Page 20 of Learning Little Lizzie

“Sleep tight, my sweet little Eliza. I’ll be back in thirty minutes for your phone.”

She’d expected to fight him for more phone time. But ten minutes into one of her favorite games, the exhaustion of the day finally got to her, and the phone fell from her limp fingers as sleep dragged her under.

CHAPTER 8

Her first morning with a Daddy went surprisingly well—for all of an hour. She’d woken refreshed and vowed not to admit to him how much better she felt after a full night’s sleep than she usually did after staying up well past lights out with Kylie. But because she was feeling rather chipper and her heart still raced a little whenever she thought about how solemn he’d looked as he’d vowed never to give up on her, she chose the outfit with the pink skirt and the pretty patterned tights he’d liked so much the day before.

A choice she decided was well worth it when she watched his eyes light up with interest the second she stepped into the kitchen.

“You look… lovely,” he said after a long stretch of silence.

“Thanks.” Her stomach fluttered, not unpleasantly at the gleam in his eye. “Um, I guess I won’t see you until after school since I don’t have math today. Bye!” Spinning around, she took a step toward the foyer where he’d made her stash her shoes and bookbag the night before.

“Wait.” When she turned back around, she nearly sighed at the stern look he was sending her way. “Sit. You and I need to have a talk.”

“But I was hoping I could leave a little early and have breakfast with Kylie.” Ever since they’d started at the University, they’d made it a point to have breakfast together. Their schedules were often too different to manage lunch or dinner, but they always carved out time for breakfast.

“Then you should have asked me last night if you could do so. Sit, Eliza.”

“This isn’t fair!” Yanking a chair out from the kitchen table, she dropped into it, well aware that she was acting exactly like the bratty Little she swore she wasn’t. “Kylie and I always have breakfast together!”

“Good. That’s the kind of thing I need to know.” Apparently oblivious to her tantrum, Samuel joined her at the table, a cup of coffee in one hand, a legal pad and pen in the other. “Do you have any other daily habits we need to build into your schedule?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right. What time do you and Kylie usually head down for breakfast?”

“Whenever she gets me out the door, usually.”

“Eliza, if you aren’t going to at least try to work with me, I’ll write your schedule out by myself and you can live with what I give you.”

Well, that sounded positively dreadful. “Eight. We try to get out the door by eight, it’s usually closer to eight-fifteen, though.”

“Then you’ll be out the door by eight every morning. I’ll add that to your Good Girl chart. What about lunch and dinner?”

“Um, lunch is usually after my ten a.m. class every day. So like, eleven thirty-ish?”

“And it looks like Monday, Wednesday, Friday you have a pretty tight schedule with three classes but Tuesday and Thursday your afternoons are free. Is that correct?”

“Yeah.”

“Tuesday and Thursday, I want you to go directly to the library after lunch. You’ll wait there for me until I come and retrieve you. My last class of the day doesn’t end until six on those days, so you’ll have plenty of time to work on homework or study.”

“You expect me to spend five hours on homework twice a week?”

“I’m sure as the semester progresses, you’ll have more than enough to fill your time. But if you finish early, you’ll be surrounded by books to keep you occupied until I can come get you. And don’t forget you still have the summer workbook to complete for my class, though we can work on that together in the evenings if you’d prefer. I will be checking it either way, so you let me know what works best for you.”

“I guess I’ll do the stupid workbook.” If she got stuck, Kylie would help her. Kylie was a freaking math genius. Which meant she had even less of an excuse not to have done her workbook over the summer when she had more time with Kylie than usual.

Just one more way she managed to fuck everything up.

“Thank you. Hand me your phone, please.”

“Why?”

“Because I asked you to, Eliza. Phone, please. Now.”

“Oh my god could you be any more of a?—”

---