The Flirting Games (The Flirting Series - Young Adult) by Stella Wilkinson Page A

cool and good-looking and he’d spent the last few
years learning how to impress them.
    Impress them, sleep with 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 shy virgin.
    In fact, she was exactly his type.
He thrived on the challenge of getting difficult girls into bed. 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 never said no. Well maybe they did at first, but not for long.
    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. She was in West Tower, he was in North Tower.
They had one or two classes together, but had different friends. Apart from the
fact she got exceptionally high grades, he didn’t see anything particularly
interesting about Rose. She was 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 like he
was studying for an exam. He gathered information about her. It made it so much
easier if the girl thought they had lots in common.
    To get close to Rose he had
befriended Alex Parkhurst. Alex wasn’t just Rose’s cousin; they were clearly
close friends too, so he needed Alex to like him.
    Surprisingly, Nate had discovered he
actually liked Alex. They were even becoming friends. He had thought Alex was
as boring as Rose appeared to be. Alex was quiet and diligent. But as Nate made
efforts to get to know Alex he had discovered he was very funny with a really
clever dry sense of humor.
    It was good to be back at school.
Back in his familiar 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 them both on.
    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
2
     
    Ellie watched Nate Naverly with
narrowed eyes. 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