The following afternoon, I had stopped shivering but couldn’t seem to shake the cold feeling. Or maybe that was just because I was trapped in a room with Pamela. Balanced precariously on my knees, a teacup rattled in its saucer.

“So.” Pamela took a loud, surprisingly slurpy sip, then set her cup decisively back in its saucer. “Here we are. All alone. Just you and me.”

I narrowed my eyes and attempted to sip some tea. Hot. Too hot. A bit of scalding liquid sloshed over the side as I set the whole dangerous business down on the coffee table.

“I must admit, I was pretty surprised when I heard you wanted to have a little chat.”

I looked at her. Yes, sitting down with Pamela had been my idea, but that didn’t make being here any easier. The way I saw it, I didn’t have much of a choice. Pamela needed to be kept distracted and as far away from my sister’s burgeoning belly as humanly possible. And if that distraction was me, well, fine.

“Let’s just clear up a few things before you film your first confessional.”

“Confessional?” I spat.

“Do you know what that is?”

“Yeah, I know what that is,” I snarled. “I watch a lot of TV. I just don’t know why you’d want to film me talking to the camera.”

“Everyone else has filmed a confessional. Most people have already filmed several. Dusty and Ronan do at least one a day, usually more.”

“Makes sense. It’s their show, right? No one is watching this thing to see me.”

She fixed me with a stare.

Then Pamela sighed heavily, breaking the silence. “You know, Dylan, I’ve given you a lot of leeway. A lot.”

“Oh, have you?” I asked sarcastically.

“Yes. I have, actually,” she replied. “You made it very clear that you didn’t wish to be a large part of this show. I respected that. I haven’t asked you to film any confessionals prior to this. I’ve kept the camera crews as unobtrusive as possible.”

I snorted. That was unobtrusive? Please.

“We have a problem, Dylan.”

“We? There is no we. I don’t have a problem.” I crossed my arms defensively.

“Fine. I have a problem. And my problem is you.”

I tried to fix her with my coldest stare. It made zero impact.

“You need to stop running away, Dylan.”

“I haven’t run away,” I shot back. “I’m on the cross-country team. I run. It’s something I like to do. Exercise.”

The look she gave me informed me very clearly that she was buying none of my bullshit.

“Last night had nothing to do with aerobic activity. You can’t run away from the cameras. You can’t hide from the cameras. You can’t lock yourself in the bathroom and shut out the cameras.”

“Don’t I get any privacy? It’s a bathroom.”

“If you’re doing your business, sure. If you’re in there with someone else having a conversation, then no. I thought you’d appreciate the fact that I only sent one crew member along on your date. You know what? We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here.” She waved her hands like she was trying to erase the last few minutes. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” I parroted in disbelief.

“Yes, sorry. Really, Dylan, I should be thanking you.”

“For what?” I asked suspiciously.

“For Jamie, Dylan! Obviously.” She laughed. “That was a really nice, very unexpected development. I honestly had no idea that would happen.” She looked off into the distance, like she was visualizing something just out of sight. “That’s going to be some excellent television. I expected absolutely nothing from you, and you’ve given us a great B story line.”

I scuffed my sneaker on the carpet. Of course I was happy that I’d met Jamie, and that he’d kissed me, but I wished I hadn’t given Pamela anything. My whole body recoiled at the idea of everyone watching me and Jamie on TV. I’d have to go on some kind of TV-smashing campaign all over Tupelo. And never look at the Internet ever again.

“Of course, single teenage boy, single teenage girl…I probably should have expected something to happen, hmm?” She narrowed her eyes. “It’s just that the way Dusty described you, I didn’t think romance was a possibility.”

Ouch. Well, she wanted me to talk about Dusty, did she? I clamped my lips together firmly.

“It must be hard, having a sister who is just so beautiful.” She tilted her head to the side sympathetically, adopting what looked like a well-practiced I’m listening face. “Can’t have been easy, growing up the younger sister of the most beautiful girl in Mississippi.”

I looked over her shoulder. A cameraman had entered the small sitting room, closing the door quietly behind him.

“So I guess private time is over then?” I asked archly.

“I think so,” she said. “We understand each other, don’t we? Run away again and I’ll slap your mother with a contract-violation lawsuit so crippling she’ll have to mortgage your home just to pay the lawyer’s retainer.”

“What—You can’t—”

“Of course I can. You’d know that if you’d bothered to read any of the contracts.” She tsked. “So. Let’s play nice, shall we? I got you a boyfriend—you’re welcome—and you got me a B line—thank you—so it looks to me like we’re even. Stay where the cameras can see you for the rest of your time at Dunyvaig. It’s not so much longer to go. Shouldn’t be hard. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said through gritted teeth. I didn’t know nearly enough about contract law to call her bluff. If this was a bluff.

“Now, isn’t it better when we’re all friendly?”

I bared my teeth in a ghoulish approximation of a smile.

“There you go. We needed this B line, honestly,” she said, almost absentmindedly. “There’s only so much mileage you can get out of the American bride who keeps puking up her Scots fiancé’s haggis. It was funny the first time, but she’s going to have to keep it down at the wedding.”

