A Man to Believe In Read Online Free PDF Page A

one long finger and pressed it against her lips. “Keep your voice down. You’re in a library.” Reaching into his shirt pocket, he pulled out a white envelope and handed it to her.
    Cori opened it and drew out two tickets for the sold-out performance of
Sleeping Beauty
at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. “Where did you get these?”
    “Marsha gave them to me last night,” he replied casually. “To us, actually. We had the fastest time at charades. We won first prize.”
    Son of a gun. She’d talked to Marsha that morning before she’d left for work, and her friend hadn’t mentioned a single word about this, probably because she was too busy telling Cori everything she’d learned about the pirate. Thanks to Marsha, she now knew his name—Jake Tanner; his age—thirty-seven; his occupation—owner of his own construction company and, most important, his marital status—single, much to Marsha’s delight.
    “First prize, my a-ankle,” Cori muttered, glancing down at the tickets.
    In the first place, she’d been with Marsha the day she’d purchased several not-too-expensive bottles of champagne to use as prizes for the party games.Clearly, she’d switched prizes at the last minute, when she’d discovered Cori and Jake had won the game. How she’d come to have such expensive tickets was anyone’s guess.
    In the second place, Marsha knew darned well that Cori would have the devil’s own time passing up an opportunity to see her favorite ballet, which was precisely why
this
prize was the perfect enticement—not matchmaking, Marsha would insist—to get Cori to go out with this man. And for a second she was tempted to say to heck with it and go.
    Then she looked at Jake.
    Last night, while she’d tossed and turned her way through countless sleepless hours, she’d decided the best thing for her to do was to stay away from him. The way her heart pounded out of control every time she looked at him told her she’d made a sensible decision. Something about this man made him hard for her to resist, and warned her he could easily become a giant distraction she couldn’t afford. Not now, not when she needed to concentrate all her time and energy on the grand opening of her bookstore the first of December.
    Slowly, she tucked the tickets back into the envelope, then handed them to Jake. “You keep the tickets,” she said. “I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding someone to go with you.”
    “I want to go with you.”
    “I’m sorry, but I really can’t make it.”
    “Why not?”
    Before she could come up with a logical reason for turning him down, he took her hand and started forthe door, pulling her along behind him. She decided he might not be dressed like a pirate today, but he was still acting like one. “What do you think you’re doing?”
    “I’m taking you to lunch. We can get something to eat and discuss our tickets at the same time.”
    “I can’t go to lunch now.” She pulled her hand free and stopped.
    He turned to face her. “Sure you can. The note on your desk said your lunch hour started”—he glanced at his watch—“two minutes ago.”
    Cori cursed her conscientious habit of writing herself notes. “But … I don’t even know you.”
    Jake took a step backward, swept an imaginary hat from his head, and bent at the waist in a gallant bow. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is—”
    “Jake Tanner. That much I know.”
    “Ah-ha. You went to the trouble of finding out.” He crossed his arms in front of him and grinned, looking rather pleased with himself.
    Cori shook her head and waved the idea away with a flick of her wrist. “I asked Marsha your name so I could see if you had any overdue library books.”
    Still smiling, he nodded his head thoughtfully. “Then you know I have a clean record, so could we go to lunch now?”
    Cori decided Jake Tanner was the most tenacious man she had ever met. That observation, coupled with the fact that she’d run out of