The Flirting Games (Book One, The Flirting Games Series) Read online



  Ellie watched Nate Naverly with narrowed eyes. She hadn’t paid much attention until he had turned his megawatt smile on Rose.

  He was sitting too close to Rose, whispering into her ear. As Ellie watched, Nate picked up Rose’s hand and began to trace a pattern across her palm. Ellie strained to hear what he was saying: something about predicting Rose’s future. He slowly rubbed his thumb across the wrist he was holding and Rose seemed to shiver.

  Ellie frowned. That was not a good thing. Nate was a self-satisfied jerk, but dynamite with girls. Ellie had seen too many crying over him in the bathrooms to doubt it. There was no way on earth that Rose was a match for his charms if he had set his sights on her.

  ***

  Gently steering Alex, Nate managed to get himself seated between him and Rose at dinner that evening. He directed most of his conversation to Alex, but under the table he concentrated on pressing his leg, very slightly, against Rose’s. She moved away a little. He shifted a tiny bit and again his knee was touching hers. She shot her hand out for her water glass and knocked it over.

  “Alright there, Rose?” he asked innocently while refilling her glass. Again he placed his hand on her back, supposedly in a reassuring manner, but really just to test the effect his touch was having on her.

  It was at that moment he really noticed Ellie Parkhurst for the first time. She was sitting across the table from Rose and giving him a very speculative look.

  The Flirting Games

  Book One in the Flirting Games Series

  by

  Stella Wilkinson

  Books by Stella Wilkinson

  The Flirting Games (Book One)

  More Flirting Games (Book Two)

  Further Flirting Games (Book Three)

  The Flirting Games Trilogy, (Books 1 - 3)

  Good @ Games (Book Four)

  Flirting with Friends (Book Five)

  Best Frenemies (Book Six)

  Boy Girl Games (Book Seven)

  A Compass Court Christmas (Book Eight)

  The Flirting Games Box Set (Books 1 - 8)

  Magic & Mayhem Box Set (Books 1 - 3)

  Halloween Magic & Mayhem (Book One)

  Werewolf Magic & Mayhem (Book Two)

  Solstice Magic & Mayhem (Book Three)

  Demon Magic & Mayhem (Book Four)

  Notice Me

  A Christmas Gift

  The Fake Valentine

  A Summer Thing

  All Hallows Eve

  Four Seasons of Romance Box Set

  If you would like to be informed immediately when future books by this author are released then please sign up to the mailing list at: https://eepurl.com/wEMmD

  Copyright Stella Wilkinson 2013 www.stellawilkinson.com

  Cover Art by Littera Book Designs

  All characters herein are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher or author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book was written, produced and edited in the UK, where some spelling, grammar and word usage will vary from US English.

  The Flirting Games

  Chapter One

  “So how are you settling into Compass Court? Seen any boys you like yet?” Ellie Parkhurst sat cross-legged on her bed and leaned over to pinch one of Flora’s sweets from the bedside table between them.

  They were three weeks into the autumn term and the girls were getting to know each other.

  “Boys?” Flora laughed. “It’s hard enough being the new girl, let alone talking to boys yet! And you do things so differently in England than in America, it’s still confusing me. There’s no Middle School and your school years have different numbers to ours. Being at a boarding school is kind of a culture shock too.”

  “I guess so; this is my fifth year here now, so it seems normal to me.” Ellie nodded thoughtfully. “But there’s loads more to do outside of lessons, than if I were living at home.”

  “Like what?” Flora sat up on her own bed and reached for another toffee.

  “Hmm, let’s see.” Ellie began to tick things off on her fingers. “There’s the Games Room if you want to socialise; have you been in there yet?”

  Flora shook her head. “I’ve seen it, but it’s way intimidating if you don’t know anyone.”

  “There’s a bunch of sports teams you can join; do you play netball or hockey or anything?”

  Flora shook her head again. “I’d rather not unless I’m forced to.”

  Ellie smiled. “Fair enough, I give sport a wide berth too. I’m on the debate team and in the chess club.”

