Pepper smiled with Happy. She knew that sometimes he felt useless, but he didn't seem to understand how important he still was, to both of them. Tony wasn't Iron Man all the time - no matter how invincible he seemed to act - and she definitely wasn't. Outside of the suits, they were both very vulnerable, and always directly in the public eye. Tony was the focus everyone, good or bad, and she was also right beside, for business or personal reasons, and more often than not, completely distracted by one thing or another.
Without Happy there keeping an eye on them, they could potentially be in a lot more trouble. Maybe even more since Afghanistan. They needed him. They trusted him.
Pepper didn't know that she could have forgiven herself if Happy had been more seriously injured that day, but she was relieved he wasn't, and it helped that he didn't blame her. It also helped that he thought she'd done a good job. Things had been awkward between them since Tony had saved her life and his own with the Extremis virus, but all of it - Extremis, the suit, the arc reactor - had not only saved her life, it had changed it. "Thank you," she said quietly. "It means a lot to me that... your approval, I mean. That you're okay with it."
Pepper frowned. In all the excitement, and her worry about Happy, she hadn't thought to ask about what had really happened at the mall. "I didn't ask, to be honest," she laughed. "I was more concerned with you."