Read Online Husband Rehab by Curtis Hox - Free Book Online

 
    “I’m … I’m not what you think.”
    Christine confirmed. But Josie’s always known. All this time, she’s known there is something special about him. Warlock!
    “Really?”
    He nods, as if he’s a drug abuser admitting his history to another drug abuser. “Since I was a boy.”
    Josie rushes to his side. “That’s so dangerous, Lennox, especially here.”
    “I know. Stella uses me for her own reasons, and my mother can’t stop her. Stella’s only a minor witch, herself, but she has powerful friends.”
    “I’ve heard.”
    “Since you know now, she’ll expect you to break me down, make me pliable. She’ll expect you to keep her secret, as if she’s the one who’s keeping me from practicing. She’ll pretend she’s harnessing me for the good of society when she really uses me. We have to fool her.”
    “I can figure something out.” Josie muses over this curious fact and realizes she’s just found a way to get close to Lennox without drawing anyone’s attention. A secret between them …”What if I pretend to cast a spell to make you amenable? Uhm, tell her that it takes some time to work. You’ll need to stay for a week … or two.” A slow grin crosses his face, the kind that might emerge over a glass of wine. “Say that any time you’re difficult or whatever, you’ll get a raging headache.” She nods furiously. “That’s it. It’ll give us time to figure out what to do about her … and you. You know what I mean.”
    He grasps her tiny hands in his large ones. “Thank you.”
    She thinks he might lean in for a kiss. Instead, he whisks himself by her toward the exit.
    Lennox Cruz and I have a secret, she thinks with a soaring heart, and I totally have a crush on him again.  
    * * *
    Josie slams the door to her room and drops the bolt.
    Enough morning sunlight pours through the window panes to illuminate the room. The center of her wood floor is dominated by an oval rug. She jumps on it like a surf board. It slides, and she rights herself. She dances a few steps, her hands swatting the air like a break dancer’s.  
    “Yes, yes, yes,” she says.
    Josie hurries into her closet, past all the old clothes (and a few new ones she’s hung up). She finds a latch in the far wall. A door on silent hinges swings inward. She walks down three wooden steps into a wide space running from the doorway to a far gable. She’s covered the wood floor in several mismatched rugs. The roof is slanted on one side. Bare, wooden struts and beams cross the space above her. She surveys her workroom to make sure no one’s been in here. The five windows on the south wall allow in plenty of light, the curtains held back by rings.  
    The room is muggy, so she activates a portable air conditioner that’s running via an extension cord connected to an outlet in her room.
    She walks past her main workbench, which is covered with household items she’ll need to finish her potions.
    Against the gable wall’s wide window is another desk. She sits at a chair and stares at the four business cards that Roxy ensorcelled. She brought them in earlier as a precaution; didn’t want to leave them lying around in her bedroom. The enchanted objects continue to cycle through key moments of the men’s wrongdoing. She’s already studied Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Creeley’s. She pushes these aside and stares down at the other two.
    Okay, Mr. Brookings, she thinks, let’s see what all the fuss is about.
    She lifts up the business card. Inside, a window plays into Mr. Brooking’s past. It’s a montage of events from his life of lies. There he is telling his wife he’s at work, when he’s at a restaurant with an old friend eating prime rib and a buttered potato. The magical footage switches, and she sees and hears him telling his wife that their taxable income is one amount. It immediately jumps, as if directed by some cameraman in the sky, to Mr. Brookings reviewing the final document with his tax attorney. The numbers