Free A Country Affair by Rebecca Shaw

promise of promotion, he’d gone distinctly highly charged in the most unpleasant way. Perhaps she was to blame, for she hadn’t been quite fair, but there wasn’t any need to go quite as ballistic as he had done tonight. Even Mia had taken exception, and her dad. Anyway, she and Adam weren’t engaged or anything, so if she decided not to see him again, she wouldn’t. An evening with Scott was a very interesting alternative to trying to lose at bowling. She winked at herself in the mirror and charged out to find Scott.
    When he saw her crossing the bar, he put down his knife and fork and stood up. “Kate! You’ve come!” He kissed her cheek.
    She kissed him back. “I have.”
    They both beamed idiotically, enjoying the sight of each other.
    “Here, look, sit down; I’ll move my coat. Will you excuse me if I finish my meal?”
    “Of course. Can I get you a drink? What would you like?”
    “A coffee first, please. Here, let me . . .” He dug his hand into his pocket and brought out loose change.
    Kate said, “This is on me.”
    The cappuccinos looked tempting, and Kate spooned some of the froth and the chocolaty bits into her mouth. Looking up, she found Scott watching her and caught a look in his eyes she’d never seen in Adam’s. Kate blushed and, to pass off her embarrassment, picked up a sugar sachet, opened it and let the sugar cascade into her coffee. Then another.
    “Hey!”
    “I like my cappuccino sweet. It’s one of my things.”
    “You’re quite sweet enough.”
    “That’s a corny remark if ever there was one.”
    “I meant it, though. Thanks for coming out this evening; I’ve had a rotten day.”
    “I know. That’s why I came.”
    Scott finished his meal and eyed the menu. “One of my things is ice-cream sundaes.”
    “And mine.”
    He ordered two strawberry sundaes and waited at the counter while the girl made them up. She was laughing so much at his comments that it was a wonder they got their order at all. Kate couldn’t quite put her finger on why it was he had this effect on women, but he did. And on her. He was so lighthearted and such fun that one really couldn’t take him seriously.
    They chatted and laughed their way through their desserts, enjoying the thick, cloying strawberry sauce, the nutty bits sprinkled on the rich cream piled right to the very top of the glasses and the fresh strawberries they kept finding even right down at the bottom of the glass.
    “I’ve never had such a delicious sundae in all my life.”
    Scott winked. “She knows me, you see; she knows what I like.”
    “You come here a lot, then?”
    “When I’ve worked a ten-hour day and I’ve a night on call to face, believe me, I’m in no mood for cooking when I get home; and a fella needs food if he’s to function well.”
    “I wonder how the farmers take you seriously.”
    “What do you mean?
    “You don’t seem like a responsible person.”
    “Where my work is concerned, I am. I know I play the fool and such, but I do know my job.”
    “You enjoy being a vet, then?”
    “I wouldn’t want to be anything else. Nothing else in the whole wide world.”
    She sensed passion and conviction in his voice, loved the light in his eyes and asked him which parts he liked the best.
    “A cold winter’s morning with a brilliant, rosy-red dawn just breaking, a warm cowshed, a fight to get a calf born alive, the sight of it slithering out and the joy of it breathing, and the mother, all toil forgotten, bending to lick it.” Scott looked embarrassed. “Sorry for going all poetic, but that’s what I like. Then you wash under the tap in the yard, or if you’re lucky, someone brings a bucket of hot water into the cowshed and when you’re clean, you go into the warm kitchen and have a coffee laced with rum and a comfortable chat about things that really matter; then you go home.” He looked somewhere beyond her shoulder, lost in thought. “More often than not, though, it’s pouring with rain, pitch