Silently, Tabitha stood in the open doorway as she waited for Amanda to draw near.
Amanda gave her a tight hug as soon as she reached her. "I've missed you."
"I'm only a couple of blocks away."
"I know, but we haven't talked much lately."
Tabitha squeezed her back, then let her go. "I know. It's kind of hard to talk right now."
Amanda brushed the hair back from Tabitha's face in a very motherly fashion and smiled. "You look happy underneath that suspiciousness; are you?"
Tabitha frowned. "You are seriously scaring me." She looked past Amanda and scanned the street. "Has someone replaced my twin with a pod person?"
Amanda laughed. "No, goofball. It's me. I've just been worried about you."
"Well, as you can see, I'm fine. You're fine. Everything's fine. So what brings you here?"
"I want to meet Valerius."
Tabitha couldn't have been more stunned had her sister hit her. "Excuse me?"
"Ash said some things to me a couple of weeks ago that got me thinking. And with every day that passed without you racking this guy and moving in with me until this is over, I did more thinking. You've been with him night and day, haven't you?"
Tabitha shrugged with a nonchalance she didn't feel. "Yeah, so?"
"And yet I haven't had a single call from my homicidal twin telling me she's going to cut his head off and put it in a bowling bag if he says or does such-and-such one more time. Why, Tabby, I do believe that's a record for you."
Tabitha fidgeted guiltily. It was true. Not once in all their lives had she been with anyone that she wasn't threatening to kill the guy every other hour for some annoying habit.
But with Valerius...
Even when he annoyed her, it wasn't so bad. And the truth was, he very seldom annoyed her. They talked about all kinds of things and even when they didn't agree, he respected her opinions.
"You love him, don't you?"
Tabitha looked away.
"Oh God, Tabitha," Amanda breathed. "You've never done anything the easy way, have you?"
"Don't start on me, Amanda."
Amanda cupped her face and turned her head until their eyes met. "I love you, Tabby. I do. Of all the men-"
"I know!" she snapped angrily. "It's not like I woke up and said, Hmmm, who is the one man on the planet guaranteed to alienate me from my entire family for all eternity? Oh, I must go and find him immediately and fall hopelessly in love with him."
She took a deep breath before her anger overwhelmed her. "God knows, I didn't want to love someone like Valerius. I keep thinking that you are his perfect woman. You're elegant, sophisticated. Hell, you actually know which fork to eat with when you go out. I'm the idiot in college who went out with you and Dad and drank out of the finger bowl because I thought it was some kind of fucked-up clear soup."
Tabitha scoffed at her own words. "For that matter, listen to my language. I have to be horrifying to him and yet when he looks at me, I shiver."
Over and over, the arguments of why she didn't belong with Valerius ran through her mind. They should be completely incompatible and yet they weren't. It didn't make sense. It wasn't right.
Tabitha sighed. "The other night he took me to Commander's Palace and we sat down where they had this really elegant display sitting in the middle of the table. It was made up of all these exotic veggies and fruit and looked really tasty. So, stupid me, I grabbed my butter knife and started hacking at it to eat some of it. It wasn't until I looked up and saw the gape on the waiter's face that I realized I'd done something completely stupid. I asked him what his problem was and he said that he had just never seen anyone actually eat the centerpiece before. I was so embarrassed I wanted to die."
"Oh, Lord, Tabby."
"I know. Valerius, God bless him, didn't miss a beat. He reached over and started eating it too, then he gave one of those haughty, regal stares at the waiter, who quickly ran off. After he was gone, Val said for me not to worry about it. That he spent enough money in that place that I could eat the tablecloth next if I wanted to and if that didn't make me happy, then he'd buy the restaurant just so I could fire the waiter."
Amanda burst out laughing.