A/N: Over 2,000 hits for my story! This, to me, is an astounding achievement! Thank you all! Maybe we can make that number go higher…

When Cara says something about the "Beverly Hillbillies", she's not talking about the show but how some hillbillies marry their relatives and "Beverly" as in "Beverly Hills, California". You'll get it once you read it (I hope)!

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CLAP!

I woke up instantly in shock. What the—

"Get up, Cara. I wanna get started," I heard Tony say from the doorway.

I turned while staying under the covers and groped for my iPod on the nightstand: 7:48

"Uh, you're kidding me," I grumbled.

"Come on. Get up and get ready."

"No," I whined, pulling the covers over my head. "I'm a teenager. Teenagers need sleep."

There was a pause and muffled footsteps. Then the covers were ripped from my grasp and pulled entirely off my body to reveal Tony, dressed for the day and emotionless. But his eyes sparkled with humor.

I took a pillow and put it over my head.

"Are you asking for me to tip the bed over?" I heard Tony's muffled voice ask.

I lifted the pillow off my face to glare. "You wouldn't."

He then walked around to the other side of the bed, his smile growing gradually.

Before I could react, he had tipped the mattress so my top half rolled off while my legs stayed on the bed as the mattress fell back to its original position.

I stared at the ceiling in disbelief.

His smirking face came into view. "I would."

He laughed at the expression on my face which was still in complete surprise. "Are you awake now?"

I narrowed my eyes. "No. Comment."

Tony laughed again and I asked, "Why am I so amusing to you?"

He didn't answer my question but only straightened up and walked out from my view while saying, "Meet me downstairs in twenty minutes." I could still hear the smile in his voice.

I heard the door close and looked toward it to make sure he was gone. I took my legs off the bed, rolled to my feet, and got ready to jump in the shower.

I was annoyed at Tony the entire time I was getting ready for the day. My mind barely strayed from his wake-up call. In some ways, it was funny to me also; sometimes you can't help but laugh at some incidents. But I wasn't going to gave him the satisfaction that tipping me over was funny; he would probably do it again.

I strode into the workshop with my laptop in hand. I was thinking we would need it for the designs of my engines.

Tony was working on what looked like the final touches of his second boot at one of cleared tables that used to be cluttered with scrap metal.

"So," I started as I walked toward him. "Are we getting started on my engine?"

"Change of plan," he said without averting his eyes from his work. "No engine today. I'm just gonna work on this myself and you're just gonna stay down here and watch."

I sighed. "Great." I walked toward his computer chair in the middle of his wrap-around desk. "Just what I want to be doing: Nothing. Fun. And you made me wake up really early too."

I sat down in the chair with my laptop resting on my knees while I spun around to face him.

Of course he didn't look up.

He then said, "I can multitask you know."

"Of course you can. 'Cause you're a super genius." I said drily.

"I meant we can still talk," he muttered, not appreciating my tone.

"All the more, you were still flaunting your talents, even if most people can multitask."

"Why are you being mean?" Tony asked simply, finally looking away from his project. "Is it because I tipped you off your bed?"

I sighed. "No, Tony—"

"Then what is it?" he pushed. "I wanna know."

I thought about it; I really didn't know exactly way I was being so cold with him. Then again, he kind of deserved it for how he treated me when I appeared on his doorstep. But I knew it wasn't right to bring up the past, so that reason wouldn't do. Then I found the reason.

"Do you ever keep your promises?" I asked.

"How is this relevant?" Tony asked.

"It's relevant, I promise," I said quickly so he can answer my question.

He shrugged indifferently. "Sometimes but not usually. That's why I don't make 'em anymore."

"It sounded like a promise when you said 'we'll work on the engine tomorrow,'" I said quietly, looking down at my laptop and fingered the crease of it.

"Look, Cara, you gotta understand that things change in my schedule. You're not the only thing I have to worry about."

"Yeah," I mumbled, not looking up.

I heard him sigh. There was a pause where I still stared at my laptop and fiddled with it. I heard Tony mutter under his breath, "I wish you were the only thing I had to worry about."

I glanced up at him to see him back to work on his boot.

I hesitated, mostly because it's still a little hard to say it. "I'm sorry for giving you a hard time."

"Don't worry about it."

"Want me to tell you the same thing about everything else? Like the company?" I asked jokingly.

"If you had that power, you'd be doing me a favor," he responded with a glance in my direction.

"Why do you even bother with the company any way if you don't want to run it?"

