Lin Xinyan slapped his hand away from her face. “You’re hurting me.”
Zong Jinghao laughed in spite of his anger, “Is this your ploy to gain my sympathy?”
Lin Xinyan knew she shouldn’t have been suspicious of him in the first place. In fact, she shouldn’t even have allowed the seed of doubts to develop in her mind because as a married couple, they should just trust each other completely.
She had always trusted Zong Jinghao previously even on occasions when she received photos of him behaving intimately with other women. However, this time was different. Gu Huiyuan was really brilliant at dropping hints to make Lin Xinyan fall for her trick.
Lin Xinyan admitted that she was nearly fooled by Gu Huiyuan because she was being too careless.
Since it was her mistake, she did not mind admitting it.
She took the initiative to sit down on Zong Jinghao’s lap and twine her arms around his neck. Nuzzling up against him, she pleaded coquettishly, “So, is my ploy working fine?”
Zong Jinghao gazed at her. Even though he was not pleased with how she was suspicious of his fidelity, he couldn’t bear to criticize her too harshly, seeing how pitiful she looked. “That ploy is not working because I don’t have much sympathy, to begin with. Why don’t you try to seduce me instead?”
Lin Xinyan chuckled, “Do you think I’m attractive enough to seduce you?”
Zong Jinghao lifted her off and carried her to the bedroom. “If I don’t think you’re attractive, will I even think of sleeping with you every single day?”
Lin Xinyan struggled hard to get away from him. “Why’re you bringing me to the bedroom in broad daylight?”
“To show that you’re attractive to me.” Zong Jinghao closed the door.
Lin Xinyan rejected, “I don’t want to do it.”
“What is it that you don’t want to do?”
“What’re you going to do to me then?” Lin Xinyan asked him back.
“Well, since you’ve succeeded in seducing me, what else do you think I’m going to do to you?”
“I’m tired.” Lin Xinyan tried to come up with various excuses to dissuade him. “Besides, doing it too frequently is not good to the baby.”
He had been using the excuse of their newlywed status to get her to make love to him. Although she had already been pregnant for six months and her condition had been stable, they really shouldn’t risk it.
“Fine. I’ll just hug you without doing anything naughty.” With that, Zong Jinghao drew her into his embrace. Immediately, he dismissed all the dirty ideas in his mind right after Lin Xinyan mentioned the baby.
He brushed his lips against hers and whispered, “Let’s stop having babies after this one.”
“Are you suggesting this for your lust or because you care about me?”
“Of course, the latter.” Zong Jinghao tightened his arms around her. When he was on his way to collect her medical report at the hospital just now, he passed by the delivery room. His heart gave a lurch when he heard the agonized wailings and screaming coming from the women going through labor pain inside. He reckoned that the process must be extremely painful to make a bunch of women scream like that.
“Did you cry when you gave birth to Ruixi and Xichen?”
Snuggling in his arms, Lin Xinyan muttered, “I did, but I didn’t scream. I remember there was a lady who kept on cursing her husband during her labor. That was super hilarious.”
“Please feel free to curse me if it hurts when you’re giving birth to our baby this time,” Zong Jinghao proposed affectionately.
Lin Xinyan chortled, “I’m not going to do that; it’s too embarrassing.”
Suddenly, she changed the topic of their conversation. “Let’s go home tomorrow, shall we?”
It was not appropriate of them to leave all the senior members of their family behind at the villa for too long a time.
Zong Jinghao agreed, “Things will get dangerous and uncertain soon as the matter concerning Old Master Gu and Gu Bei has yet to come to an end. So, please don’t go out if I’m not with you. I’m worried they might get desperate and harm you.”
Although he would be keeping an eye on the people of the Gu family, he had to take every precaution he could to make sure Lin Xinyan was safe. He knew he could only let down his guard after everything was settled.
Lin Xinyan understood him well as she just witnessed a vivid example of what they might do to her in their desperation through Gu Huiyuan.
On hindsight, she couldn’t believe she was dumb enough to nearly fall for Gu Huiyuan’s trick just now.
On the following day, Zong Jinghao left for the office while Lin Xinyan headed back to the villa. As soon as she was back, she went to look for Qin Ya immediately.
She wanted to ask Qin Ya about her relationship with Su Zhan.
Keeping her eyes downcast, Qin Ya replied, “We decided to start our relationship afresh. In fact, I should have listened to your advice earlier by telling him the truth. It turns out that it wasn’t that difficult to come clean with him as I imagined.”
Lin Xinyan patted her shoulder soothingly. “Still, I’m glad that you guys got back together.”
“By the way, Uncle and I are going back to C City tomorrow,” Qin Ya announced.
That was a decision made jointly by her and Shao Yun. Shao Yun had been having a lot on his plate lately and he really needed someone to help him manage his store in C City.