  “Chess club? You’re kidding?”

  “No, I love chess. You have to think of it as being like dating. There’s lots of strategy involved and sometimes you have to be a bit sneaky in your positioning.” Ellie mimed moving chess pieces around as she warmed to one of her favourite subjects. “You don’t want to give away your game plan too early or you might get outmanoeuvred. You can bait a trap, then it’s exciting waiting for your opponent to make the next move. Both boys and chess partners like a good game. If it’s too easy to win, they lose interest, but if you are too good and beat them too quickly, they still lose interest. Hence chess and dating are both games of strategy.”

  “Oh.” Flora looked bemused. “Have you had a lot of boyfriends?”

  “A few, though most of them were too scared of my big brother to do more than hold my hand.”

  “Your brother Alex?” Flora sounded surprised. She had met Alex, who was in the year above them, and he wasn’t exactly scary.

  “Not Alex, Jack. He left at the end of last term for university. I didn’t realise how dull it would be here without him. He and his friends were really daring, maybe a bit too wild sometimes; they used to get into some right scrapes: doing midnight kitchen raids, going swimming in the river at night, that kind of stuff. He used to let me tag along sometimes. Jack is cool. You’ll totally fall in love with him when you meet him, everybody does.”

  “Wow.” Flora’s eyes widened. “I’m an only child, but some of my friends back home have brothers, and they say they are a complete pain in the ass.”

  “That’s probably true of most brothers; I’m not nearly as close to Alex. But there’s nearly three years’ age difference between Jack and me, so I guess we don’t have so much to fight about. He spoils me really, but he also still thinks of me as his baby sister he has to protect.” Ellie reached for another sweet. “In my third year he caught me kissing Bryn Dawes in the common room, and he threw him against the wall and held him there by his neck demanding to know what he thought he was doing.” She giggled at the memory.

  “Jeez! No wonder boys were scared, then!” Flora began to chew a fingernail, then quickly whipped it out of her mouth as she realised what she was doing; she was determined to break the habit this year.

  “So what about you? Have you got a boyfriend back home?” Ellie asked.

  “Not really. I went to an all-girls high school for the last two years. There was one boy I knew, Chris. He asked me to be his girlfriend but then turned sort of mean when his friends were around. I guess he was immature – one minute he was pulling my hair and running away, the next he was saying we should make out in the old hay barn, and then he threw tomatoes at me from his bike when he was with his friends. I stopped talking to him after that, but I suppose we never really broke up.”

  “He sounds like a moron.”

  “I think most of the boys wer
e morons back home. It’s only a small town, so everyone knows everyone else too well. I did like this boy, Joe, but I never really forgave him for putting a frog in my backpack when we were five. Plus they know everything about you too. Everyone remembers the time I fell off a horse and into a huge pile of stinking manure, and then they remind you of it for the rest of your life. Sooo embarrassing!”

  “Well, you have a big advantage here; no one knows you, so you can reinvent yourself however you want.” Ellie stopped as her phone began to ring. Fishing it out of her sheets, she answered it.

  “Jack!” She was thrilled to hear from him. “How’s uni this week? Have you done loads of partying?”

  Jack said, “Yeah, it’s pretty mental, always something going on right outside my room. Talking of which, the lads are picking me up in a minute to go for a pub-crawl, so I don’t have long. How’s school? Are you still sharing a room with ‘dull and duller’?”

  Ellie looked across to the other side of their dorm room and the two perfectly made beds with hospital corners.

  “Yeah, they’re okay. I barely see them, they’re probably in the library.” She rolled her eyes at the thought of anyone studying on a Saturday. “But there’s a new girl in with us now as well.” Ellie smiled at Flora, whose bed was next to Ellie’s and far messier. It was totally unmade and the floor beneath it was littered with their sweet wrappers.

  “Oh? What’s she like? Potential friend or super swot?”

  “She’s nice so far.” Ellie winked at Flora. “Her name’s Flora and she’s a Yank.”

  “A Yank? The loud, abrasive, gum-chewing kind?” Jack laughed.

