Undeniable Page 21
“Chloe, if I move in with you, I’m never going to want to leave.”
“Really?”
“Really. I mean, you’ll be there all the time cooking for me, doing my laundry, ironing my shirts—”
She smacked me on the chest. “Very funny.”
“I’m teasing.” Grabbing her arms, I flipped her onto her back. Kissed her lips. “I’m never going to want to leave because I love you. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you. There’s nothing I don’t want to share, and I can’t believe I wasted so much time.” I kissed her again. “I don’t want to waste any more.”
Slipping her arms free, she looped them around my neck and wrapped her legs around me. “You’re making me want to risk the squeaky bed,” she whispered.
“We could.” I moved my mouth across her cheek to her ear. “Or we could go into my closet, where I first kissed you.”
She went completely still. “You remember.”
“Of course I remember. Who forgets their first kiss?”
“It wasn’t really a kiss.”
I pulled back and looked down at her. “Um, our lips touched. Also our tongues.”
“And we decided it was so disgusting, we’d never kiss anyone else again.”
“We were pretty young.” I pictured her at that age—pigtailed and gap-toothed. Dimpled cheeks.
“We had to be, what, six?” she wondered.
“If that.”
She laughed. “I never told a soul about it.”
“Me neither. I think I tried to block it entirely from my memory. I was so grossed out.”
“And yet it was your idea,” she said.
“No, it wasn’t. It was yours.”
“No way.” She shook her head. “You brought it up. I’m positive.”
“I might have brought it up, but you suggested we do it.”
“I did not!”
“How about we agree to disagree? After all, there’s no way to know for sure, and you and I will argue forever.” I slanted my mouth over hers again, stroking her tongue with mine. “But I definitely think we need a new memory for that closet.”
“You didn’t put a rubber snake in there, did you?”
“No. But I do have a one-eyed trouser—”
“No snake jokes, please. Especially if you’re trying to turn me on.”
“Is that a yes to the closet?”
“You know me,” she whispered, reaching between us to stroke my erection. “I’ve always loved trouble.”
In the end, we didn’t make it to the closet, and the bed made a horrendous amount of noise. I convinced Chloe our parents deserved it for throwing us together so much, and Gran was ninety and hard of hearing anyway.
Afterward, as we snuggled up again beneath the blankets, I had to laugh.
“What’s funny?” she asked, stifling a yawn.
“Everything. This. Us. The fact that twenty-some years ago we were sitting in that closet over there swearing we’d never kiss anyone again, let alone each other.”
“It is pretty amazing. We’ve come a long way. It makes me happy to think of it.”
I kissed the top of her head. “Me too. You think if we could go back in time and tell those two kids in the closet what would happen in the future they’d believe us?”
She laughed and cuddled closer. “Not a chance.”
26
Chloe
THEN
“Have you ever touched tongues with anyone?” Oliver asked.
We were six, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his closet, hiding so we didn’t have to go downstairs for dinner. We had a giant bag of Better Made potato chips, a couple cans of Vernor’s ginger ale, a box of chocolate covered strawberries, and a thick slice of maple fudge. We figured that was all the food groups. The closet door was shut, but thankfully we had a flashlight, which threw a cone of light at the ceiling.
“Ew, no,” I said, crunching on a chip. “Have you?”
“No.” He slurped from his can of Vernor’s and then burped.
Boys were so gross.
“But I’ve seen it,” he went on. “On a TV show.”
“Was it grown ups?” I asked.
“It was, like, teenagers,” he said.
“Huh.” I ate another chip. “Is that what teenagers do?”
“I think so.” He munched on the fudge, taking a bite out of the slab. “Want some?”
“Sure.”
Oliver broke off a piece and handed it to me. As it dissolved in my mouth, I started thinking about what another person’s tongue would actually taste like. “I wonder what it’s like. Touching tongues with someone.”
“Me too.”
“It’s probably really disgusting, but maybe we should try it. Then we’d know for sure.”
“Okay. Stick out your tongue.”
“Hold on. I have to swallow.” I took a drink of ginger ale. “Now I’m ready.”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I stuck my tongue out and waited as Oliver leaned toward me, presumably with his tongue out too. But he missed my mouth and ended up licking my cheek.
“Gross,” I said, wiping my cheek with my sleeve.
“Sorry, my eyes were closed. I’ll try again.”
I shut mine again, and suddenly I felt his hands on my shoulders and his lips touching mine. He hadn’t left me any time to prepare! Quickly I poked my tongue between our lips and he did the same. His was warm and firm and I could sort of taste ginger ale. Altogether the sensation was pretty slimy and disgusting.
After less than half a second, we broke apart.
“Ew,” we both said at the same time.
He wiped his tongue with the bottom of his T-shirt.
I licked my sleeve to get rid of his spit. “That was blech. I’m never doing that again.”
“Me neither.”
With that decided, we went back to eating our snacks.
