Accepting the hand up, Pepper ignored the jab at her organizational skills. They were going to keep her sane in all of this boundary crossing they were about to do. "It's not the sex I'm worried about," she said, unconsciously echoing his thoughts with a pert expression. "It's everything else. I know who we are, and I like that; and I'm glad we can be this too, but it also has the potential to blow up in our faces, and we're not going to do this just to -" she shut her mouth. She wasn't going to help him only to lose him.
"One more rule," she said quietly. "When this is over, we go right back to this point; our working and personal relationship resumes just like," 'nothing ever happened.' "Normal."
She was relieved he agreed so easily to her first rule that she actually laughed at his joke. "Oh, God," she moaned. "No. The paparazzi will have a field day and can you imagine the Board?" She shook her head.
But she was shocked to see him hesitate over the second rule. Tony didn't sleep with his 'dates'. He left them alone in his bed for her to deal with, and Pepper had shown enough confused, upset, and angry women out the morning after to know she never wanted to be one. "I think it will be better to have some sort of boundary between what we do and... what we're doing," she explained awkwardly, but not completely untruthfully. "At least if I'm getting dressed for work at home in the morning, I can come into work and we can start our day as usual."
He wasn't actually agreeing to two of the rules, and Pepper frowned at him, but she supposed it was close enough. The first one was the most important, and Tony seemed to recognize that. "Thank you," she said, hoping this wasn't a big mistake, but knowing that the snowball had started rolling down the hill as soon as she'd brought it up.
She looked at the ground, realizing she had absolutely no idea what to do next, and that she really didn't like that feeling at all. Insanely, she looked to Tony for guidance, and then laughed because that seemed so funny and terrifying. Needing something to do (and because it was probably time anyway) she went for the sunblock. "Anything else you can think of?"