Chapter Two
Darby May Lovelock Tyler honked her horn at the slow-moving dog in the road. The dog stopped, looked over its shoulder at her, then continued on at an even slower pace. By all means, take your time, Mr. Mutt.
She was already running late to get to Heart’s Desire, the convenience store she and her husband owned, where a brand new staff member was filling in for a sick employee.
Of course, there was now a catastrophe and Darby wondered yet again at what age she’d be allowed to stop being the only person on the entire Earth who could fill in at a moment’s notice.
Probably if she was on her death bed, someone would wheel her into the store so she could work the cash register in a pinch.
She was a regular pinch hitter, all right.
Darby inhaled deeply, held it for a count of three, blew out the breath slowly and tried to rid herself of her poor attitude while she as at it.
She should be grateful for her blessings, but she was busy and this had not been in her plans for today.
With the upcoming reading of her father’s will and her two sisters, not to mention their three half-sisters, all converging on Valentine Key, her life was insanely busy as it was, thank you very much.
In fact, her dance card was overfull and adding pinch-hitter cashier to her plate was frustrating. She should be used to it by now.
Her husband, Nate, was just as busy. He’d become a member of the Valentine Key town council just over a year ago, and recently the other members had elected him as vice-chair.
The position and added responsibilities didn’t earn him any more money, but she knew he was delighted about the upgrade.
Anyway, that was the main reason why he was not racing across town trying to get to the convenience store that was their primary source of income and was downright inconvenient at times like this.
To bring in extra cash, Nate worked as a part-time tax accountant for the first five months of every year, during the height of the tax season. Darby didn’t usually see much of him until late spring. It was also when their convenience store was busiest—tourist season. She saw a bit more of him then, but not much more.
Nate’s parents had bought the convenience store forty some years before and run it for twenty years. When Nate’s father passed just a few weeks after Darby and Nate had gotten married, her husband had become de facto co-owner of Heart’s Desire as he tried to help his grieving mother cope.
Though he’d had other aspirations for his future, Nate had been unable to turn his mother down in her time of need. Soon after that, Darby got pregnant with the first of their four daughters and the story of their lives had been spelled out fairly early.
They took over full ownership of Heart’s Desire and never really looked back.
Until now.
Her own father’s unexpected passing last year had caused Darby to look back quite a bit these days. She’d come to intimately understand the old saying that life happened while you were making other plans. That certainly applied to the two of them.
She and Nate had spent their first few months together making all manner of grand plans for what they wanted to do with their lives and their future together. Nate had not wanted to get saddled with running his parents’ convenience store. He’d made that clear from their first date.
None of those early plans they’d spend so much time talking about had ever panned out, of course.
Still, Darby knew she should be grateful. She and Nate had a good life. As it was with so many people, there had been ups and downs in their marriage, joys and sorrows. Their girls were healthy and happy—as happy as teenagers could be on any given day, but at least mostly civil to their parents.
Their eldest was attending community college, they had two in high school and one in middle school. Time marched on to the beat of its own drum, but most days all Darby heard was a fast-paced staccato going at breakneck speed.
Would her life ever settle down to a calmer pace?
She shook her head. Even if her life slowed down, she’d be so used to a fast pace, she’d probably run around in a circle just to keep up the speed that was familiar to her.
She made it to the convenience store in time to witness the pandemonium in all its glory. Well, mayhem Valentine Key-style, anyway.
A line of customers seven deep was waiting while Tina, the new clerk she’d hired only two days ago, tried to figure out how to run the cash register. The crowd was becoming restless and mean.
Tina hadn’t even been the one to call Darby. She’d gotten an SOS text from one of the Valentine Key locals who was waiting in line.
Darby swooped in. Tina looked close to tears as Darby pushed the button on the cash register that unlocked it for use. In seconds, she had the new clerk bagging items while she rang up items like she was competing at the Cashier Games.