“Even if I get married, if my husband wants to kiss, I’m saying no,” I announced.
Oliver snorted. “Don’t worry, no one will want to marry you.”
“No one will want to marry you, either,” I told him.
“Good. Girls are stupid.”
“You’re stupid.”
“At least I’m not a chicken.”
“I’m not a chicken!”
At that moment, the door to the closet flew open and our mothers stood there with their hands on their hips. “There you are!” Aunt Nell shouted. “We’ve been looking everywhere.”
“You’re late for dinner,” my mother added. “And what’s all that junk you’re eating?”
“Whose idea was this?” Aunt Nell crossed her arms and tapped her toe. “Oliver? Chloe? I’m listening.”
Oliver and I exchanged a look, during which we tacitly agreed not to tattle on each other. We were both at fault—it had been his idea to skip dinner and mine to raid the pantry.
“Come out of that closet right now,” my mom demanded. “And go clean up for dinner.”
Without another word, we scrambled to our feet and hurried to do as we were told.
We didn’t get dessert that night, which was a bummer because it was Sander’s hot fudge cream puffs, my favorite. “Maybe next time, you two will think twice before disobeying the rules,” said Aunt Nell.
Oliver and I exchanged another look that said not a chance.
We might not have liked kissing, we might not have even liked each other that much, but one thing we did like was disobeying the rules.
Needless to say, there were many nights Oliver and I went without dessert. We never could stay out of trouble. But with one look across the dinner table, I always knew he was thinking the same thing I was.
Worth it.
It’s what made us so undeniably good together.
Always.
Epilogue
CHLOE
Late August
“Oliver, this is insane. Why do I have to keep my eyes closed?” I moved forward with halting steps, both my hands in his, like
awkward middle schoolers at a dance. We were in the hallway outside my office at Cloverleigh—well, our office. We shared it now, in addition to sharing my Traverse City condo and his apartment in Detroit, which we’d decided to keep for the time being, since we’d be down there a lot. I was learning everything I could about the distilling process at Brown Eyed Girl, and when we were at Cloverleigh, I was trailing my father a lot, learning everything I’d need to know when he retired for good this fall. He and my mother were leaving for a cruise around the world in October—right after Frannie and Mack’s wedding.
It meant Oliver and I were together nearly twenty-four seven, but neither of us was complaining. In fact, I was happier than I’d ever been. We both were.
“You have to keep your eyes closed because I want to surprise you,” he said.
“I don’t like surprises.”
“Hush. Don’t you have any sense of romance? Hold on, I’m opening the door.”
“I can’t think about romance!” I exclaimed as I let him lead me outside into the heat of a hot summer day. “We were supposed to leave for South Manitou by one. If we wait much longer, we won’t catch the afternoon ferry.”
“So we’ll go in the morning. I talked to the Feldmanns and they said they’ll be working sunup to sundown.” He continued walking backward with his hands holding mine.
“But I told you I wanted to be there for the very first planting,” I complained. “We’re missing a priceless opportunity for photos to use on social media.”
“I promise you we will have all the social media photos you need. We’ll get up early and catch the first ferry and spend all day in your million-dollar fields, whispering sweet nothings to our rye seeds.”
I laughed. “They’re not my million-dollar fields. They’re ours.”
“So you say. Come this way.”
I made a half turn as he indicated. Keeping my eyes closed, I listened carefully. Sniffed the fecund air. “Are we on the path to the barn?”
“Good guess. But the question is, why are we on the path to the barn?”
“I have no idea, Oliver. You tell me.”
“It has to do with the date.”
“The date?” I thought for a moment. It was August thirtieth … was it supposed to mean something? “I don’t get it. It’s no one’s birthday, it’s not a holiday, it’s not an anniversary.”
“But it is.” Gently he led me into the barn and across the hay-strewn, wooden-planked floor.
My mind was spinning. An anniversary? He and I hadn’t been together long enough to have an anniversary. It hadn’t even been two full months. Granted, things couldn’t be better between us, and our story had started long before he—
It hit me, and I gasped. “Oh my God. Is it?”
“Is it what?” His voice held a smile.
“The anniversary of the jump?”
“Good thinking. You can open your eyes to climb the ladder.”
I opened them to find him standing next to the ladder leading to the loft. His blue eyes danced with mischief, and his grin was devious as hell. My heart thumped hard a few times—it felt like a warning. “Oliver, what is this? Tell me before I go up there.”
He laughed and slapped my butt. “Chicken. Climb up.”
With an exasperated sigh, I started up the ladder. Oliver followed, and from the loft we climbed onto the roof.
Immediately Oliver took my hand. “Careful,” he said. “Come this way.”
Slowly, we walked over to the edge of the roof where he’d issued the challenge. Then he turned to face me and took the other hand.
“So,” he said. “Here we are again.”
“Are you going to dare me to jump?”
“No, but I am going to ask you to take a leap with me.”
My heart stopped. “What?”
