Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 305 - 43

Chapter 305: Chapter 43

"Miss Wallace, Dr. Katrina has your test results," said a young female receptionist at the City Hospital, where Lauren worked.

Lauren was on leave today and had asked her friend Dr. Katrina, a colleague at the hospital to take care of Rayne who could no longer handle her constant nausea and weakness. It had become so frequent that she began to think she’d caught some illness.

She had come to the hospital for a check-up. After being examined, Dr. Katrina had ordered a few tests to be done in the office, and she had asked Rayne to wait in the waiting room.

"That was quick," Rayne told the doctor, sitting down on the opposite side of her desk.

Dr. Katrina opened Rayne’s file. "I don’t have the results of all your tests, but there’s no need to wait for them. This test tells me exactly why you’re feeling queasy and sleepy."

"What’s the answer?"

"You’re pregnant."

Rayne half rose out of her chair; then she relaxed and smiled. "There’s a mistake, Dr. Katrina. You must have mixed my tests up with another patient’s. I haven’t missed taking a single birth control pill in months."

"The pill isn’t one hundred percent effective for everyone."

"It’s been one hundred percent effective for me. Max—my fiancé—and I have been together for almost six years, and I’ve never gotten pregnant."

"Have you taken any antibiotics in the last two months? Some of them can interfere with the birth control pill’s effectiveness."

"I know that, but I haven’t taken any antibiotics. I haven’t taken anything except some migraine medicine a doctor prescribed for me in Maranta."

Dr. Katrina reached for her laptop on the corner of her desk. "I don’t know of any migraine medicine that interferes with the pill. What was the name of it? I’ll look it up."

"I can’t remember," Rayne said, frowning, "but it’s on the tip of my tongue..."

"While you’re trying to remember, tell me if you had sexual intercourse with anyone other than your fiancé in the last six years."

Rayne hesitated, resenting the fact that she had to acknowledge Liam Thompson’s existence. "Yes, last month. But what difference does that make?"

"There’s always the possibility that you’re one of the tiny percentage of women the pill doesn’t protect, and the reason you haven’t gotten pregnant before last month is that your fiancé’s sperm isn’t viable."

Rayne suddenly remembered the first part of the migraine medicine’s name. "It was butal-something. That’s the name of the prescription the doctor gave me."

Dr. Katrina frowned. "It wasn’t butalbital, was it?"

"Yes, that’s it!"

"Didn’t he ask you if you were taking birth control pills?"

"He asked me if I was trying to have children, and I said no. Actually, the doctor only spoke Spanish, but our driver spoke some English, so he translated for both of us."

"Why didn’t you go to a hospital instead of to a local doctor?"

"And spend hours waiting for someone to see me? My head was exploding. I’d been throwing up from the pain on the way down to the island. I just wanted someone to give me something to stop the pain. I didn’t care what language they spoke. Besides, he wasn’t a witch doctor. His office was in his home, but it was very nice and he had well-dressed patients waiting to see him."

"Well, something got lost in your driver’s translation then. He must have asked him to find out if you were trying not to have children."

"What difference does all this make?" Rayne said defensively, but she already knew. God help her, she already knew... but she silently prayed it wasn’t what she was thinking.

"Butalbital is very effective at treating and preventing severe headaches. However, it also interferes with the effectiveness of oral contraceptives. When a woman taking birth control pills uses butalbital, she needs to add another form of birth control to protect herself while she’s taking it."

The room started to spin, and Rayne bent forward, her arms crossed over her stomach, trying to steady herself.

"Do you know for certain who the father is?"

Rayne looked up at the doctor. In the few months following her father’s death, she hadn’t wanted to make love with Max; that was part of the reason he had been so insistent about taking her to the island for a holiday vacation.

She was pregnant with Liam Thompson’s baby...

A wave of hysteria welled up inside her, combining with dizziness and nausea, and Rayne clutched the edge of the doctor’s desk. "Yes," she said bitterly. "I know who the father is."

---

Lauren walked into the complex apartment building lobby where Rayne was staying and checked at the front desk to see if Rayne was home.

When the front desk staff who already knew Lauren as Rayne’s friend told her Miss Rayne hadn’t left the building since yesterday afternoon when she came back, Lauren grew worried.

Rayne hadn’t been answering her phone since yesterday, the last time they had spoken. Lauren hurried into the private elevator that led to Rayne’s floor, and when she arrived at Rayne’s door, it was locked with no response even after she pressed the bell.

Thank goodness Lauren knew the door passcode to unlock the lock. When she entered, the apartment was dark due to all the curtains being drawn together.

Yesterday, after Rayne had found out she was pregnant, Lauren had advised her to tell Max about it before making any decisions or even thinking about it. Rayne had agreed to tell him about it yesterday on her way back from the hospital, and she had driven to his office to have a word with him.

Lauren reached for the light switch and switched on the room’s light as she called out, "Rayne?"

"... I’m in the living room," came Rayne’s hoarse reply.

