These Thin Lines, page 1
THESE THIN LINES
MILENA MCKAY
Copyright © 2023 by Milena McKay
This is a work of fiction.
Any similarities with real life events are coincidental and unintentional.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For permission, contact mckay.undercover@gmail.com
Cover and art design by Em Schreiber.
PRAISE FOR A WHISPER OF SOLACE
When I think of McKay’s writing style, I think of 19th century grand opera. She conveys big, bold emotions within fantastic plots that challenge the reader to come along for the ride.
VICTORIA THOMAS, THE LESBIAN REVIEW
Damn, this book… Seriously. So. Many. Feelings
JUDE SILBERFELD, WWW.JUDEINTHESTARS.COM
Every ‘rule’ broken, yet it leaves me breathlessly anticipating what McKay will do with the Lesfic genre next.
THE READING ROOM
To those who struggled with learning and to those who held their hand along the way…
When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
CONTENTS
I. Candle
1. Once Upon a Fairytale
2. Once Upon a Vision
3. Once Upon a Late Night
4. Once Upon a Timely Scheme
5. Once Upon an Unraveling
6. Once Upon a Safe Haven
7. Once Upon a Family Recipe
8. Once Upon a Tennis Match
9. Once Upon a Silver Gown
10. Once Upon an Unwelcome Revelation
11. Once Upon a Well-Attended Ball
12. Once Upon a Parisian Sunset
13. Once Upon a Broken Frame
II. Shadow
14. In a Faraway Land of Thorny Memories
15. In a Faraway Land of Stormy Harbingers
16. In a Faraway Land of Entrances Well Made
17. In a Faraway Land of Past Hurts and New Pain
18. In a Faraway Land of Loaned Pleasure
19. In a Faraway Land of Roses and Debts
20. In a Faraway Land of Old Familiar Faces and Undertows
21. In a Faraway Land of Unwanted Conversations
22. In a Faraway Land of Fingertips and Atonement
23. In a Faraway Land of Tuxedos and Realizations
24. In a Faraway Land of Sacrifices and Desire
25. In a Faraway Land of Bedside Confessions
26. In a Faraway Land of Long Overdue Revelations
27. In a Faraway Land of Heroes and Villains
28. In a Faraway Land of Happily Ever After
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Milena McKay
PART I
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 the Lilien Haus of Fashion was 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 decided to 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. Vi didn’t belong 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.
The hotels, beyond their majestic beauty, didn’t interest her anyway. Neither did the other fashion houses and their luxurious stores. No, this particular building was why she’d made the long trek to the 1st arrondissement. This one had a certain je ne sais quoi…
H
And happen it did. Magic. Or something like it. And much more of that something than Vi had ever intended. But that also was par for the course for her. Vi’s family didn’t call her ‘clumsy’ on a daily basis for nothing. She had come by that adjective honestly.
In her awe of the place she was finding herself in, Vi knocked, the beautiful lily-shaped knocker heavy and cold in her fingers. And as the door opened, she did what was so in character for her that she didn’t even find it ironic.
She stumbled over her own feet and landed face first on a plush, ivory carpet, which probably saved her from a broken nose. And then Vi just sighed. Or maybe she groaned. Whatever it was, she hoped that unlike her fall—since there was no hope for that—whatever sound she’d made had been somewhat graceful at least.
As she stood up and tried to catch her breath, she looked around, then simply closed her eyes. In her relief over her unbroken face, Vi realized she had lost her shoe, the too-big-for-her good-as-new Converse from the secondhand store down the street from her apartment sliding easily off her socked foot and landing somewhere in front of her in the vast expanse of the foyer.
She said a silent prayer to whichever guardian angel of hers was on duty that day. Vi needed her wits about her. She touched her face. Her glasses seemed intact. But as she squinted and tried to fix them from their crooked position, her last cogent thought was that it must have been the wrong angel—a very amorous one and not the sanguine one she desperately needed.
All her proper musings evaporated, and only the improper ones remained. She was looking at the most beautiful woman in the world. Universe. What was bigger than a universe? Something, surely, because the woman was… Ethereal. And she was looking straight at Vi with the ghost of a smile on her incredible face.
The early morning light landed on the chiseled sharp features, caressing those planes and angles of cheekbone and jaw, and Vi was mesmerized by the play of shadows, hiding the familiarity of the face. But even in her flustered and embarrassed state, Vi knew this woman.
“Che cortese… You certainly know how to make an entrance, Cinderella.”
Vi had enough Italian to understand the remark. Courteous. Yes, it was quite the courtesy to fall flat on your face in front of the lady of the house. And she probably should have fixed her clothes, or her face, or put her shoe back on. Really, done something other than stare. But the voice… silk over steel with a note of… melancholy, was it? The voice had her enraptured. It had her imagining slaying whatever dragons were making this princess sad.
