Thomas's Muse: A Quidell Brothers Novella

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Andy pats my arm. “Off I go to sell, sell, sell!” Winking, he walks away.

  I hear a little boy’s hushed voice and I turn around, instinctively kneeling.

  “Uncle Tommy!” Bart, dressed in a tuxedo t-shirt and black pants, one of his action figures gripped by its leg, runs into my arms.

  I hoist him up. “Aren’t you up past your bedtime?”

  He stares at the painting. He’s been talking nonstop about the show for two months. Dan and I had a long talk about a five-year-old and naked lady paintings, especially when that naked lady was going to be his new aunt, but we both agreed he’d never forgive us if we left him out. So I made sure Andy set out a couple of my portraits of him, and also some of his drawings of his toys, in the special “Bart” corner.

  Dan sat him down and told him exactly how he was to act and that he was to stay out of the main gallery unless either Dan or I was with him. And the difference between paintings and photos. Plus a few other things. He’s been an exceptional little man all evening, listening and following directions, and charmed many guests with his ever-widening understanding of art.

  Bart leans close to my ear. “Sammie is pretty.”

  I laugh. Yep, my nephew is most definitely a Quidell man.

  He looks over my shoulder. “Ms. Frasier is prettier.” He’s developed quite the crush on his art teacher.

  “Well, at least I know you won’t be stealing Sammie from me.”

  “Uncle Tommy!” Bart pushes his fists into his hips when I set him down. “Stealing is bad.”

  Dan rounds a display, the pretty Ms. Frasier next to him. Bart, making a show of behaving, walks stiffly to his father.

  Dan hoists him up. “I think someone is tired.”

  Bart yawns. “I’m not tired.”

  Camille—Ms. Frasier—nods to me as she takes Bart from Dan. “Well done, Tom.” Bart snuggles in, obviously happy his favorite teacher came along to keep him company.

  I nod back. “Thank you.”

  “Dinner tomorrow?” Dan sticks his hands in his pockets. My poor brother looks uncomfortable in his suit, though I’ve noticed he’s upped his grooming game these past few weeks.

  I glance at Camille again. She’s talking with Bart, giving him her full attention. Dan runs his fingers through his hair, watching them too, and he looks happy.

  “Dinner it is, then. But no mac and cheese this time, okay?”

  Bart giggles. “I like mac and cheese.”

  Sammie appears, gliding around the same display. Her indigo dress hugs her curves and she’s as luminescent in real life as she is in the painting. Smiling, she pats Camille’s arm and ruffs Bart’s hair. “Someone looks tired.”

  Bart yawns again. “I’m not tired.”

  Sammie laughs and kisses my nephew’s cheek. “You have been a very good Quidell tonight. We are all proud of you, young man.”

  Bart beams.

  “We will see you tomorrow for dinner, okay?” Sammie musses his hair again.

  My little nephew nods. “Okay, Auntie Sammie.”

  She blinks, backing toward me. This is the first time Bart has called her “Auntie.” I take her hand, squeezing. My beautiful Sammie beams as much as Bart, and, I do believe, she is just as happy.

  We watch them go. Sammie leans against my shoulder, her cheek pressed against my arm. Her soft floral perfume wraps around me, adding an extra touch of femininity to her already perfect female form.

  She squeezes my hand. “The first time he asks Camille to sit for him, your brother’s going to freak out.”

  “Probably.” I kiss the top of her head. “But I bet he’ll draw a spectacular picture.”

  She looks up, smiling. “Andy says we can leave, if you want to.”

  “Oh?” Her dress is loose at the neckline and I have an exceptional view of her cleavage. Leaving sounds like just what I need right now.

  “But first I want you to come down the street with me.” Sammie tugs on my hand, leading me out the door.

  It’s too cold to be out without our coats and the sidewalk is slick, but she laughs and pulls me into the night air. The city feels alive tonight. People bustle by, most looking at Sammie and her bare arms, some laughing. Our breath freezes and Sammie snuggles close. I loop my arm over her shoulder.

