Cole’s hand tightened on her shoulder. “Amber?”
She pushed him off and bolted for the living room.
She made it as far as the hallway, and gripped the corner of the wall to steady herself.
Cole was instantly behind her, his hands on her shoulders.
“They’re all okay.” His tone was soothing. “Bumps and bruises, maybe a couple of cracked ribs. The captain did a spectacular job on the landing.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “What if I hadn’t?” she managed.
“Hadn’t what?” He came around to look at her.
“What if I hadn’t grounded the Coast Eagle fleet?”
“But you did. You made exactly the right decision.”
“Because I listened to you.”
“You listened to everyone in the room, and then you made the call.”
“I’m scared, Cole,” she admitted, starting to shake. “I’m not qualified to do this. I shouldn’t be cochair of Coast Eagle. Nobody should be listening to me.”
He drew her into his arms and smoothed a hand over her hair. “If they’d listened to Roth, a Coast Eagle plane might very well have crashed.”
Amber digested that thought. She knew there had to be a counterargument to it, but she couldn’t come up with it right now.
“They’ll find the problem,” said Cole, the certainty in his deep voice making her feel unaccountably better. “They’ll fix it, and nobody else is going to get hurt.”
“I want to go back to my regular job.”
He looked down at her and gave her a smile. “You’d abandon me?”
“You made the right decision, right off, because of your knowledge and experience.”
“Amber, the single most important attribute of being a good decision maker is listening—listening to the right people and weighing all the evidence. Nobody is an expert in everything. That’s Roth’s downfall. He won’t listen to anyone but himself.”
She had to concede that was true.
“It’s Christmas,” said Cole, rubbing her upper arms. “Everyone is safe, and the right people are out there doing their jobs. Let’s take one more day to forget about the chaos all around us. Can we have one more day for us?”
She forced herself to break away from him. He was right. This was Zachary’s first Christmas, and there was nothing that needed her immediate attention.
“Yes,” she told him.
“Good. We should get outside for a while. Do you think Zachary would like a walk in the park?”
Amber knew Zachary would love a walk in the park. And so would she. Cole’s instincts seemed bang on when it came to the two of them.
Twelve
By the time the judge called a recess, Cole could feel his blood pressure pounding inside his ears. Over Destiny’s continued objections, Roth’s lawyer had painted Cole as a conniving, opportunistic fortune hunter who had deliberately kept himself hidden from the Henderson family until there was some profit for him. The man had scoffed at the idea that Cole hadn’t known about the will. And he’d railed about the unfairness of placing Zachary in the care of a man that neither of his parents had ever met.