Page 1 of These Thin Lines

PARTI

CANDLE

1

ONCE UPON A FAIRYTALE

Genevieve Courtenay’s life was a fairytale. That is, if fairytales had a distant and withholding father. And a disinterested and occasionally cruel stepmother. As well as two ignorant and dismissive stepsisters.

So, a fairytale… Except unlike most main characters of every such story, Genevieve wasn’t perfect. In fact, she was pretty terrible at, you know, those fabled things that endeared heroines to the readers.

You name it, and it was fairly guaranteed that she’d been told she was bad at it. Daughter? Yep, her dad stated every day how completely useless she was. So perhaps he had reasons to be so distant with her.

Stepdaughter? Her stepmother reminded her of her ungratefulness on a regular basis. That is, when she could be bothered to notice her at all and wasn’t slugging down expensive wine at other people’s fancy parties. And why would she notice Genevieve anyway? There was nothing remarkable about her.

Sister? Well, Gigi and Kylie probably would have agreed with all of the statements above, but they mostly ignored her. Unless she could do something for them. Then her stepsisters snapped their fingers at her.

Still, Vi, as she was known to her very few friends, did something very well. So well in fact, that she, on occasion, wished she wasn’t quite as good at it. Because if she were bad at this one thing, maybe she would have shown her stuck-up, blue-blooded, touch-of-royalty relatives the finger and walked away.

Vi loved deeply and very well indeed. She was loyal and headstrong in the intensity of her love. Her love for her ungrateful, demanding family, for those few friends she’d collected and lost over the years and now, seemingly, for the one woman she had no business having any kind of feelings for.

Because that woman was somebody’s wife and therefore so off limits, she might as well not be on planet Earth.

Vi’s heart, however, hadn’t gotten the memo. Not only was its desire out of bounds, the woman was also out of Vi’s league. Hell, Vi’s heart’s desire was out of pretty much everyone’s league. Including her own wife’s. Vi always felt particularly bitter when her mind wandered in that direction, but there was no helping these notions.

And no, her thoughts weren’t particularly covetous either. Vi did not want the woman for herself. She was too… everything. Vi’s heart would simply explode in that absolutely impossible scenario. But while she yearned and pined like any of the Brontë sisters’ characters, she also resented the fact that the object of all her longing was living in a complete—in Vi’s opinion—marital mismatch.

Simply put, Chiara Conti-Lilienfeld was too good for the likes of Franziska “Frankie” Lilienfeld.

It didn’t matter that Frankie was one of the greatest couturiers of her generation. It didn’t matter that theLilien Haus of Fashionwas one of the most progressive and famous brands in the whole world. It didn’t even matter that Frankie was suave and smooth and charming, and very handsome. In Vi’s naïve, twenty-five-year-old eyes, nobody was good enough for Chiara.

The fact that Frankie was also Vi’s boss somehow hadn’t registered until after Vi had realized she had fallen smack-in, first lust, then gradually in love with the former supermodel. And once Vi had cottoned on to it, honestly, it was by far the least of her worries. Vi Courtenay was raised to keep bigger secrets, after all. And keep those secrets she did.

* * *

To her credit,Vi had realized she was in trouble the moment said trouble was upon her. Even years later, when asked when she’d known Chiara Conti was the one, she’d say it happened on a day that was rather momentous to begin with.

To her overwhelming astonishment, after denying her the chance to actually work for a living her entire life—“we are the Courtenays, other people work, we live!”—her father had not only found her this shiny new opportunity but also encouraged her, in his own laconic way, that it was, “high time you made something of yourself, all that studying does a woman no good.”

She remembered how, last night, he’d placed a delicate china tea cup on its saucer, gave her a passing look before unfolding Le Figaro with a throwaway, “Please, try to do well. And maybe don’t screw it up. For once, Genevieve. Just this one time.”

She could still hear his scornful words ringing in her ears, although she chose to believe it was the croissant he’d been too busy chewing that had stopped him from properly wishing her luck.

* * *

Vi decidedto overlook the previous day’s derision as she stood motionless in front of the classic Parisian four-story townhouse on Rue Saint-Honoré. The early morning light played off the gleaming windows, winking at her, promising something, luring her in, like the beam of a lighthouse.

She shook her head at her vision and her own silliness. Hadn’t her father repeatedly told her to quit daydreaming and stop making things up?

It was time to focus on the task at hand and on the place in front of her. A place that looked very much like the facades of all the other buildings in the vicinity. After all, she was surrounded by Lucci, Dior and Longchamps and YSL. There were other fashion houses whose names Vi could not remember to save her life. Fashion was not her thing. Not even a little.

And neither were the massive luxury hotels this part of town was so famous for. On her way to Lilien Haus, she passed by the Crillon, and the doorman gave her the ‘move along, you don’t belong here’ look. Which, to be fair, was kind of true. Vididn’tbelong at the most luxurious hotel in the world. Not anymore.

The majestic Crillon and the stately Ritz a bit farther down the street and the Mandarin Oriental, also nestled along her walk to Rue Saint-Honoré captured Vi’s imagination with their masonry and the play of glass and light on their facades.

Her hands itched for her beat-up camera, before she shook herself. She had nothing to offer any of these stone giants, and they were not establishments that Vi Courtenay could afford to even set foot in. Sure, her father and Gwyneth and Gigi and Kylie frequented the parties thrown at these places, playing at being rich and famous and trading on their name, but they couldn’t afford to stay here either.

Nobody knew that, of course, but Vi was aware the other shoe could drop any minute, and the bursting of their fake bubble of veneered wealth with ugly debts, unpaid favors, and bounced checks was imminent.

---