Puking up the haggis. My eyes snapped over to Pamela. Was she baiting me? She seemed unconcerned as she took another sip of her tea. It was possible she hadn’t figured anything out yet…but if she hadn’t, she was very, very close. I had to do something—throw her off the scent—anything. Otherwise Dusty’s marriage, her life, her future, the baby—all of it—was toast.

“What if I wanted to be more than the B line?”

“Excuse me?”

I couldn’t tell who was more shocked that I’d just said that—me or Pamela.

“I want to be more than the B line,” I repeated, trying to sound like I meant it. “Me—me and Jamie, I mean. You can film us anywhere. All our dates. And I’ll do the confessionals. I’ll do one right now.”

“This is a rather abrupt change of heart.” She set her cup back in the saucer and eyed me warily.

“You—you were right before.” The more time the cameras spent with me and Jamie, the less Pamela would be poking around in Dusty’s business. I just had to make her believe this was what I really wanted. “About how hard it is, being Dusty’s younger sister. How no one ever thinks I’m beautiful. How when Dusty’s in the room, I’m invisible.”

“Yes,” Pamela purred, “that must be hard.”

“So I want my own story line. One that’s just about me. Not Dusty at all. Okay?” It seemed like she was kind of buying it. Or maybe my motivation didn’t matter to her, as long as she got her footage. After all, I was giving her exactly what she wanted.

“Okay, Dylan. I’m glad we finally understand each other.” I hated when Pamela smiled at me. It freaked me out. “Mike will check in with you later to film confessional stuff about Jamie and we can add it in post. If you want this story line to go anywhere, you cannot hold back on the romance. Please spare no details. Understood?”

I nodded. The idea of having to recount, in detail, every experience I’d had with Jamie made me want to hide in a cave for the rest of my life, but for Dusty and the baby, I could do it. I had to.

“But there’s a few questions I’d like to ask you myself. The sudden reappearance of your father last night must have been quite a shock.”

I wanted to play along with Pamela, for Dusty’s sake, but I didn’t want to think about him. I didn’t want to talk about him. I wanted to pretend he didn’t exist. That he’d never walked into Dunyvaig at all.

“How did that make you feel, Dylan?” Pamela prompted.

“Nothing,” I whispered.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing,” I repeated. “I felt nothing.”

Pamela narrowed her eyes at me. I knew I wasn’t giving her what she wanted. But I wasn’t lying, exactly. I felt a hollowness that I couldn’t put into words. “Nothing” was the only word I could think of to describe it.

“You must have been surprised.”

“Obviously I was surprised,” I snapped. “Exactly what you wanted, right? The dramatic return of the absent father. That must have been a real find for you. How long did it take you to track him down?”

Play along, Dylan. You’re supposed to be playing along. Why was that so hard?

“And why, exactly, was us finding Cash a problem?” She paused as I tried to think of an answer to her question that wasn’t combative. “I don’t understand why you think us bringing him to Scotland was some sort of plot. Typically girls want their fathers at their weddings.”

Yeah, right. Bringing Cash in had everything to do with shock value and ratings and nothing whatsoever to do with Dusty’s wedding.

“You know how much this means to your sister. Surely, Dylan, you must have seen the episode where Dusty told Ronan about your dad.”

I had, in fact. It was the fourth episode that aired, and the first one where Dusty and Ronan got “real,” or whatever passes for real on reality TV. Dusty had pulled out a picture of herself, tiny with a pouf of white-blond hair blowing in the wind, holding the hand of a tall blond guy in jeans—a picture I hadn’t even known she’d had. She cried, then Ronan cried, and they bonded over the fact that they’d both grown up without fathers. Later, Ronan told Jimmy Kimmel that this had been the moment he knew he was falling in love with her. #FindDustysDad had even been trending on Twitter for a while. Odd that Cash hadn’t outed himself then. Maybe he’d been waiting for a free plane ticket to Europe.

“Even after Ronan proposed, Dylan, don’t you remember? ‘Of course I always dreamed about my daddy walkin’ me down the aisle, ever since I was a little girl. But I guess that’s my one dream that can’t come true.’” Pamela’s impression of Dusty was pretty accurate, if somewhat cruel. I goggled at her, unable to believe she’d actually just done that.

Screw playing nice. Dusty didn’t deserve that, and certainly not from Pamela, of all people. Dusty had given the network everything they could have possibly wanted, and Pamela couldn’t even treat her with respect. What I wouldn’t give to tell Pamela exactly what I thought of her and her whole stupid show.

“Dylan!” Jamie burst through the door, breathless. “You’ve got to help me! Kit Kirby’s challenged Heaven to a duel!”

“A duel?!” I scrambled up to my feet, nearly knocking over my teacup in the process. “What, because of the car?”

“Yes, of course because of the car! He’s absolutely livid! He’s somehow located two rapiers, a broadsword, a mace, and a pair of dueling pistols that may have belonged to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle!”

“Seriously? The Sherlock Holmes guy?”

“There’s no time to authenticate the pistols now; we have to stop the duel!”

“Don’t stop it too fast.” Pamela was already hustling the camera guy out of the room. “Find Kirby, before he gets to Heaven. We’ll come back to this, Dylan.”

And with that she was gone.