Oliver dropped to one knee. “I was trying to get the timing exactly right. According to my mother’s—and your mother’s—memories, it was around two in the afternoon when we made that fateful bet.”
I laughed and nodded, but my throat was so tight I couldn’t speak.
“I know I screwed up, proposing to you at the cottage like that. It was out of nowhere, it was too rushed, it was too public. And I went into it for the wrong reasons. But when I took the ring back, it wasn’t because I didn’t love you enough, or I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with you. Because I do.”
A tear slipped down my cheek, and I sniffed.
“At the time, I promised myself I’d never make that kind of mistake again. I wouldn’t rush things or be selfish. I vowed I would be patient and give you all the time you needed to trust me again, to believe in me. To know without a doubt that you are everything good in my life.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out Gran’s ring. “But again—I lied.”
I sniffled and smiled. “You did?”
He nodded. “Yes. Because when it comes to you, I can’t be patient. I know what I want, and I want it now. And if that makes me sound like a spoiled brat, well, it wouldn’t be the first time you called me that name. And probably not the last.”
Tears fell faster now, but I was laughing too. “Probably not.”
He turned my hand over and slid the ring on my finger, then looked up at me. The afternoon sun made his blue eyes look light and clear, and his skin golden. “Marry me, Chloe. I want you to be my wife. I want to be your husband. I want to be partners in everything—our business, our marriage, our family. I want a house that’s just ours. I don’t care where, I don’t care what size, I only care that I live in it with you and our unbelievably beautiful and smart but completely disobedient kids who are going to try to get away with breaking every rule, just like their parents did.”
“Oh God, they’re going to be terrible, aren’t they?” I asked, laughing through tears. But I couldn’t stop staring at the ring on my finger.
“Probably. But we’ll survive. And we’ll be happy.” He squeezed my hand. “So come on, Dimples. Say yes. I dare you.”
I dropped to my knees too, taking his face in my hands. “Yes,” I said through joyful tears. “Yes!”
We kissed quickly, then Oliver leaned slightly toward the edge of the roof. “She said yes!” he shouted.
Immediately I heard cheers and applause from down below. Open-mouthed, I walked nearer to the edge and saw almost my entire family—and his—gathered below. My parents, April, Mack and Frannie and all three of the girls, Aunt Nell, Uncle Soapy, Gran, Hughie and Lisa and their boys. Even Charlotte was there with Guy and their brand new baby. I smiled and waved. “I said yes! It’s for real this time!”
“Come down for champagne!” April called.
“But take the ladder!” my mother yelled frantically. “No jumping!”
Oliver and I laughed and held hands as we carefully walked back toward the loft. Once we were safely off the roof and inside the barn, I couldn’t resist throwing my arms around him again. He wrapped me up in his embrace and spun me around, my heels in the air.
Laughing, I buried my face in his neck. “I never want my feet to touch the ground, Oliver.”
“Good,” he said. “Because this leap goes on forever.”
The End
What to read next!
For another full-length standalone in this setting, read IRRESISTIBLE, Mack and Frannie’s story! Available now in ebook, audio, and paperback, and FREE in Kindle Unlimited!
For another standalone friends-to-lovers romance, pick up ONLY YOU! Available now in ebook, audio, and paperback, and FREE in Kindle Unlimited!
For another standalone small town, second chance romance, try AFTER WE FALL! Available now in ebook, audio, and paperback, and FREE in Kindle Unlimited!
For more about all my interconnected series, swipe to the next page!
Also by Melanie Harlow
The Frenched Series
Frenched
Yanked
Forked
Floored
The Happy Crazy Love Series
Some Sort
of Happy
Some Sort of Crazy
Some Sort of Love
The After We Fall Series
Man Candy
After We Fall
If You Were Mine
From This Moment
The One and Only Series
Only You
Only Him
Only Love
The Cloverleigh Farms Series
Irresistible
Undeniable
Hold You Close (Co-written with Corinne Michaels)
Imperfect Match (Co-written with Corinne Michaels)
Strong Enough (M/M romance co-written with David Romanov)
The Speak Easy Duet
The Tango Lesson (A Standalone Novella)
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Acknowledgments
Much love and gratitude to the following people!
Melissa Gaston, Brandi Zelenka, Jenn Watson, Hang Le, Kayti McGee, Laurelin Paige, Sierra Simone, Corinne Michaels, Lauren Blakely, Sarah Ferguson, Rebecca Friedman at Friedman Literary, Flavia Viotti at Bookcase Literary, Nancy Smay at Evident Ink, proofreader Michele Ficht, early readers Alison Evans-Maxwell, Louise McKie, and Shannon Mummey, Stacey Blake at Champagne Book Design, Andi Arndt at Lyric Audio, narrators Stephen Dexter and Savannah Peachwood, the Shop Talkers, the Harlots and the Harlot ARC Team, bloggers and event organizers, my Queens and CH, my readers all over the world … and always, always, always my family. I love you.