<hr/><div class="floatleft">(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v411/Shalymar/Avatars/PepperPottsAngry2.jpg)</div><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 15pt;"><strong>Name:</strong> Pepper Potts<br/><strong>Title:</strong> Chairman &amp; CEO of Stark Industries<br/><strong>Location:</strong> Tony's Personal Lab<br/><strong>Time:</strong> 6:55 PM Thursday<br/><strong>Tags:</strong> Tony Starks</span></span><br/><hr/><br/><br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"></span><div style="text-align: justify;">The minute he stepped off the elevator, her eyes were locked on his face. She could tell from his facial expressions that he knew that hell was about to rain down on him from untold heights. She had no idea that when she left their bed this morning, full of every tender emotion a woman could feel in a relationship, that she would be wanting to kill him before they stepped near it again. How the man could take her from loving him one minute to wanting to knock him up aside of the head the next, baffled her at times.<br/><br/><strong>"Just what... in the hell, do you think you were thinking?"</strong>  She saw him open his mouth and she cut him off. <strong>"No..."</strong> Her voice held back nothing of the anger and disbelief she was feeling. <strong>"You don't get to speak yet, I'm not done. And before you give me one of your sarcastic or cute one-liners, let me finish."</strong> Pepper hadn't moved yet, but her eyes burned into his but it wasn't just anger he saw, it was also hurt.<br/><br/><strong>"I tried to resign, remember? Because I have a pretty distinct memory of that moment, and when I agreed to stay on as Chairman and CEO, you agreed to keep your hands and nose out of the company's business." </strong>He was going to concentrate on being Iron Man and his research projects and she was going to do the rest, it had worked out well so far. So what had him making company decisions without even consulting her?<br/><br/><strong>"Do you know how shocked I was to learn Stark had a new Director of Communications. Funny because I didn't remember hiring one, or that I was even looking for one. A fact I was only made aware of when my assistant came in to verify the location of Ms. Ross' office."</strong> She hadn't been able to reach Tony after she had learned of the job offer, which had done nothing to ease her tension upon her arrival back to the tower.<br/><br/>If that hadn't been bad enough, the icing on the cake, was the call she had received from accounting while she had waited for Tony. She had been looking over the fax papers she had been holding in her hand when the elevator had announced its arrival. She finally took a step towards him, lifting them up. <strong>"And what is this about you reallocating resources from the company?" </strong><br/><br/>Pepper knew she had every right to being chewing him a new one, she put up with a lot, not only professionally, but personally with Tony. He took risks, it was who he was and as infuriated as it could make her, she loved him for it too, because she knew he was trying to make the world a better place. But he could be so damn thoughtless at times that she didn't know whether to kiss him or hit him in any given moment. <br/><br/>She had stood beside him through everything, and he knew he could talk to her about <strong>anything</strong>. Isn't that what couples did? What they did? And part of why their relationship was so good, so balanced. He told her she completed him, that she grounded him and by the same token he challenged her and made her laugh. But, she wasn't laughing now and the fact that he didn't even so much as discuss this with her, not even a phone call to give her heads up before hand. Yes, it had her fuming.  <br/><br/>Tony had left her in charge to run the company while he was off saving the world. The least he could do was let her do what she was good at. Slowly her hands came off her hips and she took a stepped directly in front of him, closing the distance between them. It was then she noticed the look in his eyes, she had seen that look before.  <br/><strong><br/>"You look like shit."</strong> Her eyes softened at the sight of the gravity in his eyes and despite the fact that she was angrier than a riled hornet's nest, she reached out to him. <strong>"Tony,"</strong> It was that voice that pulled him out of his own head-space to look at her, and tell her the truth. <strong>"What is it? What are you <em>not</em> telling me?"</strong></div><br/><hr/>