Undeniable: A Cloverleigh Farms Standalone Read online

  Undeniable

  Melanie Harlow

  MH Publishing

  Copyright © 2019 by Melanie Harlow

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Photography: Regina Wamba

  Cover Design: Hang Le

  Editing: Nancy Smay, Evident Ink

  Formatting: Stacey Blake, Champagne Book Design

  For all the incredible writers who attended the Gatlinburg Madcap Retreat.

  You taught me, you encouraged me, you inspired me.

  Loving someone requires a leap of faith, and a soft landing is never guaranteed.

  Sarah Dessen

  Contents

  1. Chloe

  2. Chloe

  3. Oliver

  4. Chloe

  5. Oliver

  6. Chloe

  7. Chloe

  8. Oliver

  9. Chloe

  10. Oliver

  11. Chloe

  12. Oliver

  13. Chloe

  14. Oliver

  15. Chloe

  16. Chloe

  17. Oliver

  18. Oliver

  19. Chloe

  20. Oliver

  21. Chloe

  22. Oliver

  23. Chloe

  24. Chloe

  25. Oliver

  26. Chloe

  Epilogue

  What to read next!

  Also by Melanie Harlow

  Never Miss a Melanie Harlow Thing!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  Chloe

  THEN

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Oliver scoffed. “I’ve jumped off way higher roofs than this.”

  “Because it seems like a long way down.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe to someone like you.”

  “Like me how?”

  Oliver gave me a side-eyed, shit-eating grin as he flapped his elbows and clucked like a chicken.

  “Stop it!” I punched him in the arm. He knew I hated being called chicken or scaredy-cat or baby, or any of the other names he called me because I wasn’t a fan of heights. Or the dark. Or thunderstorms. Or snakes. He was exactly the type of kid who got you to tell him your secret fears and then used them against you. “I’m not a chicken.”

  “So jump.”

  “I’m going to.” I jerked my chin at him and stared down at the ground from the roof of the pole barn on my family’s small farm. It was late August, hotter than blazes at four in the afternoon, and the sun had baked the mud below into a crusted, chocolate-milk-colored pit. Oliver had dared me to jump, then bet me his Tamagotchi I wouldn’t.

  I might have been able to resist the dare—although it’s iffy—but I really wanted that Tamagotchi. I’d asked for one last Christmas but had gotten a Barbie instead, which I’d given to my little sister Frannie almost immediately. (I did give her one fabulous night with Ken first. My Barbies were into sex.)

  “You’re really gonna give me your Tamagotchi?” I asked. I’d known Oliver practically since birth, and if I knew one thing about him, it was that he could not be trusted. All of his ideas got us into trouble.

  He rolled his eyes. “I said I would, didn’t I? And you’re not going to break your leg. It’s like ten feet or something. You can’t break a leg from this height.”

  I bit my lip and looked down again. It seemed like more than ten feet. Could I land softly enough not to hurt myself?

  “And you’re going to jump too?” I asked, my voice full of suspicion.

  “If you jump, I jump.”

  I nodded, working up that last bit of necessary courage.

  “Move over. I’ll go first,” Oliver said, scooting to the edge.

  “No!” I gave him a shove that nearly sent him rolling down the sloped roof. He was always showing off. We were the same age, but he was bigger, stronger, and faster—and he was such a jerk about it sometimes.

  I called his mom and dad Aunt Nell and Uncle Soapy (more on that later), but we weren’t really cousins. We were just thrown together a lot because our mothers had been best friends forever. They’d been pregnant with us at the same time and had given birth only two days apart. Oliver was older, of course, and you’d have thought those two days made all the difference. Half the time I couldn’t stand him—the other half the time, I found myself doing everything I could to impress him.

  I did not understand myself sometimes.

  “So do it already.” He checked his watch. Oliver Ford Pemberton always wore a watch. “I don’t have all day.”

  “Fine.” I moved a little closer to the edge and dangled my legs off. “On the count of three.”

  “One.” Oliver sounded smug and slightly bored, as if he knew I wouldn’t do it.

  “Two,” I ventured hesitantly, hoping I wasn’t going to vomit.

  “Three.” He paused. “I knew you wouldn’t—oh shit!”

  I’d jumped. And landed badly, with a noise that can only be described as a sickening crack and a leg twisted at an unnatural angle beneath me. Before I could even register the pain and start to scream, Oliver jumped too.

  THUD.

  He wound up right next to me in the mud, landing even less gracefully than I had, practically head first.

  He moaned as I started to shriek. It didn’t take long for our parents to come running.

  Turns out, Oliver had lied about several things. He’d never jumped off a roof before. He didn’t even own a Tamagotchi. And actually, you can break a leg from a twelve-foot jump.

  You can also break a clavicle, which served him right as far as I was concerned.

  I ended up needing surgery, which left a scar on my right leg, and every time I saw it, I got mad at him all over again. At myself too.

