Read Online Amanda's Amorous Aliens (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Rachel Clark - Free Book Online Page B

have come through—miniature tin can or not.”
    “Did you just dis my ship?” she asked, not certain whether to laugh or feel insulted.
    “I did,” the computer said in a snooty voice. Fuck, she’d put up with arrogant disdain from the men she worked with. She wasn’t sure she could take it from a freaking computer as well.
    “What the fuck is your problem, To’h?”
    Yes, she knew she was yelling at a computer, but in her defense it had been a couple of confusing days.
    “You’re my problem,” To’h said angrily.
    “Explain,” Amanda growled through her teeth. She had a feeling that it was more than just her unexpected visit causing this issue. The computer had liked her just fine yesterday.
    “There’s nothing to explain,” To’huto said in a dismissive voice. “I thought you were the perfect partner for Karriak and Sektannen. Turns out I was wrong. Maybe I would have picked someone more suitable if I’d known.”
    Amanda opened her mouth to yell some more, but the computer’s choice of words was confusing. Picked? She was the only one here. How could To’huto “pick” from a selection of one?
    And why did she feel like she was being played? Were computers even capable of reverse psychology?
    One thing that was very obvious, though, was that the computer was annoyed by her attitude to sex. She wanted to giggle hysterically at that. Trust her to run into a computer program with a narrow attitude to casual sex.
    “To’h, I’m sorry I’m not the one.” The computer remained silent, neither acknowledging nor arguing with her apology. “Please, To’h, you need to understand that I have a life, a career, people who are depending on me. I need to get back to my own time.” Well, that was stretching the truth just a little. Her career was her life, and the only people depending on her were the ones who planned to make big money from her inventions. When it came to friends and lovers, they were both rather rare these days.
    Amanda swallowed hard at the realization of how empty her life had become. There was a time when she’d had close friends, but they’d drifted apart when Amanda’s career had taken her in the opposite direction to where the rest of them had been heading. If she remembered correctly, her best friend from high school wasn’t just happily married but had just given birth to her third child.
    “To’h,” she said, trying to think about the way her life might have gone if she’d made different choices, “Karriak and Sektannen are wonderful men.” And probably annoyed as hell at a computer that assumed they would join their lives to hers in the Kobarian equivalent of married bliss after a single night of sexy fun. She’d heard of shotgun weddings before, but living up to the expectations of a computer program seemed a little ridiculous. “I’m sure they’ll have no problems finding themselves a wife all on their own.”
    And damned if that thought didn’t somehow make it hard to breathe.
     
    * * * *
     
    Sektannen was bored.
    Karriak-Sektannen had set up the surveillance mission so that at the beginning the job could be handled by one person. There was a much greater workload set for after his time of telkobar, but because he’d gone through it months early there was barely enough work to keep him and Karriak busy for half a day. Add that to the distraction of having Amanda within reach—but not actually available—and he was finding it tough to do anything at all.
    Out of sheer desperation for a diversion, Sektannen headed into the computer’s hub to run the ship-wide diagnostics that weren’t really due until next month. It wouldn’t hurt to run them early, or even more often, but it would take him a least a couple of hours.
    He checked the running programs, set the data file to back up, and then began taking nonessential software offline.
    “Sektannen, what are you doing?” To’h asked politely.
    “I just thought I’d run your routine