Stranger in Camelot by Deborah Smith

his back and latched his hands under his head, then stared casually up at the umbrella. Her two-piece suit was bright red too.
    She chuckled. “A rummage sale. It must have been made back in the fifties. It was faded, so I dyed it. Otherwise, it’s good as new.”
    She rolled onto her back, too, then tucked a towelunder her head as a pillow. John allowed himself a glance at the swimsuit’s bottom piece. It covered her flat belly and full hips in snug red pleats. The suit might as well have been one-piece.
    It hid her from thighs to waist and let only a narrow band of skin show between the bottom and top pieces. The top was similarly pleated and modest, anchoring her full, ripe breasts with its wide shoulder bands and sturdy gathers in the center.
    But no matter how modest the swimsuit was, Agnes filled it with the kind of bounce and sway that gave men eye strain. “I like it,” he told her. “But what made you choose an old style?”
    “I got tired of bikinis. Every time I went in the ocean all I did was hold the top half down and the bottom half up. I nearly drowned once, trying to keep my dignity.”
    He would have paid for the privilege of rescuing her from that predicament. “Why not buy a one-piece, then?”
    “Too see-through for my taste. Last one I owned was so sheer when it got wet I swore I could see my tattoos through it.”
    Smiling at her nonsense, he turned on his side and rose on an elbow. “Tattoos? Really? Where?” She’d given him a perfect excuse to study her. He scanned her torso with solemn innocence.
    She laughed. “No tattoos. But if I’d had some, you could have seen them. So I bought this little red dinosaur, and it works just fine. It’s a nineteen-fifties suit, and I’ve got a nineteen-fifties body. Lots of padding and no sharp angles. I’m a throwback.”
    “You’re perfect.” He gestured from her neck to her thighs, skimming his fingertips just above her body. “This sort of body made Marilyn Monroe a star.”
    “Wow. Paint-bucket eyes and Marilyn’s body. I could learn to like your brand of flattery.”
    “I’m being honest with you.” John leaned over. Hernostrils flared a little, and her eyes widened. She lay as still as the sand, watching him. “You’re very beautiful. Please don’t think I’m flirting.” He hesitated, his mouth twitching with humor. “It is flirting but it’s sincere.”
    She dampened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I’ve never heard of anybody around here getting in trouble for kissing on a public beach.”
    He put a hand on the center of her stomach. The small patch of bare skin, such an innocent part of a woman’s body, was a silky table making him anxious to explore more of it. She trembled under his fingertips.
    “We’re very secluded, back here by the dunes,” he agreed, sliding his propped arm next to her head so he could lower his head close to hers. “No one’s paying any attention to us.”
    “Would you mind if we didn’t do anything except kiss?” Her eyes flickered with uncertainty, despite her droll expression. “I don’t feel like Marilyn Monroe in this bathing suit, I feel like Doris Day. And Doris never did anything but kiss.”
    The hot breeze lifted a strand of red hair across her face. He drew the hair aside, letting the pad of his thumb trace her cheek. “I don’t want to hurt the friendship we have. And there’s no hurry.”
    “John Bartholomew.” She said only his name, but put a world of meaning into it, tentative affection and desire, as if she were testing her emotions out loud, to see what would happen. She touched his lips with her fingers, traced his mouth, then slid her hand in one smooth caress along his cheek until finally her fingers speared into his hair.
    “Don’t ever change,” she whispered. “You’re the sweetest man I’ve ever met. You really do have an aura of goodness around you.”
    Her words tormented him. He wasn’t good, but she was. There was a helluva lot more to her