Grave Phantoms (23 page)

And then there were always the deepest worries. The ones about class and race, and how he could not legally marry her. That if she got pregnant, their children would be under similar restraints. Where would they go to school? Would he take them to Dr. Moon if they got sick? Would they get treated with the same indignities that he'd faced? Or would it be worse for them, because they wouldn't be accepted in either community?

He didn't know the answers, and his heart grieved under the burden.

As the sun continued to climb a sky free of rain clouds, Bo urged Astrid to eat and began to think of less weighty problems in their immediate future, like the fact that the Magnusson household would already be awake and soon someone would notice that they weren't home. He'd have to telephone the house and concoct a story. Pray that Greta or Aida answered the telephone, and not Winter. Sneak Astrid into the house.

Whatever he had to do, it had been worth it. All those years of wanting disappeared when he looked at the sun shining on the softly curving planes of her face and saw the joy he felt in his heart reflected in her eyes. It had been worth it all.

“This can't be impossible, Bo,” she said as she swirled tea leaves at the bottom of her cup, peering inside as if she could read their future. “We have to make a plan. I can't go back to a life without us.”

Three nights after they left the lighthouse, on Christmas Eve, Bo stood in the living room of the Magnusson house, surrounded by twinkling candles, the biggest Christmas tree in Pacific Heights (surely), and twenty or so people—most of whom were Swedish and on the verge of being drunk on tulip-shaped glasses of akvavit spirits and mugs of cardamom-scented mulled glögg. And amidst the merry shouts of
God Jul!
and the lingering smells of the holiday smorgasbord—overloaded with ham, sausage, herring, potatoes, and the precious few Dungeness crabs Winter and Bo were able to catch that morning—Bo was experiencing a wealth of conflicting emotions.

Though few in Chinatown actually celebrated Christmas, he'd spent the last third of his life developing a taste for yuletide presents and singing “Jingle Bells” around a piano. And he was experiencing that familiar buzz of happiness now, watching Lowe and Hadley's adopted five-year-old, deaf daughter, Stella Goldberg, grinning as she ran from Aida's one-eyed mastiff, who was attempting to confiscate the almond cookie the girl carried in her hand.

But in the back of his mind, he was also worried that he could lose all this if his relationship with Astrid caused a family schism, and wondered wistfully if this was the last time he'd sit in this room watching Greta loosen her staunch Lutheran morals and get tipsy while Winter played horsey with his infant daughter on his knee.

And somewhere between the joy and worry was Astrid, who wore a dazzling sleeveless red gown that bared half her back, and was now working in tandem with Lowe to help the mastiff chase the merry, pink-cheeked Stella. How could two people live in the same house and never see each other? He hadn't been able to skim more than a couple of passing kisses from Astrid since the lighthouse—what with the combined roadblocks of work and hovering family members who always seemed to show up at the wrong times. He'd come
this
close to stealing into her bedroom last night when he'd gotten home after midnight, but Aida had been up, and she'd stayed in the kitchen with Winter talking seriously until Bo gave in to sleep, waiting for them to go to bed.

It didn't help that every time he looked at Astrid she was staring back at him with those fox eyes that left him grinning like an idiot and forgetting to keep his feelings masked. Watching her now made him want to drag her into his arms and feel her smile against his neck . . . and then haul her off somewhere private, find a pair of scissors, and split that red gown of hers right down the back.

He was in agony.

After little Stella finally tired, he made his way back over to the fireplace and stoked the logs, inhaling the fresh cedar and eucalyptus branches that decorated the mantel. Behind him, Jonte was coaxing Lena to take off her apron and dance; Christmas was the one time of the year that Greta allowed the staff to celebrate with the rest of the house.

“Meant to tell you earlier, Sylvia's fender looks shiny and new.”

He glanced up to find Astrid smiling down at him,
flames from the fire dancing across her face. “They did a good job. I would thank you for having it repaired, only you're the one who hurt her to begin with,” he said, standing to brush off his pants and replace the fireplace stoker.

“You make it sound like I socked your best friend in the face.”

“Didn't you?”