  The shops all brim with shoppers and the skyline twinkles. Music blasts from the restaurant down the street, along with the smell of burgers and fries. The cold air makes the blues bluer and the reds crisper, and I think, when we get home, I’ll paint my Sammie in her dress under the winter night sky.

  A block down, she produces a key from her clutch and pulls me into a dark stairwell. Shadows fall over us, but she shines, and lifting her against the wall would add a wonderful cap to the evening.

  But she’s laughing and up the stairs, out of sight, before I can yank up her skirt.

  “Sammie?” I hear her heels clinking on a wood floor.

  The lights are off but I see the space clearly. It’s huge, with one full wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. The city lights pour in, flooding the entire wide area with golds and silvers and the reflected red and green of a neon sign across the street.

  To one side, an open bookcase blocks the view of an old desk that has been pushed against the wall, and between the shelves I see Sammie’s blue dress.

  I stare at her for a moment, through the shelves, realizing that even though we aren’t in a library, this moment is very much like her school fantasy. The one she’s described for me now. Several brilliant times.

  I’m immediately hard. I step out from behind the case. Sammie leans back on the desk and my palms find her breasts. I rub, watching her bite her lip. “Let me see.” It’s cold in here but her skin feels volcanic. I hitch up her skirt. “I want to see.”

  She’s not wearing panties. All night, my exquisite Sammie has been walking around my gallery opening in her bright blue, clinging dress without panties.

  I stare at the v between her legs, my mind totally lost.

  Sammie smiles and undoes my belt. Is she going to suck me off? I want to be in her. I want to kiss her while I fuck her. My beautiful Sammie.

  “You want to see?” she whispers into my mouth.

  “I want you.”

  She gasps when I pound into her. Damn, she feels tight. I hold her legs and she screams my name and when we both come, I collapse on top of her. She’s given us both that perfect end to a perfect evening.

  Sammie wraps her legs around my hamstrings and holds me inside her. “What do you think of this space?”

  “Hmm?” She smells good and I’m not thinking anymore. She’s intoxicated me.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?” She kisses my cheek and wiggles.

  I pull out even though I don’t want to.

  “I thought you’d like the windows.”

  I glance around once I’ve readjusted my clothes. It is a beautiful space. During the day, the light coming in would be perfect for painting.

  “With both our salaries, we can afford it.” She’s watching my face as she readjusts her dress. “It’s zoned residential. We could renovate. Live here.”

  My beautiful Sammie found this place with its open view and its wide spaces. She found it for us. “It’s available?”

  “I thought maybe we could paint that wall orange.” She points to a little jut-out next to the windows. “If you don’t think it will bother you while you’re painting.” Sammie skips into the red and green light thrown by the sign across the street. “This whole area here should be your studio!”

  Her dress swirls around her legs as she turns in a circle, her arms out, like a ballerina. She dances in the red and the green, my muse in blue.

  All I want—all I will ever want, from this moment forward—is to see her the way she is now. Happy and alive and spinning in the moonlight, for me. The light I will never block from her life. “I love you, Ms. Samantha Singleton, Sammie for short.”

  I scoop up the woman I love. The woman who makes everyth
ing worthwhile.

  Sammie laughs and kisses me with all the passion in her soul. All the warmth and the joy she’s always had. And can now express.

  “I love you too, Mr. Thomas, Tom Quidell.” She snuggles against my chest. “I love you very much.”

  The End

  The Quidell Brother’s Saga continues in Daniel’s Fire

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  The blaze that destroyed Daniel Quidell’s firefighting career scarred more than his body. Court cases, therapy, and five pins in his bones later, he’s a divorced single father working himself ragged to provide a good life for his son. But the strain leaves him exhausted—and overwhelmed.

  Until Camille Frasier walks into his life.

  Beautiful and empathic, Camille soothes Dan’s mind and eases the pains of his body. But she desires more than a gentle hand to help her body to find its fire. And she hopes Dan will give her what she needs.

