It was normal for pregnant women to feel lethargic. After only saying a few sentences, Ye Zhen already felt sleepy again.

Lu Beichuan stroked her soft hair. "I'm going to take a shower. You can go back to sleep."

Ye Zhen nodded. Listening to the sound of falling water from the shower, Ye Zhen felt her eyelids getting heavier and heavier.

Inside the bathroom, Lu Beichuan was standing naked in the shower with his hands against the walls as he let the icy cold water fall on his strong and tense muscles. The heated blood in his body was clamoring for release. It felt as if he was going to be burned from within by the desire that couldn't be fulfilled.

He closed his eyes and breathed heavily.

This was a man's instinctual desire.

All normal men would have desires. In the past two month of Ye Zhen's pregnancy, Lu Beichuan hadn't touched her. Practicing abstinence was an incomparable torture for a red-blooded young man.

Lu Beichuan considered himself a person with strong self-control that could resist temptations. But, in the past two months, when he was sharing a bed with Ye Zhen every night, it felt like torture every time their skin accidentally touched. He had to use all of his self-control to control his most primitive urges.

The clock ticked away on the bedside cabinet. The drowsy Ye Zhen didn't know how much time had passed when she vaguely heard the bathroom door opening. Feeling the mattress sinking, she turned around and looked at the clock.

Hmm... Lu Beichuan took a long time showering today.

Ye Zhen moved over and comfortably curled up against Lu Beichuan's body. Ye Zhen sleepily thought that his body must be hot from the shower.

Ah, this felt so nice!

***

The next morning, Ye Zhen went downstairs. She was the picture of glowing health. She had felt so comfortable last night that she ended up oversleeping less this morning.

Mother Lu was sitting at the dining table and eating breakfast. Seeing Ye Zhen and her son, she smiled and said, "Zhenzhen, come here. I specially had the servants prepare extra breakfast dishes for you. I'm sure you like them."

Recently, Ye Zhen didn't have much appetite for any food, so Mother Lu kept trying out different foods that she might like.

Lu Beichuan pulled out the chair for Ye Zhen.

Ye Zhen smiled at Mother Lu. "Thank you, mom."

"Oh, you child. What's there to thank me for?" Mother Lu looked at Lu Beichuan. "Beichuan, you're not going to work today?"

"Work has come to an end for the time being, so I'm taking two days off."

"Taking two days off is good too. You've been working so hard for the past two months. You should pay attention to your health too."

Lu Beichuan nodded.

"Zhenzhen ah, you said that the egg smell was too strong in the steamed eggs yesterday. I specially had the chefs adjust their cooking to get rid of the egg smell. Try it again." Mother Lu pushed over a small bowl of steamed eggs to Ye Zhen.

Since Ye Zhen had gotten pregnant, she was extremely sensitive to the food smells, especially to the smell of fish and other seafoods as well as eggs. If there was the slightest scent of those foods in the dishes, she would refuse to take even one bite. The normal ways of minimizing those smells weren't effective. However, a nutritious and balanced diet was critical during pregnancy. How could it be okay to be so picky and refuse to eat so many different foods?

However, Mother Lu could empathize with Ye Zhen.

After all, when she had been pregnant with her son, she hadn't had any appetite either. She had felt listless all day, which caused others to fret over her.

That's why Mother Lu had asked the chefs if they could find a way to completely eliminate the fishy and eggy smells.

Ye Zhen scooped up a little bit of the steamed eggs with a spoon. Sure enough, she couldn't smell the unpleasant eggy smell. When she swallowed the food, she didn't feel nauseous either, so she ate a few more bites.

Seeing that Ye Zhen wasn't refusing to eat the steamed eggs, Mother Lu finally relaxed.

A servant came over with a cordless phone. It was a call for Ye Zhen.

The caller was Father Ye.

On the phone, Father Ye said it would be his 50th birthday in a few days. He was going to host a birthday banquet and invite some friends and relatives to have a lively celebration. He invited Ye Zhen and asked her to bring Lu Beichuan along.

