This wasn't the way I wanted to spend my wedding night.

On my hands and knees, I scrubbed the checkered linoleum floor of our new kitchen with a steel-wire brush, wondering where it had all gone wrong. I had been so excited to finally become Mrs. Thomas McGee. Thomas was the type of charming gentleman who would greet me by kissing the back of my hand as if the year were 1882 rather than 1982. "My Rosie, I have never seen a flower as lovely as you!" We were soulmates, tortured by longing, awaiting the day we could finally unite as man and wife.

Or so I thought.

But when I had discarded my wedding dress an hour ago (wrestling with scratchy frills and stabbing myself on a hook), his words had been far less romantic: "Rosie, have you no decency? Why are you stripping in front of a man?"

With a hot rush of shame, I had yanked the dress back up over my breasts. "But we're married now, Tommy. And, isn't this supposed to be our honeymoon?"

"So you're blaming me for not throwing away all my hard-earned cash on some expensive vacation."

"I think spending the week in our new home together is perfectly romantic! I just thought... well, I've heard a man usually hopes for certain things when he marries a woman."

"Like a clean kitchen?"

God, bless me with patience. I had prayed it then, and I prayed it again now, scrubbing the floor still harder. The brush slipped out of my grasp, skidding across the floor. Scrambling on all fours, I snatched the brush, then popped to my feet and strode toward the sink.

That was when I saw her: through the kitchen window, my nextdoor neighbor was sunbathing in her backyard.

Naked.

Though only a trickle of sunlight still seeped over the horizon, her position was indecent, decadent, with one arm draped over her forehead and the other sprawled to stroke the grass beside her towel. Who would sunbathe (naked, at sunset no less!) in a place like Windsor Lane?

Scarlett Everly.

I hadn't met her yet, but I had been warned.

"Watch out for your nextdoor neighbors," Linda Morrison had said when I had knocked on her door to deliver muffins the day before. "The Everlys make the rounds, if you know what I mean."

"The... rounds?"

"Keep in mind, Richard Everly is a successful businessman, so it's understandable in his case." She took a bite of the muffin before continuing, voice muffled by the treat. "He travels a lot, and you know how men are."

"I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"You're engaged now, right?"

I smiled. "Our wedding is tomorrow morning!"

"Then I suspect you'll learn soon."

My smile faded, but I thanked her for her forthcomingness. As I continued my promenade around the cul-de-sac, my tupperware of fresh-baked muffins slowly emptied, and the forthcomingness kept right on forth-coming.

"Mrs. Scarlett Everly is a wanton slut."

"She smokes and drinks more than a man."

"She doesn't cook or clean."

"She doesn't even go to church."

"She's wicked!"

The most alarming accusation came from Pastor Elliot West, the Everlys' nextdoor neighbor on the other side: "She has seduced half of the men in this cul-de-sac."

"Oh, my," I whispered. "Thomas and I had heard Windsor Lane was full of devoted Christian families."

"Rest assured, the rest of us here are godly folk! Scarlett Everly is the only sinner."

"But if Mrs. Everly has seduced half of the men—"

"The men here are good, but Mrs. Everly is evil, and that's all you need to know."

Goosebumps prickled up my spine, causing me to clench my shoulder blades together. I wanted to reach back to rake my fingernails over the spot, but I knew from experience that scratching wouldn't help. This sensation was too deep to itch, caused by something more nefarious. I had always heard the Devil described as hot and rageful, but I had experienced it differently.

The Devil was itchy.

As always, I shoved that itchy feeling as far down as I could, and I told Paster West, "I'm glad to live near a pastor so I can receive this kind of moral guidance."

When he smiled, I felt a bit better. Even if I couldn't fully understand God's ways myself, at least I could please Him by listening to those who knew better.

But as I watched Scarlett Everly sunbathe, that prickle grew worse than before.

The setting sun emphasized every angle of her perfect figure: the casually cocked knee, the indecent swell of her perky breasts, the sharp shoulders framed by her cascading dark hair. More than comfortable, she appeared sensually satisfied, as though that bare trickle of sunlight was providing her the kind of pleasure only men were supposed to seek.

My stomach somersaulted.