  Ellie smiled at the chewing-gum wrapper on Flora’s pillow. “No. She’s actually quite quiet, for an American,” she joked.

  “It’s hard being new. You should make an effort to invite her to stuff,” Jack said seriously.

  “I will,” Ellie promised. “But there’s nothing to do today, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking to you on a Saturday afternoon, would I?” she teased.

  “How’s Alex getting on?” Jack asked.

  “He’s fine,” Ellie confirmed in a bored tone.

  “Okay, keep your chin up. I’ve got to go, text me later if you like.” There was suddenly a lot of noise in the background at his end.

  “Jack?” Ellie raised her voice.

  “Yes?” He sounded distracted.

  “Will you visit on my birthday weekend at Halloween?”

  “Count on it, kiddo. Bye.” He hung up.

  She hung up more slowly. Compass Court had been so much more exciting with Jack around. She was just opening her mouth to continue her conversation with Flora when they heard a tentative tap on the bedroom door. Looking round, Ellie saw her cousin Rose peering in.

  Rose was in Year Twelve with Alex, and the two girls got on well, but Rose was so like Alex in personality, just plain nice. Ellie was much more like Jack.

  “Hiya. I’m going to down to the village to meet Alex and some of the others at the pub. Do you want to come?”

  Ellie looked at Flora. “You want to? We might as well, there’s bog all else to do today.”

  Flora sprang up enthusiastically. “I’ve never been to an English pub. Will they serve us? I don’t have any ID or anything.”

  “You’re allowed to buy soft drinks. They don’t need ID unless you want alcohol.” Ellie swung her legs off the bed.

  Ellie nodded to Rose. “Yeah, ok thanks. Give us five minutes?”

  “Sure.” Rose smiled and turned to leave. “I’ll be in the Common Room.”

  Ellie grimaced at her reflection in the mirror. Her fringe was sticking up all over the place. Hmm, not how she wanted to be seen. At nearly sixteen, you didn’t let boys see you going about looking like a scarecrow.

  She pulled a brush through her long dark hair and added some mascara to her lashes. She had finally been able to persuade her mother to let her buy some make-up this summer. She wasn’t really allowed to wear it in class, but she had been sneaking on mascara all term; it made her brown eyes seem brighter and gave them more impact. Of course, wearing a school uniform did no one any favours. But in Oakworth, the local village, she could dress how she liked, so she added some cherry lip balm too. Looking down, she was happy with her outfit. Black top, with long trailing sleeves, and tight black jeans with her favourite grey suede boots.

  Flora spent a couple of minutes attempting to collect the sweet wrappers off her bed, and putting on her shoes.

  Ellie’s mind was still on the phone call. It was nice that she had Flora now, but school was boring without Jack. What she needed was a new challenge, something to liven up the year. She flicked her hair over her shoulder, leaned forward to kiss the mirror and decided she was good to go.

  ***

  Nathaniel Naverly smiled at himself in the mirror. He ran his hands through his blond hair and flexed his chest. His reflection pleased him. Five years of school sports had filled out his upper body: now his shoulders were wide, his stomach tight and his arm muscles looked toned. He’d spent a lot of the summer swimming, as well as playing plenty of football and cricket.

  Now back at Compass Court Boarding School for the sixth form, or Year Twelve as they also called it, he reckoned he was ready to pull anyone he wanted. He knew girls liked him; they thought he was cool and good-looking and he’d spent the last few years learning how to impress them.

  Impress them, seduce them and then dump them.

  And now, he wanted Rose Falcon. He’d been planning it since the start of term. It was not motivated by desire; it was the chase.

  This year Rose had returned from the summer holidays all grown up. All his friends had noticed, too. Rose was suddenly extremely pretty and shapely, yet still very much the innocent when it came to boys.

  In fact, she was exactly his type. He thrived on the challenge of getting shy or difficult girls. Unfortunately, once he had succeeded they weren’t a challenge any longer and he lost interest.