His real intention in inviting Ye Zhen was to have her bring his son-in-law along in order to prop up the Ye family up by showing off his son-in-law.

After all, there was no family that ranked higher than the Lu's in the coastal city. Lu Beichuan was a promising youth and was regarded as a rarely seen talented individual by many seniors in the business world. Having such an outstanding son-in-law like Lu Beichuan, who hadn't given him face in the past two months when he went out?

"Your 50th birthday?" Although she didn't have any feelings for the Ye's, after being protected like a canary for the past two months, she felt stifled.

Beside, she was a daughter of the Ye family and hadn't publicly broken off with her family yet. It wouldn't be appropriate for her to skip.

After considering for a while, Ye Zhen agreed, "Okay, I'll definitely come."

Hearing these words, Lu Beichuan furrowed his brow.

Ye Zhen was currently over two months pregnant. He placed more importance on her than anything else and treated her like a delicate object that could easily break. If the doctor hadn't said it was good for pregnant women to take strolls outside to get sun, he would even want to confine Ye Zhen in their room. How could he possibly be willing for her to take a tiring car journey back to the Ye's?

Next to Ye Zhen, he said in a dull voice, "You can't go. You haven't been feeling well recently."

Father Ye heard Lu Beichuan's voice on the other side of the phone. After telling Ye Zhen to pass the phone to Lu Beichuan, he said, "Beichuan ah, what you mean by Zhenzhen isn't feeling well?"

Lu Beichuan glanced at Ye Zhen's belly. In a lowered tone, he said, "Zhenzhen is pregnant."

"Pregnant?" The news came crashing down. It took a while for Father Ye to recover enough to respond. In a very surprised tone, he said, "You said that Zhenzhen is pregnant?"

Although Mother Lu had deliberately spread the news of Ye Zhen's pregnancy, it was limited to people in the Lu's social circle.

Since ancient times, people had been divided into ranks. This practice continued to present-day. Prestigious families were also divided into different tiers. A nouveau riche family like the Ye's belonged to the lowest tier in the social circle of wealthy families. If Ye Zhen hadn't married into the Lu's because of Lu Beichuan's car accident, the Ye's would have never been able to establish any sort of connection with the Lu's.

And so, if Ye Zhen didn't inform the Ye's, then there was no way the news of her pregnancy wouldn't trickle down to them.

Father Ye was truly caught off guard by the news.

They hadn't been married for long, and Ye Zhen was already pregnant?

"How... how long?"

"Over a month." Lu Beichuan said, "The doctor said Zhenzhen's pregnancy isn't stable, so it's better for her to stay at home during the early stages of her pregnancy."

"Then, when can I and her mom come to see her?" There was no reason why parents couldn't visit their pregnant daughter.

Lu Beichuan showed no mercy in shutting him down. "No need, you can rest assured that I'll take good care of her. If there's nothing else, let's end the call here."

After saying this, he hung up the phone. He didn't give Father Ye a chance to say anything else.

Mother Lu didn't have a good impression of the Ye's, but it would go against etiquette for a daughter to not attend her father's 50th birthday. Who knows how people would gossip about Ye Zhen if she didn't attend?

"Beichuan, how can you decide without asking what Zhenzhen wants first?"

Ye Zhen wasn't happy with his despotic behavior either. "Mr. Lu, the doctor has said my pregnancy is very stable."

As soon as Lu Beichuan heard that tone, he knew that Ye Zhen was unhappy with him.

Ye Zhen poked at the meat congee with waning interest. "I haven't left the villa in over a month."

If she was seven or eight months pregnant, she could let this go. But, if he was like this when she was only two months pregnant, the rest of her pregnancy would be unbearable.

It was said that pregnant women would be prone to nervousness, but in her opinion, Lu Beichuan was even more nervous than her. Every day, it felt as if he was gingerly walking across thin ice.

Lu Beichuan remained silent for a while before he said, "Alright, when the time comes, I'll go with you."

With him there, nothing bad could happen to her.