Indestructible: Reinforced

Chapter 1

Chapter One

     September 2009

     First Encounter

     “Hi, I’m Josh.”

     Holy crap! I’d seen pictures of him, had seen him before at events our families usually went to, but we’d never been introduced.

     Josh Anderson was so unbelievably hot! I shook hands with him and found myself cursing how ordinary I looked. Next to my older sisters, Avy and Amanda, I was the ugly duckling. Avy, with her golden hair and bright blue eyes, perfect body, dazzling smile, captured the eyes of every red-blooded male whenever she stepped into a room. And Amanda’s strawberry-blond tresses attracted a lot of attention, and she had beautiful blue eyes.

     I was a green-eyed raven-haired girl. Yay for me.

     “Gaby Cassidy.” I smiled back at him and tried to sound normal. I was sure I was messing it up. “Nice to meet you.”

     “Pleasure.” He waited till I pulled my hand back before he dropped his. I noticed that I was staring at him, which was extremely humiliating because my family and his were right there.

     But all eyes were on Avy and Jake. The couple.

     They seemed civil enough. They were smiling at each other politely as if they were merely acquaintances. Not two people who had caused a huge stir in our close-knit society back when Avy had still lived in Paris with my mother and Amanda and I. They’d started dating when she was fifteen, and he’d been eighteen at the time. It had caused a lot of trouble in our family, mainly because Avy wasn’t what you would call a sane, mature person. She loved causing trouble and being daring. She loved shocking people. It was her favorite hobby.

     Not that she could be accused of being an attention-seeker, she was a lot more subtle than that.

     We all sat down at the dinner table and I found myself sitting across from Josh. He smiled at me again and I felt my breath catch in my throat. He had beautiful blue eyes and dark brown hair that wasn’t as long as his brother’s, but wasn’t so short either. It looked very nice and I just wanted to run my fingers through it. ofcourse I couldn’t because we were practically strangers and it would’ve been weird.

     The Anderson boys had the ability to make the Cassidy girls go all dreamy and girly. Jake had done the same thing to Avy. But he was such a grownup now. He looked like a man. With the stubble and all.

     Avy liked guys like that.

     Which was why Amanda, me, and our two older brothers, Jason and Seth, had a bet going around whether Avy and Jake were going to hook up anytime during this visit. The deadline was Mom and Dad’s wedding. If they didn’t hook up by then, all bets were off.

      I was rooting for a hookup before the wedding, and so was Seth. Jason and Amanda were very uptight. And Jason had left Avy back when she’d been innocent, he didn’t know how promiscuous she was. He thought that something as emotionally-challenging as a wedding was strong enough to make Avy forget her boyfriend and hook up with Jake. Seth and I knew Avy a little bit better than that.

     My family and I were gathered in London for the week because of our parents’ upcoming nuptials. Allison Thompson and Zachary Cassidy had met when they’d been in school together, they’d hooked up at the age of fourteen, had had Jason nine months later after they’d turned fifteen. And then along came Seth a year or so later. Then Avy. And then they actually got married. And then for some reason they decided to have non-bastard children. That was when Amanda had been born. And then little old me.