Earth Husbands are Odd (Earth Fathers #2) - Lyn Gala Page 0,44
offered her any kindness? His heart warred with two obligations. He couldn’t abandon her, but he couldn’t expose his children to the sort of casual prejudice she was showing.
“I love them,” Max said gently. “Come get to know them. Eventually we will have the money to fly back to Earth, and you can come with us.”
She backed away a step. “You have to know how much those things creep me out.”
Max loved Dee the way he loved all the guys in his unit. These were the people he’d trained with, fought with, drank with. He knew them better than he knew his biological family, and lots of spouses got jealous of how close the guys in the unit were. However, he would not choose her over his family. “You can’t come into my house and insult the children I’m raising,” he said firmly. “My children.”
“You can’t—”
Max didn’t wait to find out what she thought he couldn’t do. “I’m happy to introduce you to Rick if you can be polite, but I don’t want to argue with you, and I have work I need to finish. I’ve convinced a trader that her ship has security vulnerabilities, so now I hope to make a little money by selling her equipment to fill in those gaps. Come back in three or four hours, and we can share some food and you can meet Rick.” He backed away from her.
He read shock in her expression. As Max retreated, that transformed to dismay. Max turned and fled up the ramp to the ship before the guilt made him do something stupid... like invite her to move in with them so she didn’t have to be alone.
He didn’t have to trigger the door mechanism or wait for it because Kohei stood watching through a crack in the door. As Max approached, he moved back and the door slid open. Max ran home.
Chapter Sixteen
Max leaned against the equipment cart and watched Carrington’s head of security lower the weapon. “What do you think?” he asked.
“It is an excellent improvement,” she said.
Max had no idea if she was a she, but the Tribes aliens with their elaborate dress and triangular faces made him think female. He was a horrible person for making that assumption, but Max didn’t have the energy to worry about his lack of woke-ness right now. He had a con to run, and so he let his brain make the assumption that Tribes aliens were very tall women with muscular, jointed necks.
Besides, if asking for a name was taboo, then asking about reproductive organs seemed whatever level was two steps beyond taboo. Scandalizing maybe. Infuriating was a possibility. And Max did not want to infuriate this Tribes alien he had nicknamed Xena. She had grasped the mechanics of the weapon and had proved a deadly shot. She would not have fallen for the same shit the Hunter aliens had, so either their prowess at hunting was overrated or Tribes aliens were skilled warriors as well as willing to take jobs as social workers. It was almost human of them.
“I'm glad you approve. I brought some armor for you to try on as well,” Max said as she took another shot. She didn’t even line it up. She lifted and fired in one motion. And she still hit the target. Damn.
Xena craned her neck around one hundred and eighty degrees, and Max suppressed an instinctive shudder. She said, “That word did not translate. Clarify armor.”
“Armor is protective clothing that is used to counter the weapons of others.” Now that English had been added to the business translation computer and an obscene amount of compensation had been added to Max's bank account, communication was easier, but not perfect. And more annoying, Rick did not have an expensive business computer license. So the one person Max yearned to freely communicate with, he couldn't.
He could if he and Rick were somewhere like Carrington's ship, but if they were on her ship, they couldn’t do half of the things they wanted to. Maybe a quarter because Max did like to do a lot of things other than have sex. He would enjoy being able to discuss whether or not Buffy the Vampire Slayer should have made Xander come out of the closet without a lack of emotional context and translation matrix failure. The more he had that improved communication with other aliens, the more he ached to share it with Rick.
However, they had researched the price of a license, and even