Trust In Tomorrow. Кэрол Мортимер

      ‘I can get my own meals when necessary, although I have a housekeeper who usually leaves my evening meal for me. She’ll be back at work from seven-thirty in the morning, and she doesn’t leave until four. She’s had the weekend off in my own absence,’ he explained.

      She should have known he didn’t keep this huge apartment spotlessly clean himself; he hardly came over as the domesticated type. ‘I can help her out, if that’s okay?’

      ‘Mrs Harvey would probably leave if you tried. And as she’s been with me the last five years I wouldn’t thank you for that,’ he warned.

      She could well imagine. ‘I just thought that as well as being helpful it would give me something to do.’ She shrugged. ‘But if you say no …’

      ‘I say no,’ his mouth twisted. ‘Good domestic help is hard to come by nowadays.’

      He wasn’t being patronising, merely stating a fact. Nevertheless, Chelsea wondered if the awesome-sounding Mrs Harvey viewed herself as ‘domestic help’. She knew that their own maid, Clare, would have been most insulted by the title. Her face shadowed. Poor Clare, she had been as devastated by Gloria’s death as everyone else; the elderly woman would probably never recover from the shock.

      Lucas frowned as he watched the expressions flickering across her candid face. ‘I’m not so sure you don’t need food more than rest.’

      And from the sound of it he personally intended seeing that she got it! But even the thought of food still made her feel ill, although she wasn’t sure she had the strength to fight this formidable man right now. She was saved the trouble of finding the energy to try as the telephone began ringing somewhere in the apartment.

      ‘I’ll go and answer that,’ he said somewhat impatiently.

      ‘I’ll probably have fallen asleep by the time you’ve finished with the call,’ she told him hastily, in no mood to have food forced on her.

      ‘Chelsea, I——’ He broke off irritably as the telephone continued to ring shrilly, seeming to become more and more insistent the more he tried to ignore it. ‘I’ll have to go,’ he strode to the door. ‘If you need anything——’

      ‘I’ll find you,’ she nodded.

      Lucas gave her a hesitant look before leaving the room to answer the telephone, the melodious sound of his voice muffled through the apartment walls.

      Chelsea sat down heavily on the single bed next to her now that she was alone, the weight of her mother’s death forcing her down, both mentally and physically. She would never, ever, forget finding her beautiful mother lying so peacefully in her bed she seemed to be only sleeping, her silver-gold hair spread out across her pillow as if brushed there, the blue of the silky nightgown she wore a perfect match for the eyes beneath the long, fanned-out lashes, her make-up perfect, her mouth seeming to be curved into a smile, almost a secretive smile, as if something pleased her even as she lay there.

      But that serene beauty had been disturbed from the moment Chelsea had contacted the emergency services. Her mother had no longer looked peaceful or beautiful as they tried to revive life where it had decided it no longer wished to be.

      And it had all been her fault. If she hadn’t decided to go bowling straight from work instead of going home as she had planned to do her mother might still be alive now, she might have been able to get the help soon enough to be of some good to her mother. It hadn’t seemed so strange when she received no reply at home when she called to tell her mother of her delay; since the two of them had lived alone they had lived pretty independent lives, both of them busy with new careers. She had simply assumed her mother had gone out to an early supper, her job as a realtor often keeping her late with prospective clients. She hadn’t dreamt, hadn’t guessed, the real reason her mother had been unable to come to the telephone. To come home and find her like that had shaken Chelsea to the core. She doubted she would ever get over not being there when her mother needed her the most. She knew with certainty that the guilt would always be with her.