Grave Phantoms (Roaring Twenties #3)(18)

Then, of course, there was the other thing. That night. The night he didn’t want to think about right now.

But she only said, “Because my mother would just as soon me marry a convicted murderer.”

“Mm. That’s something I hear a lot,” he murmured, half serious as he flagged down a waiter and ordered them two drinks: black-label champagne for her, water for him. When the waiter left with their order, Bo mused, “Maybe I should change my line of work. Do something respectable.”

“And give up your fancy new car?” Sylvia said as she took off her gloves and pocketed them.

He smiled. “Good point.”

“What did you name it, by the way?”

“I never could decide,” he lied. He didn’t want to give her the wrong idea—or even the right one, which was that he’d decided to christen it “Sylvia” as a quiet act of petty and irrational retaliation after he’d received one of Astrid’s college letters that mentioned that damned professor of hers.

“You should give it a nice Chinese name,” Sylvia said. “What about your mother’s name?”

“A car is too sexy to be named after a mother.”

She huffed and crossed her legs, adjusting the fall of her dress over one knee. “As if mothers can’t be sexy.”

“Not your own mother.”

Sylvia squinted over his shoulder. “Don’t look now, but I think I’ve spotted the person holding your doggy leash.”

Bo slowly, slowly turned his head in the direction Sylvia was looking, and damned if she wasn’t right. In the middle of the dance floor, Astrid twisted her curvy hips in a beaded aqua blue dress. Her mouth was open, laughing, while she stomped it up with one of Gris-Gris’s regular patrons, Leroy Garvey.

Jealousy, hot and liquid, shot through Bo’s chest.

He forced himself to watch her. Penance for dreaming an impossible dream. A voice inside argued: You could be the one out there, swinging her over the dance floor. Dancing with her. Whispering in her ear. Anticipating getting her alone in some dark corner of the club, where people would look the other way.

Could he be satisfied with that? Stolen moments in dark corners, seeing her when he could, between her long trips to Los Angeles and his short trips up the coast to Canada, running booze . . . until she found someone permanent, forcing Bo to step back and accept it? To let her go and watch her spend her life in another man’s arms?

He watched her trade partners. Another handsome man, happy to hold on to her, and he, sitting here moping beneath a cloud of nebulous anger and hurt.

The band finally ended their set. As the crowd on the main floor dispersed, Bo tracked Astrid’s sparkling dress to a table across the main aisle, where she sat down with her back to him. Alone. Waiting for her friends, he supposed. Or was she? Was that just a fabricated excuse to shake off any protests that she’d be out alone, acting like a spoiled flapper, drinking and dancing with anyone in sight? What the devil was going on here, anyway?

“Oh my,” Sylvia said, clucking her tongue and shaking her head. “My-oh-my-oh-my.”

Bo’s gaze flicked to his companion’s face.

She gave him a pitiful smile. “What I wouldn’t have given for you to look at me like that.”

He relaxed against his seat and tapped his fingertips against the linen-covered table. Casual, cool. Slow breaths. He didn’t dare look in Astrid’s direction again. In fact, he banished her from his head completely, proud that he actually could.

“But if I’m being honest,” Sylvia continued, “I do think I prefer you better as friend. You are less intense.”

“You were the one who told me I was coming by too often.”

“I got tired of you looking at the clock and hearing you talk about her.” Sylvia lifted her chin in Astrid’s direction.

“You didn’t want a commitment,” he argued.

She lowered her eyes. “No woman wants to settle for second prize, Yeung Bo-Sing.”

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, and meant it. “I wish things had turned out different between us. We’ve never talked about it, but that last night, with—”

“I agreed to it. We were drunk.”

“My good sense failed me.”

She shrugged with one shoulder. “Amy was always more adventurous.”

“It changed things between us, and I can’t even look at your sister anymore without feeling guilty.”

She dismissed his words with a coy smile. “No need for regret. Amy has long forgotten it.”

It may have been two years ago, but her sister still flirted with him shamelessly and occasionally tried to talk him into coming over when Sylvia wasn’t around. Which would be a temptation to even the most pious of priests. But he couldn’t. Sylvia would be hurt, for one, and he valued her friendship too much. More than that, just thinking about it made him feel like he was cheating on Astrid . . . a woman he’d never even kissed.

He was pathetic. Truly.

“Besides,” she said. “I’ve forgotten it already, too.”

“Ugh.” He clutched his chest and grinned. “My male pride.”

Sylvia swatted his hand playfully. “What about my female pride? You drag me out here tonight for what—to make your little biscuit jealous?”