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certainly wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.”
    “And I believe you flushed something fierce when I told you I loved you the last time you were home on leave. And that I’m all right with the Cole cheatin’ gene as long as you don’t go sniffing around in our home territory.”
    “You didn’t embarrass me; you surprised me.” And made him feel like a schmuck on behalf of his family. Yeah, the cheating gene went back generations. It was accepted: Marry a Cole and pretty much count on him cheating. His daddy used to haul him over to another parish and set him in a woman’s living room in front of her television while he went down the hallway for an hour or two. Now Saxby knew why the cartoons had been turned up so loud.
    Years later, his daddy had given him a conspiratorial wink. “You’ll find that straying is in the blood,” he’d said. “Just be discreet.”
    Saxby half suspected the men just used it as an excuse to cheat. Then again, he had yet to meet a woman who made him want to commit, so maybe it was real after all. A parade of women—he’d never call them floozies—and not a one had stirred his intellect or his heart. Other parts of him, but not the parts that really mattered.
    He took a good look at M.L., whom he’d known his whole life. Nope, not her, either. He leaned back in the hammock, his hands tucked behind his head. “Darlin’, tell me why you would enter into the holy union of matrimony while giving your husband permission to have sex with other women.”
    She carefully leaned down and placed a warm hand on either side of his face. “You really have to ask?”
    He gave her a droll look. “I did, didn’t I?”
    “You’re the best-looking, most interesting man in Cole, Louisiana. You’re smart and sexy and rich. Maybe the Cole men cheat, but they otherwise take real good care of their women.” She gestured back at the plantation house with the wraparound galleries on all three levels. Or maybe it was to include the land itself, with its oaks dripping with Spanish moss, stands of palms, and all the fancy plantings his mother had done over theyears. “I could live like this even if you did stray once in a while. As long as you wear a condom.”
    “Hell, M.L., stop talking about me sticking my dick into any hole like you’re discussing which laundry detergent you’d use on my tighty whities.”
    She gave him a smug look. “See, told you I’d embarrassed you. And you don’t wear tighty whities. Least I’ve only seen those dark boxer briefs on your amazing body.”
    “You don’t embarrass me. You just”—he held back the word
disturb
—“astound me that you’d trade fidelity for a nice house and an ‘interesting’ man. Aren’t you worth more than that?”
    “Sax, honey, don’t you know you’re the most eligible man in this parish and the next? Come on, don’t play that coy card with me. How many women have come by since you got back two weeks ago?”
    It made him damned uncomfortable to be stuck with that label:
most eligible
. Like he was some product or reality TV show. “I don’t know. It’s not like I keep track.”
    She leaned even closer, her mouth only a hair’s breadth from his. “Because there are so many. Or maybe you’re just being polite by not giving me a number. But no one’s gonna love you like I will.” She ran her fingers down his shirt all the way to the front of his shorts as she said, “They’re all thinking they’re gonna change you, make you keep that big hard cock of yours right where it belongs. I’m smarter than that.”
    He merely raised his eyebrows at her blunt assessment of his cock. Well, nice of her to say, he supposed. “You’re serious about just letting me go off and screw other women?”
    “As long as you come home to me every night. So, you’ll think about it?”
    “That I will.” Because it baffled him; not because he’d consider it for one second.
    She planted a kiss on him, leaving a film of sticky lipstick behind.