  But some wounds don’t heal correctly. And no matter how much heat Camille offers, Dan feels trapped inside the cold box of his past. Is he strong enough to find his way out?

  Daniel’s Fire

  1

  Daniel

  My truck’s service indicator winks on as I pull into the lot of my son’s daycare. Frowning, I park outside the big Community Center building and stare at the little blue wrench and the letter-number combo on my dash. It’s one of the expensive service reminders. One involving every filter and hose attached to my truck’s engine, and from my last check, it probably means new tires as well.

  I pull the key and sit back, mentally adding “take in the truck” to the cloud of nag inside my head. Most people would call it a mental to-do list. To me, it’s a massing zombie scene: I’m on the rooftop and each time I tick something off the list, I get an undead kill shot.

  Most days, I get more of them than they get bites out of me.

  It’s a violent way to keep a to-do list, I know. But visualization is one of the techniques they taught me while I laid on my back in that damned hospital recovering after the doctors inserted pins into my shoulder. And my thigh. And layered on the skin grafts. My doc told me if popping the heads off slow, lumbering zombies helps decrease my stress level, then by all means I should pop away.

  Both my brothers think it’s hilarious. Some guys have stacks of porn on the top shelves of their bedroom closets. I have stacks of shitty movies because my little brother Rob buys every idiotic zombie DVD he finds.

  I glance up at the wide steel and concrete expanse of the Community Center’s boxlike, early nineties architecture. My kid’s in there right now, laughing and playing with the other four-year-olds, and I can’t help but think that I need to up my game. Life’s got too many shitty zombies. I have a boy to protect.

  I look at the sun, feeling its warmth for a second, and breathe in. The air smells fresh, though the highway is on the other side of the hill and the road noise hums through the lot. A summer breeze blows and the occasional cloud keeps it from getting too hot. It’s a nice day.

  I count, because it’s another technique the doc at the hospital taught me. To understand the moment. To see what’s really here. And to live.

  Sometimes it’s hard. But I do it. I have a kid.

  Bart’s daycare teacher—the amazing Ms. Cunningham, who used to teach high school English before “retiring” to organize and run the community-based daycare—set up a strawberry picking field trip for all the kids at the center. She called me personally, claiming I was one of her favorite students back in the day, and asked if I would like to come along.

  Who am I to say no to Ms. Cunningham? Besides, I get to spend time with my kid and watch the pretty young teachers sticking out their sweet round asses while they bend over to pick berries.

  I may not have stacks of porn in my closet, but I’m still a man. Even if my scars and my life have shut down dating.

  I slam the truck door and lean against the front fender, stretching my hamstring. I changed into cargo shorts and a long-sleeved t-shirt before driving over. At the time, I didn’t notice that the scar on my leg was visible.

  My brothers tell me not to be so self-conscious. But, like seeing what’s really here, sometimes it’s hard.

  I walk toward the Community Center door. The aches are bad today, even with the nice weather. Maybe the flavor of fresh berries on the tongue and the laughter of little kids will ease at least some of it.

  I can hope.

  * * *

  Camille

  Forty pre-kindergarteners, six teachers and aides, and eight parents. That’s three kids per adult. I hand over a bright green t-shirt and the corresponding green kids’ shirts to Ms. Selby, the pregnant parent standing in front of my table, in the middle of the Community Center lobby. She’s pretty. Wearing designer yoga maternity wear, too. Her perfume smells like an expensive field of handcrafted French lavender. Or how I imagine a field of expensive Old World lavender tended only by the most artisanal hands would smell. The closest I’ll ever get to France is downloaded movies and the occasional glass of fine wine.

  “I’m supposed to put this on?” Smiling, though she’s obviously annoyed by the chaotic green of the shirt, she holds it like she would a pair of stinky workout shoes.

  “It’s so your group can easily identify you. And you, them.” I point to the three little kid shirts and her assigned list before pointing toward the room she’s with.

  Nodding, she takes the shirts and walks down the hall, her designer sandals snapping against the floor.

