She froze as Max, Alex, and Hale moved closer, apparently wanting to confirm it.
Crap. She was screwed. She and Xander were so busy showering separately to make sure their scents didn’t linger on one another, they never even thought about it rubbing off on each other’s clothes.
“Becker’s right,” Max said. “It smells like you and Xander have been rolling around on the floor together.”
Actually they had, but neither of them had been wearing clothes at the time.
“It does?” Hale frowned as he leaned in to sniff her uniform top. “I can’t smell anything.”
“That’s because your nose sucks, dude,” Becker said, then looked at Khaki. “What, did you and Xander do your laundry together or something?”
Doublecrap. That was exactly what they’d done. She’d spent the night at his place and tossed her clothes in the washer with his without thinking about it.
The guys were looking at her expectantly, waiting for her to answer. The problem was, she didn’t have a clue what to say.
She opened her mouth, not even sure what was going to come out, when Cooper spoke.
“You want to tell them, Khaki, or should I?”
Khaki’s heart stopped. Cooper knew. She didn’t know how, but he’d figured it out. And now, he was going to tell everyone.
“Um…”
She knew she should answer, but she wasn’t quite sure what to say. How did you just come out and admit you were sleeping with your squad leader?
She was still trying to decide if it would be best to just rip the bandage off all at once or drop the bombshell in small, bite-size pieces when Cooper decided she was taking too long.
“Khaki was practicing takedown moves with Xander this morning before you guys got here,” he said.
If she’d been at a loss about what to say before, she was absolutely speechless now. She hadn’t done anything that even looked like martial arts training with Xander this morning. Wrestling, maybe.
He met her gaze, his dark eyes unreadable. “You might as well admit it. You were trying to get in some advance practice so you wouldn’t embarrass yourself, right?”
Khaki had no idea why Cooper was covering for her and Xander, but she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Um, yeah.” She gave them a sheepish look. “I didn’t even know how to take a fall, so I asked Xander for some tips. I didn’t want to look like a complete idiot out here, at least any more of an idiot than I already do.”
She held her breath, sure no one was going to believe anything she’d said. But they all nodded, as if what she’d said made complete sense to them. Moments later, they were back in training mode, flipping and being flipped.
Khaki couldn’t help looking at Cooper out of the corner of her eye every few seconds.
What the hell had just happened?
* * *
It took her over an hour to find an excuse to get Xander by himself in a part of the compound where it was private enough to talk openly. But a run over to the small armory behind the maintenance and training building to pick up some new M4 magazines for the operations vehicle gave her a chance to tell him what had happened that morning.
“Are you sure he knows?” Xander asked.
His voice might have sounded calm as he dug through the cardboard box on the shelf and came out with four thirty-round magazines, but Khaki could hear his heart beating a mile a minute.
“No, but he was obviously lying about seeing the two of us practicing martial arts moves this morning,” she said.
Xander grabbed another handful of magazines. “If he knows what we’re doing, why the hell would he bother to come up with a lie to cover it up?”
Boots sounded on the concrete walkway outside, accompanied by a scent she knew all too well.
Cooper walked into the armory and closed the door. “I lied to cover your asses since you two are doing such a crappy job of it yourselves.”