Rayne sat up on the sofa and hastily shoved aside the pillow she’d been clutching to her chest while she stared numbly into the dark and got lost into her thoughts. "I fell asleep," she lied. "Do you want some coffee?"

"Sure," Lauren said, taking in the state of her friend, who was still wearing her pajamas.

"What time is it?" Rayne asked.

"A little after ten."

Swinging her legs off the sofa, Rayne got up and headed for the kitchen with Lauren trailing behind. "I have to change clothes and go to work. I should have been at the office by five."

As she started spooning coffee into the coffeemaker, Lauren walked over to the cabinet and took out two mugs. "How did your conversation go with Max yesterday?"

In answer, Rayne held out her left hand, which was now devoid of an engagement ring. "I didn’t really expect it to go well," she said in a carefully expressionless voice as she filled the coffee carafe with water.

"After all, I went there to tell him that I’m pregnant with another man’s child who he happens to despise. But—"

"But what?" Lauren persisted.

Bracing her hands on the sink, Rayne let her head fall forward while she watched the water level rise in the carafe.

"But I never imagined it could go as badly as it did. He turned pale when I first told him, but then he recovered and even put his arm around me and told me it wasn’t my fault, that Liam had made a victim out of both of us. He said we could undo the damage and go on with our lives like it never happened."

"What went wrong?"

"I told him I wasn’t sure I want to go through an abortion."

"Then what happened?"

"He completely lost it," Rayne said tonelessly. Belatedly realizing the carafe was overflowing, she turned the water tap off and filled the coffeemaker with fresh water; then she turned the switch on.

"What he did to me today was completely unexpected. The Max I knew before would have never reacted like that..."

"What did he do? Turn around and talk to me," Lauren said, putting her hands on Rayne’s shoulders and forcing her to turn.

"He..."

Swallowing audibly, Rayne said, "He started off by making a big deal out of the little things I’ve done over the years that he put up with, and then he got all mad and started smashing everything in his office. By the time he was done, he was calling me names and... and yelling at me so loudly that I think everyone on that floor must have heard him despite the soundproof walls. Finally, when I tried to explain, he grabbed my hand, took off his ring, then pushed me out and told me to never show my face to him again. He said he hates me..."

"That hypocrite! Don’t think for a minute he’s been faithful to you for the past six years. There have been plenty of rumors about him and that assistant of his."

Turning away, Rayne reached for the sugar bowl and two spoons. "Those were just rumors. I’m the one who’s guilty and dirty, not him. Any man in his position would have reacted like that," she said softly.

Lauren stared at her for a few silent moments before she said, "Did you think he would have continued ’putting up with you’ if you’d agreed to have an abortion?"

"Definitely," Rayne replied, trying to sound nonchalant but sounding haunted instead. "In fact, I had the feeling he actually thought an abortion would be a suitable form of payback—Liam’s baby in return for the insult to Max’s pride and mine."

"That bastard! Max doesn’t care about your pride! This is about his family pride. The Everetts are not as wealthy and influential as the Thompsons, but Max tries to act all big like he owns the world. He wouldn’t want anything that would make him appear inferior to Liam Thompson."

Rayne remained silent as she could barely contain her emotions. She didn’t want to think about Liam, Max, or the baby in her womb.

"Now I don’t blame Mia for despising Max for years. She was right when she said he is a two-faced jerk and—"

"Don’t," Rayne said, turning back to the counter. "I despise the way he treated me, and I wouldn’t go back to him after today if he begged me to, but he was crushed. I wounded him in Maranta when I told him what I’d done, but today I devastated him."

In silence, they sat at the kitchen table, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. Rayne gave Lauren a mug and handed her the sugar bowl; then she picked up her own mug and started for the bedroom. "I hate to leave you here, but I have to get dressed and go to work."

"No, you don’t. You’ve been working until midnight every night since you got back from the island."

"But..."

"No buts. The restaurant can run itself for one day without you. There are many staff members there to handle things."

Rayne turned, looked at the coffee mug she was holding, then looked at Lauren and said in angry misery, "I’m so sleepy because I’m pregnant that I can hardly stand up, and I’m pregnant because I actually thought I was in love with a man who turned out to be a ruthless, depraved monster. If there is justice in this world, then I will miscarry before this thing grows in me!"

Rayne sobbed, and then the dam she’d been holding back broke, and she allowed herself to cry in Lauren’s arms. "Even if I wanted to have a baby right now, I would be terrified of the kind of genes the baby could have inherited from its father. He’s a m-monster!"

"I know," Lauren said, smiling a little and patting Rayne’s back. "Now, let’s go into the living room. You can call the restaurant, and I’ll pick out a movie for us to watch."

Lauren led Rayne to the sofa, and she immediately lay down on it and curled up, hugging the pillow to her chest again. A few minutes later, Rayne’s hoarse voice came from the sofa, "I cannot have this baby... I cannot bring another monster into this world..."