Earth Husbands are Odd (Earth Fathers #2) - Lyn Gala Page 0,33

to the idea of losing his little boy. Intellectually he knew that Rick’s people preferred novelty. Intellectually, he knew they weren’t the most affectionate parents in the world. Emotionally, he was an idiot because he had never processed what steps one and two meant.

“Query. Identify wrongness,” Xander said in a voice that was almost soft.

“I want you to be happy, but I don’t want you to go away and never visit. I want to know your happiness. I want to meet anyone you feel is worth pairbonding with. I want to see your offspring. Shit. I’ll never get to spoil grandbabies.”

Xander rotated, catching Max’s wrist with a new tentacle when he rotated too far to hold on.

Shaking his head, Max pushed himself up off the walk. “I can have a mental breakdown later. We have business to do.”

“Max Father,” Xander said, but Max had to focus. It was like when he was flying into difficult maneuvers—he had to focus on the horizon, on the instruments, on the feel of the engine vibration in the seat and the stick in his hand. He didn’t have enough space in his brain to worry about anything else, so it all had to wait until after he’d landed the plane.

He strode down the walk, all his attention on the tall, black ship that Carrington owned. He tried very hard not to hear the click-clack of the cart behind him.

Chapter Twelve

Max touched the pedestal in front of Carrington’s ship . The yellow glow shifted to a darker orange, and Max went to parade rest as he waited for someone to answer his call. Xander stopped behind him, and Max hoped he would remain silent. Max needed to concentrate on the enemy in front of him, not on his own personal dramas. It was a rule in the air that pilots forgot any conflicts and focused on the plane, the instruments, the act of flying itself. If a wife ran off or a kid was in the hospital, pilots drank and complained and emotionally fell apart on the ground—not in the air. Never in the air.

The door opened and a Tribes alien stood in the opening. It was so much smaller than the other two Max had seen that he wondered if it was fully grown. The creature raised its four-fingered hands in a strange yoga-looking pose before coming down the ramp.

“Leader of ship Tribe within,” it said.

Max glanced at Xander, but he didn’t appear alarmed at anything the alien said. When Max had to rely on a child a few months old for intelligence, he hadn’t prepared well for the mission. But in his defense, human-to-anything except Hidden language pretty much sucked without the fancy business translator.

“Lead away,” Max said. Oversized eyes blinked at him, and the neck gill flaps fluttered before the alien turned and headed into the ship.

“Max Father weird,” Xander said softly.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Max muttered before he followed the Tribes alien. Max was halfway up the ramp when the wall of humidity hit him. He felt as if he’d been dropped in the Deep South in the middle of summer, and not the literary version of the South with magnolia trees and wide verandas, but the real one with sweat stinging his eyes and doorknobs that burned off a person’s fingerprints. A bead of sweat rolled down Max’s spine and he scratched it. “Are you okay?” Max asked Xander.

“Uncomfortable but healthy,” Xander said.

With a nod, Max headed into the ship’s interior. The light was bluish and uneven and the air even more humid as he stopped in the central corridor. A familiar computer display blinked for attention, and Xander moved to the controls and hooked up their computer. The business translator flashed.

“Are we connected?” Max asked. He disliked giving Carrington access to the English database, but Bundy and Rick both insisted that the business translator’s internal security would prevent pirating. And since Max trusted one of the two, he had to take the chance.

“Done,” Xander said.

Max looked toward the end of the corridor, but his short guide had vanished. A Tribes alien stood near a door. This one was closer in height to Carrington, but the wide-brimmed eighties hat was missing, which made it hard to tell. Without the hat, the illusion of gender vanished, and Max had to consciously avoid staring at the weirdly proportioned arms with their long forearm at the end of a very short humerus.

“Hello.” Max started down the hall, his boots echoing