  I wish I could say it was the last dare I ever took from him, the last bet I ever made with him, the last time I ever trusted fucking Oliver Ford Pemberton.

  But it wasn’t.

  Not even close.

  2

  Chloe

  NOW

  “You can’t be serious.” I stared across the dinner table at my dad, who’d just ruined my life with a single sentence. “You expect me to work for Oliver?”

  “It’s only for six months.” My dad shrugged and reached for a slice of bread, like it was no big deal that I’d have to take orders from that asshole for half a year. “He seems to think that will be plenty of time to train you.”

  “Six months!” I grabbed my wine glass and held on tight.

  “It makes sense, Chloe. You want to open a distillery. He already runs one. And it’s done very well over the last few years.”

  I knew all about his damn distillery—it had been my idea.

  “Oliver is like family,” my mother said. “You’ve known him since you were born.”

  “That’s not my fault.” I took a gulp of rosé.

  “I think Oliver’s nice,” said my younger sister, Frannie, perennial sweetheart.

  I shot her a dagger-eyed look. “You don’t know him like I do.”

  “Who’s Oliver again?” asked Frannie’s boyfriend Mack. Actually, they’d just gotten engaged, so he was now her fiancé. He worked as CFO at Cloverleigh Farms, which was our family’s business and encompassed not only a farm but a winery, an inn, and a wedding venue. I was kind of surprised he didn’t know about this deal my dad had struck. He’d been in on several meetings I’d had with
my dad about starting a small batch distillery here, meetings that always ended in disappointment for me.

  No matter how much I argued that a distillery would be a great addition to our overall business and give us a modern edge, the fact remained—the money wasn’t there.

  “Oliver is my best friend’s son,” my mother said to Mack with fondness in her voice. “And he’s so charming.”

  “So was Ted Bundy,” I reminded her.

  “Smart, handsome, successful.” My mother went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “He’s really made something of himself.”

  “Which isn’t that hard to do when your last name is Pemberton,” I muttered, stabbing a grilled spear of asparagus with my fork.

  “Pemberton like the soap company?” Mack asked.

  “Exactly.” I pointed the spear at Mack. “And his middle name is Ford. How hard can it be to find success when you come from not one, but two, massive family fortunes?”

  “Now Chloe,” my mother admonished. “Nell said he used his own money to start the distillery.”

  I snorted. “His own money. Right.”

  “Much the way you used your own money for your college education,” my dad pointed out, a rueful grin on his face. “Family money is family money. Ours just happens to be Sawyer money, not Pemberton money. It doesn’t go quite as far.” He laughed at his own joke.

  “That’s different,” I argued. “Yes, you paid for my undergrad, but I paid for grad school, didn’t I? I took out loans like a normal person does, and worked while I went to school so I could start paying them back. I’m still paying them back!”

  “And we’re very proud of you,” my dad said, sipping his rosé. “But that’s another reason why partnering with Oliver is a good idea. You know I wish we had all the extra cash you’ll need to open a distillery here, but we don’t. Not if you want to do it right. Mack can attest to that.”

  Mack looked guilty. “Sorry, Chloe. I can’t argue there—if your heart is set on that expensive copper equipment and you really want to do this sooner rather than later, I think an experienced partner is a good idea.”

  I didn’t want any damn partner—I was fiercely independent and wanted to do it on my own, proving to everyone that I could. But I was running out of patience, which had never been one of my virtues.

  I set my wine down. “Okay, fine. An experienced partner might be a good idea. But why does it have to be Oliver?”

  “Oliver is a natural choice,” my dad said. “He and I spoke about your ideas a bit when Mom and I were visiting Nell and Soapy last month in Harbor Springs. He happened to be there at the time. Then out of the blue, he called me yesterday. Said he’d given it some thought and had a proposal for me.”

  My jaw hung open. I didn’t know what I was more miffed about—that my father had shared my ideas with Oliver in the first place without telling me, or that the two of them had made this deal behind my back, effectively hijacking my idea.

  Typical men!

  “What’s the exact proposal?” I demanded stiffly, trying to keep my cool.

  My dad finished chewing, swallowed, and took another sip of wine before he answered. “He’ll teach you what you need to know about the business, and when he’s confident you’re ready, he’ll go ahead with the partnership and get you started up here. And he’ll put up half the money.”

  “That gives him all the power,” I bristled.

  “Not at all.” He leaned back in his chair. “Look, if you aren’t interested, you don’t have to do it, but then there will be no distillery at Cloverleigh. I promised your mother I’d slow down, think about retiring. She’s got travel booked for us already this fall, as soon as tourist season slows down. I can’t take on a project of this magnitude at this point in my life, personally or financially.”

  “The doctor said he needs less stress,” my mother put in, patting his shoulder. “More time off. We talked it over last night, and we think this is brilliant. Oliver’s offer is very generous. Would you have preferred we turn it down?”

