"What the h.e.l.l?" he muttered, wrenching his door open to follow her.

She was huddled over something when he joined her, and it was only when she shifted that he saw it was a person, a woman lying crumpled at the top of the steps.

Claudia was slapping the woman's cheeks, to apparently no effect.

"She won't wake up," she said, looking up at him, her eyes huge in her pale face. "Leandro, she won't wake up."

Crouching down beside her, he searched the woman's neck to find a pulse, and relaxed a notch when he felt it, slow and steady beneath his fingers.

"Her pulse seems okay. Is she bleeding or anything?" he asked, trying to remember the first aid course he'd done in his teens.

"No, I don't think so, it's hard to see."

His words seemed to ground her, and she sat back on her heels and pulled out her phone.

"I need an ambulance, please," she said when her call was connected. While she gave her address and details, he shrugged out of his coat and lay it across the woman's body.

She was small and fine boned, and his coat covered her nearly to the knees.

Claudia made another phone call as soon as she'd finished the last, the conversation short and sweet.

"She's here, at my place," was all she said.

Then she glanced up at him.

"I don't want to move her, in case she damaged something when she fell down, but can you go in and turn on the outside light?"

She handed him her key and he squeezed past her to get to the door. Flicking the lights on, he turned back and froze as he got a good look at the woman's face for the first time.

There was no hiding the family resemblance-the nose, the hairline, the cheekbones. This woman could only be Claudia's mother or some other close female relative. As he watched, Claudia curled her hand into a fist and pressed her knuckles firmly into the woman's sternum. It was a move he'd employed when wrestling with his brothers, and one he knew doctors used to ascertain levels of consciousness in patients.

The woman flinched slightly, then moved her head from side to side.

"No," she whispered. "Don't want to."

She thrashed a hand out, nearly connecting with Claudia's face. Instinctively he ducked down to protect Claudia, and for the first time he registered the woman's smell-alcohol and sweat and unwashed body.

He shot a look at Claudia and she bit her lip.

"This is my mother," she said stiffly. "She's...she hasn't been well. She gets confused sometimes and goes wandering."

"Does she have Alzheimer's?" he asked.

"Something like that," she said, her hand smoothing the hair back from her mother's forehead.

"She's been missing all week? That's why you were so worried?" he asked.

Claudia nodded, still not meeting his eye. "Yes."

He frowned. She was lying to him. He didn't understand why, but she was lying to him.

The wail of an ambulance siren sounded in the distance, and he stood.

"I'll go flag them down," he said, resting a hand on her shoulder.

Striding to the sidewalk and out into the road itself, he spotted the flashing lights at the end of the street. Glancing back at the house, he watched as Claudia bent over her mother and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

Headlights loomed closer and he waved his arms, then stepped out of the way as the ambulance veered to the curb.

Within seconds, two paramedics were out the doors and grabbing gear from the back of the van.

"She's on the front porch," Leandro said, hanging back so as not to crowd the small s.p.a.ce.

He couldn't hear what Claudia was saying to them as they checked her mother's vitals, but he saw one of the paramedics nod and reach for something from his kit. Clearly feeling she was in the way, Claudia stood and stepped back a few paces, wrapping her arms around herself as she kept an anxious eye on the action.

Wordlessly he moved to stand behind her, drawing her back against his body and wrapping his arms over hers. Her body was stiff with tension and fear, and he dropped a kiss onto the crown of her head.

She was so fierce, yet so small and fragile at the same time. He felt an overwhelming need to wrap her up and coc.o.o.n her from the world. But he was painfully aware that he could only do that if she let him-and at the moment, that wasn't looking likely.

THE DINNER SHE'D just eaten churned in her stomach as she watched the paramedics work on her mother. She kept telling herself that Talia was alive, that was the important thing, but inside she was resounding with shock over how thin her mother was, how wretched she'd looked when Claudia found her huddled on the steps.

"We're going to take her in," one of the paramedics said as he crossed back to the ambulance.

"Which hospital?" she asked, forcing herself to think. There were things to do, people to notify.

"Cedars Sinai."

She nodded, then wriggled free from Leandro's arms. She couldn't look at him. She hated lying to him, but she also couldn't bring herself to explain that her mother was a chronic alcoholic, that the smell of urine and sweat and G.o.d knows what else on her was because she'd been living on the streets in pursuit of oblivion via the bottle for the past week.

Pulling her cell from her handbag, Claudia dialed her brother again, aware that he was with her father and that they were both on their way to her place.

"They're taking her to Sinai," she said when her brother picked up.

"Okay. How is she?" Cosmo asked.

"Unconscious, but she's responding to pain. I guess they won't know anything else until they run some tests."

Alcoholics were p.r.o.ne to a number of illnesses-liver problems, heart disease, pancreatic problems, and were far more likely to develop breast cancer than the general population. There was no knowing the extent to which Talia's binge had damaged her body.

"You okay?" Cosmo asked.

"I'm fine."

"I'll let George know and we'll see you over there, okay?" Cosmo said.

She ended the call and watched as her mother was strapped onto the stretcher, an IV line taped to her forearm.

"I'll lock up, then we can follow them," Leandro said from behind her.

She took a deep breath and turned to face him.

"You don't need to come. My father and brothers are meeting us at the hospital," she said, trying to inject as much cool strength into the words as possible.

"I'm coming," he said unequivocally.

Hunching her shoulders, she turned toward his car. Short of s.n.a.t.c.hing her keys from him, she knew she had no hope of discouraging him. She'd seen that stubborn light in his eye before.

