The General (Professionals 4)

“This is your house?” I asked even as he pulled up to the side, revealing a shed a good half an acre from the back of the house.

Where he worked on his wood projects.

I could see him there with a little space heater on to ward off the chill, music humming from some old radio, the kind where you got to pick a.m. or f.m. and that was it. No USB connector or iPod port or Bluetooth. I didn’t know much about what one found in a workshop, but I saw him there with his shirtsleeves bunched up, revealing his strong forearms, as he bent over a desk, sanding a piece of wood, maybe some of the shavings getting into his beard, the smell of the wood clinging to his skin.

“Jenny,” Smith’s voice called, snapping me out of my daydream.

“Sorry. I was just wondering what kind of project you are working on in your workshop,” I told him. It was half true, at least.

“Right now? A new coffee table for the upstairs at work. We have a common area there and little rooms. For when clients need to stay. And we had two clients staying at once who we didn’t realize knew each other. And were not on good terms. They got into a fight. It got physical. And they crashed through the coffee table we had up there. What?” he asked, making me catch my own bemused smile in the side mirror.

“I can’t imagine getting used to those kinds of situations is all,” I told him. “I almost kind of hope I never would. Takes the fun out of it in a way.”

“Never thought of it that way, but I guess that’s true. So, do you want to come in? I know you said you didn’t want to go home. If you’d prefer a hotel, I could drive there instead. I just needed to check on things here real quick if that’s the case. But you’re welcome to stay if you need a break from your house for a bit.”

“I think I’d like that,” I told him, giving him a nod when my voice maybe didn’t sound as certain as I felt.

It was just new.

Staying in a different home.

I’d stayed in hotels when Teddy deigned to bring me on vacation with him. Or when we had joined Bertram on his campaign trail. But hotels were different. Perfect. Streamlined. Cold. Impersonal. It was why people who lived on the road craved home so much.

This was different. This was stepping into someone’s personal space, seeing what kind of furniture they liked, if they hung art on their walls, if they even painted them, if they had any little bits and bobs they liked to collect, if they were neat freaks or completely unconcerned with dust bunny colonies congregating in corners.

The only other homes I had even stepped foot in in fifteen years were the kinds belonging to people in my circle. The furniture and art were chosen by designers, the house cleaned meticulously by staff.

I missed the smell of other people’s houses – that comforting mix of their own personal preferences for laundry detergent and room refreshers and what they cooked. That smell you knew whenever you came across it and could say, Oh, that is so-and-so’s house.

My childhood home smelled like knock-off Tide, Newports, popcorn, and the mixed smell of TV dinners.

My home now had no discernible smell. Just a lemon clean for a few hours after Maritza got done. And nothing else.

“Come on, let’s make a dash for it,” he said, cutting the engine, going around to help me down. But he didn’t release me. His giant hand gripped tighter, the callouses a delicious scrape over my soft skin as he picked up the pace, both of us nearly running toward the front door.

“Sorry. That was stupid,” he said as he dug for his key. “You could have sprained an ankle in those things,” he told me, nodding down at my heel-clad feet. “It might be a little chilly until I start a fire,” he warned me as the door groaned open, something oddly charming. If the door even let out a tiny squeak at my house, someone in the staff was running for the WD-40 like it was a matter of utmost importance that everything was perfectly greased, like homes were supposed to be silent things. “I’ve tried to insulate it better than it was when I bought it, but there is usually a chill that won’t go away unless I light some logs,” he rambled on as he flicked on the light, and I silently wondered if maybe he was nervous. If maybe his house was not somewhere he brought random women.

He moved in ahead of me, making a beeline for the oversized stone fireplace that took up the entire wall to the right.