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Hudson ended the call, then stayed near the window. It was definitely a different view than he’d had less than forty-eight hours ago. He wasn’t sure which he preferred.
Some days he missed the view of New York City from his apartment. And to some degree, he missed his apartment. But at the same time, he’d rather be in Serenity than in New York.
That mess of contradictory thoughts had to be the result of jetlag. There was no other explanation.
What he wanted more than anything was to have a pause button. Then he could just pause everything and get some rest without the fear of something happening somewhere in the world while he was sleeping.
It was as if he was burning out on his job. He’d didn’t know why that would be. Nothing was different with the work. Not really. But something was making him want a break in a way he’d never experienced before.
But a break wasn’t in the near future, so rather than dwell on that thought, he prepared another cup of coffee, then sat down at the table in front of his laptop… to work. Because what else would he do?
He had to make a decision with regards to continuing to stay at the resort in Serenity. It had already dragged on longer than he’d thought it would. Alexander had even asked how much time he thought he’d need to get to the bottom of things.
It wasn’t that he wanted something else to go wrong, but if nothing did, they’d have nothing to follow up on. So far, they were at a dead end, and they needed a new direction to move in.
Pulling up his calendar, Hudson went back to see what they’d had to postpone on his schedule in order for him to come to Serenity. For the next little while, he sorted through what still needed to be dealt with.
He could use Serenity as his base for the next little while and go to Remington locations that were within a few hours’ flight. It was the ones on the other side of the world that would be off his schedule for the time being.
Knowing he couldn’t deal with this on his own, he called Caleb. Together they worked out how he could continue to do the other aspects of his job, while balancing it with his need to remain in Serenity for the time being. He just wasn’t ready to leave yet.
With those plans in place, something settled inside him. He blew out a long breath.
“You okay?” Caleb asked. “Still trying to get over jetlag?”
“I shouldn’t be, since I spent a day in New York,” Hudson told him. “But yeah. I feel a little drained and exhausted.”
“You need a vacation,” Caleb said. “Maybe you should have stayed an additional week in Scotland.”
Hudson sighed. “I can’t afford vacation time at the moment.”
Plus, he hadn’t really wanted to be gone from the resort—and Kayleigh—any longer than he had to be. Which was ridiculous, really.
“You never feel you can afford time off. You’re going to burn yourself out.”
“I enjoy what I do. I’m not going to burn out.”
“You know better than that, Hudson,” Caleb said. “You can burn out even doing a job you love.”
“I’m just tired from all the international travel lately. I haven’t had a chance to recover after that long stretch I did right before I came here.”
“Maybe you should take a few days there and not do anything but ski and drink hot chocolate by the fire.”
“I did that when I first got here, remember?”
“No. That was not you enjoying yourself. You were still working because you were looking over the situation there.”
“I don’t know how to really relax.” Though he recalled the evening he’d spent with Kayleigh and her family, and how much he’d enjoyed that. It had been the most relaxed he’d been in a long time.
“Well, you’d better figure it out soon,” Caleb cautioned him.
“Yeah.”
Kayleigh seemed to have similar workaholic tendencies to him. He wondered how she balanced everything in her life. Maybe she didn’t. However, from what he’d seen of her, he was inclined to think she did.
When his stomach rumbled, Hudson glanced at the clock on his phone. He’d planned to see about meeting up for lunch with Kayleigh, but it was well past that time now.
“I’m starving,” he told Caleb. “I’m going to grab some lunch.”
