“I’m not a liar. I just needed to do what was best for my town!” She raised her voice. Clark didn’t give her the satisfaction of doing the same, no matter how much he wanted to, no matter how red his skin grew under his collar. Doing the best thing for her town was as good as a confession. Another one. She didn’t give a lick about him. He was a useful, lonely idiot willing to believe any affection tossed his way after a lifetime of being starved for it.

“You admit it.”

“But when I saw you at the diner, I realized you had never had what we had. I wanted to share it with you.”

“Yeah. Because you wanted to use that to your advantage.” The next revelation hurt the most. No one in his life ever liked him. But he was stupid enough to believe she might be the first. He’d fallen, all right, but not for her. He’d fallen for her trap. Hook, line and sinker.

“You convinced me you liked me.”

“I do!”

Any better and she’d win an Oscar. The woman even managed tears. They puddled in her eyes, refusing to overflow. Clark paid them no attention. They were just another tool in her deception.

“You only stuck around because you had an endgame. Was all of this,” He pointed an accusing finger down to the town. They still sung, the lemmings. “part of it, too?”

“No!”

“Convincing.” Clark laughed derisively.

“Honestly, Clark.” Her small hand flew to his chest, the pleading gesture of a woman broken by her own game. “This wasn’t me.”

One look down the ridge of his crooked nose and he removed the desperate hand. He never wanted to be touched by her again. If Miller’s Point knew about her plan to con him out of his own company, they probably organized this entire thing to trick him. To give him a childish love of a stupid farce of a holiday so he would fall over himself to give them this expensive, two-month long game of Charles Dickens dress-up. Even if she didn’t call this sing-along, she was complicit in it. As the mastermind of this scheme and the pied piper of Miller’s Point and all her people, he felt no guilt in holding her responsible, not when his heart was the prize she’d incidentally managed to seize.

“Maybe not, but it was them. They were in on your plan, weren’t they?”

“It isn’t like that,” she ground out between gritted teeth.

“What is it like then? Explain.”

Her mouth opened and closed, invisible, soundless words came out, but nothing else. For the first time, Clark raised his voice.

“Explain yourself!”

Her shiver of fear would have made him feel like the biggest heel on earth if she hadn’t started it.

“I wanted to get the festival back, yes. But I wanted to help you, too.”