Cletus Falls in Love just goes to show how certain things shouldn't be thrown around lightly. Bo's smart enough to know better.
"Cletus is a fool," Luke declared somewhere around the time it got too hot to be digging anyway. Spring, when they had to make trenches upon trenches and they'd gotten behind, what with all the phony check charges. Shirts-open weather, Bo sweating into his own eyes. That and the way Luke smiled over Cletus' lovesickness, gave him all the excuse he needed to turn his shovel into a chin prop.
"Now wait a minute, Luke," had to stop long enough to shake the hair out of his eyes. "She done told him she loved him."
"And like she said, it's just a thing she says." Hard to tell whether the look he was getting was annoyed at the whole ridiculous concept of Daisy loving Cletus, or more about the work Bo wasn't doing. Either way, Luke would get over it.
"Still, them words ain't nothing to play with."
Luke snorted. "Get back to work, Bo."
"They ain't!" Love was… well, ask anyone in Hazzard and they'd tell you Luke was a smart man. And maybe he knew some things nobody else did and could come up with solutions to problems, from the mundane to the bizarre, faster than you could say lickety-split. But for all that, Luke was an idiot who didn't put enough stock in love.
"All I'm saying is, anyone could tell Daisy didn't mean it," Luke said. And that, Bo Duke, was a compromise.
Which only left him on the ragged edge of angry. "Then she shouldn't have said it!" She really shouldn't have. It was just that kind of thing that got her into all kinds of trouble that he and Luke had to rescue her from.
"What?" Luke's face called Bo and idiot so his mouth didn't have to. "You said it to her, and you didn't mean it."
"Luke, that's different," and how did his cousin do this to him? Here he was, dropping the shovel and taking those two steps up to Luke just so he could look down on that mean little smirk. That smile a few minutes ago was something to see; this sarcasm wasn't worth the effort Bo was putting into puffing out his chest. "She's family."
Luke's lips buzzed against each other in dismissal of that idea. "You're family, too. I love you, Bo. Is that different?"
He was all set to fight, to accept a bloody nose if he had to. But that question of Luke's—when a man was right, he was right.
"Nope," Bo answered, fingers grabbing Luke by the collar of his loose shirt and yanking him forward, thumb propping his cousin's stubborn chin up. Planted a wet one on those disbelieving lips while his other hand grabbed around Luke's waist to get him close. Didn't take long for Luke's palms to find purchase on Bo's chest and push them apart with a silly sucking sound.
Bo favored him with his brightest smile. "Them words ain't nothing to play with."