“Didn’t give quite that much,” he confesses. “But next time you go in, search among the plaques on the walls outside your cafeteria. Who knows. You might find me there.”
His manner of speaking, cocky but matter-of-fact, tells me that he isn’t bragging, exactly. Having wealth so unconscionable that he can give enough away to put a dent in a hospital’s funding goals is simply a fact of his life.
“You’ve got to be the youngest person in that room,” I muse.
Julian shrugs.
“Not always,” he says. “There are some lawyers. And the young old-money socialites whose only job is to be the face of their family’s charity work.”
“You say that with derision,” I observe. “You don’t relate?”
“I don’t,” he says. “Most of them are the family misfits. As long as they show up every few months, wear a suit, and smile for pictures, they can spend the rest of their lives snorting lines and going to forest raves.”
“Sounds like they’realsopeople of leisure,” I taunt, calling back to how he’d described himself only a week before.
The irreverence is gone from Julian’s expression now; his gaze turns razor-sharp. I feel pinned by it, like it’s diving through my sweater and nailing me to my chair.
“What are you insinuating, Dr. Sullivan?” he says.
“I’m not insinuating anything,” I say innocently. “You clearly want to differentiate yourself from your peers, and I just want to understand why.”
Winona would call what I’m doing now “self-sabotage.” I’m taking a needle to his defenses, jabbing at the soft parts to see what makes him flinch, and it’s unkind, and maybe even rude, but I can’t help it. I want to know who Julian Conrad becomes when he feels disrespected, whether he raises his voice or demeans or belittles, if his indelible charm is actually conditional. I want to know if my sneaking suspicion that he’s a fraud has any validity or if I’m just cynical and hypervigilant. And it’s working. Bit by bit, Julian’s veil—the one he wears to convince me that he is toothless, that he is a cub with a crush and not a wolf on the hunt—is falling, and I am ravenous to see who he is underneath.
More interesting still, I can see that helikesthis. Brandon might think I am self-righteous, but Julian is hooked into me, staring me down with a lethal mixture of disdain and interest that reminds me of the version of him I briefly met in the conference room of his gallery. The one who looked like he might just swallow me whole.
“I identify innovation,” Julian says. “I take risks on people with bigideas and help them turn them into reality. I take money and turn some of it into more money and convert the rest into art and homes and resources. Those people,” he takes a vicious swig of his water, gulps, places down his glass firmly, “are not my peers.”
“But you share the same spaces. You’re often in the same rooms, which is why you know what they get up to when they’re not in them.”
Julian doesn’t wince, exactly, but he does go still, and it’s his sudden rapt attention that gives me the confidence to let my thoughts continue to flow, unfiltered, from brain to mouth.
“I’m just saying,” I continue. “I don’t think I have to look through your portfolio to know that you’re probably putting your money where everyone else is. Broadview Hospital is in one of the richest neighborhoods in the city. They will never be short of funding. Margaret? She’s talented, of course, but an easy pick. Your friend, and already famous in her own right. She’s been showing in galleries for thirty years, doesn’t even need a day job. And I’ve looked up some of your other exhibitors—rising stars from all over the world, but none from your own backyard.
“There are a hundred Margaret Wests in Ingleside who are trying to have their work seen and won’t get the opportunity because people with money in this city don’t even think to look anywhere outside their spheres of influence.” I cross my arms. “You would never have found me, Julian. The places where I existed…you probably would never have thought to look.”
There’s music playing in this restaurant, but I can’t hear it over the roaring in my ears. I mean what I say, every word of it, and there’s a power in speaking it out loud and looking at this man who has probably been able to use his money to get into the few places his face might deny him and telling him that I don’t find him that impressive.
“Careful,” Julian croons in that same low tone he’d purred into my voicemail earlier this week. “I might think you’re calling me uninspired.”
“Maybe I am,” I say with a shrug. “But I notice that you aren’t calling mewrong.”
Julian opens his mouth to counter, but he’s saved by Devram, who sweeps up to us with a barely suppressed grin that tells me he can sense the tension emanating from our table and is enjoying every second of it.
“Are you ready to order?” he asks.
Julian doesn’t let me get a word in, just launches into an exchange in rapid, syllabic Turkish, only pausing to ask if I have any dietary restrictions. Devram laughs as he writes down the order, gives me a quick glance like he’s in on some joke that I’m left out of, then spirits away.
“That was presumptuous,” I say when Devram is out of earshot.
“I was getting hungry, and you’ve been too busy lecturing me to look at the menu even once,” Julian notes.
“You could’ve prompted me.”
“You were distracted,” he says. He throws a languid arm over the empty chair next to him and smirks, well aware of the pretty picture he makes. “Understandably.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re so full of yourself.”
“As I should be,” he says. He blinks those sleepy eyes, gives me a smug smile. “As you should be too.”