And, Darby couldn’t blame the young woman either. Some customers got ugly when the line was slow and they had to wait. That was never nice to deal with, even less so when you were new and trying your best to figure things out.
She recognized the look in Tina’s eyes. She was ready to bolt. Darby would probably have to hire yet another clerk from who knew where. It had taken her a month to find Tina and, when she did, she’d had a glimmer of hope that at least some of her scheduling issues for Heart’s Desire might ease. She suppressed the urge to sigh out loud.
Darby had no clue what had led to this disaster. Tina was not supposed to be manning the store alone. One of her daughters was supposed to be here with her. Either Ava or Bella.
Once the customers had all been rung through, cash and cards accepted then at long last sent on their way with their purchases, Darby turned to Tina.
Trying for a sympathetic smile, she said, “I’m sorry you had to deal with that. You handled yourself well.” She hadn’t.
Tina should have called Darby for help when things got hairy instead of letting her find out from one of their customers that there was trouble at the store. Darby knew there was no value in pointing that out to the rattled clerk, reminding herself that the young woman was very inexperienced.
With that in mind, she went over the basics of the cash register again, pointing out the “unlock” key and ensuring Tina remembered how to use it. She repeated the instructions more slowly while Tina took down a few notes. Or rather, used her cell phone to “take notes.” At least she was reliable enough to make the effort to do that much.
“Who left you here all alone?” Darby asked.
Tina looked like she’d rather walk over broken glass than tattle on one of Darby’s daughters.
In a small voice, she said, “Um, I’d rather not say.”
Darby nodded. She’d check the schedule as soon as she was alone. “I understand. Very diplomatic. Don’t worry about it. Are you okay take over?” There was only one customer in the store and she should be all right to handle him.
Tina nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
Another point in her favor—Tina was very polite. That was a must when dealing with the public, and one of the reasons Darby had hired her. She might be desperate for staff, but she wasn’t going to hire just anyone.
“I’m going to go back to the office for a bit. If you get busy again, call for me and I’ll come and help you, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Tina bobbed her head quickly, ponytail bouncing where she’d pulled it through the back of the Heart’s Desire cap she wore. She looked relieved, either that she wasn’t getting fired or didn’t have to tattle on whoever had left her alone when she clearly wasn’t ready to go solo behind the counter. Probably both.
Darby went back to the small office off the stockroom to discover on her own which of her daughters was about to get yet another lecture about why they couldn’t just leave the new employee all alone in the store.
She didn’t look forward to it. She had been young once. She knew what it was like to not want to work in a convenience store. Boy, did she. Darby hadn’t had a choice then, and her daughters didn’t now. Heart’s Desire was a family business, such as it was, and they all had to pitch in.
Darby sat down at the utilitarian desk covered in the clutter that came with any small business. Piles of papers waiting to be filed: order forms, bills from a variety of vendors, catalogues. A Rolodex that was darn near older than she was.
A chipped Heart’s Desire mug stuffed with pens, pencils, a pair of scissors and a raggedy nail file. A less-chipped mug with the dregs of the coffee she’d gulped down the last time she was in here.
A half-full plastic bottle of blue sports drink and an open can of energy drink—evidence that her daughters had been in here at some point. Several stacks of Heart’s Desire staff T-shirts, aprons and caps she hadn’t had a chance to put away.
She took the clipboard off the hook on the wall beside the desk and flipped the pages to look through the posted staff schedules. It didn’t take long to figure out that Bella was the missing daughter. Of course.
Between the night courses she was taking at the community college and the day shifts she worked as a housekeeper at the Lovelock Inn, Ava was usually only scheduled to work at the store a few days a week, when Darby had no one else to cover.
Bella was a junior in high school, she had a shiny, brand-new driver’s license and a boyfriend. Definitely a dangerous combination.
Growling under her breath, Darby put the clipboard back on its hook and slumped deeper into her chair. Why couldn’t things be easy? This headache was one more thing piled on a whole heap of “one more” things. That included the upcoming reading of her father’s will.
