Undeniable （Cloverleigh Farms #2）
Melanie Harlow
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.