Then the massive amber eyes crinkled at the corners, the beautiful crow’s feet deepening, and an eyebrow rose up regally. Not a Princess then, a Queen. Would genuflecting be too much?
“Take a picture, darling. It will last longer. Though judging by the suspenders, you probably had several of mine on your wall growing up.”
The words were sarcastic, but the smile curving the wide mouth grew warmer. Vi stupidly found herself smiling back. Of course she’d be pegged as a lesbian. She’d long ago stopped pretending to be something she wasn’t. But this was impressive gaydar, nonetheless. And of course it would be this woman who’d be in possession of it. Chiara. The Chiara.
Still, Vi didn’t think she was necessarily telegraphing anything. She’d pulled back her long, auburn curls and covered her freckles with makeup. Her outfit was straight enough that her father hadn’t rolled his eyes at her when she’d stopped by his house earlier. She did sneak the suspenders under the blazer, so maybe…
Then she remembered that she was in the presence of lesbian royalty, and figured being seen and being known was nothing unusual within these walls. Which made her both terrified and brave—never a good combination for Vi, because it led to her saying inane things.
“I might have. This surely proves my good taste.”
Silence reigned, and the smiling mouth opened just a touch in obvious shock at the brazenness—or stupidity—of the remark. Vi wanted to sink through the carpet. She was desperate enough to disappear that she’d dig her way through the marble underneath.
But then the smile bloomed fully, and the silence was broken by gorgeous, deep laughter, sincere and contagious.
Vi stared before averting her eyes. Of all the times to so boldly exhibit her innate clumsiness and foot-in-mouth disease, today was not the day to do it. Today was important, her one chance to make something of herself, a chance so rare she hadn’t even been sure her father would ever allow it, yet he had, and the gravity of her situation weighed heavily on her. Still, as she peeked from under her lashes, the object of her befuddlement winked at her. Vi felt the tips of her ears go pink.
And then, as she sat awkwardly on the soft carpet, sinking deeper into the woolen luxury, the woman from her posters knelt down beside her, and long fingers gently encircled her ankle, sliding her foot into the runaway sneaker.
Vi hyperventilated and was fairly certain Chiara could feel the pulse hammering under her skin where the cool fingers touched her. The smug lift of the lips told her as much, and as the graceful hand offered to pull her up, Vi felt her color turn ruddy.
“My god, she’s delicious. And ridiculous. Aren’t you, love? Who might you be?”
Belatedly, Vi realized there were other people in the room. Two, in fact. The one speaking with a pronounced Irish accent was much shorter, with wild hair and wilder clothes. Was she really wearing an elaborate wife-beater? But her eyes were kind, even if Vi could tell they were laughing at her. Little devils played in them, twinkling and teasing, and Vi found herself grinning.
“I think this is our new summer intern, Aoife. Consider acting professionally. We don’t need lawsuits. Of any kind…” The words sounded ominous, and this woman was taller, statelier, and older. The severe, no-nonsense face was devoid of the mischief so easily found in the other two women who were looking at Vi.
“Oh, oh, the Courtenay!” Aoife made a gesture that Vi could only assume was some kind of elaborate curtsey. Vi felt like sinking through the floor from a different kind of embarrassment.
“Sully…” Now Chiara’s velvety voice had a tone of warning in it, and Vi’s eyes followed the staying, long-fingered hand laid on Aoife’s forearm. Vi licked her lips. Such a simple gesture, it made her envious. Not of Aoife and not of Chiara, but of the ease to touch and be touched by another person.
“Ms. Courtenay, welcome to Lilien Haus of Fashion. This is Renate Lilienfeld, the company’s financial director.”
Renate inclined her head, but didn’t offer her hand, and Vi was silently glad she hadn’t stuck hers out like an overeager kid.
Perfectly comfortable with the other woman’s brusque manner, Chiara went on.
“This is Aoife Sullivan, head of production. She’s in charge, so be afraid.” After an awkward beat, all three women laughed. Aoife had no misgivings about pumping Vi’s hand several times, the shake strong and warm. Vi unclenched her jaw.
“Yeah, not so much. But you’re gonna be with me, kiddo. So stick close.” The Irish accent was strong, musical to Vi’s ear.
“Regardless of what she says, Ms. Courtenay, I’d listen. Though perhaps, only believe half of her stories.” As she spoke, Chiara’s wide, amber eyes looked at her with so much playfulness, Vi swallowed nervously and wanted to tug on her non-existent tie. Was it really this hot in the foyer?
