Anna sits at a table for two. Jim sits opposite, soft brown eyes looking earnestly into hers. He's a farmer. Says he gets up at the crack of dawn every day, seven days a week.

'Really,' Anna tries to inject some enthusiasm into her tone. Now Jim's talking about cows' udders, their shapes, weight when full of milk and even when empty. Then abruptly changes the subject and tells her, looking down at her fingers drumming on the table top, that she has nice hands.

Anna stares at her hands that puts mince into Stours Pies and she wonders if any of Jim's cows end up as filling. She shudders.

Then Jim asks her what she does for a living. 'I'm catering manager at The Manor Hotel,' she utters the same lie she's uttered on the last two occasions she attended 'YOU FOR ME' speed dating.

He raises bushy eyebrows that Anna considers need both thinning and trimming. And as she considers this, she thinks of sheep shearing and wants to laugh.

'I thought Kelso Brown was catering manager,' she hears Jim say, crushing her amusement.

Heat rises to her cheeks. 'Oh, Kelso left last week.' She adds another lie to her growing repertoire of speed dating lies.

Now Farmer Jim looks worried. Then smiles tentatively. 'But you'll keep buying my fresh produce, won't you?'

Anna nods but unable to meet his pleading gaze, glances over to the next table where her eyes lock onto the amused expression of a thirty fivish, quite hunky man sitting with a mousey, terrified looking companion. He winks. Anna blushes.

Then the bell rings. Five minutes have passed like eternity. Couples rise with a clatter and swap tables but Anna heads for the exit.

Outside the air is warm. Dusk sends wisps of purple clouds across a darkening sky. Taking in a deep breath, she heads for her car parked under a chestnut tree weeping snowy white blossom onto the bonnet.

Suddenly, a voice calls to her. God! It's Farmer Jim, Anna thinks and turning, she watches the man with whom she so recently exchanged mutual glances striding towards her.

'Hi,' he says, reaching her side.

'Did I forget something?' she asks noticing a rugged jawline, a dimpled chin and amazing blue eyes.

'Yes,' he replies. 'Me. You were my next partner.'

'Really?' Now she wishes she hadn't left so fast.

'I saw you at The Manor Hotel, last month,' he continues.
He leans against her car as if in no hurry to rush off. 'I was best man at a friend's wedding. You were waitressing, dressed in that lovely Elizabethan costume.' He laughs. 'Can you remember tripping up with a platter of roast pheasant?'

'Don't remind me,' she replies, recalling the clamour of silver crashing to the floor and the pheasant hurtling in the air as if alive, landing on a guests lap. 'I got the sack,' she adds wryly.

'That's unfair,' he says. 'An accident is an accident after all.'

'One of many,' she tells him. 'Now I work in a pie factory.' And as she speaks, she realises that she hadn't told a lie. Had refrained from embelishing on a boring occupation.

He holds out his hand. 'I'm Bruce Jenkins.'

Taking the proffered hand, Anna notices oil engrained in long, sturdy fingers. 'I bet you're a mechanic,' she says.

Much later, as the YOU AND ME clientele drift away, Anna and Bruce sit in her car, chatting. Then after a long conversation dries up, he leans across, gives her a tender kiss that makes her lips sizzle.

Then he says, in a low voice, 'Bring your car into my garage for a free service anytime.'

Thanking him, Anna muses upon another exclusive service Bruce Jenkins hopefully will offer her in the not too distant future.