Beyond the Ivory Tower (2 page)

The pub was noisy, filled with an after-work happy hour crowd. Ethan managed to snag a corner table.

“So what kind of medicine do you practice?” he said, once the waitress deposited their drinks and left with their food orders.

Medicine?
Anna forced herself to focus on the words rather than the dimple that appeared in his cheek when he smiled. “Excuse me?”

“Trisha called you Dr. Lazarev.” He shifted and his long legs brushed Anna’s beneath the table, setting the butterflies in her belly back to fluttering. “My father’s a cardiothoracic surgeon. Mom does dermatology. What’s your field?”

“Discrete mathematics.”

His dark brows shot up. “Discrete
what
?”

“Mathematics,” she repeated. “Enumerative and algebraic combinatorics, graph theory, probability and computational number theory, that sort of thing.”

“Oh. I just assumed…” he trailed off. “Never mind. So, you have a PhD.”

“I do. From Princeton.” She wasn’t usually a name-dropper, despite having spent the last nine years in a mecca of celebrity culture and conspicuous consumption. But for once, she couldn’t resist the urge to flaunt her credentials. “I have a big research group at UCLA. In the math department.”

Ethan Talbot may have temporarily knocked her off-kilter with his good looks and physical presence, but in a contest of intellectual ability and academic achievement, she had no doubt who’d come out the winner. And that wasn’t just ego talking. Her sister often joked that Anna collected degrees and awards as easily and predictably as a magnet collected metal filings. With a list of publications as long as her arm, an h-index of fifty-one, and a Fermat Prize under her belt, there were few people who could measure up. A self-promoting venture capitalist—no matter how gorgeous or charismatic—wasn’t even in the running.

He traced a finger along the stem of his wineglass. “I’m a Stanford man, myself.”

“What?”

“JD and MBA.”

She stared at him. “You’re a
lawyer
?”

“You say that like it’s a dirty word.” The dimple was back. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to run her tongue over it or slap the damn thing from his face.

She resisted the urge to do either, and muttered instead, “Hypocrite.”

“Sorry.” He leaned forward, pitching his voice over a burst of laughter nearby. “Would you mind repeating that?”

She pushed aside her glass and leaned in until they were almost touching. “I said, you’re a hypocrite. Two graduate degrees from Stanford, and you’re paying kids to drop out of college?”

“Are we back to that?” He sighed. “Anna, our secondary education system is broken. It’s stifling all the creativity out of young minds and saddling an entire generation with a huge, unnecessary, and often impossible-to-pay-off debt.”

“Maybe it’s not ideal,” she conceded. “But it’s the only way to get ahead. Without at least a college education, a kid in today’s world has no chance of success at all.”

He shook his head, and a lock of dark hair fell across his forehead. Under different circumstances, Anna could picture herself reaching up, smoothing the strands back in place. Running her fingers over the hint of five o’clock shadow that covered his square jaw. Pressing her thumb to his lips to still their movement, and then leaning in to taste—

The waitress arrived with their burgers, interrupting Anna’s fantasy. She deposited a bottle of ketchup, mustard, and hot sauce on the table. “Anything else I can get you folks?”

After several minutes of eating in silence, Ethan picked up the conversation again. “There are plenty of people with no formal education who’ve managed to do quite well for themselves.”

“The exceptions that prove the rule,” Anna said. “And I’m sure every one of those people succeeded
despite
their lack of education, not
because
of it.”

“You sure you’re not just a little biased here?”

“Maybe.” She stabbed a French fry with her fork, wishing she could poke holes in Ethan’s overblown conceit just as easily. “But I’m still right.”

“I don’t think so. And I’m going to prove it.”

“How? By cherry picking the top students to participate in your start-up incubator? Piggy-backing on their talents and taking advantage of their naiveté to make yourself and your VC cronies an extra billion or two?”

“Whoa, there.” He pushed aside his plate. “I don’t know where you’re getting your ideas—”

“I read the fine print on the deal you offered my sister.” Not only had she read it, she’d combed through the damn contract multiple times, looking for loopholes. If anything sounded too good to be true, there was bound to be a scam involved. No one in his right mind would simply hand over a hundred thousand dollars to fund a college dropout’s delusions of grandeur. And this man promised to do just that for twenty kids every year. Sure, he spread it out over twenty-four monthly installments, contingent on participation in mentoring sessions, networking and team-building retreats, as well as “opportunities” to meet with and pitch to venture capital firms. But it was still a huge up-front investment. There had to be a catch. Anna just had to uncover it, and figure out how to extricate her sister.

Ethan leaned forward. “If you read it through, then you know that what the Talbot Fellowship offers is an opportunity for bright, ambitious young people to explore their passion for learning and innovation. It provides them with the resources and support they need, and frees them from the constraints of an archaic university system. This has nothing to do with making money—”

“Oh, please. You expect me to believe that? Coming from someone with degrees in business and law? ”

“Anna, let’s put aside the philosophical argument for a moment, okay?” He reached across the table, capturing her hand, and she felt the tingle all the way up her arm. “Just tell the truth. What is it that you’re really upset about? The fact that your sister decided to do something you disapprove of? The fact that she’s an adult and what she does is out of your control? Or the fact that
you
, a Princeton-educated professor with a prestigious university job, couldn’t convince your own sister to stay in school?”

She gasped at the direct attack and tried to pull back. His grip tightened, keeping her from moving. She glared at him. “This isn’t about me.”

“Really?” His voice dropped and he leaned closer. “Are you sure?”

