CHAPTER ELEVEN
JAZ WAS TRYING not to show how nervous she was the next morning but Jake must have sensed it because he kept looking at her with a watchful gaze. She picked at the breakfast he had had delivered to their suite but barely any made it to her mouth.
‘At least have a glass of juice,’ he said, pushing a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice towards her.
‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
He took her hand from across the table and gave it an encouraging squeeze. ‘Sweetheart, you’re going to knock them for six down there.’
She bit down on her lip, panic and nerves clawing at her insides like razor blades whirled in a blender. ‘Who am I fooling? I’m just a gardener’s daughter from the wrong side of the tracks. What am I doing here pretending I’m a high street designer?’
‘Imposter syndrome,’ Jake said, leisurely pouring a cup of brewed coffee. ‘That’s what all this fuss is about. You don’t believe in yourself. You think you’ve fluked it, that someone is going to come up behind you and tap you on the shoulder and tell you to get the hell out of here because you’re not up to standard.’
That was exactly what Jaz was thinking. She had been thinking it most of her life. Being abandoned by her mother had always made her feel as if she wasn’t good enough. She tried so hard to be the best she could be so people wouldn’t leave her. But invariably they eventually did. Three times she had got engaged and each time it had ended. Her fiancés had ended it, not her. She was ashamed to admit she might well have married each and every one of them if they hadn’t pulled the plug first. She was so terrified of failing, she over-controlled everything: her work, her relationships, her life. Her business was breaking even...just. But she’d had a lot of help. If it hadn’t been for Jake’s parents, she might never have got to where she was.
How long could she go on doing everything herself? She was constantly juggling. Sometimes she felt like a circus clown on stilts with twenty plates in the air. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a holiday. She took her work everywhere. She had Holly’s dress with her in case there was a spare minute to work on the embroidery. She hadn’t had a chance to draw a single sketch for Miranda. How long could she go on like that? Something had to give. She was going to get an ulcer at this rate. Maybe she already had one.
‘You’re right,’ she said on a sigh. ‘Every time I get myself to a certain place, I make myself sick worrying it’s going to be ripped out from under me.’
‘That’s perfectly understandable given what happened with your mother.’
Jaz lowered her gaze as she smoothed out a tiny crease in the tablecloth. ‘For years I waited for her to come back. I used to watch from the window whenever a car came up the drive. I would get all excited thinking she was coming back, that she had got herself sorted out and was coming back to take me to the new life she’d always promised me. But it never happened. I haven’t heard from her since. I don’t even know if she’s still alive.’
Jake covered her hand with the warm solidness of his. ‘You’ve made your own new life all by yourself. You didn’t need her to come back and screw it up.’
‘Not all by myself,’ Jaz said. ‘I’m not sure where I’d be if it hadn’t been for your parents.’ She waited a beat before adding, ‘Do you think you could have a look over my books some time? I’m happy to pay you.’
‘Sure, but you don’t have to pay me.’
‘I insist,’ Jaz said. ‘Your family has helped me enough. I don’t want to be seen as a charity case.’
Jake lightly buttered some toast and handed it to her. ‘One mouthful. It’ll help to settle your stomach.’
Jaz took the toast and bit, chewed and swallowed but it felt like she was swallowing a cotton ball. ‘Do you have it?’
‘Have what?’
‘Imposter syndrome?’
He smiled crookedly, as if the thought was highly amusing. ‘No.’
‘I suppose it was a silly question,’ she conceded. ‘Mr Confidence in all situations and with all people.’
A shadow passed over his features like a hand moving across a beam of light. ‘There have been times when I’ve doubted myself.’
‘Like when?’
‘At boarding school, especially in my senior year,’ he said, frowning slightly as he stirred his coffee. ‘I played the class clown card so often I lost sight of who I really was. It wasn’t until I left school and went to university that I finally found my feet and became my own person instead of being Julius’s badly behaved twin brother.’