She hadn’t had time to give it much thought, but when she did, she wondered what they were all in for. She hadn’t spoken to her sisters about it, so she had no idea if she was alone in just wanting to get this over and done with.
None of them had been close to Horatio Beauregard Lovelock. Their father had made it more than clear that was how he preferred it.
Until recently, her older sister, Colleen, was busy running her own business. Evaline, Darby’s younger sister, was slightly reclusive and had a tendency to be very private about her life. As for their half-sisters, Darby had no idea what they thought about what was coming.
Victoria, the eldest of the Lovelock girls, hadn’t lived with them while they were growing up, so they’d only seen her briefly over the Christmas holidays when Horatio and Kelly were married.
Aunt Lily always said good things about her. Then again, Aunt Lily said good things about everyone. Darby knew Victoria had one daughter who was all grown up. She thought her name was Angela or Angelique and Aunt Lily had mentioned she lived somewhere in the Northwest.
Darby couldn’t be sure she was remembering that correctly. She was usually so caught up in everything she had to do, she tended to tune out when it came to anything she didn’t have to think about.
The only thing the six Lovelock girls had in common was that their father hadn’t wanted them. He’d made no secret of the fact that all he wanted was a son to be his heir and take over the running of Lovelock Enterprises. That had been his singular goal in life and he had failed.
Horatio being Horatio, he was stubborn to the end. Once he realized he wasn’t going to have a son, he hadn’t swooped in and tried to offer the job of “not a son but better than nothing” to any of his daughters or offered to train them to take over the family business someday.
Not for the first time since Horatio died, Darby wondered what would happen to Lovelock Enterprises. It had been big when Horatio took over from his father, Silas, and Horatio had built on that and diversified.
Darby had long since stopped paying close attention, but she knew Lovelock Enterprises was into property development, the hospitality industry, medical research and the tech sector, among other things. Would it be sold off? Handed over to the next-best unrelated man their father had liked?
Part of her cringed to think it, but would that mean they were finally all about to get a slice of the profits from the family business? Probably not.
While she hoped she would get a small sum of money, she wasn’t counting on it. She’d love to get enough to help her and Nate’s bottom line, not to mention put toward the girls’ college educations. It wasn’t that they had terrible finances. They held their own, but any family financial accounts could always be better.
Still, something would be nice. It would be decent of Horatio Lovelock to leave his daughters some kind of financial boon in his will. Just a crumb that would make them all think that their father cared about them even a bit.
Again, probably not, but she could dream.
She glanced at the time on the exercise monitor on her wrist and noted it was later than she’d thought. Nate had told her he was going to be late again for dinner, so perhaps she should drive through someplace to pick up dinner for everyone.
She couldn’t recall if Ava had class tonight. Her schedule was almost as full as Darby’s, since she worked five days a week at the inn, too. Basically, Ava changed the sheets and cleaned up the rooms after folks checked out. She got a flat fee for every room she completed. It was important to Ava that she help pay her way through college. She was a good kid and one of the reasons Darby knew she was very lucky.
Bella would probably be out with her boyfriend somewhere or at a friend’s house and rarely showed up for dinner with the family. Sophie, her high school sophomore, and Talia, her middle schooler, were probably the only two she had to feed tonight.
Especially if Nate didn’t show up for dinner at all, as had become the norm.
It wasn’t that she thought her husband was not doing what he said he was. He was just so busy with his new role as vice-chair of the Valentine Key town council that he sometimes seemed to forget he had a family.
At least, that was what she laughingly told him on the rare occasions when he did show up for dinner. He would smile and simply say he was trying to be a productive adult.
Darby hoped that after the reading of the will, if they did get a financial boon, maybe they could relax.
Perhaps they could give up going at a breakneck speed. Perhaps they could slow down to a mere five miles over the speed limit of life instead of fifty.