One of the ladies walked away shaking her head.
“Alice Burns,” Pearl said. “Don’t worry, she’ll soon be headed back to Charleston.”
They reached a table and Wesley pulled out her chair for her while Anthony went in search of drinks.
“So who is Pearl Tuttle?” Wesley asked, staring at her full lips, barely holding himself back from tasting her.
“A southern belle who lost everything in the war. Even though we were for the North, the war cost us our plantation, our land, and my family.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Wesley said, thinking about his own family and how one fight had torn them apart. But a war, you couldn’t get out of the way of.
She leaned into him and reached out to touch his arm. “What about you? Do you have a family that lives around here?”
“My family left me for dead,” he said, thinking he wasn’t going to hide anything from her. She needed to know the circumstances before they married.
Married? Had he just thought the wordmarried?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That happened a lot in the South. Families were torn apart by this war. I hated it.”
“Yes, I’m glad I was here,” he said, wondering how her breasts would feel in the palm of his hands. How it would feel when he ran his hands through her hair and brought her mouth to his.
“What do you do for a living?”
“Anthony owns the ranch and I help him with the cattle. When he came here, he knew nothing about how to raise a herd and I grew up doing it.”
“Oh, so you live on a ranch?”
“Yes,” Anthony said, walking up with three glasses of punch.
The man set the cups on the table. Anthony reached out and stroked the side of her face with his fingers. Damn, the man beat him to it. Wesley wanted to touch her face, kiss her lips, and more.
“Tell me what you expect in a wife,” she said, glancing at Anthony.
“I want a family. Children, babies, sons and daughters. A house filled with love and laughter and a woman who takes care of them and us.”
She grinned at him. “I’ve had cooks all my life, so I don’t know much about cooking, but I’m willing to learn.”
He leaned into her. “Once the first baby arrives, I’ll hire you a cook.”
Wesley knew Anthony was good for his word and he didn’t doubt for a second that he would hire someone.
“No, I want to learn to cook,” she said. “Maybe I was a little too pampered. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy being taken care of, but I also need to know how to live.”
Wesley glanced at Anthony. This sounded almost too good to be true.
“Do you know how to shoot a gun?” Anthony asked.
“No, will you teach me?”
“Darling, I will teach you whatever you want to learn,” Wesley said.
“In South Carolina, we had a big garden. Would you teach me how to garden?”
The memory of his mother’s garden smacked him in the chest. Homegrown vegetables, snapping beans, shucking corn, and canning. The best cooking he’d ever had, and he missed that part of his family.
“If we don’t know how, we’ll find someone to help teach you,” Anthony said.
“My mother gardened and I would love to have fresh vegetables.”