Free Bookends by Liz Curtis Higgs

forward, tiny ears pinned back against her head, she looked like … like …
    Of course.
    An owl. Emilie Getz looked like an owl. A boreal owl, to be exact. No, she didn’t have a light-colored bill or a dark border around her face. But she
did
have the same puzzled expression and erect posture, with no ears worth mentioning.
    Except boreals resided in Canada, not Winston-Salem.
    “Dirt?”
    She even screeched like an owl.
    “I’m a land developer.” He watched her spine stiffen. “I buy land and turn it into something profitable.”
    “Then you, sir, represent everything I despise about the world today.” Her voice, no longer cool and brittle, burned instead with the heat of conviction. “In the pursuit of commerce, men like you have torn down landmarks, desecrated communities, and run roughshod over history and society and culture and—”
    “Emilie, wait. I—”
    There was no stopping the woman.
    Her shoulders pivoted in his direction, led by that jutting, ferocious chin of hers. “More antiquities have fallen under the blade of your coldhearted bulldozers than historians can count. Believe me, we’ve tried to stop you.” She huffed dramatically, then leaned back against her seat. “I cannot adequately express how disappointed I am to learn that you are counted among their ilk.”
    Concentrating on two important activities—staying on the road and notlaughing out loud—Jonas simply nodded. “I realize that some of my colleagues have gotten carried away—”
    “They
should
be carried away!” she fumed, glaring out the window to punctuate her disgust. “Carted off in a paddy wagon! Thrown in jail for their blatant disregard for the history they’ve carelessly tossed aside under the guise of … 
progress
.” She spat out the word like a bit of rotten fruit.
    He let the energy of her unexpected diatribe hang in the silent air, its static electricity palpable. Every short hair on his head stood at attention. Before he could stop himself, he said exactly what he was thinking: “Emilie, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
    Her head swiveled toward him. “Had what in me? That kind of anger?”
    “No. That kind of passion.”
    In seconds, she was pink again, forehead to chin, just like yesterday, only brighter. “I’m … I’m not …”
    He eased on the brake as they reached the red light at Newport Road. “You’re not what? Passionate?”
    “No!” She yanked on her gloves, refusing to meet his sideways glance. “I’m not at all sorry for what I said about developers.” Her voice was steel cold. “Your … well, your profession happens to be a sensitive subject with me, that’s all.”
    Sensitive?
Best he could figure, she was touchy about every subject in the book.
    As they passed the intersection and climbed the hill that led north out of Lititz, he studied her angular profile. Even with every corner of her face softened by that porcelain skin of hers, it was clear she’d shut down again.
Blast.
If he expected to cheer up the gloomy professor, so far he wasn’t doing too well.
    Trix took her cue and laid her head on Emilie’s shoulder, offering her own brand of encouragement as she nuzzled Emilie’s tightly knotted hair. Emilie didn’t move a muscle, Jonas noticed, until Trix made a wild foray with her wet pink tongue and practically swallowed the woman’s delicate ear.
    “Eeek!” Emilie shuddered and ducked her head to escape the canine’s zeal, swatting the air behind her. “Go … go lick
him,
will you?”
    Trix would have none of it, Jonas could see that. The retriever had plenty of opportunities to lick him any old day or night, but a hysterical woman—well,that was too good to pass up. Lunging over the seat to get at her target, Trix ignored his every command. “Sit! Now, sit, girl!” Her obedience school days seemed a distant doggy memory.
    Without a traffic light in sight, and Emilie whimpering in a huddle under the dashboard, he had no choice but to