  “No,” I admitted, crossing my arms over my chest. “I just wish you’d have talked to me before telling him I’d do it.”

  “You’ve wanted this for years, Dimples,” my dad reminded me, using his old pet name for me. “Why be stubborn about this? It’s the perfect solution. Right, Mack?”

  “Uh.” Mack went a little pale at the thought of having to weigh in on a family argument.

  “Oh, go ahead, Mack,” I said crossly. “You might as well weigh in. You’re family now, and I trust you’ll tell me the truth.”

  Mack cleared his throat. “Well, while I’m not privy to the details of the deal or partnership your dad is talking about, and I don’t know anything about Oliver or his business, I can tell you that partnering up with someone who has the knowledge and means to see something like this through is a better idea than borrowing or crowdsourcing tons of money and going in blind.”

  “Exactly.” My father nodded at Mack. “I spoke with Henry DeSantis about this as well, and he agrees. He doesn’t have any background in distilling spirits, plus he’s got his hands full with the vineyard this season.”

  “You already talked to Henry about this?” Henry DeSantis was the winemaker at Cloverleigh, and I worked with him a lot since I was in charge of marketing and PR for our wines and also managed the tasting rooms both here and downtown. He was a great guy and we were pretty good friends, which was why this felt like a betrayal on so many sides. I felt like they were all part of some Boys Club I wasn’t allowed into but that got to decide my future.

  “I had to,” my father went on with a shrug. “After all, it will be Henry who’s short-handed while you work with Oliver—if that’s what you want, of course.” He picked up his wine again. “I won’t force you to agree to this.”

  Frowning, I stared at my fork and knife. Then I cut and ate a bite of grilled shrimp, mostly just to have something to do while I mulled things over. My therapist, Ken, had taught me the benefit of taking time before shooting my mouth off, even just two or three seconds. It wasn’t always easy for me, but I was working on it.

  “I think it’s a good idea,” said my older sister April, seated to my left. “Why not give the partnership with Oliver a chance?”

  Why not? I had a hundred reasons, but here were the top two:

  1. Oliver Ford Pemberton could not be trusted.

  2. I could not be trusted around Oliver Ford Pemberton.

  But I took my time chewing and swallowing. Another thing Ken had taught me was to be more empathetic, to put myself in another person’s shoes. My dad was older, almost seventy, and his health was an issue. All of us—my mother, my four sisters, longtime employees like Mack and Henry—agreed that slowing down would be best for him. Deep down I was really hoping he’d turn over some of the general management of Cloverleigh to me … it only made sense.

  I wasn’t the oldest sibling—that was Sylvia—but she lived out in Santa Barbara with her husband and kids. I wasn’t even the second oldest—that was April. She was the event planner here. She was awesome at her job, and I’d never heard a peep from her about wanting to do anything else. Weddings and other corporate events kept her busy, and she was always adapting to new trends. Next in line was Meg, but she lived in D.C., where she was busy fighting injustice and trying to change the world for the better, which had always been her dream.

  That left Frannie and me. Frannie was the youngest at twenty-seven, but she’d recently stopped working reception at the inn to run her own little macarons enterprise out of a coffee shop in downtown Traverse City, which was about twenty minutes away. She was also newly engaged to a single dad who had three young girls and had just moved in with them. Between her new business, helping to raise three kids, and planning a wedding, there was no way she could take on more responsibility at Cloverleigh.

  So promoting me made sense. I was fully dedicated to the family business. I was thirty-two. I was single and had no prospects or plans to be otherwise in the near
future—my romantic history was a road pockmarked with impulsive behavior and regrettable decisions. I had terrible taste in men, and until Ken could explain to me why I always chose assholes over nice guys, I’d sworn off relationships.

  But I understood that if I wanted to prove I was a team player, flexible and smart, a big-picture thinker and a cool-headed businesswoman, I had to be willing to make compromises and not let my emotions get the best of me.

  I took a deep breath and another sip of wine.

  “I like the idea of compromise,” I began. “I’m just … concerned that Oliver and I might not be the best fit as partners.”

  To my left, I heard April snicker, which she tried to hide by lifting her wine glass to her lips. No one at the table knew my full history with Oliver Ford Pemberton, but April knew enough to recognize the awkwardness of the situation. I kicked her lightly in the ankle before going on.

  “Why not?” my mother asked. “You two were thick as thieves once upon a time.”

  “Because I’m a hard worker, and he’s a globe-trotting, yacht-cavorting, devil-may-care, rich, egotistical playboy. That’s why.”

  “Now, Chloe. People change. Oliver may have been a bit unruly in his twenties but he’s really settled down over the last few years.”

  “We don’t get along, Mom.”

  “Oh, posh.” My mother dismissed that idea with a wave of her hand. “You two may have scrapped a bit when you were younger, but that was just because you were so alike—so headstrong and competitive. But you’ve known each other forever. For heaven’s sake, he even took you to his prom.”