Linda Hudson-Smith: Indiscriminate Attraction

She wasn’t the kind of person who lied to herself—and she wasn’t about to start now. She was hot for Chancellor, homeless or otherwise. The man made her pulse race and she couldn’t even put a name to what else occurred to her physically. She just knew she felt flushed all over whenever he was around. No one—but no one—had ever made her feel this out of control.

Laylah’s parents, semiretired television news correspondents Jack and Selma Versailles, would think their youngest child had totally lost her mind. Brandon, her entertainment-correspondent brother, would rib her unmercifully if he ever found out about the man she secretly admired. And her uppity, well-to-do sixty-seven and sixty-nine-year-old aunts Cora and Gertrude, both celebrity newspaper columnists, might be stunned to learn that their niece was hopelessly infatuated with a homeless man….

turned to writing as a healing and creative outlet in 2000, after illness forced her to leave a successful marketing and public relations career. Dedicated to inspiring readers to overcome adversity against all odds, she now has twenty published novels to her credit, spanning an array of genres that include romance, contemporary and inspirational/ Christian fiction. Linda has traveled the world as an enthusiastic witness to other cultures and lifestyles, which has helped her craft stories set in a variety of exotic and romantic locations.

For the past seven years, Hudson-Smith has served as the national spokesperson for the Lupus Foundation of America, and has made Lupus awareness one of her top priorities. She travels around the country delivering inspirational messages of hope.

Linda Hudson-Smith was born in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, and raised in Washington, D.C. She furthered her educational goals by attending Duff’s Business Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The mother of two sons, Linda shares a residence with her husband, Rudy, in League City, Texas. To find out more about this extraordinary author go to her Web site, www.lindahudsonsmith.com.

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Dear Reader,

I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading Indiscriminate Atrraction from cover to cover. I’m very interested in hearing your comments and thoughts on the romance story featuring Laylah Versailles and Chancellor Kingston, a couple who meet under very unusual circumstances.

If you are interested in receiving a reply, please enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope with all your correspondence, and mail to: Linda Hudson-Smith, 16516 El Camino Real, Box 174, Houston, TX 77062. Or you can e-mail your comments to LHS4romance@yahoo.com. Please also visit my Web site and sign my guest book at www.lindahudsonsmith.com.

Linda Hudson-Smith

This book is dedicated to all the wonderful

staff members at Dental Etc:

You guys are the very best.

Thanks for all your unyielding support.

Mitchel Mai, D.D.S.

Veronica Morales

Trini Pham

Hope Salcedo

I want to acknowledge each and every one of you for your love, support and dedication. Thanks to all of you who helped to make my first annual Book Club Luncheon a huge success. It was such a pleasure hosting each book-club member.

Kumosa Book Club

Cover2Cover Book Club

Coffee, Tea & Read Book Club

Turning Pages Book Club

One Really Awesome Woman Book Club

Thomasine C. Smith—Palatka, Florida

Mable B. Mosley—Palatka, Florida

Ronald and Sheila Wright

Mitchel Mai, DDS

Ralph Tharp, M.D.

The 3-Gs Grace, Georgia and Geraldine—my Winnsboro connections

Sydney and Gwen Mulkey

Donna Hill—Donna Hill Promotions

Misherald Brown—Donna Hill Promotions

Rosemary Poole

Kristina Smith

Leroy Hamilton—Photos by Hamilton

Mattie Watson—Little Rock AFB Exchange

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

As Laylah looked up at the large clock on the back wall of the L.A. Press newspaper office, where she worked as a top-notch feature-story reporter, her light gray eyes expressed shock. Totally lost in her deadline story, she had also lost track of time and everything else. Since she had less than an hour to get her assignment in, she really had to step it up. This was a very important feature she couldn’t dare to fudge on, not that she ever would. Laylah was a very conscientious reporter.

Ashley Roberson, a seven-year-old child, had been missing for over a week now. Thus far, not one clue had turned up. Byron Gates, the lead detective, had told Laylah he’d rarely worked on a case where there wasn’t at least something to go on. “Nothing about this story makes any sense to me,” he’d said at the end of the interview.

Ashley allegedly had been abducted from her own bedroom in the wee hours of the morning. The timing was just speculation on Renee Matthews’s part, since the single mother hadn’t discovered the child missing until 7:00 a.m., when she’d gone to the child’s bedroom to get her ready for the summer day-care program. Then Renee had dialed 911.

This sad and interesting story had intrigued her from the onset. Laylah always took great pride in her job at L.A. Press—she was known for writing her features in painstaking detail and with loads of passion. Once she was given an assignment, she went right to work on it, lending it her undivided attention until it was in actual print. Numerous awards had already been bestowed upon her for excellence in journalism and for her strong commitment to community service.

Laylah also penned various articles for several nationwide magazines; she positively lived and breathed her craft. The “All Around Town” column she wrote was a favorite to many.

“Laylah,” Joe Angleton called out from across the room, “March needs to see you in his office right away.” Joe chuckled lowly, knowing how their personalities clashed. Sparks flew whenever they were in the same room.

March Riverton was the boss, yet he wasn’t nearly as knowledgeable about running the newspaper office as Laylah. Not only did she know her job inside and out, she was able to execute everyone else’s duties with relative ease, including March’s.

“Ugh!” Laylah had no desire to butt heads with her boss yet again, especially not when she had more important things to take care of. March always seemed to know when she was a bit behind on her assignments, never failing to call her into his office at the most crucial, inopportune times. Most of what he’d call her in for was pure nonsense.

If anyone would ask Laylah why March was so hard on her, she’d be inclined to tell them she believed he had a romantic interest in her. While he was a very attractive man—tall, slim and velvety dark—she wasn’t the least bit attracted to him. In her opinion, no chemistry whatsoever existed between them. His sense of humor was about as dry as a bale of hay—and his cockiness was anything but a turn-on for her.