Convincing her (Jen and Lucas)

The rest of the morning, after the two of them fooled around, passed smoothly without Lucas doing anything too outrageous. Jen called and asked her mother if she would need a ride there, but Diane refused, saying that she couldn't make Lucas drive her to the restaurant they were going to meet.

Jen compromised and said that she would go with her but Diane still refused so she had to ask Lucas if he could arrange transport for her mother.

Lucas, of course, did not refuse and promptly arranged for someone to come and pick her up when the time came.

The two of them ate breakfast as Jen animatedly talked to him about the plans for the engagement party that was going to happen in two days Lucas had a faint smile as he watched her describe everything that was going to happen and asked himself why she did not want to have the wedding sooner if she was going to act excited about everything. 

"Don't forget to eat," Lucas said and fed her a forkful of food. Jen chewed quickly before she continued to talk to him about what they were going to wear and the venue and the guest list and so many other things that Lucas was just enjoying watching her excited expression without really paying attention to what she was saying.

He would occasionally stuff her mouth with food as he watched her excitedly talk about what was going to happen in the next couple of days.

Just like that, Lucas had his fill of breakfast and had also managed to feed Jen until she stopped him so he was satisfied, and the two continued to talk for a bit more before Lucas went to wash the dishes.

In the meantime, Jen went to the living room and turned on the tv and found something to watch. Jen hadn't really found the opportunity to watch anything recently, so she caught up with recent affairs and didn't even notice Lucas walk towards her.

Lucas lifted her legs that were strewn across the sofa and sat down before placing them on his lap. Jen, who had become suddenly distracted, lost her focus on what she was watching and could only feel the warm hands that were rubbing her fair legs.

She could stand it for quite a while until Lucas's went all the way up to her inner thighs. She couldn't help but feel that both of them had become so fixated on having sex with each other after not being together for just two months now. But thinking about it properly, they still had another ten months to spend like this. 

She was going to do her finals next month and she could go over to country M for three months before she resumed classes, so that was the only thing that comforted her.

She had planned to go back to City K for her holidays, but since she was already spending time with her mother, she was not going to go to City K to spend more time with her during her holidays. If Diane knew of her daughter's real thoughts, she might have disowned her.

"What are you thinking about?" Lucas asked as he watched her spaced-out expression and she came back to earth.

"I was just thinking about what I was going to do after I'm done with my finals," Jen answered honestly and a small smile appeared on Lucas's face.

"If you are bored, I'll accompany you," Lucas offered, and Jen felt warm in her heart. That was what she had been planning from the get-go.

When it was late morning, Jen went to take a shower and started working on her makeup afterwards. As she was doing her own makeup, Lucas had gone to take a shower as well and remembered the first time she had met Hellen and Noah at the company's party.

Lucas hadn't been too formal with the first introduction, probably because he was considering her own position. Now that she was planning to introduce him to her mother, she started feeling nervous.

Lucas came to the dressing room with a towel wrapped around his waist as he looked for something to wear. The last time he had appeared before Diane he had just been moral support for Jen, now that things were escalating, she could only be more serious about the matters that were coming up ahead.

Jen watched as he got dressed through his reflection on her mirror and did not rush him at all and only patiently waited for him. The benefit they had was that they knew when exactly Diane left the hotel.

So Lucas dressed smartly in a white shirt and a pair of black slacks. He did not wear a full-blown suit so that he would not look overdressed. So when Diane walked into their private room, she just took it as him being semi-formal.

It wasn't like he was going to sign a formal document with her, anyway. It was not like Jen would stop being her daughter when she got married, so she did not really mind these trivial matters.

Fortunately, Jen and Lucas had arrived before Diane at the restaurant, and once her mother arrived, Jen became conflicted on whether she should sit with Lucas or her mom. Even though she leaned more towards Diane, at the end of the day, she was pushed to sit next to Lucas.

Jen shyly introduced her fiancé to her mother and watched as two of the most important people in her life talked and felt warmth in her heart. Diane had met Lucas once before when she had reconciled with her daughter, and she felt both grateful and regretful to him because of her own failure to act as a proper protector to her own daughter.

So when she saw how he sheltered and nurtured her, she had become assured that he was going to be good for her so she did not have any objections from the beginning.

Diane kept asking Lucas questions like what he liked to eat and if she could make him anything and why he liked her daughter and similar things. It was to the point that Lucas ended up promising to never hurt her as long as he was alive.

Jen felt both flattered and flustered at the banter between her mother and fiancée, so when the conversation ended, she felt very relieved.

Lucas had been faithfully answering his mother-in-law's questions. The three people continued to talk as they drank wine for a while, so when he perceived that she was getting drunk, he called for the driver to take her back to the hotel as he too got a substitute driver to return him and Jen to the hotel.

Jen had not stopped him from drinking because she knew that he could get someone to drive them back home. So as they made their way back, Jen leaned into Lucas's embrace as she dazedly looked at the scenery outside.

She was happy that her mom and Lucas got along well enough. She already got along with the Lewis family, so the meeting tomorrow was just a formality, as the two families had to formally meet before the engagement party.