She tried to stifle a laugh and pinch his arm, but he grabbed her hand before she managed it. “I'll throw you in this fire,” he teased. “Burn you right up. We'll toast marshmallows over your hair.”

This time she laughed, loud and vibrant, but quickly covered her mouth.

“Tsk, tsk. You've had too much glögg, Miss Magnusson.”

“I've had no glögg whatsoever, Mr. Yeung. I'm the picture of tolerance tonight.”

He peered into her eyes—an excuse to lean closer to her face, really. “Why, you're telling the truth. I think you and I might be the only sober people in the house. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if someone slipped akvavit into baby Karin's cup.”

“Pfft. Winter hasn't let go of her the entire night.”

He nodded slowly. “I asked him if he was going to start breast-feeding her, too, and came
this
close to being flayed like a fish.”

“Aida says he's getting sentimental,” Astrid said. “Maybe he'd only paralyze you.”

“As long as it's from the waist up.”

“Now
that
I'd drink to.”

He smiled down at her and rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. “I'm worried I might accidently paralyze myself from all the self-abusing I've been doing the last couple of days.”

Her cheeks flushed. She furtively glanced over her shoulder and murmured, “Now that's a picture.”

“I'll give you a theater-worthy performance if I can just find a way to be alone with you for five minutes.”

“Is that all it would take?”

“Honestly, I wish I could say otherwise, but yes. Maybe even two.”

Mischievous eyes slanted sideways toward his. “We could race.”

He sucked in a quick breath and was thankful his suit jacket was buttoned over the front of his pants. “Christ, I need you,” he whispered.

“I need you, too,” she whispered back.

Upon realizing he was still holding on to her hand, he reluctantly let go and checked to see if anyone was watching them. Not a soul. People were too sozzled to notice, anyway, so he slipped a couple of fingers between Astrid's wrist and the bracelet-like band of her watch and tugged her arm closer. He was just about to suggest they accidently bump into each other somewhere in the house where there were fewer people when Winter stepped in front of the Christmas tree and got everyone's attention.

Bo heaved a dramatic sigh and released Astrid's wrist.

“I wanted to take a moment to thank Lena and Julia for working so hard on the
julbord
,” Winter said in a booming voice. “It might be the best meal we've had all year, and it certainly was the most bountiful.”

Cheers and applause roared through the living room. When it died down, Jonte spoke up from the piano. “And that goes for the holiday bonus, too.
Tack så mycket!
”

More applause, and Bo clapped along with them. He was shocked when he'd opened up the red envelope from Winter. It was too much—more than he earned in two months' time, and that made him feel grateful and guilty at the same time.
If he only knew
, a negative voice in his head chastised. He pushed it away.

“It was a good year,” Winter said. “Pappa always said, ‘Shared joy is a double joy.' We are all part of this household, and we all share in its successes. And that's why I wanted all of you to know that, God willing, we'll become one member bigger next year. Little Karin's going to have a baby brother or sister.”

A cascade of surprised noises, cheers, and whistles
went around the room, and while Astrid hugged Aida, Bo shook Winter's hand and slapped him on the shoulder. “Good job. Keep it up, and you two will have those five empty bedrooms filled in no time.”

“Smart aleck,” Winter murmured, but anyone could see he was pleased. And when Bo moved to congratulate Aida, her freckled arms swept him up in a hug as she whispered, “Thanks for keeping my secret. Road goes both ways.”

Flustered, he pulled back to see her face, and she smiled at him surreptitiously before the rest of the clan descended upon the fertile couple. As Bo sidled out of the crowd, Astrid caught his arm and said in his ear, “Meet me at the top of the turret in five minutes. I want to give you my Christmas present.”

—

Bo sneaked out of the merry crowd and climbed the back stairs to the upper story. No lights shone. Two of the low-ceilinged rooms were bare and closed off. He passed a powder room with a severely slanted ceiling and pushed open the door to the turret.

“It's only me,” he said softly, in case she hadn't heard him come upstairs. “I thought we agreed we weren't giving each other presents this year, so—”

He stopped in the doorway and stared at the windows banding the rounded wall. She was waiting for him, perched upon the window seat of their hiding spot, wearing nothing but stockings and garters. Above her head, a stem of mistletoe hung from a ribbon.

