An eyebrow lifted, the corner of his mouth twitching. “I just thought it’d be nice to repay you for your selfless assistance. No offense was meant,” he said, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “Figured since I’m the billionaire here it would be more sensible for me to pay for a lady’s meal.”
“Oh sensible! Sensible is not what brought me down here.” Summer shook a finger at him. “I will permit you to drive. And choose the restaurant. We’ll see about the bill. In the meantime I want to know what you were working on.” She raked long fingers through her hair, then started rummaging through pockets in her bag with a slight frown.
“It’s a rare commodity, my sensibility,” Tony joked, fetching a set of keys from a nearby table and missing the frown she made. “Okay, I know a great little place. You like Mongolian food? As for what I was working on, it’s part of a tear gas emitting arrowhead for Barton. Trying to win them over, little by little.” It was true, and the only way Stark knew how to do that was to build them things. He was also working on creating a new material to better protect Barton and Romanoff, but he’d only just started designing that.
With an exclamation of discovery, Summer pulled out a metal butterfly clip. “That’s what I needed. Mongolian sounds great.” With practised and economical motions she wound her hair up into a bun and clipped it. “You have to win them over? Dude, you /saved the world/. That’s gotta count for something. I figured your charm did the rest.”
He watched her work her hair up into the bun as he spoke. “The others are more accepting, but Romanoff and Barton are a little more difficult. Can you see either of them being won over by charm alone? And my charm, after a while, tends to rub people the wrong way.”
Summer made a moue of agreement. “True, true. So what’s the right way to be rubbed by your charm, Mr Stark?” she snickered. “And … you have a /lot/ of cars.” She turned to him, turned back, turned to him, eyes wide, eyebrows up. “How can you even /decide/ what to drive?”