Tough Rocks — Linda Hughes

It was one cell phone call too many that made Gem Swenson abandon her carefully manufactured high-class persona and cold-cock her husband in the head with a frying pan. Did he honestly think she was so stupid she didn't know he was having an affair? No doubt with a young, helium-boobed twit. Twenty years of volunteering for his hoity-toity charity events and faking orgasms, and this was all the respect she got?



The fragile shell of hypocrisy shattered, falling away like a dropped rotten egg, leaving Gem to wonder about Harley, that young deputy sheriff she'd fallen in love with so many years before when she and her hippy sister, Garnet, defied their controlling mother and took a madcap road trip through the South. Flashbacks to that adventure, which their mother thought was a vacation to the Grand Canyon when the girls had actually never made it far beyond the Gravel Pit Bar in Alabama, stir up feelings long buried for Gem. She had once been carefree and mischievous and full of moxie. Where had that girl gone? Why had she let her die in order to follow their overbearing mother's demand that she return home to marry the “proper” man?



Well, she was tired of feeling dead inside. She wanted to come alive again! She wanted to find Harley. Was he married? Fortuitously divorced? Even living? Did he still have that jet black hair and tight rear-end that made her knees turn to jelly? And was he still the most decent man she'd ever known? As soon as she got out of jail for assaulting her husband, nothing could stop her from finding out.



When she finally tracked Harley down, she found a widowed sheriff who was a little worse for wear but still a perfect fit for her. He was reluctant to trust the woman who'd once broken his heart, but she eventually convinced him to at least have a cup of coffee with her. In the end, she proves that it's never too late to make your dreams come true.