Chapter 7
Lily slipped back up to the cliff house before dinner in the hope that Juliet would now be well enough to come home. She was indeed much better and thought she could probably get down the steps with help, but Casey insisted there was no need to be brave.
“We love having you here,” said Casey, and Cecilia and Yumi backed him up so effusively that even Lily thought they meant it.
“You’re definitely safer here,” said Dorian with an air of authority that made Lily roll her eyes on the inside.
“He’s done a lot of damage to his ankles, knees, whatever, on set,” Casey explained. “We’ll move you down in the morning after another twelve hours of keeping it elevated.”
Juliet was easily convinced. Lily less so, but she was hardly in a position to object.
When Casey asked her to stay for dinner again (“We’re getting delivery!
By boat!’) and Juliet assured her it would be fun, she gave in, accepted a cocktail, and shot a text back home to say not to wait for her for dinner.
Two nights in a row at the cliff house. Yet this time the atmosphere was very different.
The previous evening had been overshadowed by Juliet’s pain, the adrenaline spike, and the awkwardness of new acquaintance.
The emergency was over now, and a whole night and a day later, Juliet felt accepted.
She sat at the table next to Casey, perfectly relaxed and happy.
Lily, however, was very aware she was on the other side of a growing gulf.
While she was glad to be there for Juliet’s sake, and enjoyed the lighthearted chat about previous emergencies, falls, and injuries, she was very conscious of the impression she—and her family—had made on Cecilia and Yumi.
Last night, she felt they had judged her as smart and sly.
Now, after properly meeting her mother, they knew she was most definitely the poor cousin.
But she cared too little about what they thought of her to be very uncomfortable.
Casey was a charming host who kept the atmosphere buoyant.
He entertained them all with anecdotes of on-set antics, pranks in five-star hotels, and encounters with outrageously famous celebrities.
Lily enjoyed seeing him make Juliet laugh.
She found it even more amusing to watch the American girls’ performance of being charmingly entertained, which she rightly guessed was very much for Dorian’s benefit.
Dorian himself, meanwhile, sat slightly apart, engaged little in the conversation, told no fun anecdotes of his own, and didn’t even add to the ones in which he featured.
Soon after dinner, he checked the time and stood up to leave.
“Excuse me, I have a meeting. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
“Nooooo!” whined Cecilia.
“Oh come on, we’re on vacation!” complained Casey.
“I won’t be long.”
“Then why go?”
“Because it’s a workday in London and my team is working for me.”
“Ugh, that word,” slurred Cecilia, who had already had a cocktail and two shots. “Work! How can you even say it? I won’t let you go. No, I won’t. You’ll have to kill me first.” She stuck a high-heeled leg across to the coffee table to prevent him from leaving.
“I’m going.”
“You beast.”
She ran her foot up his thigh. Dorian caught her ankle and placed it on the floor casually but firmly. And while Cecilia visibly fluttered at his touch, he was unmoved, as though he’d just removed a slightly bothersome insect.
“If you’re not back in twenty minutes, I’m coming out to get you!” she called after him. “In my underwear!” she added with a laugh. “I mean, no online meeting’s complete without it, right?”
Lily suspected the scene of Cecilia interrupting a meeting in her underwear would have been a good one, but it didn’t come to that. True to his word, Dorian reappeared within twenty minutes.
“Everyone! He’s back!” Cecilia announced. “Working, on vacation, during a party. I mean, the rabble think that people like us don’t work, but you know what, we work so hard. So hard.” She mourned into her cocktail.
“You save the world out there?” asked Casey.
“I saved my schedule.”
“Good for you, man, good for you. I would not sacrifice this moment—this view, this company—for anything.” Casey spread his arms and looked straight at Juliet.
“Unless you had to,” said Dorian. “And I reminded you.”
“You would too! Meetings, schedules, budgets, scripts, endorsements. You’re all—bam!” He punched a hand for emphasis. “And I’m all—what?” He fluttered his hands in circles. “Having a good time.”
“Ha,” said Dorian.
“What can I say. I’m embarrassed.”
“No you’re not; you’re showing off.”
“You’re right!” crowed Casey, clearly enjoying himself. “You’re always right!”
“I’m not always right and I’m not always working.”
“Dude, you literally just came out of a meeting.”
“It was important and now it’s over.”
“So what constitutes ‘important’?” asked Lily.
All eyes turned to her. Should she go on? It was too late; she had waded in. She thought it was pretty rich for Dorian to call Casey out for showing off when he made such a performance out of a phone call.
“I mean, some things are more important than work,” said Lily.
“That is true,” conceded Dorian, with a sarcastic edge. “Perhaps I prioritized my meeting unfairly. Did I miss anything crucial?”
“Yes, actually,” put in Cecilia. “My shoulder strap broke. See?” She pointed to where she’d fixed it with a safety pin.