For several seconds, I struggled to name what I felt—and I struggled to look away. When I regained some modicum of control, I snatched the curtains shut and wheeled around, exhaled a stream of air, and leaned back hard enough that the counter dug into my lower back.

Jealousy, I finally told myself, with a little shame but more relief. While jealousy wasn't a godly emotion, it was a perfectly natural thing for a newlywed woman to feel when her stunning neighbor was displaying herself in front of her new husband. After all, if my dear sweet Thomas saw this, he would surely lose all interest in me.

Or had he already seen it? Perhaps that was the reason he had no desire to consummate our marriage.

When footsteps thumped the linoleum nearby, I jumped.

"Rosie?" Thomas tilted his head. "Are you alright?"

I shifted to block the kitchen window. "Yeah, I'm fine! I was just thinking about the neighbors I haven't been able to meet yet. Have you seen any of them, by chance?"

He blinked, then frowned. "Why are you rambling about the neighbors when the house isn't even clean?"

His tone stung a little—he never spoke to me like that before marriage!—but I was relieved he apparently had not seen Scarlett Everly.

"You're right," I said, meekly. "I should get back to it."

"Atta girl, Rosie." He stretched his arms wide and yawned. "Well, I've had a long week, so I'm off to bed, but I'm looking forward to seeing how much better this place will look by morning."

I tried very hard to shift that twinge in my gut into something akin to happiness. He has faith in me, I told myself. That's a good thing.

I scrubbed and scrubbed until my knees and hands and back were sore. By midnight, I was fairly certain I had scourged every bit of grime in the kitchen—except for the window above the sink. I didn't dare open those curtains again, afraid of what I might see next.

Still, when I finally lay down to sleep, I couldn't stop my own imagination. Even though it was my first night sleeping in the same bed with a man, it was my neighbor's hourglass figure that was burned across my shut eyelids. In my mind's eye, she cocked her head a little, looked right at me, and smirked... as if she knew I was watching her in my dreams.

I tossed and turned, even jamming my palms over my eyes, but the image remained, and the itchiness burrowed under my skin and clawed into my belly.

If itchiness was the Devil, Scarlett Everly was the Devil incarnate.

***

Thomas and I sat together at church the next day, but I had never felt more distance between us. As Pastor Elliot West spoke of God's all-encompassing love, Thomas crossed his arms tight enough to strain his suitcoast. When I laid a hand palm-up on the wooden pew between us and tried to meet his eye, his jaw twitched just below his mustache and his gaze remained locked straight ahead.

This was a big adjustment for him, I told myself. Pressuring him certainly would not help.

So I smiled through the service, and through the day... and through the next day, and the day after that. I smiled while I cooked, while I hung up his clothes, and even while I scrubbed the toilets.

When three days of our week-long "honeymoon" had passed with only a few brief conversations and still not even another kiss, I grasped for an answer. I was smiling too much, or too little. I had been shamefully forward, or I had been far too withdrawn. I wasn't pretty enough, or I was too concerned about my appearance.

The one thing I knew for certain was that this was all my fault.

With desperation exceeding my shame, I pulled on my most daring red dress (exposing my shoulders and even a hint of cleavage!), applied a little make-up, and approached Thomas once more.

"Tommy, if you've had enough time to rest, maybe we could spend this evening together?"

"Oh, I'm actually about to leave for a fishing trip with Adam."

My heart fell. "During our honeymoon?"

"Come on, Rosie, don't be like that. This might be the last week of good fishing weather, and you and I will have our whole lives together."

I bit my tongue. "Yes, of course. I'd hate for you to miss out on something you love."

The undertone was so pathetically obvious that I winced.

Don't you love me?

But Thomas didn't seem to notice. "So glad you understand." He swept a gaze around the room, landing on the dusty light fixture and rusty-knobbed liquor cabinet. "Anyway, I wouldn't want to distract you from your work; I see you have plenty left to do."

After Thomas left, I went back to scrubbing, but something new and fierce bubbled in my chest—something even my prayers could not calm. And when I approached the liquor cabinet with a polishing rag in hand, a strange urge gripped me.

Maybe I should find out why Thomas enjoyed such a thing.

I immediately scolded myself. That kind of pleasure was not meant for women, and it certainly was not meant for a good Christian wife home alone at night.

