The Flirting Games (The Flirting Series - Young Adult) (2 page)

At dinner that evening, Alex
suggested that Nate join them on the West Tower table. There were assigned
house tables, but students were free to sit anywhere. The Headmistress was a
fan of house integration and tried to get them to all mix as much as possible.

Nate accepted the invitation, much
to the obvious confusion of his friends watching from the North Tower table as
he walked in and went over to the West Tower table instead with Alex.

He caught the eye of his best
friend, Gabriel, who was staring at him with a look of disapproval. He gave a
subtle wink and Gabe acknowledged it and nodded. They had been friends a long
time and he didn’t need to do more than wink. He hadn’t told Gabe what he was
doing, but his friend would know he was up to something. He watched as Gabe
returned to his food reassured.

Gently steering Alex, Nate managed
to get himself seated between Alex and Rose. At dinner 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. He wanted to laugh, but instead he reached for a pile of
paper napkins and helped her mop it up.

“Alright there, Rose?” he asked
innocently while refilling her glass.

She looked like a deer in
headlights. Again he placed his hand on her back, supposedly in a reassuring
manner, but really just to assert that it was his touch that was making her
jumpy.

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

He quickly withdrew his hand and
turned back to Alex, but his thoughts were on the look in Ellie’s face. He had
the feeling that she might be on to him. The suspicious gleam in her eyes,
coupled with the disdainful curve of her lip, suggested that she was
questioning his motives and drawing conclusions he didn’t want her to.

He shrugged to himself. So what. She
was two years below him, only a fourth year, beneath his notice. He didn’t
doubt his own power to conquer Rose, and Ellie wouldn’t be able to do anything
about it. Did Rose listen to Ellie? As far as he was aware they weren’t especially
close. They were cousins, but he was confident that it was Alex he needed to
get on side. Rose listened to Alex. Ellie Parkhurst didn’t figure in his plan.

***

Ellie had seen enough. Nate was
definitely not to be trusted. He was clearly playing one of his games with
Rose. If he genuinely liked Rose he would have been more attentive and if he
didn’t then he wouldn’t have been so touchy-feely with her. She had briefly
caught his eye at dinner and he had looked shifty; just for a split second, but
she had seen it. The question now was what to do about it.

Ellie reasoned that she had a pretty
good grasp on what motivated boys. She had two older brothers and she had
learned plenty at the knee of Jack, one of the best players she had ever seen.
Nate was over-confident; he needed taking down a peg or two. Yes, he was older
than her and, yes, he was a pretty cold customer, but could she somehow take
him on?

She pushed away the doubt. Rose was
so sweet, Nate would eat her for breakfast. She had to act. Would talking to
Rose help? No, probably not. Rose would deny everything until it was too late.
Ellie telling her that Nate wasn’t really interested might even hurt Rose. But
Rose was going to get hurt no matter what unless somebody stopped this right
now!

Maybe the key here was to take his
focus off Rose. Ellie was objective enough to know that Nate had never even
noticed her before. Plus she was two years below him, he was every girl’s dream
and pretty full of himself. Girls threw themselves at him in obvious ways and
they tried less obvious ways. He seemed to prefer doing his own chasing. So how
could she get in under the radar? What was going to distract him?

Ellie lay awake in bed that night
thinking about it. She wasn’t hugely vain, but boys did seem to like her. The
fact he knew so little about her could perhaps work to her advantage by
intriguing him. Should she go in with all guns blazing or in a more mysterious
manner? Could she manage to entice him without appearing too interested?

She smiled in the darkness – Yes,
she would try playing him at his own game.

Flora Kincaid was horribly homesick.
After California, England seemed so colorless. She was used to the vibrancy of
the vineyard her mother owned. The bright sun and the blue sky. The deep orange
sunsets and the sounds of home. It was too quiet in England. It was the end of
September and she longed for the rich smells of autumn and the burgundy red of
the ripe grapes.

England seemed endlessly green.
Green grass. Green trees. Even the river running past the school was a shade of
green.

She looked with disgust at the dark
green stripe on her school tie that signaled she was in West Tower Schoolhouse.
She preferred brighter colors. Colors that complemented her hair and skin tone.

Her hair was a honey blonde and she
wore it neatly plaited down her back. When you lived on a farm you learned to
keep long hair tied back and so she had been plaiting it for years. She had
regular features, slightly freckled skin and large brown eyes. She knew she
wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she hoped she might be considered pretty.

At 14, there was no way her mother
would allow her to wear make-up, but as she had clear skin she hoped she was
passable without it. Some mascara might be nice to make her eyelashes darker.
Perhaps when she got to know Ellie a bit better she might be able to borrow
some mascara from her.

She was really glad she was sharing
a room with Ellie. Ellie seemed to know everyone and hanging around with her
had made being the new girl a lot less lonely. It was so hard starting at a new
school when everyone else in her year seemed to have been there since the first
year and had now had over three years to bond and form cliques.

She supposed she could have gone to
stay with her dad, but she hated his girlfriend. The woman who had once been
his secretary and lived in their home. No way. She was glad her mom had gotten
the vineyard; Dad had been shocked at that. But he’d put all of it in her mom’s
name for tax reasons and didn’t have time to change it back again before he was
caught having an affair with Sandra.

Her mom had remarried a year later
to Travis, who owned the land bordering their own. Flora had been glad; Travis
adored her mother. But then he had offered to take her mother on a year-long
tour of the vineyards of Europe as a sort of honeymoon.