They drove to the hospital in silence. On one level, she was aware that it was only a matter of time before he realized the truth-that her mother didn't have early-onset Alzheimer's or some other medical condition that could explain her current state. But she couldn't bring herself to say anything.

She was ashamed of her mother. An ugly, terrible truth. Sometimes she felt she'd been ashamed of her mother all her life. As a child, she'd never been able to have friends over to play like the other girls. There was never any knowing what state her mother would be in when she came home-happy, maudlin, angry, sober. It had been a lottery, one that Claudia had quickly learned not to play. At family gatherings, she or one of her brothers had always kept constant surveillance over their mother, waiting for her to have one ouzo too many, trying to steer off the slide into slurred speech and inappropriate laughter and unexpected anger. Having Leandro see her mother like this, her family like this-she felt weak and exposed.

Cosmo, George and her father were already waiting in the E. R. when they arrived, hovering amidst a sea of other worried people. Stretching out in front of them were rows of curtained cubicles, all of them apparently occupied. George hugged her in greeting, and Cosmo slid an arm around her shoulder, but their father barely met her eye. He was bristling with anger; she could feel it coming off him in waves. She squared her shoulders. None of this was her fault-she was the one who had tried to jolt her family out of its head-in-the-sand att.i.tude to Talia's behavior.

"They brought her in five minutes ago," George said. "She's in the third cubicle there. Did she say anything when you found her?"

"Nothing coherent. She's pretty out of it," Claudia said, burningly aware of Leandro standing just behind her.

Slowly, reluctantly, she turned to introduce him.

"Leandro, these are my brothers, Cosmo and George, and my father, Spiro," she said.

Cosmo and George shook Leandro's hand, but her father just nodded his head once in acknowledgment.

The crash of a trolley being overturned in one of the treatment cubicles drew their attention, and Claudia stiffened as she heard her mother crying out.

A nurse and two orderlies rushed into Talia's cubicle, and Claudia wrapped her arms across her middle and gripped her elbows tensely as her mother's cries grew louder and louder.

"Get off me, get off me, let me go," Talia hollered shrilly, then she started with the four-letter words, and the people around them in the waiting area shifted in their seats and murmured amongst themselves.

Claudia imagined the scene in the cubicle-her mother rousing from her alcoholic stupor, angry to find herself in the control of others, disoriented, confused, scared. She'd be thrashing around, lashing out. When Claudia was fifteen, her mother had caught her unawares during just such a reaction and perforated Claudia's eardrum with a blow to the head.

She didn't dare look at Leandro as her mother's cries turned to despairing sobs.

"I want my girl," she began to wail. "Where's Claudia? I have to see Claudia."

A harried-looking nurse whipped open the cubicle as she exited, swiftly sliding it closed again behind her-but Claudia still caught a glimpse of one of the orderlies holding her mother's legs down. Tears p.r.i.c.ked at the back of her eyes at the indignity of it all.

The nurse approached the waiting area with a brisk, no-nonsense step.

"Is anyone here with Talia Dostis?" she called over the low murmur of conversation in the waiting area.

Her father moved forward. "I am Spiro Dostis. Talia's husband," he said with firm dignity.

"Do you have any idea what your wife has been drinking? Does she use other drugs?" the nurse asked matter-of-factly.

"No. Never," Spiro said firmly. "She has been missing for six days. We...we have no idea where she has been."

The nurse nodded, obviously understanding how painful an admission it was for Spiro to make.

"She's very dehydrated, disoriented and aggressive. The doctor is reluctant to sedate her given her blood alcohol level. We'd like one of you to come sit with her. A familiar face might orient her."

"I'll go," Claudia said, stepping forward.

"No." Spiro did not even turn his head to look at her. "I am her husband."

"But she's calling for Claudia," Cosmo said. "And she wound up on Claudia's front doorstep. Maybe if she sees her she will calm down."

"No."

A high-pitched scream came from Talia's cubicle, and Claudia turned urgently to the nurse.

"Can I just go in?"

"I'll take you," the woman said, and Claudia turned to face Leandro for the first time.

There was no way he didn't know now-he'd overhead their whole conversation.

"You should go home," she said, forcing herself to meet his gaze.

Not waiting for his response, she followed the nurse.

Her stomach dipped as she saw that her mother had been tied down with restraints. Talia still fought, however, straining futilely against her bonds, arching her head off the bed, her mouth open in a plaintive wail.

"Mama, Mama-I'm here," Claudia said, hastening to her mother's side.

But Talia was lost in a haze of alcohol and confusion. Her head tossed from side to side as she wrenched her body violently, trying to free herself.

"Mama," Claudia said, leaning across the bed and grasping her mother's face in her hands to still her frantic movements. "I'm here. It's Claudia. I'm right here."

Talia froze, her mouth open in a silent wail. Slow recognition dawned in her bloodshot eyes, and all the fight seemed to drain out of her.

"My little girl. My baby girl," Talia said, the words slurred but still coherent.

"That's right. I'm here, so you have to stop hurting yourself, okay? You need to let the doctors and nurses look after you."

Big tears welled up in her mother's eyes as she stared at Claudia.

"You went away. You went away, but then I saw you in your pretty dress. So nice in red, always so nice in red," Talia said, her voice trailing into a whisper.

Claudia frowned, then she realized what her mother was referring to-the People's Vote Awards. Her mother had seen the televised ceremony after all.

A horrible thought occurred-was that why her mother had gone off on a binge? Because she'd seen Claudia on TV? Claudia closed her eyes for a brief moment, hating the thought that, however indirectly, she might have been responsible for what had happened.

"It's okay, I'm not going anywhere," she said, smoothing her mother's hair back from her forehead.