But if no one else found out, what harm could it do?

I set down the rag and eased open the cabinet door. When it creaked, I froze, heart thumping. I imagined Thomas would enter any second to gawk at me, my great-aunt would drift down from Heaven to ask why I was dishonoring the house I had inherited from her, or perhaps even Jesus himself would suddenly materialize to shake his head in disappointment.

When none of that happened, I reached for the whiskey.

The next sounds rang through the empty house: the bottle scraping against the wooden shelf, the liquid sloshing, and the squeak and then gluck of the cork as it popped free.

A single whiff made me cough. But surely, the taste would be better than the smell. Tilting the bottle back, I took a swig—

Blech!

I clapped a hand over my mouth to force myself to swallow instead of spewing it over the freshly-scrubbed linoleum. Goodness gracious, it tasted even worse than it smelled. Well, clearly women were not meant for such things, and that was that!

...but when I thought about it more, Thomas often winced during the first gulp. He usually downed at least two small glasses before he left for his fishing trips with Adam, and by then, he only ever looked happy.

I took a bigger gulp.

It was even worse than the first.

I doubled over, gagging, gulping, and then gagging again before managing to draw myself upright. What was I doing? If Thomas could see this, what would he say?

Then again, Thomas didn't seem particularly pleased with me regardless. Maybe I was too boring. Maybe he preferred a woman like Scarlett Everly.

When I thought of her once more, I welcomed the self-punishment of another swig.

As the third swig burned in my throat, the second swig hit my bloodstream, and my thoughts turned into actions with alarming speed. I should give Scarlett a piece of my mind, I thought—and the next thing I knew, I was marching toward her door.

The sidewalk was rough beneath my bare feet, but the front steps to the Everly's house were smooth and cool. The silver door knocker gleamed in the moonlight, inviting me to lift it, and it dropped with a satisfying clang.

Wait, bare feet? The moonlight?

Goodness gracious, was I really knocking on my neighbor's door at night without shoes? Plus, I was wearing a frumpy nightgown my grandmother had given me eight years ago, one that was now a little too small, far too childish, and smudged from cleaning. My hair was a frizzy mess, and my face was undone.

As panic surged through me, I darted a desperate glance back at my own house. If I ran away fast enough, maybe the Everlys would never know I had been there.

The door clicked open.

Scarlett was wearing a nightgown, if you could call it that—the white silk hugged her curves, the plunging neckline showed off the full inner swell of her sun-kissed breasts, and the hemline reached just halfway down her toned thighs. Her dark hair caressed her shoulders as if obeying her every whim, and even her eyebrow-length bangs somehow emphasized her confident disregard (while my own bangs usually looked like the grass and twigs a mother rabbit used to hide her nest). Keeping one hand on the open door, she drew the cigarette from her lips and blew a slow breath, a curl of smoke drifting above her.

"You must be Rosie." Her gaze slid from my face to my bare feet and back again, dark eyes unreadable. "I have to admit I didn't expect to meet you at eleven o'clock in the evening. I'm guessing this is not part of your muffin delivery route."

"Ah, you heard about the muffins. You weren't home when I came by, and I did set aside some to give you later, but they were sadly... lost." After seeing Scarlett on that first night, I had never worked up the courage to visit their house and had instead eaten the muffins myself. "How about I go bake some more for you right now?"

Her lips twitched. "I'd rather you tell me whatever you came here to say."

Now was my chance to warn her to stop trying to seduce my Thomas. Wasn't that why I was here? Only suddenly, that whole warning business sounded rather spiteful and asinine. Thomas was away fishing, not here with Scarlett. Scarlett was not the problem.

I was the problem.

But could Scarlett be the solution?

"I was wondering if you'd be willing to help me with..." I swallowed. "Something."

"Help you with what, darling?"

Her gaze remained intently on mine, and she sounded a little amused, neither of which helped the burn in my cheeks. I once again imagined fleeing, racing across the yard and up the steps to our house, slamming the door shut behind me... but Scarlett would remember that I ran away, and Thomas would still want nothing to do with me. So instead, I drew a deep breath, dug my fingernails into my palms, and whispered a wild plea:

"Teach me your ways."