The Cinderella Promise (Adult Rucas AU)

Chapter 5 - The First Night

Riley started cooking, since Lucas said he wanted his mom's chicken fried steak she decided that she wanted to try to make it. Although she had made it before she wasn't sure if her own recipe was going to be the same, but maybe making it would make him happy, she thought as she started on the meal. She heard the front door open and close, she wondered if Lucas went out for a minute until she heard a voice calling out.

"Dude are you cooking," someone said as the voice got closer to the kitchen. "I remember the last time you cooked the house almost burned to the ground so just do yourself a favor and... Oh my god you're not Lucas."

"No I'm not, but I will tell him that you don't think he can cook," she said with a smile. "I'm Riley."

"Well damn sugar I never thought that I would meet you," he said taking her hand and shaking it. "I'm Isaiah, but you can call me Zay."

"Hi Zay," she said looking at the lawyer in front of her. He wasn't as tall as Lucas but he was handsome, his hair was buzzed and his smile was sweet. Yet she didn't feel the same electricity she had whenever she was with Lucas.

"So where's Lucas?"

"He's in his office, he said something about contracts," she smiled at him. "Are you staying for dinner?"

"I was actually going to crash here tonight, I'm the one working on those contracts and I need to hand them in tomorrow morning before the final meeting."

"I'll make extra, it should be ready in about an hour so go talk to Lucas and keep him busy so he doesn't distract me."

He smiled at her and nodded as he walked away. Riley didn't think anything about it and just started making dinner.

Lucas looked at the contracts for the seventh time since he left Riley, all he could think about was finding the two guys who had done her wrong and punching them until they bleed. He couldn't understand why he was so keen on saving her. A woman he barely knew but somehow she brought out every emotion he normally bottled inside, while calming him before he did or said anything.

"Lucas," Zay said as he walked in through the office doors. "I never thought that you would keep the wife, what happened? Are you hiding something from me?"

Lucas knew that since Riley had told her family the story he needed to do the same, he was better at lying than she was so stretching the truth would be easy. "Sorry man, I should have told you. Hell I should have told you that I ditched you to go have drinks with her and when I told her about your idea she said that she was alright with it."

"You've been hiding things from me," Zay said acting shocked. "Is that why you didn't want to go out with that leggy blonde the other day."

The reason why Lucas hadn't gone out with the blonde was because he was at the point in his life where meaningless relationships were useless, and also blondes weren't his type, although they were Zay's type.

"I didn't go out with her because I was already with someone. We just wanted to keep it quiet and we're going to continue to keep it quiet, this relationship was new and now we've gone and complicated it with marriage, I'm trying not to scare her off."

"Well she's out there cooking dinner and you eat way too much take out so I'm hoping she's going to be a good influence on you," he said, Lucas couldn't help but think of Riley cooking something in an apron. She was cute and sexy at the same time so the apron would be more of a fantasy, her in it and nothing else. "You're heads in the gutter, I can tell."

"Yeah whatever," he said sliding over the contracts, he had made notes on the plane and looked through them several times since but the moment he had that conversation with Riley his mind wasn't on work.