She was getting at least three calls a day from one member of the family or another, and before the call was over, the topic of David Spotted Horse would somehow have worked its way into the conversation. How was he doing, had they gone anywhere together, did she think they might come over to Claremore for dinner some time in the next couple of days. … Even from her brothers; they were going fishing, would she and David like to join them—they were going to a powwow, would she and David like to come along.

Mother’s bad enough, but Dad is worse. Her father thought he was being subtle; he was about as subtle as a billboard.

I don’t know why he doesn’t just rent a billboard. She could just see it now, out on I-44. Forty-eight feet wide, sixteen feet tall. Jennie, when are you and David going to—?

At least Mooncrow was keeping his mouth shut. He kept giving her looks, but at least he kept his mouth shut. It seemed as if everyone in the Talldeer family was trying to throw Jennie into David’s bed—or vice versa—and no one was going to take “no” for an answer.

She expected that kind of thing out of David; after all, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been hinting. But her own family?

I thought they were supposed to want me to preserve my so-called honor! Not go jumping into some guy’s bed!

Well, she wasn’t having any. She could be just as stubborn as any of them, and she was not, by god, going to get herded into this as if she were the prize mare and David the champion stud!

I suppose by now Dad has waylaid David at least once, telling him how nice it would be if we got back together again, she thought forlornly. That’s probably why he’s been looking like a hopeful puppy these past few days.

The worst part of it was, if she’d wanted him before, now she really had it bad for him. This business with finding his spiritual direction was not just for show; he’d made an enormous amount of progress, and it made him all the more attractive to her. He’d been treating her the way she suspected he normally treated other women; as competent equals. He, at least, had managed to unload all that old baggage and start fresh, even if she had not.

She’d forgotten, deliberately, all the things about his personality that had attracted her to him in the first place. Now all those things were coming back with a vengeance, and if he was frustrated as hell, sleeping all alone just down the hall from her, she was twice as frustrated.