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The late afternoon sun was still blazing hot. Kate Sutherland wiped the sweat from under her ponytail and bent again to pull tender green onions from the crusted earth of the garden. The flies and bees sped by in a monotonous tune of buzzing through the corn stalks and over the tomato plants. It hung in the still heat that shimmered over the fields beyond.
Kate straightened again and wiped her brow, looking out over the green-gold rolling plains through the big poplar that stood guard over the edge of the garden. It was almost a blinding color, the wheat gold that burned the eyes and leeched their moisture in a Van Gogh painting. Arles must have been very much like South Dakota she decided.
She moved over to the cucumber patch and pulled three big ones for dinner, feeling their slick green silky length in her hand. Cole would be home tomorrow. She blushed then, realizing those phallic vegetables had made her think of her husband. Well, it had been a long time. Six weeks in France while she’d been here alone on the ranch except for the hired hands.
Kate wandered over to the strawberry patch, her basket almost laden now with vegetables, the good things she grew every summer in this unpromising earth. If the foreman hadn’t been so new she could have gone with Cole. She still didn’t quite understand what was that special about a Limousin bull but Cole studied every night after dinner, the breeds, the blood lines, the beef per pound, the proportions of bone and gristle and fat. A Limousin bull was finally what he had to have … and so he’d gone.
Fictional reading for entertainment purposes only.