Val studied it. Had someone—her lover—called? Was the heart meaningful? And why no name? She sighed, seeing how the heart was outlined over and over again, surrounding the single word.

Oh, Cammie, she thought. Was this a message, or just the idle musings of someone who was dreaming of phoning her lover; or had the lover called her? Who knew?

And finally, there was a note that only said Reverend Mother, with half a dozen little arrows pointing at the word, like angry arrows, as if Camille truly hated Sister Charity.

Without any concrete answers to the cryptic notes that really could be no more than idle doodles, Val flipped another couple of pages. “Uh-oh. Even you made mention in the hit parade.” She twirled the stem of her glass of Pinot between her fingers, and her smile slowly disappeared. “Looks like I owe you an apology.”

In the diary, Camille had admitted to trying and failing to seduce a “particularly stubborn rancher who took his vow of marriage as seriously as he did his long Texas heritage.”

“Unless there’s another cowboy out there.”

She leveled her gaze at him. “Like who? Trask? Zane? Last time I checked, they were both single. She definitely mentioned the marriage vows.” She took another sip, and he was caught again by her beauty, made more so by the simple fact that she didn’t realize how breathtaking she was. Never as flashy, flamboyant, or outwardly sexy as her younger sister, Valerie Renard had been and still was blessed with a more subdued and classic beauty and a sensual intelligence he’d always found fascinating.

“What if she’d lied in this diary?” he asked, leaning back in his kitchen chair, hearing the wood squeak as he reached for his beer. “What if she’d said that I’d gone after her, that she’d just not been able to say no to me? Would you have believed it? Or condemned me?”

Val didn’t answer.

“She’s still running the show, Valerie,” he said, the quiet fury that had been pushed aside rising again.

“What are you saying?”

“That you should have trusted me. Known that I was telling the truth, but you didn’t. You believed her, and now you’re believing her again. Her handwriting says it was a lie, and you believe her.”

“I’d think you would be happy that I understand. Thrilled, even.”

He held her gaze. Recognized the fire in her hazel eyes. Felt himself weakening, a crack slowly splintering his determination to work this thing out between them on his terms, not terms dictated by a dead woman.

“These pages,” he said, pointing to a particularly vivid sexual scene, “could be pure fantasy.”

“You’re saying she’s lying in the diary.”

“I’m saying she could be. That’s all. Don’t take anything at face value.”

“Including your innocence.”