She started to say that she didn’t believe him, but this was Liam Jenner, a man with no patience for niceties. “It’s—it was crazy.”

His expression grew fierce. “Your body is magnificent. It’s lush and extravagant, exactly the way a woman’s body should be. Did you see the way the light fell on your skin? On your breasts? They’re outrageous, Lilly. Big. Fleshy. Bountiful. I couldn’t ever get enough of painting them. Your nipples …” He settled his thumbs over them, rubbed, and his eyes burned with the same passion she’d seen when he painted. “They make me think of showers. Showers of rich, golden milk.” She shivered at the intensity she heard in his husky whisper. “Spilling to the ground … turning into rivers … sparkling, golden rivers flowing to nourish continents of parched land.”

Such an outlandish, excessive man. She didn’t know what to do with a vision so outrageous.

“Your body, Lilly … don’t you see? This is the body that gave birth to the human race.”

His words ran counter to everything that the world she lived in preached. Diets. Denial. An obsession with female bone instead of female flesh. The culture of youth and thinness.

Of stinginess.

Of disfigurement.

Of fear.

For a fraction of a moment she glimpsed the truth. She saw a world so terrified of Woman’s mystical power that nothing would do but to obliterate the very source of that power—the natural shape of her body.

The vision was too foreign to her experience, and it faded. “I—I have to go.” Her heart hammered in her chest. She leaned down and grabbed her panties, threw them into her sewing basket, snatched up her quilt pieces. “This was … this was so irresponsible.”

He smiled. “Am I likely to get you pregnant?”

“No. But there are other things.”

“Neither of us is promiscuous. We’ve both learned the hard way that sex is too important.”

“What do you call that?” She jabbed her hand toward the floor.

“Passion.” He nodded toward the quilt pieces spilling from her basket. “Let me see what you’re working on.”

She couldn’t imagine permitting a genius like Liam Jenner to see her simple craft project. Shaking her head, she made her way toward the door, but just before she got there, something made her stop and turn back.

He stood watching her. A smudge of blue paint marked his thigh near his groin. He was naked and magnificent.

“You were right,” she said. “I’m fifty!”

His soft reply followed her out of the house and down the road.

“Too old to be such a coward.”

Chapter 17

17