“What about Su Zhan?” Lin Xinyan asked, wondering whether the couple were going to part ways again so soon after they patched things up.
“I’ve told him about that.” Although they had decided to patch things up, they wanted to take their time to work on their relationship and their future together. They didn’t get to do all that before because everything happened too fast when they first started dating each other. Their plan was to visit Grandma Su together when both of them were ready.
“He’s okay with you leaving?” Lin Xinyan pressed on.
“Yup, he’s fine with it,” Qin Ya answered with her lips pursed. Ever since they got back together, Su Zhan had been treating Qin Ya’s words as if they were royal decrees. He had never said no to any of her requests so far.
“See how great things are going right now? You could have spared the two of you so much torture if you told him the truth earlier.”
Qin Ya kept her eyes downcast without uttering a word. Deep down inside, she felt guilty for making everyone worry about her because she was too much of a coward to face the truth.
Later that night, Su Zhan visited the villa and brought a huge bag of toys for the kids. He was there partly to inform everyone about Qin Ya and him, and partly to thank everyone for looking after him when he was in the city.
“Did you invite Peichuan to join us?” Lin Xinyan asked Su Zhan, seeing that basically everyone was there except Shen Peichuan.
Su Zhan answered, “I called him, but he said he was busy. I think Captain Song invited him to his house for dinner too. His boss really thinks very highly of him and treats him quite well.”
It was true that Captain Song admired Shen Peichuan. a great deal. Otherwise, he wouldn’t deem Shen Peichuan as his ideal future son-in-law.
Although Captain Song told Shen Peichuan to visit him at his place to talk about work, it was actually an excuse to create a chance for Shen Peichuan to get closer to his daughter.
On top of that, Captain Song decided to make his intention clear this time.
Halfway through dinner, Captain Song suddenly said, “Peichuan, you know that I’ve always thought very highly of you, don’t you?”
Shen Peichuan agreed, “Yes. Captain Song, I must say you have always taken care of m.”
Captain Song took a swig of wine before steeling himself to do this. If his wife and his daughter had not been pestering him to do this for a long time, he would not have agreed to have this discussion at all. After all, he was willing to do anything for his daughter’s sake. “I’m not sure whether you are aware of this – Yaxin seems to be quite fond of you too.”
Shen Peichuan froze for a moment before he realized what Captain Song meant.
“Uhm, I…”
“Please don’t get so uptight.” Captain Song took several seconds to rephrase his words. “Since you and I are so close to each other, let me get straight to the point with you here. Being wishy-washy isn’t my style at all too. As you know, Yaxin is a divorcee and I understand that she might not be good enough for you…”
“I certainly don’t think of her that way because I’m far from meeting her expectations too. Besides, I don’t think being a divorcee is something bad.” Frantically, Shen Peichuan added, “It’s not Yaxin’s fault to have an ex-husband who couldn’t stay faithful to his relationship.”
Captain Song let out a sigh of relief. “I’m very glad that you actually think that.”
Shen Peichuan did not respond to Captain Song, as he already had a rough idea of what he was going to say next. All at once, his mind was in a turmoil and he was at a loss.
“Peichuan, you’re not getting any younger now. Why don’t you… think about it?” Captain Song’s face reddened after saying that. As Shen Peichuan’s superior, he felt really embarrassed to hard-sell his divorced daughter to him.
“Just forget what I said just now if you don’t think it’s a good idea,” Captain Song added in the end.
Captain Song’s approach came too unexpected that Shen Peichuan did not even know how to turn him down.
Captain Song really looked after him well at work and Song Yaxin was indeed a nice girl. However, marriage had never been on his agenda ever since his last attempt at getting married failed.
“Come on, let’s drink and forget about what I said.” Captain Song filled up Shen Peichuan’s glass with wine.
Meanwhile, Shen Peichuan remained silent.
Captain Song then lifted his glass and clinked with Shen Peichuan’s. “Cheers!”
Shen Peichuan took his glass and said after a moment of contemplation, “Captain Song, this is too sudden and I’m sorry that I don’t have an answer for you right now.”
“Please don’t fret about it. I know you deserve a woman much better than Yaxin.” Captain Song did not make that statement just to please Shen Peichuan. In fact, he genuinely thought that a divorced woman was inferior to single ladies. He applied his archaic mindset to all women, including his own daughter.
On the other hand, Captain Song really admired Shen Peichuan, who was not only single, but was also a righteous gentleman.
If he were not Song Yaxin’s father, he would not have encouraged Shen Peichuan to get a divorced woman as his wife.
Shen Peichuan looked like he was in a dilemma. “Please don’t say that. As this idea came too sudden, I really need some time to think about it.”
