Page 30 of A Dangerous Bargain

“I’m looking for fever. Something must be wrong if you’re trying to do me a favor.”

“That’s not fair! There was the time you went off with the handsome blacksmith for three days, and I told Verrocchio you were caring for an ill relative.”

He thumbs his chin pensively. “Oh yes. I forgot about that.”

“You forget every time I’m nice to you,” I grumble.

He glances at me, a sideways look through his eyelashes. “I don’t forget. You’re just so rarely pleasant, it’s hard to remember.”

I give up my fight with a frown. I can still feel the outline of each one of his cold fingers across my forehead. “This is important.”

“More important than painting Lorenzo de’ Medici’s grumpy toad face for the opportunity to paint his toad-faced children? More important than precious work?”

I groan and look at the ceiling. “Please let me be nice to you.”

He shrugs and tosses the art supplies back into the workshop. “All right, fine. I’m not the one who cares about winning.”

I wince at the crash but don’t tell him he doesn’t have to throw things.

The city is painted ocher and bronze in the morning light, the stone thawing in what promises to be one of the first warm days of the year. Leonardo takes me to a crumbling window that faces the Arno. An old woman with nut-brown skin hands slices of focaccia to a queue of workers. The entire time we wait in line, Leonardo twirls that lock of hair around his fingers, over and over again. Who does that? Isn’t he worried about losing it or getting it all greasy? Did he pay a strega to put a curse on someone he hates? The hair color is close enough to mine that I pat my head to make sure I don’t have a shorn spot.

The old woman has to yell at me twice before I realize it’s my turn to order. Blushing for no reason, I order two slices topped with stracciatella cheese and roasted onions. Then, to really sweeten the deal, I buy a flagon of watered wine from the vintner just a few doors down. By the time we settle on the steps of Ponte Santa Trinita, Leonardo’s skepticism is drawing the interest from the female Primavera statue guarding the bridge’s northeast corner. She bends closer with a stony creak, eager to eavesdrop.

“Out with it,” he demands. “You’re obviously buttering me up for a reason. Breakfast and wine? I doubt you even do this for your lovers.”

He’s twirling the curl again. “Do you have a ragazzo?” I ask suddenly.

Cristo santo, that’s not what I wanted to ask him!

His fingers freeze. “Are you asking me if I have a lover?”

My face is as hot as a kitchen fire, but it’s too late to take the question back. We’ve never talked about both of us liking boys before.

Of course, everyone knows it about him—Leonardo maintains all the mystery of an unshuttered window that always has a candle burning in it so everyone can see inside—but I’ve only ever brought a boy home once.

He followed me up the stairs to my attic, shy and eager, but all I could think of when we tangled across my bed was whether or not Leonardo had noticed when we tiptoed past his open door.

I expected Leonardo to bring it up—it’s the sort of thing he’d tease me mercilessly for—but strangely, he never did. “I’m only asking because what we’re doing is important. You shouldn’t let other people…” Kiss you. I bite the words back before I humiliate myself further.

His eyebrow lifts knowingly. “Distract me, as you’re fond of saying?”

I nod and shrug, the movement jerky, and try to focus on the Ponte Vecchio upriver. ’Tis early enough that the butcher shops crowded along it haven’t stained the water red yet. It doesn’t matter who he talks to. It certainly doesn’t sodding matter who he kisses. Why did I bring this up?

Leonardo slips the curl back into his pocket when he thinks I’m not looking. “No,” he says finally. “I don’t have anyone.”

It’s not the answer I expected, and he can tell. His long fingers flex, as if they can pluck the words he wants from the air. “Sometimes it’s easier to let someone take what they want from you than to want something for yourself. Do you understand?”

I don’t, but I’d rather die than admit it. “Sure.” I shoo away the hungry pigeons already gathering around us and wait until it feels like I can ask the question I really wanted to ask him.

“Did you know Lupa has magic of her own?”

Leonardo takes an enormous bite of his focaccia. Steam wreathes his face from the warm bread, the sweet tangy scent of yeast enveloping both of us. He thumbs away grease from the corner of his mouth and leaves a smudge of charcoal there instead. “No.”

“And you know how I’ve been struggling to get inside the palazzo?”

Leonardo’s snort scatters the pigeons lusting after our food. “Struggling? You’ve barely tried! Every time you look at the guards, your face turns the color of spoilt milk.”

He’d feel sick too if he remembered the casual menace of their grip. “Lupa offered to use her magic to get me inside. What do you think?”