Page 113 of The Billionaire Boss and the Barista

She breathed in and out slowly before collapsing on him a little more heavily. “It’s okay now. Let’s just avoid moving that part of me.”

“Deal,” he said from behind clenched lips, staying very still.

“I meant big movements,” she snickered, poking him. “Just don’t laugh that hard or push me off the bed and we’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” It took him a minute, but he finally relaxed, continuing when she pressed him for the story.

“I worked on that pitch for weeks,” he said, recalling his earnest enthusiasm. “I honed and refined that plan until I had every angle covered—even some that would never come to pass. Then the night before I was supposed to fly to Athens for the meeting, Ekaterina slipped some Ecstasy into my drink at dinner.”

“Oh my God!”

Garrett gripped Emma’s arms, holding her still so her shock wouldn’t hurt her.

“I can’t believe she did that.”

Neither could he at the time, but it made perfect sense to him now.

“I had tried Ecstasy once or twice before then, but I didn’t understand what was happening tome at the time.”

“God, I can only imagine,” she said. “One minute you’re fine, digesting your souvlaki, and then the next, the room is melting.”

“I think that’s more a symptom of dropping acid, but close enough. All I knew was that I felt very wrong. I became convinced I had botulism or had been poisoned. I called emergency services and ended up in the hospital, getting my stomach pumped.”

Emma’s hand gripped his arm, alarm and anger in her expression. “Did you call the police too?”

“No, but it’s okay,” he soothed. “Because I called the ambulance, I was never in any real danger. It wasn’t that large a dose. I just didn’t have enough experience with E to tell the difference.”

If Emma had been capable of moving, she would have gotten out of bed and marched out to the airport to hunt his ex down. That was how angry she was. “She shouldneverhave done that to you.”

“I agree. It was a violation.”

He still felt that way, although the anger and bitterness he felt over it was gone.

“Why the hell did she do it?”

Again, he boiled it down to what he considered the essential takeaways. “She didn’t like that I was accepting her father’s help or the praise he occasionally bestowed on me afterward. Which was a little two-faced. She happily spent his money and played the dutiful daughter whenever he was around. She just didn’t want me to be on good terms with him.”

“And she probably wanted her boy toy back,” Emma observed. “I bet she didn’t want you to have any other ambition but pleasing her.”

“Yes and no. I think she wanted it both ways—a doting husband at her beck and call. But also a successful one she could point to with pride. A man in the same mold as her father.”

Emma scowled. “Then she shouldn’t have sabotaged you.”

He no longer agreed. “In retrospect, I’m glad she did. I filed for divorce in the aftermath. And because of what happened, Andreas didn’t argue, for which I was grateful. He could have made things difficult but chose not to.”

“Really?” she asked, incredulous. “He would have tried to talk you out of it?”

Garrett had thought about that quite a bit. If his daughter hadn’t put him in the hospital, Andreaswouldhave fought him on the divorce, squeezing him until he caved.

The man had wielded a lot of power when Garrett had none by comparison. And Andreas was used to getting his way.

“Of course he would have,” she said, answering her own question. “He was losing his free caretaker.”

“Exactly,” he agreed. “But it also helped that I didn’t ask for money. I was happy enough to escape with what I’d brought into the marriage—and the things I’d learned from him.”

Andreas couldn’t take those away, although he might have tried had he not felt his daughter had shamed him with her actions.

Emma understood perfectly, as usual. “He knew he didn’t have the right. Not after what she did. But how did she take the divorce?”

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