"No! You're on my side. If you call Matthew, you're just admitting he's better than you. So will you help me or not?" Erica demanded.
"Of course I will. I'm busy these days and won't go to Y City soon, though. I'll make a few calls. If it doesn't work, maybe you can talk to Dad," Gifford answered. But helping Erica was a little tougher than it seemed on the surface. He was glad to help, but he needed help himself to pull it off.
He had no connections in the court system. He knew people who did, so he had to call them and see if they could pitch in.
'Why does Rika always come to me for help? Dad's better set up for that than I am. Maybe she figures Dad would turn her down, anyway, ' he thought.
"I won't call Dad. He always sides with Matthew. He won't help me..." Suddenly, Matthew opened the door. He was silent as usual, so Erica had no clue he was there. His face darkened as he heard what she said. "Thanks Gifford, you're awesome!"
"Yeah, yeah. I know. I'll see what I can do!" Gifford couldn't stand Erica's tone, as if he was the one who bullied her.
The next moment, before Erica could say anything else, her phone was wrenched from her hand. "Mind your own business, Gifford. Just pretend Rika never called you. I'll fix this," Matthew said into her phone.
"Matthew, you're there too? Rika said you are holding off her case against Phoebe Su. What happened?" 'So I wonder if the rumors are true. Does Matthew still carry a torch for Phoebe?' he wondered. 'Nah. Couldn't be.'
Matthew held the phone high, foiling Erica's attempts to retrieve it. He put a hand out to keep her away, put the phone back to his ear, and said, "Nothing serious. She's just being a bad girl again."
"Oh..." Gifford believed it without a doubt. He knew better than anyone else what kind of trouble Erica could cause. "Remember, Rika's pregnant. You need to be a little more patient. She'll be fine after you calm her down some!"
"Don't worry. I will. Have a good night."
He hung up the phone.
Erica shouted, "Gifford!"
But it was too late. She could clearly see the screen of her cellphone. It showed the call was disconnected.
'Why did Matthew have to come in just when I managed to get Gifford to say yes? All that trouble for nothing, ' she cried inwardly.
Placing her phone on the bedside table, Matthew asked gently, "Are you hungry?"
"I've lost my appetite!" She turned her head away in a fit of pique.
"So what do you want to eat?" he asked, as if he didn't hear her reply. It was said that pregnant women were always hungry and needed to eat more. Not only that, sometimes they did strange things like eat rocks, chalk, or dirt. Those odd cravings were caused by a nutrient deficiency, so he wanted control of her diet.
"I told you: I'm not hungry!"
As if he hadn't heard anything she said, Matthew took off his suit jacket and hung it in the closet. "You can't eat spicy and sour rice noodles. But you still have tons of choices—noodles with seafood, wontons with chicken filling, steak, shrimp dumplings..." He rattled off a long list of dishes, including Western food as well as more traditional Chinese meals.
Some of it did sound scrumptious, and Erica couldn't help but drool. "I want spicy and sour rice noodles and wontons with chicken filling."
The man glanced at her and emphasized, "No spicy and sour rice noodles. I already said that." Every time she ate spicy and sour rice noodles, she would put a lot of pepper in them. Heartburn was common during pregnancy, especially as the baby grew bigger. So he tried his best to make her feast on some lighter fare.
She lowered her head and replied in a quiet voice, "Then how about noodles with seafood?" Then she looked up at the man and added, "That's what your sons are clamoring for, not me!" She was still angry. How could she want any food he cooked?
With a faint smile, Matthew said, "Well, what if you're carrying daughters?"
"Then it's your daughters that want that type of stuff, not me! Why the stupid question?"
Matthew nodded. 'So Rika doesn't want to eat the noodles, but our sons or daughters want them. Got it.'
The man left the room, and paused at the door. "Come down in twenty minutes. Dinner should be ready then," he said, and went downstairs.
Erica made a face at the man's back and muttered in a quiet voice, "Don't try to buy me off with a bowl of noodles and seafood. I'm not dropping that suit against Phoebe."
On the first floor
When Matthew went downstairs, he called someone up. "Yes. It's me. Send some red shrimps, abalones and scallops. Enough for two people. They must be fresh." Erica also liked eating crab. He had wanted to order some, but it was said that pregnant women should avoid crab meat, so he decided against it.
The maid heard the noise from the kitchen and walked out of her room. Seeing that Matthew was making a fruit platter by himself, she quickly came over and asked, "Mr. Huo, what are you doing? Let me do it."
"No, thanks. Just clean the kitchen later."
The maid hesitated for a moment and guessed that he might want to prepare a midnight snack for his wife himself. She nodded and said, "Yes, Mr. Huo."
Before twenty minutes passed, Erica went downstairs. Seeing the woman making her way downstairs, Matthew said, "Why don't you take the elevator?"
When she had first gotten pregnant, she almost had a miscarriage because she rushed up and down the stairs. When Matthew saw her walk downstairs, fear loomed in the back of his mind.
Erica waved her hand indifferently. "I'm not running, I'm taking it easy!" She used to fly down those stairs, taking more than one step at a time, jumping over several of them on the way down. Since she was pregnant, she took them far more slowly, and used the handrail.
Matthew didn't say anything more. He tore open a piece of Spanish ham meat. He was afraid that Erica would fall back into her old patterns, forgetting that she was carrying babies whose safety she was responsible for.
The colorful fruit platter was sitting on the dining room table. While eating the fruits, Erica played with her phone and sent a message to Watkins. "I'll think of something."
She would find a way on her own first. If it didn't work, she would cry and threaten to kill herself in front of Matthew and he would give in.
The doorbell rang, echoing throughout the house. Erica looked at the man walking toward the door in confusion. Who would be coming here this late?
When she saw Matthew walk out, talk to the man, sign something, and come back in with a delicately packaged box, she couldn't help asking, "What's that?"
Matthew glanced at her and answered, "Seafood."
"Oh, I didn't know we were out of seafood."
"We're not." There was frozen seafood in their fridge, but she was pregnant, so she needed fresh food.
Erica was confused. 'Since we have seafood in the fridge, why did he buy more? He is too extravagant! Forget it.
I'm still mad at him, so I won't ask.'
The smell of food soon filled the kitchen. Erica swallowed and waited for Matthew to serve the food.
The noodles were the same old noodles they always ate. But the seafood was quite different.
Erica ate a mouthful of the noodles. 'Wow! This is amazing.
I love having a husband who can cook!
I have to drive Phoebe away from him, ' she swore in her head.
Matthew took out two egg tarts from the oven and put them on a plate. "Tell me if you get full."
"Well, okay!" Erica agreed and took another mouthful of the noodles. The noodles were so scrumptious that she didn't want to talk.
Seeing that she was eating well, Matthew went upstairs to take a shower.
When he came back down, his wife was pacing back and forth on the carpet, holding her expanding belly in her arms, and every once in a while saying something to the maid cleaning the kitchen.
"Finished?" he asked.
"Mm." Erica wanted to tell him that she was stuffed full, but she was still angry with him. So she continued to look down at the traces of her feet stepping on the carpet one after another, which quickly disappeared.
"So you're all done?"
"Mm-hmm!" This time, she didn't raise her head, nor did she look at him.
Matthew looked at her belly thoughtfully. So she was hungrier. He prepared a large plate of fruits, a large bowl of noodles and two egg tarts for her. She had wolfed them all down.