Like that was going to help. Looking at him would just make her dizzier. It always did. But sitting was good, she thought woozily as he pushed her down into a chair. Sitting would definitely stop her crumpling into a heap on the floor.
‘Breathe.’
‘I can’t,’ she croaked. Her throat was too tight and, because he’d dropped to his knees in front of her and was leaning in close, he was stealing all the air.
‘Breathe with me.’
He placed her clammy hand in the centre of his chest and held it there, covering it with his warm, dry one, and she didn’t even have to think about focusing on the rise and fall she could feel beneath her palm. All her senses narrowed in on that one thing, the warm solidity of his body acting like a sort of anchor, calming the chaos whirling around inside her as she instinctively followed his lead until eventually her heart rate slowed and the panic subsided.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured shakily, faintly mortified and not quite able to look him in the eye as she reluctantly took her hand back.
‘What happened?’
‘I had a panic attack.’
‘Why?’
‘There’s a national shortage of ornamental cabbages.’
‘What on earth are ornamental cabbages?’
‘Bedding plants,’ she said, lifting her eyes to his and seeing the fierce concern in his expression turn to puzzlement. ‘For an engagement party tomorrow night. The iceberg proposal. But there aren’t any. Anywhere.’
Duarte sat back on his heels and rested his forearms on his knees, his frown deepening, as if he couldn’t see the problem. ‘So use something else.’
If only it was that simple. ‘Nothing else will do,’ she said. ‘The bride-to-be was very specific. It’s a disaster. A complete and utter disaster.’
At the thought of it, tendrils of renewed panic began to unfurl inside her and her breath caught, making the dizziness return.
‘It doesn’t have to be,’ he said with enviable calm. ‘If you can persuade Isabelle Baudelaire to part with a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar bottle of wine, you can persuade this bride-to-be to accept an alternative to ornamental cabbages.’
She stared at him, holding his gaze and taking strength from his steadiness until her head cleared and she could breathe once again. Well, when he put it like that, she probably could. Cardoons had been suggested by one of her contacts. They were as bold as ornamental cabbages, if not bolder, stunning in their own way, and supply wasn’t an issue. ‘Cardoons might work.’
‘And no one will ever know.’
But that wasn’t really the point. ‘I will,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘I’ll always know I screwed up.’
‘You didn’t,’ he countered. ‘This is not your fault.’
Debatable, but irrelevant. ‘I’m still responsible. The buck stops with me.’
‘It’s a hiccup. Which you will fix. And everything will be fine.’
‘It won’t be fine,’ she said. ‘It won’t be what the client wanted. It won’t be perfect.’
‘It will be almost perfect.’
She shook her head in denial. ‘Almost perfect is not good enough.’
‘It’s more than enough.’
It wasn’t. It never had been. Second-best wasn’t in her mindset. ‘That’ll do’ was not a phrase she’d ever used. She could understand why he didn’t get it. No one ever did.
‘You are exceptional at what you do, Orla,’ Duarte continued in the same steady vein while she continued to resist. ‘I’ve seen you at work here and watched how you’ve managed people and handled problems. Focus on the many things you’ve achieved and trust yourself.’
That was easy for him to say, and it gave her a kick to know that he thought her work exceptional, but she doubted his entire life imploded when he made a mistake. She’d bet he didn’t live with a super-critical inner voice that constantly drove him to achieve more and be better. That battered him with insinuations of worthlessness when he was down and made him feel he deserved to be overlooked.
He was impossible to overlook. He just had to walk into a room and all heads swivelled in his direction. He came across as supremely confident in who he was and what he did. He was out to prove nothing.
Whereas she was out to prove...
Well, she wasn’t quite sure what she was out to prove. Which was odd when she’d always known exactly what drove her. But right now, suddenly, she wasn’t sure of anything. Because to her shock and confusion, as everything he’d said spun around her brain like a demented, out-of-control top, she was wondering whether she oughtn’t ease up on herself a little. As he’d once pointed out, she did put an immense amount of pressure on herself. She always set herself goals that were slightly out of reach, forever needing more to silence the judgemental devil that lived in her head.
Announcing she’d acquire for Duarte the bottle of Chateau Lafite 1869 was a case in point. It had been a nigh on impossible task. She hadn’t slept. She’d been too wired, too focused on the goal. She’d felt no great sense of triumph at having achieved the inconceivable in itself, only at what it had meant for her job and her emotional well-being.
She’d lived like this for the best part of twenty years. She’d never considered perfectionism a flaw—despite what that therapist she’d seen once had insinuated—but maybe he’d been right after all and it was. She knew from experience that it wasn’t an irritating little personality quirk. At times it could be hellish. But maybe true perfection was impossible anyway, and if it was, then the pursuit of it was not only wildly unrealistic but also incredibly unhealthy.
How much longer could she go on like this? she wondered, her stomach and her thoughts spinning. She had no time for friends or hobbies. Her to-do lists were out of control. She was heading for burnout. Her doctor would certainly be pleased if she took her foot off the pedal. Her cortisol levels were stratospheric.
And mightn’t it be nice to live in the moment for a change instead of either analysing her performance on tasks gone by or thinking about everything she had to do next? Happiness and contentment weren’t things she’d ever really thought about, but could she honestly say she was happy? No. She couldn’t. Not in the way her siblings were. They were far more sorted than she was. They took setbacks in their stride. They didn’t wallow in recrimination and self-doubt when things went wrong. And they had the whole relationship thing nailed. Her sister was married and her brother had a long-term girlfriend. She, on the other hand, had been planning to marry a man with whom she had less-than-mediocre sex simply because she refused to admit defeat. She hadn’t been jealous of them for years. She found she was now.
So could she unravel two decades’ worth of perfectionist traits and allow that good enough was good enough? The thought of it made her feel even more nauseous than before, and every cell of her body was quivering with resistance, but something had to change. She couldn’t carry on like this. So perhaps she could try it and see how it went, however terrifying.
‘You’re right,’ she said, taking a deep breath and bracing herself for a giant leap into the unknown. ‘Cardoons will have to do.’
***