how grounded, were likely to be put off-balance by what was to come, but Lily planned to continue to be a rock-solid presence in their lives, no matter how much her heart might break for them all.

Staying strong for her nieces in the face of difficult news was the least she could do. That had largely been her role as their aunt all these years.

Together, they would face the final wishes of Horatio Beauregard Lovelock and whatever turmoil they would bring. Lily would do what she could to be strong for the girls, even as she faced her own challenges with the Lovelock Inn.

With fresh determination, she put pen to paper and composed the first letter.