“Stop doing that,” he said. “I am eighteen years of age, so quit whacking me like a scullion. And it’s my recipe even if it is your kitchen, so I’ll tell you when you’re allowed to taste it.”

I felt my brows fly up in surprise, and I almost told him he was an insolent lug, as I had last week when he dared add beaten mint to my dish of salted tuna belly. But his voice now was firm rather than belligerent, and his eyes were steady as they looked down at me. My apprentice was eighteen years old, and perhaps we’d been arguing too loudly for me to notice that the unsteady wobbles of his young voice had settled into a confident tenor, and his milk-pale shoulders were as broad as Marco’s. Just last week I’d watched him step between two of his fellow apprentices as they started a shoving match, haul them out in the yard, crack their heads together until they yowled, and then deliver a stern tongue-lashing that could have come straight from me. They’d listened, too, muttering and rubbing their sore heads, and it didn’t seem to occur to them that he didn’t have any real authority over them. My erstwhile pot-boy had grown up, it seemed, and I wondered if I should think about raising him from apprentice to undercook.

“Pass me the pepper,” said Bartolomeo, releasing my wrist. “If you please, signorina. And a block of the good Parmesan, and a grater.”

“Yes, maestro,” I said with just a bit of a sniff so he’d see the concession I was making, and I fetched both. Bartolomeo tossed the crisp golden disks with pepper and just a little fine-grated cheese, and popped one into his mouth. He chewed. I waited. “Well?”

“Needs more salt,” he decided. Another sprinkle, another taste, as I shifted from foot to foot. My mouth was watering again, and Bartolomeo’s cheeks creased in a smile as he proffered a fried golden coin of tuber. “Here.”

Taste exploded in my mouth—the crunch of salt flakes and faint burn of fresh pepper, the crisp fried skin on the outside giving way to something mealy, mild . . . and quite wonderful.

“Hmph,” I said, swallowing the last heavenly crumb. “I’d add a dash of rosemary.”

“At least you didn’t say cinnamon,” Bartolomeo said, and then he kissed me. Not a boy’s clumsy peck but a young man’s kiss, too hard, too hungry, too eager, but I was too astounded to pull away as he cupped one big hand around the back of my neck and pulled me up against him.