Dorian remained unmoved and Lily remained determined to push him out of his smugness.
“I’m just pointing out that where we draw the line is up to us. Casey puts fun and friends before work. Is that such a bad thing?” Lily said.
“It depends on the work. What its needs are.”
“What about your needs? Your family’s needs, the community’s needs. Your friends. The environment. There has to be a point where ‘the work’ comes second. Don’t you think?”
“No offense,” sniffed Cecilia, “but, honey, you don’t work in the industry.”
“The industry is irrelevant.”
“No it’s not,” insisted Cecilia, who was pretty sure this Lily girl was making fun of her but was unsure exactly how. “He’s Dorian Khan.”
“My work is no more important than any other kind,” interrupted Dorian. “I just have high standards.”
“It’s not like manual labor,” Cecilia went on.
Lily smiled in the awkward pause that followed. “I’m sure whoever built this house with manual labor had standards too,” she said.
“Do you think they compromised their work for their friends?” Dorian asked.
“The house would have been built faster if the builders never went surfing. It could have been bigger too, but the owners thought it was important to preserve the look of the headland.”
“Come on, man, she’s just messing with you,” said Casey in a conciliatory tone.
Lily shrugged to make it clear that she was not at all invested. Why was he always so serious? “I’m just making conversation. Wondering aloud about how we decide our priorities.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with Dorian’s priorities. He always shows up for the people who matter,” Cecilia asserted, with a pointed look that suggested that Lily was not such a person.
“Now, that is true,” agreed Casey.
Lily smiled at how quick Casey and Cecilia were to defend their friend—who also happened to be the most powerful person in the room. Perhaps the thought that he could ever be wrong about anything had never entered their heads. Or Dorian’s.
Lily felt his eyes on her for the rest of the evening.
She wondered why. She couldn’t imagine Dorian was at all disturbed by what she had said, or was interested in her, except maybe as a curiosity.
To him, she was probably a creature from another world or a deeply flawed individual who invited further study as some kind of example of how things could go wrong.
Perhaps he was irritated by how little she cared about how she presented herself or what others thought of her.
Surely he didn’t get to his current position without caring deeply about both.
He always seemed to be on guard, and that would take up a lot of energy.
And his accent, part-London-part-posh, struck Lily as another aspect of his persona that just seemed careful and cultivated, especially considering he was born in Geelong.
Perhaps behind it, he was an outsider too.
She felt she disrupted his world somehow, but she wasn’t sure whether it was her everydayness or her unique qualities as a Pippi Beach girl who lived among millionaires’ mansions, whose mother’s job was cleaning them.
She couldn’t help wondering if Dorian had ever encountered anyone who was not actively trying to impress him, working for him, or wanting something from him.
Certainly, Cecilia and Yumi seemed to be all three.
While she couldn’t work out what her effect on Dorian might be, she didn’t spend too much time wondering.
She had no doubts at all about what she thought of him, and he was quite clearly not worth her attention.
Yes, he was obscenely good-looking; there were moments when Lily observed him thinking, or looking at the view, or bantering with Casey and it was like watching him in a movie.
Lily half expected him to put in a call to spy headquarters on his watch.
But she was quite satisfied that her first impressions of him had proven right.
Whatever talent and intelligence this person may have was ruined by his arrogance, entitlement, and inflated sense of his own importance. And he was obviously paid too much.
When dessert was finished, Yumi called everyone out to the deck to admire the moon.
“Feel the vibrations,” she demanded.
Casey and Juliet were far too comfortable on the couch, but Lily was drawn to the fresh salt air.
Out on the deck, with the water beneath and the stars above, Lily caught Dorian looking at her again, and really, it was too much.
Sure, the camera might love unreadable brooding glances, but in real life they were just strange. So she returned his stare.
“Do I have something on my face?”
“No, of course not.”
He frowned slightly and looked away.
She laughed. “Sorry. I suppose I’m not as used to being looked at as you all are.”
Which led to great protests from Cecilia, who insisted she was completely unaware of how she looked.
“I just never think about it,” she opined as she lolled on the railing in front of Dorian.
“And so many of my friends are so obsessed with their appearance, they have, like, mental health issues. It’s sad.
” She tilted her gaze downward. “Oh my GOD! Casey, why didn’t you tell me your deck had a hot tub? I adore a hot tub. Yumi, come on!”
Cecilia and Yumi fled to Juliet’s room to change into their bikinis.
“Did you want to join them?” Dorian asked Lily. At least he had the sensitivity to notice the slight.
Lily laughed. “Oh no. I wouldn’t want to spoil the performance.”
Dorian and Lily were now alone on the main deck with the moonlight, but it was Cecilia and Yumi on the deck below who commanded their attention as they splashed, giggled, and marveled at how peaceful it was and how little they cared if anyone watched.