She tugged on her hand again, and this time he released her. Scooting back as far as the wall behind her would allow, she crossed her arms and tucked her hands out of sight, palms pressed against her ribs. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think I hit a nerve.”

He had, but there was no way in hell she was going to admit it. Around them, a dozen different conversations blended into one other, a jumble of overlapping words that rose and fell like waves on some distant shore.

She cleared her throat. “Do you have siblings?”

“No.”

“What about kids?”

He hesitated. “No.”

The slight hesitation piqued her curiosity, but she let it go. She wasn’t here to probe into his personal life. Her interest extended only insofar as identifying common points of reference that might stir his empathy. If he’d never been solely responsible for anyone other than himself, how could she make him understand what it was like to pour everything that you were into another human being?

Nine years ago, when their parents had died, Anna took over her sister’s care. Sure, she’d had some help and guidance from family friends, but the bulk of responsibility rested in her hands. She’d helped Klara navigate the craggy landscape of childhood and adolescence, maneuvering around the land-mines of drugs and alcohol, sexting and bullying, eating disorders and body image issues. The one thing she had never worried about was Klara’s education. She’d erroneously assumed that her sister would be as dedicated to carrying on their parents’ legacy of intellectual achievement as Anna was herself. They were, after all, the children of two nuclear physicists who’d fled to the West during the chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union. Whatever success the Lazarevs managed to attain in the U.S., they attributed entirely to hard work and education.

Anna couldn’t imagine how disappointed their parents would be now. The enormity of her failure to guide Klara in the right direction settled like an unfamiliar weight on her shoulders.

“What about you?” Ethan said. “Any kids?”

Besides her sister? “No.”

“Because you haven’t had the opportunity, or you don’t want them?”

Well, that was blunt. Bordering on rude. Just because she’d taken a few potshots at him and his ridiculous ideas about education, did that give him the right to ask insolent questions about things that were absolutely none of his business?

She suppressed the urge to get up and walk out. There was too much at stake to give in to a fit of temper. She hadn’t accomplished what she’d set out to do, which meant she had to bite her tongue and at least try to play nice. Like it or not, she still needed Ethan’s help.

“Look, Ethan, I respect that you have strong opinions about this issue. And I admire the fact that you’ve taken concrete steps to put your convictions to the test.” She studied his face, trying to gauge whether her stab at diplomacy was having any effect. “I’m not asking you to change that. All I’m asking is that you consider making an exception in this one particular case. Surely one Fellow more or less won’t impact your experiment. But for Klara, for me, it would make a world of difference.”

He rested his elbows on the table. “By ‘making an exception,’ you mean kicking your sister out of the program?”

Put that way, it did sound a bit harsh. But rather than argue semantics, she made a last-ditch effort to salvage the situation. “I’m happy to repay whatever money the Foundation already spent on Klara. With interest.”

She’d been saving for a down-payment on a house, but with the way real estate prices were rising in southern California, she suspected she’d be renting for another decade or two. Paying off what amounted to a ransom for her sister’s future was probably better use of the money anyway.

“No one needs to know,” she added. “You’ll have the entire grant back, available for any other applicant you choose.”

He was shaking his head before she even finished speaking. “It’s not a matter of money.”

“Fine. Then
you
tell me what it’ll take to get Klara out of this.”

His gray eyes darkened and dropped to her lips, then traced a slow path down the rest of her body—or whatever was visible above the table. She shivered and felt her nipples tightening beneath the thin cotton of her shirt. Surely he wasn’t implying…

“Sorry to disillusion you,” he said. She didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed when his gaze returned to hers. “But this isn’t my call to make, or yours. The Foundation has a committee that selects applicants. If the committee members offered Klara a Fellowship, it means they saw something extraordinary in her. They’re not going to reverse their decision.”

“But—”

“No.” His voice hardened. “I will not interfere with the process.”

She bit her lip and looked away. For nearly two weeks, since Klara first dropped the bomb about leaving school and moving to San Francisco, Anna had been racking her brain to figure out a way of getting her sister released from the program. Ethan was her last hope.

Why wasn’t he cooperating? He had nothing to lose. By accepting Anna’s proposal, he even stood to
make
some money. Not as much as he’d get if whatever product her sister developed became the next Uber or Scribd. But the odds of having a successful startup straight out of the gate were pretty slim.

So why was he digging in his heels?

“Anna.” He shifted, drawing her attention back. “I understand that you’re worried. But this is a great opportunity for your sister. She’ll have access to some of the best minds in business and technology today. Whatever guidance and support she needs, the mentors and Fellowship staff can provide. And it’s not like she’s moving to another planet. San Francisco is just an hour’s flight away from L.A.”

“I know.”

“She can go home whenever she wants. And you and your family can visit her here.”

She blinked against the unexpected sting of tears. Nearly ten years, and the grief still grabbed her, like a giant vise squeezing her chest. Not always. There were days, even weeks, when she didn’t think of her parents. But then she’d be walking down the hall to her office in the Math Sciences Building, mentally working through some new proof, and catch a snippet of conversation in Russian. And she’d stumble, knowing even as she turned her head that it couldn’t possibly be her parents talking. Or on the rare occasion when she and her sister enjoyed a quiet dinner at home, Klara might tilt her head and smile in a way that reminded Anna of their mother. And the sense of disbelief would wash over her again, as fresh and sharp as the day she’d received the call from the hospital.

She forced her attention back to the present. “There is no other family. Just me.”