Claire tried not to fidget in her seat. She gave her skirt a surreptitious check. Good. The hem wasn’t riding up to mid-thighs; her skirts were cursed to do so every time.
She tried to tamp down the unfortunate blush that was crawling its way from somewhere around her thumping heart up her throat. One quick, covert glance at the silent, unmoving figure before her and the itching in her throat increased.
One. Two. Three. No unusual shortness or overtly rapid inhale or exhale please. Just nice, evenly spaced breaths. Good. She should be normal in a minute.
She forced her eyes to stay lowered, the temptation to look up straight to those pair of searing, searching eyes were inexorable. But she feared he had Superman’s x-ray vision and Professor X’s mind-reading skills too, on top of everything else.
One fugitive, clearing noise escaped from her parched throat. Primly, she shifted on her seat, as quietly and as unobtrusively as possible. With a slightly shaking hand, she smoothed down her skirt.
Her eyes caught the hands of the clock mounted about a couple of an inch above the door to the Secretary’s room. Five minutes! She’s been there just five minutes yet it felt like a lifetime.
Her eyes went back to the smooth, glistening marble floor, searching for imagined cracks and fissures. They stopped short of the tips of the shiny regulation black shoes of Capt. Padua, the close-in security and aide of the Secretary and the hands-down heartthrob of the entire intelligence community.
He was the ‘immortal beloved’ of her life, as well.
Why, oh why, won’t he stand up and go away? Leave her in peace? A few minutes more and she feared her little, romantic secret will be a secret no more.
She sighed. Might as well declare her undying love for this soldier if she didn’t stop acting like a fool.
Capt. Padua froze at the sound of that heartfelt sigh. Fearfully, he can almost hear the rush of minute rivulets of moisture erupt from the thousand and one pores on the surface of his skin. His guts tightened to an unbearable bind.
The door to the Secretary’s room opened.
Surprised by the sudden noise in the silent room, Clare looked up, inadvertently straight into Capt. Jake’s eyes. She heard the rushing of feathers and the sweep of a hot breeze. All other sound faded. She heard the slide of iron bars and the click of a lock.
Jake saw the flash of lightning and heard the boom of thunder. He sat rooted to his seat, mid-breath. His eyes widened, his nostrils flared.
He heard the turn of a key, the click of an unbolting lock and the slide of iron bars from center to side.
For the first time in this seemingly hopeless fascination, he heard someone strike a match to the flickering candle of his timorous passion.
Write a mini-story (100 to 250 words) on the prompt: “They had nothing to say to each other.”