“Merry Christmas,” she said.

“
Buddha-Osiris-Jehovah
,” he mumbled. He shut the door and leaned back against it for a moment to take it all in. The inky sky dotted by starlight. City lights like powdered sugar sifted over rows of streets that ended at the foggy Bay. The soft panes of moonlight spilling over her shoulders and lining the tops of her breasts. The red dress strewn on the floor by her feet. He took a mental photograph
and filed it away under
Things I'll Never Forget as Long as I Live
.

He exhaled a calming breath, adjusted the angle of the growing bulge in the front of his trousers, and tried to sound causal. “Did I ever tell you the story of the fox spirit that climbed over the rooftops at night to sneak inside a young scholar's bedroom window?”

“No,” she said, a slow smile spreading over her face. “Tell me.”

He fumbled around in the dark and found a chair to wedge under the door handle. “She came to his room every night for a month and aroused him to three orgasms.”

“Every night?”

“She was a remarkable fox.”

“I'll say. He must have been a little remarkable himself.”

“He wasn't one to brag, but he was bigger than the average scholar and had spent many years studying books about pleasuring women.” He began stripping off his suit jacket and necktie. “He gave her two orgasms for each one of his.”

“I'll bet she was happily surprised about that,” she murmured with a smile. Her hands glided over the tops of her thighs and rolled her stockings a little lower. “What kind of books taught him these tricks?”

“You'd be surprised what you can find in the back room of your average bookstore in Imperial China. The scholar had a boss who collected . . . interesting drawings that he thought no one knew about”—Astrid snorted a soft laugh—“so the scholar got an early education in rare books when he went into town to pick up the boss's special-order packages.” Bo unbuttoned his shirt. How much time did they safely have? Half an hour?

“He probably should have taken the fox spirit with him on these trips,” she said. “They might have realized earlier how much time they could have spent on orgasms all those years.”

“The fox spirit was much too young.”

“I seriously doubt that,” she said as one hand lazily skimmed over her breast. Down, and then up. “Why did the fox spirit only come to his window for one month?”

“Because the scholar's father was superstitious of supernatural creatures. He caught her sneaking in one night and was afraid she was siphoning his son's vitality, so he nailed the window shut.”

“The bastard.” Her knees slowly opened. The hand that was on her breast dipped down between her legs, shielding his view. Teasing his imagination as it made slow movements. “I hope that didn't stop them.”

“Not a chance. They had already fallen in love. So the scholar climbed up the chimney and met the fox on the roof,” he said, stopping in front of her. “Spread your legs a little wider and let me see what you're doing,” he murmured, enjoying the thrill that careened through his chest when she complied without hesitation—and the way that thrill echoed in the tightening of his balls and the jumping of his cock.

“What happened on the roof?” Astrid asked in a breathy voice as her fingers tentatively dipped lower. She slipped a finger inside herself and he nearly lost his mind.

“He was covered in soot, so she didn't recognize him at first, but he knew a way to prove his identity to her.” He stopped in front of her and unbuttoned his fly. His cock sprang free. “And she instantly knew it was him.”

“Oh,” Astrid said, shyness and daring warring on her face. The daring won out. She leaned forward and ran her tongue up the ridge of his cock, root to tip, forcing a contented sigh out of him before she drew back again. “Quite right,” Astrid murmured. “I'd recognize that anywhere.”

He cupped the crown of her head and urged her forward. “Again,” he murmured. “And this time, take it inside your mouth. And keep your hand between your legs.”

Gripping the open fly of his pants as an anchor, she set to the task without hesitation. He watched her gazing up at him, her indrawn cheeks, and then closed his eyes as his head lolled back in bliss. He could only stand it for a
moment, and then it was too much. “Any more and this will be over in thirty seconds,” he said. “Lean back against the window.”

Her eyelids were heavy with lust. “What happened to the scholar and the fox?”

“It wasn't easy for them, because not only did they have to worry about his father catching them, the entire town was superstitious and would watch the rooftops, ready to shoot any fox spirits with arrows. So every night she came to him, she risked her life.”