There was no question of Flora
missing a year of school to go with them, so they had decided that a boarding
school would be best if she didn’t want to stay with her dad.

They had chosen Compass Court as it
was in a part of the world that spoke English, but also very close to where her
mom was going in Europe so she could regularly fly over and visit.

Her mom and Travis were starting
their tour in Bordeaux, France, just over the Channel and it was good to know they
were literally only an hour away.

So here she was, an American girl in
an English boarding school. It was just like she imagined, but with less
ghosts.

The girls she shared the room with
all seemed nice, but Miranda and Jessica were kind of high achievers. Always
off on some activity or studying in the library. Flora was a little intimidated
by them. But Ellie was open and friendly and had made no secret of the fact
that she sucked at Math and History, making her seem more approachable.

Flora felt that with Ellie as her
friend it might not be so bad at Compass Court after all.

***

Ellie began working on her strategy
to get the attention of Nate Naverly carefully. She would have liked to spend
longer on the details of the plan, but time was of the essence. She had to get
him away from Rose before Rose got emotionally involved.

The first point of action was to get
noticed
. Noticed indirectly
. She chose her location and her outfit with
care. The location was the Games Room. The school provided a large room with
sofa’s and pool tables and table tennis and other games, and a lot of people
hung out there in the evenings. You didn’t have to wear uniform and you didn’t
only mix with your own year. Ellie remembered that Nate and his friends often
went there after prep for a few games of pool. Her outfit was deliberately
provocative yet understated. A firm believer in the tenet that ‘less is more’,
she hadn’t gone for a low cut top or a short skirt. Instead she had chosen a
white floaty full covering shirt, but it was very slightly see-through and she
had gone for a full-on cleavage black bra underneath, teamed it with a
waist-cinching belt and then just normal jeans and trainers so she looked sexy,
but not like she was trying too hard. She was slightly shocked by her own
breasts. Sophie, one of the girls who shared a dorm-room with Rose, had lent
her the push up bra and she couldn’t help looking down once or twice to make
sure she stayed in it!

She decided she couldn’t go alone
without looking a bit obvious so she invited Flora to go with her. As they
walked into the games room, she was relieved to find Nate and his three usual
friends there. Firstly she and Flora chatted with some boys from their year who
were playing cards in one corner then she suggested to Flora that they play
pool.

“I’m rubbish at pool.” Flora said
candidly, “but I’ll come and watch”. Ellie was pleased; Flora was looking great
too and was clearly an asset as a wingman.

As Ellie chalked her name up for a
game, she chose her first combat partner with care. She went for one of Nate’s
more stupid friends. An over muscled oaf by the name of Jerry Doury. As she
leaned over the table to break, she deliberately let her shirt pull tight
against her chest, gave him a bit of a pouty smile and slammed the white ball
as hard as she could with the cue.

She didn’t know how good any of them
were at pool, but as Jack had a table in the garage at home she had spent a lot
of time playing and was feeling fairly confident.

The game definitely suited her
purpose: there was a lot of bending over and plenty of chances for a bit of bum
wiggling for good measure as she lined up her shots. She watched Nate covertly,
he was leaning against the wall with Gabriel Brenner. They didn’t really seem
to be paying much attention to the game, they were just chatting quietly
between themselves. On the other hand, Jerry Doury and Owen Lang were
definitely engrossed with eyeing up her and Flora. In fact, Jerry wasn’t much
competition and she cleared the table pretty quickly. She put a hand on his
chest and batted her eyelashes at him.

“Sorry Jerry, better luck next
time.”

As the winner she stayed on the
table and this time it was Gabriel who stepped up. She discreetly undid the top
button on her shirt to add a little cleavage to the mix. Okay, so it was a bit
trashy and she didn’t like to stoop to that kind of flirting, but these were
17-year-old boys. If she had learned anything from having older brothers, it
was the main weaknesses of 17-year-old boys.

Unfortunately, Gabriel was a much tougher
nut than Jerry. He showed very little interest in her at all and she only got
two shots in before he cleanly potted the black and gave her a cold smirk.

Time to retreat and regroup, Ellie
decided. She smiled in a carefree way and she and Flora immediately left the
games room.

Had he even noticed her? She was
sure at least two of his friends had. This was definitely a case of
softly
softly catchee monkey.

***

Flora was completely awestruck by
Gabriel Brenner. She chatted to Ellie about him all the way back to their room.

“Oh my goodness, did you see his
cheekbones? And do you think his hair is naturally that blond? I mean, I can’t
imagine him dyeing it, but it’s unnaturally fair, I’d kill for my hair to be
that color. And his eyes, such a deep shade of blue, sorta like the sea, don’t
you think?”

Ellie smiled at Flora. “If you say
so. I didn’t really notice.”

“How could you not notice? I mean
it’s like all the air gets sucked out of a room when he enters. The clocks stop
ticking. He has such presence.”

“Well he’s clearly made an impact on
you. Maybe you should try talking to him next time?” Ellie laughed at the look
on Flora’s face.

“Talking to him? No way, never in a million.
He’s terrifyingly perfect. What on earth would I say? He’s never ever going to notice
someone like me. He’s two years older than me for a start and so incredibly
handsome.” She paused for breath. “Do you think he has a girlfriend?”

“I think he does actually. Sorry.”
Ellie looked at Flora’s crestfallen expression and racked her brains for what
else she knew. “I think I heard a rumor that he’s dating a model and that she’s
much older than him.”

Flora sighed. “Yeah, I can believe
that. Not that it makes any difference. He didn’t even notice I existed.”