Danielle Steel - One Day at a Time

“Are you okay?” Leslie asked, shouting over the noise of the paparazzi and the boats. The flashes were still going off, and they almost overturned the gondola as they reached the Grand Canal. Coco looked terrified. She felt as though they were going to be killed. And there was very little that Leslie and the gondolier could do to protect them. He was praying they'd see one of the police boats, but none appeared. They steadily made their way back to the Gritti Palace as fast as they could go, surrounded by the paparazzi in the motoscafi. The paparazzi reached the dock nearest the Gritti before Coco and Leslie arrived in the gondola. Leslie pressed three hundred euros into the gondolier's hand, preparing to make as quick an exit as they could. It was only a short dash to the hotel from the dock, but the rabid photographers weren't going to make it easy. He almost wondered if it would help if they stopped and posed for them, but they were too far gone for that. A mob mentality had taken hold, and they were egging each other on in a feeding frenzy. Leslie wanted Coco out of it and away from them as fast as he could.

He got out of the gondola first and pulled her out, but there was already a wall of photographers between them and the hotel, and Leslie knew he would have to break through it to get her to safety. She was just stepping onto the dock, when one of them reached out of their boat and grabbed her ankle and pulled hard to stop her. She screamed and fell back into the gondola, and nearly fell into the water. Leslie looked down at her in desperation, stepped back into the boat himself, lifted her out, and ran to safety with Coco in his arms. His years of rugby as a young man served him well, he broke through the barrier of bodies and ran into the hotel with the paparazzi on his heels. The doorman and a fleet of security and bellmen tried to stop the crowd following them, and there was a melee of bodies and fists in the lobby as Leslie literally ran up the stairs with Coco in his arms. One of the security men followed with a look of grave concern.

“Are you all right, sir?” he asked as Leslie looked at Coco and gently set her on her feet outside his suite as the security guard let them in. They were both out of breath and Coco was shaking violently from head to foot, and there was blood all over her coat and Leslie's jacket. She had cut herself when one of them had grabbed her ankle and she fell back into the boat.

“Get a doctor!” Leslie said tersely as the security guard left the room immediately to find one. Before he left, he assured them that there would be guards outside their room all night, and he would call a doctor and the police. He said he was very sorry.

Leslie gently led Coco to a chair and ran into the bathroom to get a towel. He gently helped her take off her coat as she winced, and saw that her arm was at a nasty angle. He didn't say it, but he was sure that it was broken.

“Oh God, darling… I'm so sorry… I never thought… we should have gone somewhere else… or stayed here…” He was almost in tears, and she was crying. He took her in his arms and held her as she shook violently and said not a word. He could tell from the look on her face she was in shock. He just sat there and rocked her as she cried, and told her he loved her, until the doctor came. Leslie explained to him what had happened, and the doctor examined her as gently as he could. There were the beginnings of a nasty bruise on her back where she had been slammed into the wall before they reached the boat. The cut she had gotten on her hand needed seven stitches, and her wrist was broken. Leslie felt sick when the doctor told him.

He gave Coco a shot to numb her hand before he stitched it up, another shot to sedate her, and a tetanus shot. She was groggy when the orthopedic surgeon came, and set her wrist in a small fiberglass cast. Neither doctor wanted to risk taking her to the hospital and exposing her to the mob again. The orthopedist said he had seen several paparazzi lurking outside, although there were none in the lobby. The security had thrown them out. The doctors said that her wrist and hand would hurt for a few days, but they cleared her to travel. Leslie wanted her out of there now. He didn't want to risk having them pay someone to get into their room at the hotel. The hunt was on. The sharks would smell blood in the water and refuse to leave them alone from now on. Their Venetian idyll had ended in disaster. It was time for her to go home.

Leslie lay awake all night watching her, stroking her cheek and her hair as she dozed. He propped her arm up on a pillow, and she woke once or twice when he put ice packs on her hand, but the drugs had taken effect, and she was too sedated to say anything more than that she loved him, and thank him before she fell asleep again. She finally came out of it enough to talk to him at six o'clock in the morning, and then started to cry again.

“I was so scared,” she said as she looked at him with panic in her eyes. “I thought they were going to kill us.”

“So did I,” he said miserably. “It happens that way sometimes. They drive each other into a frenzy.” He had never felt so defenseless in his life. He had wanted a last romantic gondola ride for her, and they had been totally unprotected. They had no escape. “I'm so sorry, Coco. I never wanted anything like that to happen to you. Someone must have tipped them off at the restaurant or here. They get paid for that, and you never know who does it. The poor gondolier didn't know what hit him.” He had made a hell of a tip for the experience, but Leslie doubted it was worth it to him. He had been terrified too, although he had probably made more from Leslie's tip than the snitch who had sold them out to the paparazzi.

“What happened to my wrist?” She stared down at it. She remembered nothing of the doctor putting on the cast the night before. She had been heavily sedated.

“It's broken,” Leslie said in a hoarse voice. There were circles under his eyes, and beard stubble on his face. “They said you should have it looked at when you get home. They didn't want to take you to the hospital last night, and risk it happening again. You had seven stitches in your hand,” he said with a look of anguish. “They gave you a tetanus shot. I didn't know if yours was current.” He had taken wonderful care of her, but he hadn't been able to protect her from the paparazzi nightmare, and he bitterly regretted that. It was everything she was afraid of in his life, and her only reason for hesitating about living with him. He had enlisted in that kind of life when he became an actor. She had done all she could to run away from it.

“Thank you,” she said softly, and then looked at him with broken eyes. “How can you live like that?” It had scared her to death.

“I have no choice. They would pursue me now even if I stopped working. It's the downside of my job.” And in her eyes, it was a big one.

“What if we have children? What if they go after them like that?” Everything she thought about it was in her eyes. What Leslie saw there was raw terror, and he didn't blame her. It had been a terrifying night, one of the worst he'd been in. And he hated that it had happened when he was with her, and she had been the one to get hurt. He felt like a monster for putting her in a situation where it could happen.

“I've always been very careful with Chloe,” he said quietly. But he had been careful with her too. It was just rotten luck that it had gotten so out of hand, and they'd been in such a vulnerable place. “I don't take Chloe to public events with me,” he explained. But this had only been dinner in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in a back alley in Venice. They both knew it could happen anywhere. “I'm sorry, Coco. I truly am. I don't know what else to say.” She nodded and lay silently in their bed for a while, and then finally she spoke again. All she could think of was the moment when one of them had yanked her ankle and she fell back into the gondola headfirst and tried to break her fall. She knew she would remember it forever.