  It would be depressing except that he didn’t much care for the company of girls anyway. He was a guy’s guy. He had a group of male friends who thought he was great, and that was all he needed. It was almost amusing that half the girls in the school seemed to hate him, yet they hardly ever said no.

  He and Rose had so far had very little to do with each other for their first few years at Compass Court. She was in a different schoolhouse; he was in North Tower and she was in West Tower. They had one or two classes together, but had different friends. He didn’t see anything particularly interesting about Rose. She was generally quiet, probably fairly boring; barely noticeable to a popular boy like himself.

  He had honed his skills a lot in the last year. His usual game plan was to do his homework on each conquest as if he were studying for an exam, gathering information from her friends. It made it so much easier if the girl thought they had lots in common.

  So to get close to Rose he had befriended Alexander Parkhurst. Alex and Rose were cousins, the same age and apparently close friends too. Her female friends were bound to be suspicious of him, so he wanted Alex to like him.

  Surprisingly, Nate had discovered he actually liked Alex. He had thought Alex was kind of a geek. But as Nate made efforts to get to know him he had discovered that Alex was fun company with a really dry sense of humour.

  It was good to be back at school, back in the familiarity of his room at Compass Court. He took one more look at himself, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, and flexed his muscles at the mirror again. Yes, he was ready. He dragged a t-shirt over his head and fished his trainers out from under his bed, found his socks still stuffed inside, and pulled on socks and shoes.

  He and Alex were going into Oakworth Village. They were meeting up with Rose in the Fox and Hounds pub. He grinned, thinking the name of the pub was apt. He stuffed his wallet in his back pocket and headed out to meet Alex in the school courtyard.

  Chapter Two

  Ellie watched Nate Naverly with narrowed ey
es. He had come in with Alex and joined their table. He had made everyone laugh and seemed to settle easily with the group, who were mostly from West Tower House. She hadn’t paid much attention until he had turned his megawatt smile on Rose.

  He was sitting too close to Rose, whispering into her ear. As Ellie watched, Nate picked up Rose’s hand and began to trace a pattern across her palm. Ellie strained to hear what he was saying: something about predicting Rose’s future. He slowly rubbed his thumb across the wrist he was holding and Rose seemed to shiver.

  Ellie could plainly see that Rose didn’t know what to do. Rose had never had such a good-looking guy single her out like that. She was blushing and nervous. Quite suddenly, Nate dropped her hand and turned away to talk to Alex, leaving Rose looking shell-shocked and a bit bereft.

  Ellie frowned. That was not a good thing. Nate was a self-satisfied jerk, but dynamite with girls. Ellie had seen too many crying over him in the bathrooms to doubt it. There was no way on earth that Rose was a match for his charms if he had set his sights on her.

  Eyeing Nate suspiciously, Ellie wondered what he was playing at. Did he genuinely want Rose? Even if he did, it was reason for concern. Rose was far too nice for him. Ellie was extremely fond of her cousin and didn’t want to see her get hurt. She had a very bad feeling that this was a game to Nate and not a genuine desire to be with Rose.

  Ellie looked at Alex to see if he had noticed anything. Of course he hadn’t. He was as naïve as Rose. She wished again that Jack were still at Compass Court; he would have stamped on any pretensions Nate might have.

  Mentally squaring her shoulders, Ellie decided she would have to keep an eye on the situation herself.

  ***

  Nate felt smug. Stage One was a success. He wanted Rose to be aware of him and now she was. He had flattered her and he had touched her, so she noticed him. He had been fully aware that the hairs on the back of her arm had gone up when he’d intimately stroked the inside of her wrist. Not too much, not to draw attention, just enough to confuse her. He concentrated on Alex and tried not to look too pleased with himself. A few more moments like that and he would have her where he wanted her.

  His second opportunity came at the bar. Rose was helping carry out drinks. He put one hand on the small of her back, leaned in close behind her and curved his arm around her to reach for his drink. She jumped and came right up against him. He smiled at her and didn’t step back. She blushed yet again. It was quite endearing really. This was going to be easy.