"It's not that. It's just that the board's not agreeing with the direction I want to take. Obie's the same way."

"Obie is…"

"Obadiah Stane, my co-owner."

"Oh, I knew him, just not his nickname."

"Sure you did," Tony smirked.

"I did! Pepper told me about him."

His smirk disappeared gradually before he asked, "Did you know anything before you got here?"

"I was clueless," I stated blankly. "I knew you only by what the kid's in high school said about you. I figured out you were a ladies' man when I kept hearing girls giggle when the talked about you and the fact that some of them had pictures of you hanging in their locker."

Tony grinned. "I have that effect on a lot of women."

"I'm glad I was never in that party."

"You wanted to be in that party."

"No I didn't. If I ever was, it would be pretty awkward for both of us when we found out we're related. Talk about Beverly Hillbillies."

Tony cracked up at that but, of course, had to add a smart-ass remark, "We're in Malibu, not Beverly Hills."

"Do you have something I can throw at your big, smart-aleck head?"

"If you were planning on throwing something at me you wouldn't tell me what you were gonna do—"

"I wasn't going to throw something at your head anyway!"

"I'm just saying for future opportunity."

"I'm never going to throw something at you, okay? I'm particularly non-violent."

"What are you, a hippie?"

"No, I just avoid physical conflict."

"Sometimes punching someone's nose solves everyone's problems."

"Since when?!" I asked.

"Since the beginning of time, Cara," Tony turned to face me. "It's always been like this. You have to be the best of the best and that includes having the best of the best. What my company made was the best weaponry in the world and now it's in the wrong hands. It's my fault those soldiers died—"

I interrupted, surprised at the change in atmosphere. "You didn't know—"

"Exactly; I was naïve and now I know what I need to do and it's to destroy the weapons I helped to create."

"That's not what I meant. I meant you didn't know they were gonna get killed—"

"I could've avoided it. I could have avoided the Ten Rings from getting my weapons—"

"Look Tony, you can't change what happened," I spoke seriously to him, looking him right in the eye. "You can only learn from your mistakes. Yeah you were naïve and, frankly, a jerk"—Tony smiled amusedly—"but somehow you were given another chance to fix things. Just don't waste it this time."

There was a pause before Tony said, "That's why I'm building the suit."

"I figured," I said, smiling.

"Wanna see me fly?"

"Yeah, you're done with them already?"

"Yep, let's try 'em out."

He put on the boots and grabbed the handles that would make them fly. The boots had cords that attached to his arc reactor to give them power to fly. He got two robots, a fire extinguisher and a camera robot, and set them by the black grid on the floor by the cars that I remember rolling my luggage over my first time here.

"I'm gonna be filming this so try not to talk," Tony instructed to me from the grid while I sat in his computer chair to watch.

"You say that like I can't keep my mouth shut," I said.

He ignored me and took a couple steps back toward the middle while saying to the camera robot, "Okay, let's do this right. Start mark half a meter back at center."

He takes a deep breath and says to the fire extinguisher robot, "You, look alive, standby for fire safety." He looks at the camera robot. "Dummy, roll it. 'K"—he gripped the hands controls firmly—"activate hand controls. Start it nice and easy, gonna see ten percent thrust capacity, chief lift an' three…two…one—"

SMACK!

Tony was flown up and backwards from the force of the stabilizer and smacked into the slope of the high-to-low ceiling and crashed to the floor on his back. The fire extinguisher robot then doused him with some type of gas even though there was no fire to be seen.

I stood up quickly and ran around the desk to him while I was grinning widely and trying hard to hold my laughter.

I heard him cough. "Stop!" Tony ordered the robot between coughs, which obeyed and ceased its spray.

"Are you okay?" I asked, unable to stifle my laughter.

"I'm not gonna answer that," he muttered, annoyed. He stood up and began to take the cords that were connected to the arc reactor out.

"What kind of gas was that?" I asked.

"Carbon dioxide," he answered. "Made specifically to save a person on fire but"—he turned toward the robot—"I wasn't."

The robot bowed its douser sadly.

"You don't have to be mean to it," I defended the pitiful robot.

"Whatever," Tony said. He took off his boots and said, "I need to make some modifications..."

Ignoring the comment, I asked, "Are you sure that fall didn't hurt you?"

"I'm just a little banged up, nothing serious," Tony looked at me with eyebrows raised. "Are you actually concerned for my well-being?"

I rolled my eyes. "I'm not going to pretend I don't care. Wipe that smirk off!"