style="font-size:15px;"> “Brat!”
“What would you call it?” he threw back at her.
She considered him for a moment and then dropped her eyes as she chewed her bottom lip. “I’m sorry, it was bratty.”
“Good. I’m glad we agree. I will treat you with respect, I expect the same in return.”
She nodded. “While I was unpacking, I was appreciating how much work you did over the weekend to prepare for me, thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I can’t take credit for your rooms, though, I hired a cleaning service to come in and do that.”
“Oh, I thought you said… well everything was very clean and I was very grateful to find it that way, especially given the time factor. Thank you for thinking to hire them.”
He grinned, “I pay them to come and do my rooms, do you think I would turn around and clean yours? I’m not that altruistic. All I can take credit for doing in your rooms is what I said I did, which was put out the clean linens for you. I can give you the cleaners’ contact information if you’d like to arrange for them to continue to clean for you. I could never talk John into hiring them, but I know they could use the money; they have a bunch of kids.”
“Yes, I would like to hire them. I confess I am also unaccustomed to cleaning my own rooms.”
“Good. Now that we have had a bit of civil conversation, I’d like to return to the issue of breakfast.” He held up his hand to forestall her. “I’m doing my best here not to spew orders, but you can’t expect to teach four straight hours without any fuel in your body. The timing is too tight to grab a bite between classes, you are going to be ready to faint by the time noon rolls around and your last class ends.”
He watched as she struggled with his statement. A couple of times it looked like she might be able to offer a response, but she shook her head and kept working at it. Finally, all she could do was whine, “But I never eat breakfast.”
“So you agree that it is a good idea; but you just don’t want to break your streak of not eating breakfast? That’s not bratty, but it is pretty childish.”
She sighed. “I’m not a morning person. It’s going to be a miracle for me to be on time for that first class as it is. Trying to add in eating breakfast is just going to make it impossible.”
“Great. Just how much are you not a morning person? What time do you normally get up?” She blushed and looked away. “Come on, I need to know what I’m dealing with here.”
“I’m a night owl.”
“All right, if you won’t tell me what time you get up, what time do you go to bed?” She turned her head and mumbled towards the floor. “Come on, give me an answer I can hear, please!”
She turned back to look at him, defiance in her eyes. “I’m usually in bed by three.”
“Three o’clock in the morning!”
Her head started dropping again, “ish.”
“ ‘ish’! What does that mean?”
She was almost back to addressing the floor. “Well, almost always by four.”
“Almost always! Four! Shit!” He scrubbed his face. “I feel like my father.”
She tilted her head, “You’re not that much older than me.”
“Can it, little girl,” he growled. “I’m six years older, but that’s not what I meant. I’m going to have to watch over you, aren’t I?” he demanded. “I’m going to have to make sure you go to bed at a reasonable hour and get up in a timely manner and have breakfast before you go to work. Shit! I thought it was going to be bad enough pulling those grades out of you, I never thought I was going to have to worry about your daily performance!”
Her spine stiffened and she glared at him. “My daily performance will be fine. I’m a great lecturer. All my students love coming to my classes.”
“You can’t be late and you can’t cancel classes. It’s another of Boxford’s rules, and frankly, I agree with him on that one. These kids are paying a small fortune in tuition to come here, or their parents are, and we owe it to them to give them full value for their dollar. You just told me that it is going to take a miracle to be on time for your first class. How do you expect to go to bed at four, get up, be dressed for business, eat breakfast and be intelligent in the classroom four hours later? And, and! Keep going for four straight hours! I expect a high level of performance from you, no sleepwalking through classes.” He threw himself back against the sofa, “Shit!”
She leaned back against the sofa too. “I’m sorry!” she wailed. “It’s not my fault! I never asked for this job. I don’t want this job! I’m a victim too.”
“Yeah, well Miss Victim, I like my job and I don’t want to lose it, so I am going to have to watch you like a hawk. How much time does it take you to get dressed in the morning? Not jeans, full business attire.”
“Do I have to wear my hair up?”
He looked startled. “Why do I care how you do your hair? How long?”
“Well, as long as you don’t care about my hair, I’d say forty-five minutes should do it. That’s make-up and everything.”
“Okay.” He blew out a breath, “Your hair is going to be presentable, right? I mean I do care that it looks decent, just not what style it is.”
She was tapping her front tooth as she thought. “You know, putting it up might be faster. I don’t have to blow it dry, I can just let it dry on its own.”
“No! You have to dry your hair. God sakes, woman! Do you know how cold it gets here? You’ll catch pneumonia and I’ll get fired for sure.”
“But I don’t have to go outside, just walk downstairs.”
“It doesn’t matter, dry hair,” he said firmly. “Okay, forty-five minutes to get dressed and take those extra fifteen minutes to get downstairs and prepare, so we’re at an hour already. Let’s say half an hour for breakfast, hmm.” He turned to her, “How many times am I going to have to wake you up before you actually get out of bed?”
“Huh?”
“Come on,” he said impatiently. “You know how these things go. I’ll knock on your door and tell you to get up. You’ll say okay and roll over and go back to sleep. By the time I realize that you aren’t getting ready for work, it’ll be too late to make up for lost time and then we’re screwed. So let’s just acknowledge that it’s going to happen and plan for it. What’s it going to take to get you out of bed every morning?”
“I don’t know!”
“All right,” he said evenly, “I’m going to plan on half an hour to wake you up. We can adjust as experience tells me what to expect. So you need to be up by six. How much sleep do you need each night?”
“What! Is this the Inquisition?”
“All
