I know self-deprecating, beautiful, sweet-natured women, aka “good girls”, are a norm in romance writing, and I usually enjoy such a heroine. But when one of these kind, thoughtful women decides to take on the role of sexpot to seduce an unknown man as well as wreck his life all for the sake of her career, I start to lose interest quickly. Add to that the required sexy, designer knockoff wardrobe she must purchase to fool said rich and sophisticated man into believing she runs in his upscale world, and I find it difficult to care much for the heroine or her schemes.

Max Taylor worked hard to get his private charter airline up and running. He recently expanded to a fleet of six jets and has a merger in the works that could make his airline financially successful beyond his dreams. However, his reputation as an extreme playboy may be the one thing to throw a wrench in his well-laid plans of expansion. One of his famous ex-girlfriends has written an expose of her many sexual exploits and Max has one whole damning chapter devoted to his jaded lifestyle. Attempting to thwart its publication, Max threatens a libel suit and goes into hiding with the resolve that he stay away from all women – for the time being.

Sabrina Cavanaugh is a junior editor eager to advance her career and show management she has what it takes. Knowing the publication of the exploitations of a senator’s widow is in jeopardy with Mr. Taylor threatening a lawsuit over the damning chapter devoted to him, Sabrina comes up with a plan to prove he is the womanizing playboy the book portrays and end this nonsense. No, she is not seeking to interview his former lovers – she will prove it by becoming personally involved with the man. If this setup seems unclear to you, I don’t think the book will make it any clearer, even though it tries to repeatedly, but let me try.

“She wanted Max Taylor to fall crazy in lust with her. Not so she could have wild, passionate sex with the man (liar, liar) but so she could nail him for the womanizing deviant Grace Wellington’s book made him out to be. The book that was now in jeopardy since the rich, slimy playboy had hired a shark lawyer to threaten a lawsuit.”

And so the plan is: “Stop the lawsuit, get the book into print so it could make a big splash, earn a promotion because of that big splashy book, and make more money so she could take care of Allie.”

And to further sum it up: “Once she caught Taylor in the act of being exactly the heartbreaking, sex-addicted loverboy Grace had made him out to be, she’d cut his legal legs out from under him. Nip his lawsuit to stop publication of Grace’s book in the bud. And laugh all the way to the bestseller lists. Piece of cake.”

And she is going to do all of this without ever taking her clothes off.

Of course, Sabrina is helpless to stop the extreme sexual draw she feels – a draw Max easily recognizes as a blatant invitation for no-strings sex, but he is trying to be a good boy. The possibility that the publisher may have planted one of their employees to expose him as a true sexual deviant helps him reign in his desires. Max and Sabrina’s reflections on the mind numbing sex each wants so badly are kind of fun at first, but lose their charm quickly when those same thoughts are pondered relentlessly.

In the discussion following a recent ATBF column, The Age in Your Head, it became clear that there are a large number of women over 50 reading romance. Every one of those women sees the effects of aging on her body – there is no way to avoid it. Therefore, when I read comments ridiculing an older woman’s body, I shuddered at the lack of sensitivity, despite the attempt to brand it as humor. Numerous times within the pages of the book, references to the unsightly nature of an age spotted, older woman’s body are made and I feel compelled to share a few: the “length” of her bust line, the sags that can’t be lifted by a crane, wrinkled nudity, two-inch wide bra straps, crossed arms that lift a sagging bosom, breast implants going south, granny panties, support hose, and the overall “I’ve fallen and can’t get up” description. Add to that the fact that several seventy-plus women are described as sex-crazed, and I mean really crazed, as well as sex-starved bovines, and the humor can only be described as bad taste. I’ll give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume that she used Archie Bunker type humor to support the idea that older women do in fact enjoy sex, but it fails miserably with the slaps given to their appearance.

Around page 230, the story became tolerable for me although I must admit that if I weren’t reviewing this book, I would never have read that far. Once the sexual word play ends, there is a fair sense of romance, but trumped-up villains and a suspense plot that seems to be more of a requirement to end the book than an actual enhancement drag down the entire story further.

I’m sure that Here Comes Trouble could be categorized as “mindless reading” with the reasoning that one should just enjoy the laughs and go with the flow without picking too closely at the story. But there were few things I found to be truly humorous, little to inspire me to continue reading, and unfortunately a good bit that I thought tasteless. A definite losing combination for me.