  I watch her go. Sandy—Ms. Cunningham to all the parents—is wrangling her room of little ones, as are the other teachers. I don’t get my own room until next week—I’m teaching pull-out art classes—so I’m wrangling the parents.

  When I hear the Community Center’s door whoosh open I look up, expecting another neighborhood mom to saunter in, or the second dad. We have two today. The first guy, a tech from one of the local computer businesses, walked in early, blinking like he’d never seen the sun before, and went about following directions as well as the best of our students. He waits now in his bright yellow t-shirt in his daughter’s room helping the other kids with theirs.

  The second one is little Bart’s father. Sandy’s eyebrow arched just a tad bit when she said his name, and her lips rounded for a fraction of a second. The man had a reputation—a good reputation.

  I remember the news reports. How Bart’s father and another firefighter got a family out of an apartment building before it collapsed. How they’d both been injured. Dan Quidell is a hero.

  I’d seen Bart’s file. Hell, all the teachers have seen his file. We need to know when kids have non-custodial parents who might cause problems and sadly, little Bart is one such kid. So I know what his dad looks like, as I do his ex-wife. Her photo in the file is a six-year old snapshot. His, a slightly blurry cell phone snap. Mr. Quidell holds Bart but he’s turning away, like he doesn’t want his photo taken. Bart, though, is mugging for the photographer, as Bart tends to do.

  There’d been the snickers in the break room this morning when Sandy went over the parent list. “Hug a Teacher” mugs held high and the calls to make sure that when Dan Quidell changes into his neon colored parent t-shirt, he does it out in the open, where they all can see.

  I rolled my eyes. Because, I’m sure, the man likes being considered a piece of meat. The disrespect left a sour taste.

  But when the Community Center doors whoosh open and the road noise rolls in, when I see one Mr. Daniel Quidell in the flesh for the first time, only two words echo through my head. Two very unteacher-like words. Two words that sum up the halting physical grace before me: Holy fuck.

  The sun backlights his body, so I can’t immediately see his face, but I see his shape. Like a lot of tall men, he does the slight head duck as he walks across the threshold into the main lobby, even though he has plenty of clearance. He twists too, angling in
one broad shoulder before the other.

  He moves like the dancers I used to date, gliding on strong, sure legs. But I see the snagging of his joints, and, I suspect, some aches, and I’m sure not all his injuries healed right.

  His scars from his firefighter days must still cause him pain.

  Stopping just inside the door, under the full glory of the lobby’s huge skylight, he curls one sculpted bicep as he reaches to pull off his sunglasses.

  The tingle doesn’t creep up from my belly or between my legs or from any other part of my body. It manifests from every one of my cells as if I’m standing between two static electricity generators. Two of those huge sparking monstrosities from old movies, the ones Dr. Frankenstein used to bring his monster to life.

  I look at the big, gorgeous man framed by the Community Center’s entrance, at his well-proportioned chest and arms, his flat abs and his strong, centered-though-pained gait as he walks toward me, and my entire body suddenly has a mind of its own. Or half a mind. It most certainly has desire.

  Holy fuck bounces through my head again. I want to rub those shoulders. Soothe those aches. Stretch and loosen that body. I want to give him relief in every way possible.

  He hooks one temple of his sunglasses over the collar of his long-sleeved t-shirt as he glances around. A smile appears as he notices my table. And me.

  I hope I’m not blushing. God, I feel like I’m blushing. My skin feels hot and my nipples tingle and I swear if he asks, I’ll sneak off to a supply closet with him just so I can suck him off.

  Which is unprofessional of me. Very unprofessional. For goodness sake, I teach his little boy.

  But the smiling Mr. Quidell, with his short chocolate brown hair and his incredible blue-green eyes, is beyond gorgeous.

  He extends his hand. “Dan Quidell,” he says, his voice washing over me in a wave of warm, deep tones. Damn it, he sounds as good as he looks.

  One side of his mouth curls up higher than the other. Just a little, and it gives him a hint of devilishness. He’s got a swashbuckling air to him, but in a leader kind of way, like he’s the head pirate.