The Seduction of Esther by Jennifer Wilck

Blurb:

Samara Goldberg has a problem even the most beautiful singing voice can’t fix. She’s a walking disaster, especially when she’s around handsome men. To make matters worse, she’s in desperate need of someone to play the character of Mordecai for the Purim spiel she’s producing and the new congregant, Nathaniel Abramson, is a perfect fit. Nathaniel is a divorced dad who’s recovering from the biggest public scandal of his life. The last thing he needs is a relationship with the choir director at his new synagogue, who also happens to be playing the lead female role of Esther in the very play he’s been coerced into joining.

Woven around the Jewish holiday of Purim, The Seduction of Esther is a story of two people whose lives mirror the plot of the Purim story. Like Esther, who had to hide her Jewish identity from the King of Persia, Samara and Nathaniel are hiding key pieces of themselves. Evil Haman wanted to destroy the Jews, and the nasty Josh will do anything to keep Samara and Nathaniel apart. Will their love survive, like the Jewish people in Shushan, Persia, or will their fear keep them apart?

Excerpt:

Samara stared at her reflection in the mirror, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. The breath was supposed to relax her—to calm her nerves, lower her blood pressure and help her handle Nathaniel’s impending arrival. However, her body didn’t get the message, because all she achieved was a case of the hiccups. Terrific. Her stomach flopped and her hands trembled. She took another deep breath, opened her eyes and hiccupped.

This was not happening. She could not go out on a date with Nathaniel with a case of the hiccups. No way, no how. She turned on the tap, filled a glass and took a sip of water. Hiccup. She brought the glass into the kitchen, put a spoon in it and took another sip. Hiccup. She drank from the opposite side of the glass. Hiccup. Moisture on her chest made her look down. Wonderful, now I’ve spilled on my blouse. She put the glass in the sink and raced back into her bedroom to change into a sweater. She undid enough buttons to fit her head through the opening and yanked.

“Ow!”

Her hair caught on a button. As she lowered the blouse, more hair got stuck. Now the blouse hung in front of her face, neither fully on nor fully off.

“Argh!”

She reached her arm in front of her, felt for the bed so she could sit and untangle her hair. As she floundered, the doorbell rang.

“No!”

Please, please, please don’t be Nathaniel. The three days since his phone call asking her out had made ketchup falling out of a Heinz bottle seem quick. Despite her manner on the phone with him, she’d been so excited for today. Her mind wandered to him at the most inopportune times, like when she sang, worked on the spiel, walked down the street. She examined every note she sang and wondered how he’d receive it; she contemplated, and refused, moving scenes around to give Esther more time with Mordecai; she examined every man she passed and compared him to Nathaniel.

No matter how she hid it or reason it out, she could no longer deny her feelings for him. He made her laugh, he made her relax and he made her feel like the most important woman in the room. She could stare at his hands all day and watch the way they moved when he spoke. When they touched her, her whole body tingled. The air she breathed with him was fresher, filled with more oxygen. Time froze, yet at the same time, sped by. Her worries faded away; he made her feel invincible. If he were here now, he’d laugh and have her untangled in an instant. But she would be mortified. There was no way she could let him see her like this. There was nothing she could do—she’d have to skip the date and make up some excuse later. She held her breath as her stomach dropped with disappointment. She didn’t dare move, for fear of alerting him to her presence. The doorbell rang again, accompanied by a scratchy, jingly noise.