Page 20 of Contentious

I feel bad blowing them off, Gillian said.

Julian was pissed all over again at his parents for upsetting Gillian, for upsetting all of them.

Good day to head back to school, Roman said. I don’t envy you guys having to go to work with them today.

Maybe we should have an eight-way sick out, Carson said.

Wish I could, Griffin said. Branden trial starting today. The good news is I’ll be nowhere near the office.

Lucky you, Julian said.

I’ll be out in the field most of the day, Carson said. Let me know about any developments and remember—all of you—we’re not kids anymore. We can’t be forced to do anything, even though we work for them. Especially because of that. Nothing says we can’t quit them and start our own firm. We could actually do that any time we wanted. Never forget that.

Carson’s text had Julian staring at his phone, wondering if this new nonsense with his parents could actually lead to them leaving their firms to start their own.

“Is everything okay?” Isla asked.

Julian hated that his family drama was again interfering with their time together. “Both parents have requested meetings with us today that we’re planning to ignore. Carson just noted that we have the option of leaving them and starting our own firm.”

“Wow. Would you ever do that?”

“I mean… Anything is possible, but that’d be a pretty big step. We all walked into ready-made businesses out of law school, so starting from the ground up would be a huge challenge. That’s the number one reason we work for them, despite the drama.”

“Your mother did it after they split, right?”

“She did.”

“So you could, too, if it came to that.”

“I suppose so, but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.” He squeezed her hand and smiled, hoping to reassure her. “I’ve got much better things to be doing with my time these days than starting a new law firm.”

Chapter Six

Carson was furious about his father calling a meeting and deeply resented the massive number of texts he’d woken up to expressing shock about his parents. Everyone he’d ever met wanted the dirty details and would expect a response they weren’t going to get, as he had other, more pressing things to think about. On the way to check in at Rachel McDavid’s home, he called his grandfather.

“Morning. I can’t believe you took that beautiful woman home and didn’t have a sleepover.”

“Quit spying on me!”

“You need to get a freaking life, Carson. That woman is drop-dead gorgeous, and you took her home? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Nothing is wrong with me. We’re just friends, and she has a son, and why am I even explaining myself to you?”

Spencer cackled with laughter. “You’re so defensive because you know I’m right. When I was in my prime, I would’ve been hard-pressed to let someone like her get away. Underscore ‘hard-pressed.’”

“Ew, and thank you for the advice, but that’s not why I called.”

“What’s up, sonny boy?”

He told Spencer about the meetings his parents had requested and his siblings’ plans to blow them off.

“You’ll have to deal with it at some point, I suppose,” Spencer said with a sigh.

“No, we don’t have to deal with anything. It’s got nothing to do with us.”

“Carson, come on. Of course it does.”

“No, really, it doesn’t. We’re adults, Gramps, and they can’t make us be part of this reunion story, or whatever it is, if we don’t want to be. We don’t care about their explanations. We want them to leave us alone and stop making salacious headlines that we have to then answer questions about. I had three hundred texts this morning! Do I have time to deal with that? Absolutely not. We want nothing to do with it.”