She seemed pleasant. That was a good thing. More often than not, Tony found himself stuck at dinner with arrogant women who had more attitude than they knew what to do with. Admittedly, that was probably because those were the women that Tony chose to spend his time with - ditching them shortly afterward was a lot easier to do when he simply didn't care about them - but that didn't mean that Tony didn't enjoy the sight of a friendly face. Felicia was distracted and evasive right now, whereas Pepper was currently buried elbow deep in her work. To say that Tony could have used a positive dose of company was more than an understatement. High class women with unrealistic expectations and snotty, unfortunate outlooks on life bored him. Tony needed real company. Someone that he could actually, to a certain extent, talk to. Helena seemed like an intelligent woman, which already made her a thousand times more interesting than anyone else he had spent time lately. Tony found he had high hopes for their little exchange here, even if it ended with dinner and dinner alone.
After giving Helena's hand a shake, Tony took a seat in the chair opposite her. As if on cue (fun fact: it was), one of the waiters whisked over to the table with a bottle of wine and began pouring a healthy dose of the finely aged drink into their glasses. At this point, small talk was probably the expected approach. Tony didn't really like small talk. It was boring. Plus, awkward. And who wanted to be stuck with awkward small talk when there were plenty of other things to discuss? Rather than asking Helena how she was taking to Lawrence, mentioning how nice the weather was, yada, yada, yada, Tony picked up his glass, took a sip, and jumped to what was on his mind instead.
"You don't look like an H.G. Wells to me. Are you sure that's your real name?" He was pretty sure that was her real name. Still, Tony couldn't help but poke fun at her. The H.G. Wells in front of him now looked nothing like the version he had pictured in his head long before he met Helena here.
For all her curiosity about the remote that was sitting on the table, Tony didn't seem to all that interested in it. He planned on using it later on to give Helena a visual tour of the area that he had reserved for her and the team of people she would be working with, but Tony hadn't gotten there yet. Currently, he was far more intrigued with the woman sitting in front of him. He'd talk business later.