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She’d blushed to the tips of her hair, but reminded him, “I told you I was licking my lips.”

When she’d accused him of being bossy, he’d grinned and told her to get used to it.

Those first two days, he would check her temperature every hour, lift her from the bed, and carry her to the bathroom. She had thought that was embarrassing until he’d kept walking through the door and over to the toilet.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

“I’m helping you go to the potty.” She wondered why a nice avalanche couldn’t bury her when she needed it.

Yesterday morning, she’d put her foot down. At least, she’d tried. “I do not need you to help me go to the potty anymore. I’m all better, and I’ve been doing it on my own since I was a year and a half old.”

“A year and a half? You’ve been an over achiever since birth, haven’t you, gypsy?”

She’d shrugged and attempted to shove him out of the water closet.

He’d allowed it, thank goodness. “I’ll be right outside the door. Call out if you need me. That’s if you get dizzy or feel sick. I don’t want you falling and injuring yourself.” He winked at her as she started closing the door. “Or if you just want help wiping your bottom.”

She’d slammed the door on his laugh at her horrified gasp. He was such a Daddy.

Today, she woke up alone for the first time. He’d stayed by her side for seven days, but today he’d left a note about riding out to check on the bison in the north pasture and ride the fences.

Even though she’d been encouraging him to get back to his life , she missed him. But his brothers and the ranch hands had been working hard to do everything Chance usually did. And that was a lot.

Then it occurred to her it would probably take all morning. He shouldn’t be back until later in the afternoon. That would give her plenty of time to take a shower and still be able to rest. He would never know.

To be on the safe side, she waited five entire minutes before climbing out of bed. Tingles ran along the bottoms of her feet when she settled all her weight on them for the first time in a week. A wave of dizziness almost sent her to her knees. She tried to grab the bedside but hit the lamp instead, sending it crashing to the ground.

The door flung open. Chance rushed in, coming straight to her. He lifted her and set her on the edge of the bed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, babygirl? Did you cut yourself?” He checked her hands and arms before carrying her to the sitting area and standing beside the couch. “You are in big trouble, little girl. Don’t you move an inch. There’s broken glass on the floor. I don’t want you to get any glass splinters in your feet.”

As soon as he had her settled, he picked the larger pieces of the broken lamp from the floor before calling Ruby, the family's housekeeper, and told her to send someone up to clean the rest of the mess.

Things became uncomfortable after that. Chance crossed his arms over his chest and glared down at her. “Would you like to tell me what you were doing out of bed? I'm very disappointed in you.”

Well, now she felt horrible. On top of recovering from the flare-up, now she felt guilty.

You should feel guilty. You deliberately disobeyed him the minute his back was turned.

Worrying her fingers, she said, “I'm sorry I broke your lamp.”

“You think I’m worried about the lamp? You could have seriously hurt yourself, little one. That’s what worries me. I have to be able to trust you to behave when I’m not in the room.”

Her stomach tumbled. “I know. You can. But Daddy, I have to get out of this bed. Seven days is too long. I feel fine. I didn't run a fever all day yesterday. All I wanted was to take a shower.”

By the flash of anger in his eyes, she wasn’t making her situation any better. “That’s fine, gypsy, but you’re still weak. Youneed my help to take a shower. What if you had slipped and hurt yourself? No one would have come in to check on you until lunch. They shouldn’t have had to. You were supposed to be in bed. If Doc Bradford hadn’t called to say he was on the way out to check on you, I might not have made it back until this afternoon.”

She got that she’d messed up. He didn’t have to make her feel worse than she already did. Now she wished she hadn’t broken the lamp, so she could throw it at him. At the very least, she wished the bed wasn’t so high so she could stomp her foot.

“I can take a shower all by myself!”

“There is no ‘all by myself,’ damn it. That’s not how things are gonna work.” Chance’s anger practically radiated from him in waves. She thought she’d seen him angry before, but she’d been wrong. Very wrong.

It sent a frisson of fear up her spine. Not a fear of her Daddy. Never that. But a fear of what her life would be like without him. She shouldn’t say anything.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t the best at following advice, even when it was her own. “Even for a Daddy, you’re a bit of a control freak. Has anyone ever told you that?” When his jaw clenched, she quickly kept going. “I appreciate all your concern. I’ve never had anyone care about me like you do. You control everyone and everything because you’re a Daddy, and that’s what Daddies do. But I have to do things by myself. I came here by myself, and I’ll leave by myself. And since I’ll be by myself for the rest of my life, I have to get used to doing things by myself. So, for me, there is a ‘by myself’ whether you like it or not.”

Okay, that came out a lot harsher when she said it than it had sounded in her head. He was trying to take care of her. She loved it, but it was going to make leaving too hard. And she had to leave because eventually she would only bring more trouble to the ranch and all the people he cared about. Then he wouldn’t want heranywhere near him. She wasn’t sure she could survive that, so she had to leave. And soon.

He lowered his chin like a bull getting ready to charge. “That is not how you talk to your Daddy, naughty girl.”