Page 5 of The Southern Submission

“You only need to save it once, but if it makes you feel better to do it multiple times, you can.” I laugh.

“Better safe than swearing,” she replies seriously. She looks over at me, and her cheeks stain pink once again as she fidgets against the aqua velvet of the banquette. “Um, thanks for the help. I don't know what I would've done if this laptop had died on me and taken my story with it. I would’ve missed my deadline for sure. Maybe given up completely.” She rolls herlip with her teeth and looks down.

“You would have been fine,” I assure her. “You strike me as the industrious sort and would have come up with a solution to your problem that didn't involve throwing the laptop on the ground in a fit of anger.” I can’t help the laugh that breaks out of me this time, remembering how cute she was as she lost her shit and lifted the laptop to do just that. She has so much personality and I've barely broken the surface.

“I was about to before you intervened,” she admits, propping her elbows on the table and hiding her face in her hands.

I restrain myself from reaching out and tugging her hands away from her gorgeous face. That would be something a more familiar person would do, not a perfect stranger like me should. Instead, I lean back and silently watch her, waiting to see if she’ll look over again, or if she’ll take this as her out and get back to work on her story.

A moment later, she drops her hands and glances over at me, her face a mask of anger I wasn’t expecting to see. She sees my casual posture and leans back to match me.

“How am I supposed to repay this act of generosity?” she snaps.

I raise an eyebrow at her tone and resist the urge to bring out more of the brat in her for fun. “That’s assuming I was expecting you to repay it in the first place instead of helping because I could without any ulterior motives.”

“People don’t do nice things for strangers. There’s always some kind of expectation, insidious or blatant.”

She’s sassy and I like it. I want more of her.

“Look at you, pulling out your fancy journalist vocabulary trying to figure out my motives. I helped you when you needed it because I have the skills to do so. That's it.”

I run a hand through my hair and give her alook I hope conveys I purely wanted to help. She narrows her eyes, so I roll mine at her and laugh. She huffs in indignation.

“Just take the help when someone offers. Why question everything?” I straighten abruptly. She sits up quickly, mirroring my movements while appearing uneasy. “Unless you want to owe me a favor, Ainsley Montgomery.” I pin her with a calculating stare, knowing it’s far more intense than anything I’ve sent her way this entire exchange. She squirms under the scrutiny.

“That sounds like a motive to me, Payton,” she fires back.

Fuck, she’s feisty. I like the roiling energy she matches to my easy enthusiasm. I lean my arm on the back of the banquette, entering her space. She refuses to give up an inch of her position, allowing me closer. I breathe in the sweet scent of vanilla and coffee coming from her that smells better than the blasphemous Americano I was drinking. I should start every morning with a hit of her.

“What’ll it be?” I ask softly, instead of letting my mind wander to the what-ifs and remote possibilities. “Take it as something nice a person did for you, or you’re now beholden to me for an unspecified favor of my choosing.”

Her choice will say a lot about how she views the world. She’s already told me plenty just by insisting that strangers don't do nice things for others out of the goodness of their hearts. She expects there to always be a catch. Despite her assumptions, I had no ulterior motives when I offered to help her. But if she willingly chooses to owe me a favor when given the option to accept that it was good luck that I happened to sit down next to her and could fix her tech issue, well then, that seems to be my own good luck. If fate wants to tie Ainsley Montgomery to me so easily, why the hell would I turn that down? I’m an opportunist to my core, and I like the idea ofmore time with her for some reason.

“Why would I agree to an unspecified favor of your choosing? There are too many uncertain terms in that phrase. I’d be stupid to agree to that.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, drawing my attention to her perky tits that are now straining under the white cotton of her tank top. I look away at the busy café. I have no business checking out the chest of a beautiful woman who has to be a decade younger than me. I’m usually better than that, but I’m unreasonably attracted to her. There’s no denying that she’s my physical ideal from top to bottom, and her attitude has me itching to teach her a lesson on what bratting this hard will get her with me. Apparently, it’s been too long since I’ve exercised my desires thoroughly to ignore the spike ofwantfor her that’s risen in me. I return my gaze once I’m back in control.

“I didn’t say you have to. The choice is yours.” I reach out and playfully tip the bill of her hat up, and she swats at my hand.

“It’s not much of a choice,” she says, adjusting the hat on her head. “I owe you for fixing my computer. I just don’t like your terms. I need them defined in order to agree. Or at least to understand the level of the favor that’s required.”

“I saved your ass today,” I point out as I tip my head at her.

I’m arguing a point I hadn’t even wanted to originally, but now think is hilarious as she takes us down this route when she could have avoided it altogether. I have no problem stirring the pot when presented with the opportunity. Ainsley just happened to give me a very tempting pot.

She bites her lip and narrows her eyes at me, and this time, I can’t stop myself from reaching out to grab her chin gently, using my thumb to pull her lip from between her teeth. Her eyes grow wide as I tap the plump pink softness once beforereleasing her face.

“You abuse that poor lip when you’re thinking. It’s not nice to do that to something so pretty.” I smile and lace my fingers in my lap to keep them to myself. The last thing I need to be doing is touching a stranger, flirty banter or not.Especiallynot a journalist who writes about my company. She’ll likely use this interaction against me the next time she’s given an assignment on Olympus. I can see the headlines now,Olympus COO manhandles strangers in cafés off the clock. Just what Olympus needs. I have to rein in my desire to flirt with her for the hell of it. Flirting with everyone may be my go-to and ingrained in my personality, but it doesn't have to get me into trouble when I need it the least.

Her cheeks flush, but she doesn’t look away, her gaze fierce and determined. “Fine. I owe you a favor. I hate that you’re being super vague on purpose and seem to enjoy my displeasure about not knowing your terms of what that means. I don’t like the idea of you fixing my computer and not expecting anything from it even more. I’d feel worse about that.”

My brows rise at her agreement and my heart soars as I study her for a moment. “You’re an enigma, Ainsley Montgomery. Most would’ve taken the help and moved on without another thought. You choose to owe me an unspecified favor. What’s wrong with you?” I chuckle at her look of rebuke at my question.

“Nothing’s wrong with me. I just know the world always expects its pound of flesh. If I didn’t pay you back for this, there would be something far worse waiting for me. Why do you keep saying my full name like that?”

“That’s such a morbid way of looking at life. I say your full name because that’s how you introduced yourself and I like the way it sounds.”

“Do you always say everything you think?” she growls, pressing her arms tighter against her chest as she grows exasperated, closing herself in more.

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