NOTHING BUT TROUBLE

By Trish Jensen

 

To say that I was something of a handful as a child would be akin to saying that nuclear weapons are a bit worrisome. The analogy is somewhat appropriate because I was a midget nuclear weapon.

For example, there was the time when I was five when I wanted cherry Jell-O, and my mother was off playing bridge. So I was determined to make it myself. I’d watched her make it for me so many times, I was certain I could pull it off. My oldest sister was on the phone with one of her girlfriends, discussing boys (oh, ick!), so I had free reign of the kitchen.

By the time I was done, the entire kitchen was cherry red and I’d nearly set the house on fire. My mother looked around, shook her head and said, “Patricia Louise, you are nothing but trouble!” I looked up at her and smiled and she saw my cherry red teeth and face and couldn’t help it. She laughed.

This was not the first nor the last time I was reminded that I was nothing but trouble. Most but not all of the times a rueful smile and promise I wouldn’t finger paint the dog again kept me out of well, the dog house. The worst were when my allowance was taken away for that week (the horror of that is too psychologically traumatizing to think about).

But the phrase always stuck with me. Nothing but trouble. What if I had a woman who was told that all of her life, too? But not in a

 

good way? What if it stuck with her to the point that she believed it?

That’s what happens to Laura Tanner, who grew up with a father who never let her forget she was a burden, not a treasured child?

Along the way she makes some bad choices, but is determined to be something. She scrimps and saves enough to open a bar in Manhattan, which she calls, of course, Nothing But Trouble. Along the way she meets an eclectic group of people who become best friends. One friend, Ali, comes to work for her. Ali is a psychic. A bad one. At last count, Ali is batting 0-1000 in her predictions.

So when Ali tells her one night, after reading the pulp in the Screwdriver (no tea leaves for Ali, she reads pulp) Laura had just prepared that Laura is about to meet her prince, man-shy Laura feels she’s as safe as safe can be.

Until a stranger walks into her bar and introduces himself as Brandon Prince.

Ali’s pulp can’t be right, can it?

 

Trish Jensen is a USA Today bestselling author.

Nothing But Trouble is now available for your NOOK or KINDLE.