"Trixie, you can't just go and keep intentionally putting yourself in danger!" Jim told his friend in exasperation, his green eyes flashing with anger.

Trixie glared at him. "I don't intentionally put myself in danger! It just happens!"

Jim snorted and rolled his eyes. "So you say. Yet you keep investigating mysteries. How is that not intentionally putting yourself in danger?"

Trixie's blue eyes narrowed into slits, and her voice was clipped as she replied, "I investigate mysteries, yes. But I do not purposely walk into dangerous situations. If I could, I would avoid them altogether, but I can't. Not when I'm a detective."

Jim's shoulders slumped. "Why do you have to be a detective?"

Trixie looked coldly at him before realizing it was more of a rhetorical question than a serious one. She answered it anyway. "It's who I am, Jim." She started to stride out of the stables when she paused for a moment. "Why do you care so much, anyway?"

Jim blinked and looked at her in befuddlement. "I'm your friend. Of course I care."

"Yeah, but all the other Bob-Whites are my friends, and none of them worry about me like you do. Not even Brian, although he does come close." Trixie furrowed her brows and said jokingly, "It's not like you have some latent romantic feelings for me or anything, so what gives?"

Jim opened his mouth to respond, and then he quickly shut it again. He turned so she couldn't see his face go red.

Trixie played back in her head what she had said and then slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from letting out an audible groan.

I did not just say that. I did not.

For though it was difficult for Trixie to believe that Jim might be interested in her, she wasn't dumb. She knew that the bracelet he had given her three years ago wasn't simply a token of their friendship, although it was that, too. No, she knew it was a symbol of something deeper. And she also knew that Honey and Di both believed that Jim had feelings for her, and she was reluctant to dismiss her friends' instincts simply because the idea was too ridiculous for her to believe.

So it maybe hadn't been the best thing to throw at him.

Trixie started to say something to end the awkward silence that had followed her remark, but she couldn't figure out what to say. She was just about to turn around and simply walk away when Jim turned back and looked at her.

He swallowed. "Trixie, I . . . I can't . . . "

Trixie could see the redness in his face, and judging from how hot her own cheeks were, her face on was fire as well. She looked at him nervously while he tried to figure out what he wanted to say.

Just when it seemed he was going to continue, an exuberant presence waltzed through the stable doors.

"Greetings, my fellow acquaintance and younger errant female relation," Mart said to them. "What goes on up here?"

Jim just groaned while Trixie buried her face in her hands.

Author's Notes

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters.

This short scene was inspired by the prompt "silence" by Maeve of Winter at Jix. My first thought was an awkward silence, and this is what came of it :)

Thanks for reading!

528 words